The Black Vault

Truth, lies and Afghanistan
How military leaders have let us down
By LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2012/02/8904030

hxxx wrote:Careful G2, someone might think you are disparaging this soldier's service.

I spared you the cut/paste of entire article. Don't mention it. If you're interested, follow the link. The fact that this is not in your daily newspaper speaks volumes in itself.

ricardo wrote:

hxxx wrote:Careful G2, someone might think you are disparaging this soldier's service.

I spared you the cut/paste of entire article. Don't mention it. If you're interested, follow the link. The fact that this is not in your daily newspaper speaks volumes in itself.

that was a cheap shot hxxx. I didn't interpret that to be disparaging at all.

anymore than your post is anti American and makes you a ' coward '

if you read the statement from the general ( petraeus) he specifically

alluded to the situation( gains) being ' potentially ' reversible.

even in the monstrosity of horror and death that war leaves in the tidal wave

of its hellish destruction , something good is reborn. something always takes

root where nothing existed before... when you look in the mirror and see the

shadow of a man that once was, do you ever ask yourself, what did I do today,

to make tomorrow a better place ???

Senior ranking US military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the USCongress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the
truth has become unrecognizable. This deception has damaged America’s credibility among
both our allies and enemies, severely limiting our ability to reach a political solution to the war in Afghanistan. It has likely cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars Congress
might not otherwise have appropriated had it known the truth, and our senior leaders’ behavior
has almost certainly extended the duration of this war. The single greatest penalty our Nation has suffered, however, has been that we have lost the blood, limbs and lives of tens of thousands of American Service Members with little to no gain to our country as a consequence of this deception.

greeney2 wrote:The main context is that you did not read it from the sounds of it, I doubt Hxxx did either. I wonder if its a report to Congress why its not in the form of a letter, and why its not signed on the last page? Oh well, thats just me.

Reports on Afghanistan war too rosy? Army officer, others say yes.

Washington

Are US military leaders being honest about how the war in Afghanistan is going? No – and to a troubling extent, argues an Army lieutenant colonel who served there last year.In an article that is creating buzz in the halls of the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, Lt. Col. Daniel Davis argues that not only is the war in Afghanistan not going well, but also that his fellow US military officers – whether due to a misguided “can do” spirit or a fear of repercussions within their chains of command – are misleading the American people.

This apparent lack of candor, in turn, is creating what Davis calls a “credibility gap,” making it impossible to allow US citizens and lawmakers to “decide if the risk to blood and treasure” inherent in America’s wars is “worth it.”

Published Sunday in Armed Forces Journal, produced by Gannett, “Truth, lies and Afghanistan: How military leaders have let us down” begins with Davis emphasizing that, upon his arrival in Afghanistan in late 2010, he was “sincerely hoping" to learn that Pentagon officials' consistent claims – "that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and the military were progressing towards self-sufficiency" – were true.

“I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured,” he writes, “but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.”

Instead, “I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.” He cites the inability of Afghan soldiers and police to handle security in many parts of the country, and the continued widespread influence of the Taliban.

“I’m hardly the only one who has noted the discrepancy between official statements and the truth on the ground,” he says, citing a 2011 report by an Afghan organization which noted that US military assessments routinely differ from those of other international military forces in the country and are “solely intended to influence American and European public opinion ahead of the withdrawal.”

Defense analysts outside the Pentagon, for their part, have long grappled with disparities between official intelligence assessments and what they hear behind closed doors, but some argue that the tendency to “spin” is getting worse as US forces prepare to leave. “Since June 2010, the unclassified reporting the US does provide has steadily shrunk in content, effectively ‘spinning’ the road to victory by eliminating content that illustrates the full scale of the challenges ahead,” writes Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in a piece cited by Davis.