The Afghanistan Report The Pentagon Doesn't Want You To Read

Rolling Stone:

Earlier this week, the New York Times' Scott Shane published a bombshell piece about Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis, a 17-year Army veteran recently returned from a second tour in Afghanistan. According to the Times, the 48-year-old Davis had written an 84-page unclassified report, as well as a classified report, offering his assessment of the decade-long war.

Read the whole story: Rolling Stone

Comments

[gregory57]

08:31 AM on 02/11/2012

Has anybody noticed that we only have these long, drawn out wars in places where there are lots of drugs?

[horsey]

12:52 PM on 02/11/2012

O, wars are about drugs. Thx for the great info.

[gregory57]

01:01 PM on 02/11/2012

Not necessarily. Maybe drug production is a breeding ground for the conditions that result in modern wars.

[Gracie fr]

07:14 PM on 02/11/2012

For some people, war is a drug......

[gregory57]

08:29 AM on 02/11/2012

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but it sure is a hell of a lot more tedious. Let me get back to you on this.

[reality4u2]

08:25 AM on 02/11/2012

There is nothing to "win" in Afghanistan - and that's been true as far back as Alexander the Great...

[shewolf2002]

08:23 AM on 02/11/2012

It will be interesting to see how our politicians, after reading the report, will justify doing nothing.

[AZreb]

07:56 AM on 02/11/2012

Only 107 comments on this important article. Lost more on the article about the Marine snipers using lightning bolts as a symbol - due to Panetta's willingness, actually happiness, to punish them.

Will this report actually change the way this "war" is being described and waged? Too many of our congress and administration are willing to face the truth, so it is doubtful. More dead troops, more wounded troops - more billions spent - and the beat goes on.

[RubalKhali]

11:58 PM on 02/10/2012

One of the first actions the U.S. took in Afghanistan was to attack Al Jazeera. At the time it was the only world class news source in Afghanistan. Not only do they not want you to read THIS report, they never wanted you to read ANY report.Honest reporting is as dangerous to the military 'minds', and I use the term loosely, as it is to a politician.

[uk progressive]

04:58 AM on 02/11/2012

Didn't they also fire on a hotel where AL-jazeera reporters where staying in Baghdad killing some of them?

[RubalKhali]

07:27 AM on 02/11/2012

They took out the satelite uplink and killed a reporter when they attacked Al Jazeera offices in Baghdad. Al Jazeera had supplied the U.S. with the exact co-ordinates of both its offices to avoid an 'accidental' strike.

[ghost7]

09:44 PM on 02/10/2012

I erroneously posted he was a current aide to a Republican senator when he is an ex-aide. He is--by his own admission--a contributor to the conservative Washington Times.

It gets better though, LTC Davis never, not once, took part in any counter-insurgency operations. He was part of some rear-echelon resupply group.

While he traveled around he never commanded a unit in charge of counter-insurgency ops, never trained in counter-insurgency ops, was never responsible for an area to conduct counter-insurgency ops, never planned, executed or took part in tactical operations, or never experienced long-term interactions with native elders or villagers.

He was never the originator or recipient of Taliban intelligence reports. He never interrogated Taliban prisoners or knowingly saw any Taliban.

He never conducted patrols of a village and his 'on patrol' photos aren't on patrol just merely him riding a vehicle. He never took part in an ambush, never got ambushed, never fired a shot, never had troops who fired a shot, and on and on.

But he does get RS and NY Times articles and gets touted as some expert in Afghanistan counter-insurgency operations.

[MikeDu]

11:15 PM on 02/10/2012

You are trying to supress the truth by a campaign of character assassination?

[ghost7]

12:48 AM on 02/11/2012

No, I'm trying to tell you the guy isn't some sort of insider and his 'document' is ignored because he's a clown. Afghanistan deserves a lot of criticism but not by this idiot.

[ghost7]

01:13 AM on 02/11/2012

How exposing his lack of insider knowledge and experience in counter-insurgency 'suppressing the truth'?

If I read a treatise on what's wrong with how we approach cardio surgery I'd like it to be from a surgeon or one of the surgical staff. I'd tend to want to know if it was written by the supply room attendant who talked to a few people in the break room and looked on from outside the operating room doors.

[darthmaul]

11:40 PM on 02/10/2012

His "Street Cred" may be irrelevant, I think the bottom line is the same. We are throwing money down a rat hole and wasting American lives.

