Army Whistleblower: US is Lying About the Afghan War

John Glaser, February 05, 2012

Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis writes that his deployments to Afghanistan revealed to him a reality that “bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.”

I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

…I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.

Update: Matthew Hoh responds here.



9 Responses to “Army Whistleblower: US is Lying About the Afghan War”

  1. Aarky
    February 5th, 2012 at 6:23 pm

    The military will fry this man! How dare he dispute the official propaganda even though the truth is already out there if anyone had commonsense to read other than main stream media.

  2. Sheikh Yamoni Maker
    February 6th, 2012 at 2:25 am

    What this guy saw is probably little different than what drives so many other of his fellow fodder units to suicide.

  3. Ralphman
    February 6th, 2012 at 4:29 am

    What's as bad as untruth is suppression of information: last year, a fellow co-worker said that he was being sent to Afghanistan as a replacement to fill gaps in an Air Force supply unit, which had been decimated by the Taliban – literally dozens of dead and wounded. No mention of this incident was ever released by the media.

  4. fenistol
    February 6th, 2012 at 7:16 am

    Somebody at West Point forgot to teach Colonel Davis that the US won the Vietnam War and that an emperor always wears the finest clothes.

  5. persnipoles
    February 6th, 2012 at 3:33 pm

    Any detail on how they were attacked? On ground, in air, with what, etc.? Might be a lead for someone reading here? Lowballing US wounded seems consistent with the Colonel's portrayal.

  6. Matthew Hoh and Lt. Col. Daniel Davis on Failure in Afghanistan « Antiwar.com Blog
    February 8th, 2012 at 8:06 am

    [...] noted a both their writings early this week here. Print This | var addthis_pub="wiredispatch"; var addthis_options = 'facebook, twitter,digg, [...]

  7. Less Than 1 Percent of Afghan Forces Are Self-Sufficient -- News from Antiwar.com
    February 8th, 2012 at 7:04 pm

    [...] that systematically misrepresents the progress of the war. As Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis has recently written, facts on the ground in Afghanistan “bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. [...]

  8. The Pentagon’s Smear Campaign on Lt. Col. Davis « Antiwar.com Blog
    February 9th, 2012 at 12:42 pm

    [...] Colonel Daniel L. Davis. Davis, who was deployed to Afghanistan numerous times, has in recent days written and spoken out against the “rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground” [...]

  9. Lt. Col. Davis’s ‘Manufacturing Consent’ « Antiwar.com Blog
    February 13th, 2012 at 8:15 am

    [...] Lt. Col. Daniel Davis submitted to Congress. Davis is of course the army whistleblower who has written and spoken out against the “rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground” in [...]