Mike Flynn and the Afghanistan's papers

The former lieutenant general, Mike Flynn, shared a pdf on Telegram about an interview he had at SIGAR headquarters in Arlington, VA on October 11, 2015. The original PDF can be found here.

Recently Talibans toke over the entire country and everybody fleed. Biden's administration did nothing to stop this. They fall asleep.

This is a copy from the PDF but you can find an spanish version here.

This is where I present the content of the statement of former Lieutenant General Mike Flynn of the investigation committee:

Introduction

I think that in general, you'll be part of the history of this thing (the war in Afghanistan), obviosly because what SIGAR's role has been for a long time. I used to go down and sit with the SIGAR people in Kandahar, just to chat with them, have a cup of coffee, and see what they were up to. Never mind not accomplishing our mission, but the severity of corruption in our own system, I think is just unbelievable. The waste that I saw is unbelievable. You just sit there and go, "you have got to be kidding me, why did we do this?" I think that somebody, someday, will sit down and do some very serious research with data, which they can discover, (about this problem). A friend of mine just did an assesment in Iraq. He is a very serious gentleman in this case. He is discovering how little data we actually have kept for (the new military) organization. The Secretary (of Defense) has just appointed our general in Iraq-U.S. Army 3rd Corps. It is amazing. He (my friend conducting the assessment) did a good solid 45 days and went into theater. He has an extraordinary background in the whole theater, but definitely in Iraq. He just told me the other day that it is like we are starting from scratch. In this era of data and information that we have; we have all these things and all this stuff, but everybody goes and then takes (the data) when they leave. You do your right-seat ride and we actually taken right-seat rides for granted. I am in the process of writing a book right now and part of it is how we have gotten away from that. We are such a strong country, but we have gotten away from the idea of actually how to win anything. There is a machinery that is behing what we do, and it keeps us participating in the conflict because it generates wealth. (It generates wealth) all around and on both sides... well all sides... there are more than two sides.

Information and access

The institution resists that kind of innovation (as I recommended in my report fixing Intel). The most innovative time in a human's life is in combat. Your instincts to survive are as turned on as a human being will ever have their instincts turned on. It is as high of a time of instinctual innovation as you can imagine. So does it apply to the big force? I don't know. I still see media on the battlefield today. I just watched a great documentary of these Yazidi women that were taken by ISIS and then tortured and raped. It is unbelievable. Here is this female reporter who is in Syria, who snuck into Syria. We can't do that right now without permission from the President of the United States, but they instead get permission from some producer. They are filming the whole thing: crossing the river, sneaking in, going on boats, and she is driving on the road. Not in any kind of a cober or nothing. It was a blond hair woman. It was unbelieable and the story is amazing. So when I ask the intelligence community where they got the information and they say it is from some INT. I ask what INT and they might say SIGINT. So no one actually talked to anybody? They would say no.

The easiest deception against the U.S Intelligence Community is SIGINT. The easiest. That is me picking up my phone, knowing that someone is listening to me, and saying "the wedding is on, it will be tomorrow". Of course one of the code words we always listened for and we already thought wedding meant there would be an attack. That was some of the language used for 9/11. That right there, whether anything is going to happen, I just say that and all of a sudden you get an entire country (I have seen this happen) put on alert because of something like that. This happened more than one. In an environment where human behavior is at its most active, which is an insurgency-like effort, where humans interact on the battlefield and not just combat. (You also) are trying to understand a population. Every insurgency that I have studied, and I have studied nearly 30 case studies if not more over the last 10 or 15 years, the population is actually what are you trying to convince. So if you trying to convince the population, you have to understand the population. That, to me, was sort of one those cold bucket of water over the head moment.

I spent three years hunting human beings to kill them or capture them in Iraq, Afghanistan and East Africa. We refined our processes in Iraq. We experimented with capabilities, techniques and procedures in Iraq. What we learned in Iraq, we began to apply actually globally, because that was JSOC's missions. Our main effort was Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia but our mission was global. We did things in other parts of the world including in the Asia-Pacific Theater and in Central and South America. Again during that time, it was against terrorists because that is where they were. So I did that for three years and that was my intelligence mission, it was man hunting. It was capture/kill al-Qaeda and its associated movements and leaders.

