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IPFS News Link • Afghanistan

Selling the war: I helped craft the official lies in Afghanistan

• http://www.startribune.com By Lauren Kay Johnson

Recently, Washington Post reporting showed that the conflict in Afghanistan has been an operation of deception, as the war's architects knowingly misled the public about its objectives and progress. The "Afghanistan Papers" were not a revelation to me. I was one of the deceivers.

From July 2009 to March 2010, I served as one of the U.S. Air Force's designees for a nation-building mission, and I witnessed the disconnect between what happened on the ground and the messages the public heard about it. As my team's information operations officer, I played a direct role in crafting those messages. I employed "strategic communication" during events like the 2009 Afghan presidential election and directed embedded reporters to only the sunniest stories, keeping them away from disgruntled troops who might not stick to tidy talking points. But my job wasn't only to mislead the American public: Our information campaign extended to the Afghan people and to higher-ups within the American military itself.


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