“The documents … contradict a long chorus of public statements from U.S. presidents, military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans year after year that they were making progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting. Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul — and at the White House — to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.” WaPo on the release of a secret trove of documents that reveal US officials consistently “failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.” (Being rosy about a war that’s taken 18 years was a key indicator we weren’t getting an accurate picture.) Just because it’s not surprising doesn’t mean it’s not a really big deal. At War With the Truth. (Oh, well, let’s give it one more surge…)