The newest buzz is the release of the “Afghan Papers”…..the Pentagon has said that the papers subjects are “no big deal”…..

Pentagon officials are continuing to react dismissively to questions about the Afghanistan Papers, and the revelation that the Pentagon systematically lied about the state of the war. This is leading the experts to conclude that the Pentagon does not intend to change its policies.

Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman surprisingly attacked the primary point of the papers, that the Pentagon was misleading the public, and used that to dodge questions about whether the Pentagon would be more honest in the future. He said the reports of dishonesty were just what people “believed at the time.”

In other words, he isn’t promising that the Pentagon won’t keep lying in the exact same manner. The only indication that things might be different is that since the papers came out,the Pentagon has been refusing to provide any details at all, which seems to be one way to prevent them from lying to the public for the time being.

Analysts say they don’t believe the Pentagon sees any upside to addressing the complaints, and so they are just ignoring it, and pointing out that most people keeping track of the Afghan War knew about this dishonesty long ago.

(antiwar.com)

If that is the case that it is “no big deal” then the Pentagon should stop hiding numbers and costs….

“I’m not going to get into specifics,” insisted Rear Admiral William D. Byrne, during a recent Pentagon briefing, saying only that the commander is “satisfied” with where things are at.

Indeed, Pentagon officials have refused to provide any metrics at all that might be used to gauge how the war is going. That’s likely because any metrics show the war is generally not going well, and any claim that the war is going fine risks being uncovered as another in decades of lies.

(antiwar.com)

In an attempt to head off any blowback from the release of the “Afghan Papers” the White House will soon announce the removal of 4000 troops from Afghanistan…..

White House officials say President Trump will soon make an announcement of a withdrawal of 4,000 US troops from Afghanistan, with the troops to leave over the next few months. The Afghan government has confirmed that this is the case.

This announcement has been expected for some time, with Defense Secretary Mark Esper saying the drawdown would come with or without a peace deal with the Taliban. The US has paused the Taliban talks, so it appears it will be coming without a deal.

This move will make it better when the 2020 election rolls around…Trump can say that he brought 4000 troops out of Afghanistan…..

But the rest of the story is…these troops may NOT come home for a rest but rather be redeployed…..

The withdrawal of some 4,000 US troops from Afghanistan, expected to be formally announced soon, isn’t just a drawdown for its own sake. Rather, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he wants to focus on competition with China, which he views as “higher priority.”

Esper says the troops will be sent to the Indo-Pacific “to face off our greatest challenge in terms of the great power competition that’s vis-a-vis China.” It’s not clear where in the Indo-Pacific those troops will end up.

Nor is it apparent what 4,000 more troops scattered around China’s periphery would really do in a challenge sense. China, after all, has the world’s second largest military and is focused almost exclusively on control and defense of its own region.

(antiwar.com)

What purpose and how effective will 4000 troops be in the grand scheme of Trumpian foreign policy?

This would be just one of many, many adventures the Pentagon has decided it is participating in, and between the Indo-Pacific, Iran’s periphery, and eastern Europe, the US is committing a lot of troops to standing around doing non-specific things close to major rivals that they envision future wars against.

In other words …..not much besides pissing people off.

The next question would be why is the MSM ignoring the “Papers”?

The Afghanistan Papers are, in other words, a bombshell. Yet the report has received scant attention from the broader press. Neither NBC nor ABC covered the investigation in their nightly broadcasts this week. In other outlets, it has been buried beneath breathless reporting on the latest developments in the impeachment saga, Joe Biden’s purported pledge to serve only one term, and world leaders’ pathological envy of a 16-year-old girl.

The relentless news cycle that characterizes Donald Trump’s America surely deserves some blame: This isn’t the first time that a consequential news story has been buried under an avalanche of other news stories. But one major reason that the Afghanistan Papers have received so comparatively little coverage is that everyone is to blame, which means no one has much of an interest in keeping the story alive. There are no hearings, few press gaggles.

https://newrepublic.com/amp/article/155977/media-ignoring-afghanistan-papers

The Afghanistan Papers are just as important important and revealing as the Pentagon Papers……so why the “black out”?

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