All of a sudden I step out of that and I return to a series of assignments, starting with CENTCOM, then the Joint Staff, then back into Afghanistan with ISAF. I then held the Assistant Director for National Intelligence (position), then to DIA. I went back into a world with a very conventional, very structured, very cautious, very archaic intelligence system. (That is of course true beside) the time in Afghanistan where I realized that what were needed to change. So as I was watching things un fold from my perch at CENTCOM, then from my perch at the Joing Staff, particularly inside of the region and inside of Afghanistan and listening to the failures that we were having. It started to strike me that we were doing a whole rande of things incorrect. I am actually looking at the intelligence and I am saying, the intelligence is actually pretty good. The strategic assessments, if you go back and I am not sure if you guys can do this, you may want to go back and look at the NIEs at least, but If you went and looked at strategic intelligence system was assessing in Afghanistan pretty clearly. I think it was very clear. The policy decisions and the operational decisions, I don't think matched what the intelligence was saying. I think that there is a biasedness. I am going to draw you a picture here.

First of all, we started the war and then subsequently we continued to focus on the "where"... where the problem was. Strategically, we focused on where, which is really important because I will get to what we should have started off with and stuck to. So we started on where, because it was, "well where did they (al-Qaeda) come from?". Well they came from Afghanistan, so let's go to Afghanistan. We of course also went to a "where" called Iraq and why did we go to Iraq? That is the other side, "why"?. So we have got really gotten to this (question of why for Iraq) but we have not gotten to the why (with Afghanistan). Why did they hate us? Why did they attack us? Why are they operating the way they are operating? Why is the government like this? All the ways you could ask the question "why" we never really addressed (for Afghanistan). There has been bunch of stuff written since 9/11 of course that have tried to address it. There are think tanks and all of these other people. If you pull it all back and dig into some of the great products that have been written. A little bit of Fixing Intel was about the why, in fact, 99% of it some of it was about the why. It was trying to addess the why to influence and look backwards as to the where. In between (where and why) then you can have the what and the when. Why did something happen? What did it mean? When do we do something about it and where do we go? The big question in why, first, Why did this happen? Why is it that we have this problem? To me, we have not gotten to this (why). Politically we are still arguing about why.

I am probably going to make a lousy analogy here. First, the intel system- every component of it wants their intel to be golden nugget NGA wants their analysis of their picture son NGA can come in and say "we are the ones that solved the problem, we found (Osama) bin Laden". The SIGINT system wants to come in and say "it was our SIGINT system that found the guy and that is why we were able to get the guy". HUMINT wants to say, "we had the best HUMINT and he led us to the target". There is an absolute bias in the single INTs that we have that is why I am a huge believer in the open world of information. That is beyond open source data, it is the open world of information.

I attended a meeting yesterday, because I got back Sunday from Japan. I attendet the meeting all day yesterday on cyber and right now there are eight companies that have formed a strategic alliance. They are all U.S.- based companies. They are collecting more in probably five minutes than the intel community is collecting in the same period of time. I can tell you that in a month, and I am guessing and likely underestimating, they are probably collecting five times more than the U.S. Intelligence Community is collecting. This is a commercial alliance. Millions and millions of piece of information and threat data that they get. Their challenge as commercial entity is analyzing it. What the intel community has is a gazillion analysts. So you have this inherent bias and this is what we are trying to achieve and everyone is saying "this is mine". That is why the all-source activities we have become very important.

The SOICs are a good example. The SOICs were meant to actually review everything and to validate what it was we were seeing on the battlefield. To the debree that they could, enlightened commanders, particularly enlightened company commanders that saw use them, they would have a much more thorough understaning. A company commander has an area of operations, so we wanted to gather a level of detail (in there) but the SOICs had the responsibility to bring in the pressure points around the area and bring in the connections. Most people don't know that if you live in Farah province in Afghanistan, if you live in Uruzgan, if you live in Ghazni, or a portion of Paktika, that you are a Kandahari. You are a member of the Kandahari tribe. Now you then can get down into the zai's like the Ghilzais, the Orakzai's and Noorzais, zai, zai, zai. They are all sub-tribes of being a Kandahari. So the end of the day, they are all Kandarharis. If you understand the history of how it unraveled, it is not even six degrees of serpation, it is one.

