“By lying about how close the insurgents had come to harming Cheney, the U.S. military sank deeper into a pattern of deceiving the public about many facets of the war, from discrete events to the big picture. What began as selective, self-serving disclosures after the 2001 invasion gradually hardened into willful distortions and, eventually, flat-out fabrications.” A book excerpt from WaPo: Deceptions and lies: What really happened in Afghanistan.

+ US vows to isolate Taliban if they take power by force. (The twenty years of bombing didn’t dissuade them, but maybe some stern words will do the trick.)