{"id":12568,"date":"2018-10-21T21:10:55","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T01:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=12568"},"modified":"2018-10-21T21:14:04","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T01:14:04","slug":"endless-u-s-government-lies-on-the-afghanistan-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/21\/endless-u-s-government-lies-on-the-afghanistan-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Endless U.S. Government Lies on the Afghanistan War"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The U.S. military tried to cover up the Taliban’s shooting of a U.S. general<\/a> on Thursday in Kandahar. What other Afghan debacles is the Pentagon hiding?<\/p>\n

Here’s a 2009 piece I did for Counterpunch and the Future of Freedom Foundation<\/a> on the lies that permeated the first 8 years of the Afghan war.\u00a0 The New Yorker cartoon at the left is from 1988. Unfortunately, Washington didn’t learn.<\/p>\n

October 9, 2009<\/span><\/p>\n

Eight Years of Big Lies on Afghanistan<\/a><\/h1>\n

by<\/span> James Bovard<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

It seems like only yesterday that President George W. Bush was bragging about having given \u201cfreedom and democracy\u201d to 25 million Afghans.\u00a0 This was a key theme of his second inaugural address, and it\u00a0 helped Bush preen as the conqueror of the world.<\/p>\n

For 8 years, the American people have been fed one big lie after another regarding Afghanistan.\u00a0\u00a0 Now, when the Pentagon is saber-rattling to vastly increase the number of U.S. troops sent there,\u00a0\u00a0 a refresher course on the Biggest Lies is in order.<\/p>\n

In his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, Bush frightened Americans with a bogus nuclear threat: \u201cOur discoveries in Afghanistan confirmed our worst fears. . . . We have found diagrams of American nuclear power plants and public water facilities\u201d in caves used by Al Qaeda.<\/p>\n

Senior CIA and FBI officials followed up with \u201cbackground\u201d briefings to the media, revving up the threat that Afghan-based Al Qaeda fighters were targeting U.S. nuclear power facilities. This made the terrorist threat far more ominous and spurred support for Bush\u2019s preemptive war policy against Iraq.<\/p>\n

Two years later, Bush administration officials admitted that the president\u2019s statement was completely false and that no nuclear power plant diagrams had been discovered in Afghanistan. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Edward McGaffigan, who had testified in 2002 on this falsehood at closed hearings on Capitol Hill, commented that Bush was \u201cpoorly served by a speechwriter.\u201d This was a farce \u2013 as if the deceit stemmed from some speechwriter\u2019s poetic fancy \u2013 as opposed to the conniving of a phalanx of high-ranking officials.<\/p>\n

Pat Tillman was a star defensive back for the Arizona Cardinals who, in the wake of 9\/11, turned down a multimillion dollar contract extension to enlist as an Army Ranger.\u00a0 Tillman was the highest profile military recruit of the Bush era.<\/p>\n

Tillman was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Within minutes of his demise, it was clear he had been slain by fellow soldiers.\u00a0 The Pentagon responded with an information lockdown -cutting off all communication to the military base where Tillman had been stationed.<\/p>\n

A week after Tillman\u2019s death, Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then a top commander in Afghanistan, notified the White House that Tillman was killed by U.S. troops: \u201cI felt that it was essential that you received this information as soon as we detected it to preclude any unknowing statements by our country\u2019s leaders that might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of CPL Tillman\u2019s death become public.\u201d The same day McChrystal sent his memo, the Pentagon announced that Tillman had received a posthumous Silver Star and was killed while leading an attack on Al Qaeda forces. Pentagon emails referred to the \u201cSilver Star Game Plan\u201d (to distract attention from the \u201cfriendly fire\u201d killing).<\/p>\n

On May 1, 2004, Bush exploited Tillman\u2019s death for the finale of his speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner.\u00a0 The Pentagon and White House delayed admitting that Tillman had been killed by Americans until after a high-profile memorial service rallied public support for the war and Bush\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n

The Bush administration perennially claimed that the U.S. invasion in 2001 resulted in \u201cfreedom\u201d for Afghan women.\u00a0\u00a0 But women in many parts of Afghanistan continue to be oppressed even worse than characters in American country music songs.\u00a0 Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently approved a new law in August that entitles a husband to starve his wife if she refuses his sexual demands.<\/p>\n

Both Bush and Obama touted the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan as promoting democracy. But the election in August showed Afghan democracy as an onion-layer of frauds.\u00a0 Peter Galbraith, a top United Nations official in Afghanistan, estimated that a third of Karzai\u2019s votes may have been bogus.\u00a0 (He was fired after he refused to muzzle himself).<\/p>\n

Some Obama administration officials probably cringed at the scale of the Karzai\u2019s conniving. But it is only a question of time until we are again told about our duty to defend democracy in Kabul. The elections did not fool the Afghan people: they know Karzai is an American puppet. But the election may help the U.S. government con slow-witted Americans into believing\u00a0 the war has a redeeming purpose.<\/p>\n

There are other perennial four-star howlers\u00a0 \u2013 the claims\u00a0 that the U.S. is speedily building up the Afghan army, that the U.S. is striving\u00a0 to make sure Afghan opium no longer floods the world, that U.S. experts are helping the Afghan government become non-corrupt\u2026..<\/p>\n

There is no reason to expect the U.S. government to ever become trustworthy on Afghanistan.\u00a0\u00a0 At best, Washington will rotate its lies, the same way it rotates the National Guard units sent to the Afghan badlands.\u00a0 Americans need to recognize that, once their government commences warring, truth will be target number one<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. military tried to cover up the Taliban’s shooting of a U.S. general on Thursday in Kandahar. What other Afghan debacles is the Pentagon hiding? Here’s a 2009 piece I did for Counterpunch and the Future of Freedom Foundation on the lies that permeated the first 8 years of the Afghan war.\u00a0 The New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[42,137,264,1756,1757],"class_list":["post-12568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-afghanistan","tag-george-w-bush","tag-lies","tag-pat-tillman","tag-stanley-mcchrystal"],"yoast_head":"\nEndless U.S. Government Lies on the Afghanistan War - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pentagon coverup of shooting of a US general in Kandahar is only the latest Afghan war con job from the U.S. govt. 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