At the beginning of the war (2002-2010), INTs were where we got our intelligence because that was conventionally where we got it and everybody knew it. Facebook didn't come around until 2005 and Twitter was a sound. The information revolution has only occurred in the last 10 years. If you want to strectch it, but really in the last 5 years. The war went on for a long time and INTs were where I was informed. I could also read a really good report out of RAND, CSIS, or CNSAS. If I am switched on and really paying attention to open source back then, if I am reading a variety of things, to include history, I could probably know a lot more than the Intelligence Community is going to tell me. The response from policymakers is always "what does the intel say?" Remember there is an inherent bias in the intel community because they want to get money, they want to exist, and they want to grow.

Back in 2002, (we only used) 20 % of open source (to inform us). I call this open world information now because if I can see where 1.8 billion people are trending on Twitter that is pretty telling what is important in the world. I can go to my iPhone right now and see what is trending on Twitter for 1.8 billion people and what the mass quantity of those people are thinking. You can see the top 10 trends, just that and never mind other social medium. So the intelligence system and the government system has not broken from this model (of reliance on traditional INTs for a majority of their information). Again, I call them enlightened commaders or enlightened leaders, will tend to use other things than their intelligence system and I have been a part of it. As a J2 for many years, if my commander knew less than I knew about intelligence, then he was worthless. The best leaders, the best commanders that we have, the best Chairman's, the best Secretaries of Defense, the best Presidents of the United States. If they don't have better intelligence than their heads of intelligence, that they are doing a disservice and they are being irresponsible in the jobs they are serving in.

Violence and the Media

Yes, (people, especially at the NSC level were looking at violence) because it was a very visible thing. That is whatsells. That is what the news sells. They sell bad things. Nobody wants to talk about how many schools are beingbuilt. Every so often you may get that Again, I really highlight this idea about leadership. You can get wrappedaround the axle about every JED that goes off. bul the best counter to an improvised explosive device is security, not another MRAP. Provide security and that will counter the improvised explosive device. Now there are tactics that go with that. I went around Afghanistan and [would sit down with tribal leaders and individuals. 1 sat down one time and they were describing where we built wells. It was like, why do you guys continue to put these wells in? You are putting them in the wrong places. There were some SOF units that would work with their counterparts and would actually figure out where to pUt them in. To say that an Afghan can't dig a hole or know where to put a well is amazing. They know where their wells are and where the water is at, yet we have engineers saying we have to put a well here. (We would place wells!) between two tribes to try and bring lhe tribes together.lnsane. Totally insane !tis not a model that works for them.

(Early on) we would rely a little on th!s [open source] and a lot on the INTs. You may have an individual like Eric Schmidt, who has a great article out today, and people will say that he does not know what he is saying. But some of these reporters have far more combat experience and actually go talk to these individuals because they are able to get into villages. They (Afghans) know that they are media. There is a trust, almost like if you are from the military I (Afghans) can't trust you.

What has changed and had an impact on the U.S. Intelligence Community is that it is now 90 % of open source or open world of information (that they use). There is now a richness now that comes in this final 10% (of the traditional INTs). We might have a Hamid Karzai's phone tapped, (TEXT CENSORED). Those are very finites pieces of information. They are typically very strategic- this 10%. Sometimes their latency makes it more irrelevant for timeliness. Sometimes, it can be very relevant. It can be a piece of SIGINT, (for example) it seems like the U.S. got some SIGINT when this Russian plane was blown up in the sky. It sounds to me like it was just somebody in the Sinai talking to each other and they are boasting about it. I hope that at some channel that we actually told President (Abdel Fattah) el-Sisi and President Putin that we picked it up. Why hide that? Telll the world that we collected signal intelligence of these guys talking. Do you know how many they change phones? Just find them again. So there is a relevancy still to this (traditional INTs) but it is strategic and policymakers still tend to want this (traditional INTs) and not this (open source). I don't think they know what to do with (open source information) and it is (to them), what is the reliability? I actually think that it is in the analysis and instintics and the experience is where the reliability comes in.

