The Big Reveal for the Washington Post was the release of the Afghanistan Papers. A series of interviews and documents "compiled in secret" and then the subject of a "legal challenge" from the US government.
The WaPo baldly calls it:
But there's nothing here that's really secret, and very little actual history. What do they tell us? Absolutely nothing, except what we're supposed to believe.
An awful lot of modern "leaks" are no such thing. They are Orwellian exercises in controlling the conversation. And this is no exception, carefully making sure the "establishment" and the "alternative" are joined in the middle, controlled from the same source.
It presents apologism, simplifications and outright fabrication as if they are classified information.
Telling us about "bad intelligence" and a "lack of coherent strategy", as if THOSE are the biggest crimes of NATO in Afghanistan.
It's all about enforcing the establishment line, disguised as criticism. Real crimes are ignored, whilst smaller, simpler "well-intentioned mistakes" are reluctantly acknowledged.
Nowhere is the illegality of the invasion addressed.
Not once is anyone accused of war crimes.
This is an outright lie. Before the 2001 invasion, the opium trade had been all but destroyed by the Taliban.
The Taliban banned the production of heroin in 2001 (just before the invasion). It dropped to almost nothing by the end of the year.
Since the US took control the heroin production of the region has increased almost every year. Today, Afghanistan produces 90% of global heroin.
All this, we are told, while the most powerful military force on the planet desperately tries to stop them. The Taliban did in 6 months what the US army has been unable to do in 18 years.
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