Perhaps a much better person to listen to would be Karl Eikenberry former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan who also served two tours of duty in Afghanistan while he was in the military.

Eikenberry has characterized the current Afghan government and President Karzai in particular as a Kleptocracy. The populace sees the government as corrupt and Karzai as ineffective. With such weak leadership, it's only a matter of time, when we pull out specifically, that the Taliban will take over.

[ghost7]

01:33 AM on 02/11/2012

Eikenberry is a good example of someone with some real experience and weight. I might not agree with all he says but his position deserves a listen and you'd better have your ducks in a row if you choose a different course. Davis is an example of how little civilians know about the military and how easy a uniform is to gain 'street cred'. Helps he was a senator's aide, something I believe is also relevant to the discussion.

[Bradley Greig Smith]

09:04 PM on 02/10/2012

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2012/02/20122511363735905.html

Read the article or at least watch the video about 2/27 Wolfhounds it's only 2 and half minuets long. These guys barracks were right across from mine when I was first in. This is the kind of job grunts get stuck with.

[GypsyRose]

10:04 PM on 02/10/2012

Take the loss and come home. The word "win" has no business here, even ask Brady.

[Bradley Greig Smith]

12:30 AM on 02/11/2012

Right on.

[muck-raker]

08:18 AM on 02/11/2012

"Just throwing taxpayer money down a rat hole"...just print that...........................................its the same everytime....take over and control. In the end our kids come home either in a wood box or missing parts of their body...The interested party... The Military Industrial Complex cares very little about these stories...It's the bottom line that matters...GREED

[banker67]

08:21 PM on 02/10/2012

First, this sounds like The Pentagon Papers II, except the Vietnam originals were authored by the Pentagon generals, spooks and experts themselves. No one suggested the appalling deceptions recorded in those documents were not authentic; the Power Fraternity just didn't like the public knowing the truth. Nothing new there.

One reader here says Davis works for a right-wing elected official. If true -- and I have no idea if it is -- I agree that this point should be made in the first sentence of the article.

I also don't understand why this story -- which a few hours back was #2 on the front page behind that trivial article on ethically challenged business execs -- is now off the front page entirely.

Something is very odd about this story. If this guy's message to Congress is real, it should be the top story. It's far more important than anything the record industry does.

If it's only another focus-group-driven rightest maneuver, it's still big news. If that's the case, no editor worth talking to would publish this without saying in the first sentence that the subject of the article works for a right-wing official.

Last, who doesn't know the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are based on gigantic neo-con lies?

Looks like the only people who pretend to believe these towering, obvious lies are those who are paid handsomely to do so; tragically, that includes just about every American 'journalist' who earns more than minimum wage.

[sallybutt45]

12:50 AM on 02/11/2012

I've got to confess that I don't understand why a right-wing politico would want this story released. To what avail? I thought that GOPers were hot to stay in Afghanistan forever.do they wish to discredit Obama's war policy? I agree that Afghanistan is senseless and we need to get out, but please explain, do they want to end that theater so that they can turn their focus on Iran?

I have felt for years, that we were in Afghanistan, for nefarious reasons, pipeline, minerals, etc everything except what we were being told. Patreaus & McCrystal convinced the administration that the "surge" was the way to go, and neither of them appears to me to be leftists. I've felt that Patreaus aspired to the presidency, am I mistaken?

[banker67]

07:36 AM on 02/11/2012

I can't think of any 'liberal,' whatever that may be these days, who wanted or condones these never-ending wars. And I don't see why the right wing would be condemning them either; that point has to be clarified.
Of course the truth is 99.99% of Americans did not want either of these wars. They were persuaded to want them by very expensive, tax-funded PR campaigns so Cheney and his corporate pals could clean up on natural resources and the always-profitable business of killing people who can't really fight back.

[MikeDu]

07:38 PM on 02/10/2012

A brief snippet from page 3: "Had the president know the truth of what really happened in 2007 it is a virtual certainty he would not have made the decision he did in November/December 2009. In any case, the situation demonstrates a growing and expanding willingness on the part of our country's senior military leaders to us "Information Operations" even on domestic audiences to manipilate the system in order to get what they want." end quote.

