Report: ‘Truth’ of war in Afghanistan was hidden

WASHINGTON – Many top U.S. officials held sharply negative views of the U.S. entry into Afghanistan and bleak assessments of the prospects for success – views that were often at odds with public pronouncements – a trove of documents obtained by The Washington Post revealed.

The Post gained access to more than 2,000 pages of interviews on the war in Afghanistan through a Freedom of Information Act request. John Sopko – who heads the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, which conducted the interviews – told the newspaper that the documents show “the American people have constantly been lied to” since U.S. troops first arrived there 18 years ago.

“If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction ... 2,400 lives lost. Who will say this was in vain?” retired Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, who served as an adviser on Afghanistan under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said in February 2015 in an interview published by the Post.

The interviews reveal that officials saw fatal flaws in virtually every aspect of the U.S. approach to Afghanistan, from the initial invasion and decision to topple the Taliban with a light force to the failure to tackle corruption and the drug trade. They decried the unwillingness or inability of U.S. leaders to stop their Pakistani allies from lending support to the Taliban forces. There was widespread pessimism about the prospects of training Afghan military and police units or finding reliable political partners.

Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard