Afghanistan Papers
The Afghanistan Papers are a set of document, mostly interview transcripts.
Contents
Etymology
The name "papers" invites comparison with the "Pentagon Papers", a set of documents presanted by Daniel Ellsberg about the Vietnam War.
Reporting
The Washington Post introduced them as:
A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals 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 unwinnable.[1]
Reaction
James Corbett was highly critical of the "leak", and suggested that it was a psychological operation to derail criticism of the war. He stated that he had found nothing revelatory in the papers> He opined that they were intended to seed opposition against the war with the official opposition narrative that it was a "mistake" and "not worth" fighting, because the costs outweighed the gains.[2]
