Congress must investigate why America was lied to about Afghanistan for all these years – Gabbard

Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard pledged to seek a congressional inquiry into the Afghanistan war after a damning report said US officials have been lying about what has been happening there since the US occupation began.

Gabbard, a military veteran who runs for the Democratic nomination on an anti-war platform, said there has to be “accountability for the lying” and the lives and taxpayer money lost in the longest military operation in the US history.

“The cost of this war and regime change wars and the nation-building that follows is immeasurable in many ways but it’s measurable in the ways that have been detailed in that Washington Post report,” she told Hill.TV on Tuesday.

The Washington Post expose is based on documents it obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and paints a picture of a sustained effort by several US administrations to mislead the American public on the engagement in Afghanistan.

The report states that, while publicly reporting progress and being on the verge of success, behind closed doors US officials admitted they were “devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan” and what they were doing there, according to Ret. Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, who served as a top adviser on the war during the Bush and Obama administrations.

“We’ve known for so long that it was the military-industrial complex, contractors, consultants like McKinsey, who are profiting off of this scam, who have ripped off the American taxpayer dollars of over a trillion dollars just in Afghanistan alone,” Gabbard added, making an apparent jab at her competitor in the race, Pete Buttigieg. The mayor of South Bend, Indiana used to work for McKinsey & Company and did consulting work in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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