The Real Story In Afghanistan?

Rolling Stone, via nc links:

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. That assessment is essentially that the war has been a disaster and the military's top brass has not leveled with the American public about just how badly it’s been going. "How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?" Davis boldly asks in an article summarizing his views in The Armed Forces Journal.

Davis last month submitted the unclassified report –titled "Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leader’s Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort" – for an internal Army review. Such a report could then be released to the public. However, according to U.S. military officials familiar with the situation, the Pentagon is refusing to do so. Rolling Stone has now obtained a full copy of the 84-page unclassified version, which has been making the rounds within the U.S. government, including the White House. We've decided to publish it in full; it's well worth reading for yourself. It is, in my estimation, one of the most significant documents published by an active-duty officer in the past ten years.

I tried to save a copy of the report to read later, but that didn't work.  Regardless, I don't know about the veracity of the report, but based on previous examples of the military misleading the public, I wouldn't doubt that they are true.  I was hoping that Obama's surge would give us a face-saving way out of this clusterfuck relatively quickly, but that looks like wishful thinking.  Hopefully, we will follow the drawdown plans already outlined and bug out.  I agree with the Lt. Col. though, that we shouldn't be wasting American (and Afghani) lives in this wasted effort.