Analysis and policy

I don't need much information at all to trust my instincts and my experience when it comes to certain things. I don't need somebody to take me through an hour briefing. What is the subject? What is it you are going to ask me to do? Let's have a conversation because (they) can trust that I inform myself properly during the course of my daily activities and I have enough experience on that issue. What I want to do is give my experience back. So I trust the analyst. I get to know somebody and I ask how long they have been doing this and they might say twenty five years. I may ask if they focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan and if they say yes that is all I need to know to know. Then I can have a conversation with somebody and trust that they know what they are talking about. That might be an intel person or intel analyst, but do they have the expertise on operations and policy? Maybe not. Have they talked to commanders and policymakers? Sure. I think that policymarkers, the ones I have gotten to know, and there have been plenty of them, only touch the subject episodically, instead of living it and breathing it for a lifetime. You are going to get some policymakers (who say otherwise). If you are policymaker you are being driven by a political leader who is politically appointed and goes in and out of government. (This person) may go to a think tank or go to something on their own in business, but it is political. They live and breathe on the political scheme. As for the professional policymakers that are in the bureaucracy, I am not so sure how much their voice is heard and how much they are able to actually push an agenda that should be consistent over time despite the political agenda.

Corruption and narcotics

We did the raid on the New Ansari Bank. It was huge. I thought it was a huge success. We conducted that raid and in three days, we did a lot of exploitation. We brought in like 45 people from around the country very quietly (to help with the exploitation). We parked them inside of ISAF headquarters and I even brought McChrystal over to thank the people we dragged in. We did it in coordination with the Minister of Interior, (Mohammad Hanif) Atmar, who at the time was incredibly courageous to do it. We literally went there and surrounded the bank and had a standoff. We look all of the data. We did it on a Thursday night to have the thing back up and operational by Saturday night/Sunday. we used Friday for their kind of holiday period to exploit as much as we could. The lead up to that was that the New Ansari was just incredibly corrupt. It had double hooks and people were just stealing us blind. Money was being siphoned through it- hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions probably. The Central Bank of Kabul was involved.

The U.S. Embassy was involved to a degree. The overall outcome... was anyone held accountable? No, no one was held accountable. There should be data on that. One of the guys that did that is out now but is a good friend. His name was (TEXT CENSORED). He was a DEA. He just changed jobs but he did the DEA Major Crimes Task Force. That was actually the beginning of the Anti-Corruption Task Force. McMasters comes in with Petraeus, but really we had the Anti-corruption Task Force going on for a while. Andrea Thompson is another one, she is still in. Colonel Thompson came and worked for me. She became sort of a quasi-lead for me. She is in town here and works Congressman McCaul

I also saw intelligence, and we knew it, that Hawala system that was run by the Taliban out of Kandahar. I mean they had one Hawala and that was part of the whole New Ansari system. They had like one Hawala in Kandahar in 2000. Then in 2009 they were in 29 countries. It is actually moving money, narcotics money, probably our (U.S. money), was being moved globally. I believe, and I think I saw enough evidence, where the Central Bank of Kabul was adjusting their rates to the U.S. dollar off of a Hawala. So the money that was in, the could adjust it. It was the whole thing about buying currency. You sell high, buy low. Money that needed to be moved through contracting and through narcotics.

The narcotics today, is the worst it has ever been. I don't think that there was a year that has gone by in our time in Afghanistan where the narcotics industry has had a bad year. I think it has been progressively, on a scale, progressively moved up. There was a lot of things we did we tried to do to reduce that, but narcotics was not a big mission for the international force. (However), it was driving a lot of the funding for the enemy that we were facing.

Yes, (confronting this would have meant confronting Fahim and Bismullah Khan). I was in his office (Fahim's) and it was not pretty (when we confronted some of his Air Force generals). You know what, arrest the guy. This is a combat zone. Arrest hi, If they want to fight us, fine. Fight us, but arrest them. They should have arrested every one of them and thrown them all in jail. I will tell you that all of the threats that came out of that, from those that I remmeber, I thought that we should have arrested them. Yes, (in the Air Foce case and the shooting), they should have been arrested and brought up on charges by us. Not by the international assistances force and not under some lousy Afghan court. There are a lot of guys that should have been arrested. You have to have accountability. That is part of the problem with instilling confidence in a population- they see it (corruption) happening right in front of their eyes. We see it happening and we don't look the other way, we actually enable it.

