I am usually not a fan of The Washington Post, because of their Liberal reporting bias, but Craig Whitlock did a masterful job in describing what happened during our prolonged War in Afghanistan.

Whitlock joined The Washington Post in 1998 as an investigative reporter specializing in national security issues. He has covered the Pentagon, served as the Berlin bureau chief, and reported from more than 60 countries.

In early December 2019, he wrote a multi-part article based on a confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post

These documents reveal that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become un-winnable.

The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials.

The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all their remarks. After a three-year battle, the Post won a release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare.

With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations, and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.

Click on the headings below to see the actual articles.

Part 1- At war with the truth

U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it.

Part 2 – Stranded without a strategy

Bush and Obama had polar opposite plans to win the war. Both were destined to fail.

Part 3 – Built to fail

Despite vows the U.S. wouldn’t get mired in “nation-building,” it has wasted billions doing just that

Part 4 – Consumed by corruption

The U.S. flooded the country with money — then turned a blind eye to the graft it fueled

Part 5 – Unguarded nation

Afghan security forces, despite years of training, were dogged by incompetence and corruption

Part 6 – Overwhelmed by opium

The U.S. war on drugs in Afghanistan has imploded at nearly every turn

Interviews and memos – Explore the documents

Key insiders speak bluntly about the failures of the longest conflict in U.S. history

Post Reports – ‘We didn’t know what the task was’

Hear candid interviews with former ambassador Ryan Crocker and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn

The fight for the documents – About the investigation

It took three years and two federal lawsuits for The Post to pry loose 2,000 pages of interview records

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