[MikeDu]

08:10 PM on 02/10/2012

Back again, still reading the report. Its becoming clear that Petraeus is a primary 'bad guy' in this narrative. To the point that calls should be made to* immediately remove Ptraeus from his current CIA post*. You can't have a man in that position capable of such proven calculate mendacity.

[ghost7]

09:01 PM on 02/10/2012

Petraeus, now Obama's man, is the 'bad guy' in a narrative put forth the paper's author LTC Daniel Davis, a Republican & conservative commentator on the Washington Times of all places with an agenda cleverly disguised as 'criticism' of the war. An agenda assisted by the fact most civilians don't understand how far down the rung this guy is or that he's nothing close to an expert.

Normally I'd not have anything to put forth but in this case I personally witnessed and/or took part in many of the operations Davis commented on in his paper on and he's full of it. All of which makes me suspicious of his other claims and his motives.

[REDSTATEREFUGEE]

07:36 PM on 02/10/2012

Reminds me of 1968, when I was leaving the Army and we were keeping under wraps from public knowledge the opening of yet another massive military hospital for Tet Offensive casualties. Seems the brass did not want the public to know how many wounded and dead we really sustained in that "victory." It only took seven more years of death and destruction before the whole, pathetic mess was concluded with NVA tanks crashing through the presidential palace grounds.

60,000 men and women died in Vietnam, and we still have aging survivors walking around with us today, some wounded, many with grievous PTSD afflictions. I agree with Ron Paul on just one policy issue: Bring home our troops.

[ghost7]

07:28 PM on 02/10/2012

The author of the 'report'--Davis--is a reservist and aide to a Republican senator. What isn't readily apparent to most civilians is that his position is that reaching out to the civilian population or the insurgency is mistaken strategy and of course everyone is lying. If left to Davis and his ilk we would have continued to amass civilian & military casualties rather than conduct a hearts and minds campaign.

Rolling Stone offered a mouthpiece to a right-wing political activist using his part-time weekend warrior's experience and position as a senetor's aide to put forth criticisms of a hearts and minds campaign. Davis' default position, not spelled out in his paper, is that violent war-making trumps hearts and minds, and RS fell for it.

The most ironic thing is that he names his paper "Dereliction of Duty II" knowing most of those reading wouldn't realize that the original author of "Dereliction of Duty" is one of the proponents of COIN strategy in Iraq (& now in A'stan) which favors reaching out to the civilian population, coming to terms with insurgents and avoiding a 'kill them all let God sort them out' approach.

[MikeDu]

11:23 PM on 02/10/2012

I assume you're a hired propagandist whose job is to discredit the story.

[ghost7]

12:58 AM on 02/11/2012

Uhm no, I'm a veteran of the same conflict who whose witnessed something much different then Davis is spouting, knows his background and am speaking up. Sorry to disappoint, if I'd witnessed the same as Davis I'd say that.

I assume you're the kind of target he's fishing for, one who can't tell the difference between a REMF reservist supply officer and an experienced battle commander who can bring some gravitas to the criticisms (Eikenberry counts).

[valmach]

07:15 PM on 02/10/2012

In my view, our duplicity in and around Afghanistan is one of the key problems with our efforts,
and where practically speaking, our failures have the greatest negative impact. We continually
convey to the Afghan people the same "victory narrative" we share with the American people,
but the local population recognizes it for what it often is: fiction.

Rolling Stone Article -Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis

[greyhound2]

07:12 PM on 02/10/2012

According to the Pentagon Papers, the top brass knew in 1966 that the war in Vietnam was unwinable, that they had severely underestimated the strength of the opposition and that the campaign was a lost cause. Two years later, in 1968, the Chicago police and the National Guard cracked down on demonstrators at the Democratic National convention as hooligans, and the war went on for another four years until Nixon, who professed he was not a crook, settled at the Paris Peace Accords to withdraw with "honor" as the last helicopter left the roof of the US Embassy in Siagon. That war cost 52.000 American dead. They said then it would never happen again. Short memory.

[Enroh Mot]

07:19 PM on 02/10/2012

We live in the United States of Amnesia.

[MikeDu]

11:25 PM on 02/10/2012

Actually, the title of the report is 'Dereliction of Duty II". The 'II' in the title is meant to remind us of the 1998 history 'Derection of Duty" which traced the lies that got us into Vietnam. So the author at least remembers hisa history.

[Enroh Mot]

07:10 PM on 02/10/2012

The war profiteers and the heroin dealers are making out like bandits.