I will give you a good story of probably one of the wealthiest people in Afghanistan today. He started out as a young interpreter in the very early days. He owns a couple of banks. He owns a rental SUV service. He rents interpreters. He is a young guy and savvy as Afghans are. He is an interpreter and a not very good one. He literally was like 21 or 22 and was doing interpretation for a commander and this was day with no problem with bags of money (TEXT CENSORED) Talk about lack of accountability. So this commander is using this interpreter and the commander says I need "this to this Afghan guy he is talking to. The commander says that he will buy "it" from you". The man (who is selling the item) says he will sell the item for a couple of hundred dollars. The interpreter then says (to the commander) $20.000. The commander says, okay, no problem. The interpreter gives the man a few hundred dollars and the takes the rest of it because he is a savvy businessman. He keeps doing that and keeps doing it and doing it. The money is more and more and he is cutting deals. Everybody loves this interpreter. Everybody thinks the world of him. He drives around in a big up-armored SUV inside of Kabul today. He has security all over him and if you want to rent a nice, clean SUV, black, end everybody does, you will rent it from his company. He also owns a couple of banks. That is a real story an a real person. He is all of 34 of 35 (years old) as of today. How many others of him are there? There are probably hundresd of those types of individuals who benefited because, frankly, we didn't know what we were doing.

When I got to Afghanistan in the summer of 2009, one of the things that we had talked to the Chairman about, prior to going and prior to the big decision to replace McKiernan with McChrustal, we talked about the Af-Pak hands program. That was in winter or spring of 2009. We wanted to build this Af-Pak hands program and when the decision was made to change it, there was this big push. So when we get to Afghanistan, there is only one officer on the ISAF staff that could speak Dari. That was an Air Force Brigadier General. He was there in the summer of 2009. He self-taught himself. He was in the CSTC-A staff I think. He was a good guy and I met him, but he was only their briefly. The Air Force pulled him out in like July and sent him to Japan. So here is a guya who we could have used, and we laughed about it because this is how insane this (system) is. I always use the example that in WWII where we trained like 2.000 (people) in a tier 3 language called Japanese to support the war effort. Not interpreters, but actual members of the military. We could not even train five in Dari. The interl community did some SIGINT people but I know of others that did some self-training, but it is ridiculous. Even today, we are still in Afghanistan and you go tell me how many actual U.S. members of the military or policy (community), or from State who speak Dari or Pashto. That is a shame and that is a policy decision.

The intelligence system, I thought was very accurate on the who is who in the zoo there, so to speak. Who is who in the leadership of those who were facing in Afghanistan and also the members of the international coalition. The international coalition was also corrupt and also saw the U.S. money coming in and took advantange of it. Don't think it was just the Afghans. There was a lot of intel about other countries and people that were there taking advantage of deals, including us. That is why I say that there is probably criminal cases waiting to be had against people who found weakness in our system. Even soldiers and other government officials founf weaknesses in our system to make money. The tactical intelligence and the reporting that was captured in terms of written down and databased in some computer system that described corruption, was unbeliebable. There was plenty of it.

Positivity Bias

As intelligence makes its way up higher, it gets consolidated and really watered down; it gets politicized. It gets politicked because once policymakers get their hands on it, and frankly once operational commanders get their hands on it, they put their twist to it. My news before 9 o'clock in the morning was never good. If I brought good news in, it was that we captured or killed somebody, we just found out something, we just did something that actually worked out okay that was intelligence success, or we found somebody. For a while it might have made me feel good, but after 2006, for me, it was actually irrelevant because we were just killing so many people and it spectrum of news, they want to always be good news. Operational commanders, State Departament policymakers, and Departament of Defense policymakers are going to be inherently rosy in their assessments. They will be unaccepting of hard hitting intelligence.

