The claim that Taliban attacks are dropping in Afghanistan, the single piece of data backing up NATO claims of “progress” in the protracted occupation and indeed the centerpiece of President Obama’s re-election campaign speeches related to foreign policy, has turned out to be completely false, Pentagon officials admitted today.
The data, which seems to have formed the basis for much of NATO’s occupation strategy, was ultimately the result of a “clerical error” that officials attributed to the Afghan military turning in certain forms late. Officials say that the revised data shows attacks approximately flat, buit they have simply removed all the old reports based on the false data and haven’t replaced them with anything since then.
Officials repeatedly cited the false data as proof of improved security in Afghanistan, and indeed it remains the only piece of “proof” that ever existed. Despite it turning out to be fake, officials say their assessment that the situation is getting better has not changed. They just don’t have anything to back it up with anymore.
Pentagon spokesman George Little says they only finally learned of the error during a “quality control” check recently, and that it is “unhelpful to have inaccurate information in our systems.” That the inaccurate information was the basis for major policy decisions, and that officials are standing by those decisions seemingly as a face-saving measure, is the much bigger concern.
What else is new.., coming out of a mouth of high ranking Democratic Party managing the pentagon.., or for that matter state department. Falsehood, is what started all.
There's our old friend, "the first casualty of war".
Once again, the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be an oncoming train.
Or an oncoming 2 motorcycles
George Little says … “unhelpful to have inaccurate information in our systems.” Liar.
Does this error mean we'll have to stay longer and leave more troops in Afghanistan?
Yes, we can not possibly until we train the Afghan army to produce the quantity and quality of paperwork expected by the Pentagon.
That's my concern also. This is one lie I think would have been better if left undetected. Now we'll need another "surge".
"Clerical error". Give me a break. This has as much validity as Osama bin Laden was the "mastermind behind 9/11." The truth is, as with most of what the government maintains is somewhere else. The Taliban offered up Osama to the Bushies only to be ignored. Osama while resident in a Pakistani hospital in pre-9/11 days had daily visits from the CIA? While in Afghanistan, the Taliban Foreign Secretary Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil told me they had him under virtual house arrest as "the guest was burning down the guest house." A reference to his troublesome big mouth. There is so much BS with the government's rendition or story of the Osama bin Laden saga.
Apparently the officials failed to remove the old files dating back to the beginning of 2012. These show a consistent pattern of misinformation.
This is documented on the Nuristan news site to-day.