CIA vs ISAF Intelligence

(TEXT CENSORED) What I learned was that the CIA was not sharing all of their information with the Departament of Defense or the rest of the Intelleigence Community for that matter. I asked why and (they said) it was operational traffic. So the CIA has operational cables that don't make it into intelligence reporting, which is absolutely irresponsible. They are an intelligence agency so their operational traffic and their intelligence traffic, to me, is intelligence. I don't need, in their operational traffic, their sourcing. I need the richness of the report. (TEXT CENSORED) What I saw was the incredibly ineffective reporting system that the CIA has. I hands-on saw it. I know what their system is. They were not providing intelligence from operational reports to the rest of the Intelligenve Community.

So now you have this disconnect and I wanted to know about that disconnect. (TEXT CENSORED) and when I asked why they couldn't share they said it was operational traffic, not intel. So wait a second, you (CIA) are an intel agency. This is where the intelligence leadership is irresponsible for not sharing intelligence in and among themselves. Back to the alliance I told you about that has better intelligence than the intelligence community because everything is intelligence to them.

(TEXT CENSORED) We would come up with the 83 Districts for our Campaigh Plan and we used that (TEXT CENSORED) I think 83 was the number and we might have added one additional district, General Rodriguz may have added on later on and it may have been around Kabul.

(TEXT CENSORED) Operationally the reporting that comes out of there (ISAF) is wonderful; it is rosy. So I am on VTC with the Secretary of Defense, CENTCOM Commander, ISAF Commander (with McChrystal and Petraeus), and I give my presentation and it sucks. It is almost like disregarded but it is "okay, got it. Here is what we are going to do, strategically".

Mission Statements and Self-rating

To me this is a really important point. If you go back and look at the mission statements for every battalion and every brigade from the beginning of the war, they are essentially all the same. IT is "defeat and destroy the enemy and protect the population" (This was true for every) battalion commader and every brigade commander from a U.S.- side. It is essentially those same two things-defeat the enemy and protect the population. So they all went in for whatever their rotation was, 9 months or 6 months, and were given that mission, accepted that mission and executed that mission. Then they all said, when they left, they accomplished that mission. Every single commander. Not one commander is going to leave Afghanistan, or Iraq or any place, not one is going to leave and say, "you know what, we didn't accomplish our mission". So the next guy that shows up finds it (their area) screwed up, after a great right-seat ride. They do their mission analysis once they are on the ground and then they come back and go "man this is really bad", but the last battalion, regiment or BCT, accomplished their mission. They have all of these wonderful stats about what they did. I am telling you that this is true from 2002 until today.

From ambassadors down to the low, level, (they all say) we are doing a great job. Really? So if we are doing such a great job, why does it feel like we are losing? I was supposed to testify this Thursday in front of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Chairman Johnson's committee, but they moved it. I am going to walk through my testimony. My testimony is on ISIS in the Middle East and the threat to the Homeland. I have been working on my testimony for about a week and doing a lot of research. Every measurable activity is falling. So when you look at Afghanistan, every single measurable activity is failing. If (General) John Campbell were to sit here today and say (that is not true because), we have built more schools, we have more cars on the road... really? Afghanistan is better today than it was? There are more people, I guess, in the city of Kabul. The reports right now in Helmand province is that the Taliban have completely retaken Marjah and are about to retake Lashakar Gah. So you know, really? We have done better? So every single operational commander, battalion commander, regimental, BCT, RC- every single one came in (to Afghanistan) and said the situation was not like they thought it and when they left that they had defeat the enemy; we have convinced the population and helped the population. (They all said) that they gave it over (to the next commander) and I said, here it, it is in great shape and they love us down here. Then you come in and you say, ok. I am here and I have a year. My first 30 days, (I think) this is really bad, but I guarantee you that If you look at the out-briefs you will see nothing but goodness. Believe me, I was looking at them for 10 yeares. I saw this in Iraq and really dug into it in Afghanistan.

I will give you one other picture. I saw this in Iraq and did a little bit of research in Afghanistan. This is in general, but this study was done by General Casey in 2006 for Iraq. For Afghanistan, I did my own sort of (review) that was anecdotal. I thought it was pretty thorough. It was looking at mission statements and end of mission results. A unit comes in (to country) and comes in at certain level or tempo. They are going to be there for 12 months. So when I (a unit commander) comes in, it takes about three months to find an operational rhythm. I (as commander) have new guys, not everyone came for the right-seat side. Some of our battalions are bringing in new recruits the day they are getting ready to deploy in some cases. That is how bad out personnel system was. So I get to a rhythm and then I operate to about the 9 month mark. I have a hihg operational rate (for those 6 months) and then all of a sudden I begin to drop off until I depart. I (would ask) why is that?

The other part of this is when you look at casuality rates. When do casualties occur? They occurred here (during the three month ramp up) and here (during the three month ramp down). There is a lack of readiness (in the first three months) and there is a complacency (in the final three months) because (the unit) is looking to get out of there. The operational tempo (at the end) is just way down. Incluiding the number of patrols and out of sector missions. So you lost some guys here (in the beginning) and had casualties along the timeline. To me this is the Vietnam affect. So if you really study this, you would find a trend. You wolud find a very clear trend of casuality rates, op-tempo and you could really measure whether or not we were successful. Intelligence has nothing to do with this. At the end, when I leave, everybody gets a high-five. You can kind of tell the great leaders and the great units (because) they wull have less casualties and less wounded because of the way they operate. The best units, they come in at a higher level, get to a higher level (of operational tempo) quicker, perform for a longer period of time, and tend to not let up (as early). These are your Special Forces and select units out of places like the 82nd or some from the 101st. I am not talking about battalions, I am talking about regiments and companies.

This sense that we are doing great, permeates all the way up to the top. As a senior intel officer for many years, my assessments were not good. Things (I wrote said) said it was not at all going well. Never. We are basically fighting the wrong way. We are participating in conflict, we are not really here to win. There is corruption in reporting and not just corruption in the theft that occurred. This was irresponsible, to be kind, in reporting operationally that everything was wonderful. That also includes from the State Department. There is no way that over the years, to include this year, that we can say things are wonderful. All of the indexes that judge the country of Afghanistan are all still down in the bottom. The attack on this training camp, the number in there was 160 in the camp, never mind around the country. So when we would say, hey we have a problem with al-Qaeda and a problem with Le T (and I am talking about Le T in Kandahar and not up in the eastern province), and we are talking about this group called the Khorasan group for years. We would say we don't see al-Qaeda as a threat at the higher level. Wait a second, here is the reporting, here is the intelligence.

You guys should as for the (TEXT CENSORED) assessments (TEXT CENSORED). You should see if you can get copies (TEXT CENSORED). They are very sensitive. Typically, they are supposed to be read by the President of the United States, especially for combat zones. I have read probably 5 or 6 years worth of them and (TEXT CENSORED) I can tell you that there is not one (TEXT CENSORED) that I read that would say anything is going in the right direction. So when it (the negative assessment) gets to the Director of the CIA or the Director of National Intelligence, what happens? Is it (just considered) one (TEXT CENSORED) opinion? (TEXT CENSORED) You should see if you can pull them back from 2006 or 2007 maybe, for at least Afghanistan. I think it would be a very interesting read. They are usually pretty short reads and you could get through one in an hour. I can't remember one that gave a rosy picture, not one. So how do we come to grips with what the intelligence community says and what the operational and policy community is saying? I would tell you, there is huge, huge political blasedness in this. The reason is that there is a political bias and the reason is that there is lack of courage in senior government officials to tell the truth. That is civilian and in the military. Political and government.

Clarification on Who's who Analysis

I would not say those reports were from 2020 onward, but maybe pieces of it. I can tell you it was definitely 2008. When I was in CENTCOM, we were doing quite a bit of it. (They) are assessments of the key players, leadership assessments of Afghans, the Afghan Ministers, and the Coalition leadership that we had in the Coalition. These are all U.S. things. We wanted to do assessments of the next RC capital commander. You know, who is this guy? Same with the Germans. With all of there guys, it is like, who are we dealing with? Then we had our own little HUMINT network to look at if there guys are talking with the enemy.

So many years in Afghanistan for nothing ... thrown overboard. It is very clear that the interest is not, supposedly, the fight against ISIS but the fight for economic power and narcotics on the part of the USA.

Flynn, in 2016, was implicated in the Pakistan case. You can read it here.