Craig Whitlock | The Afghanistan Papers: At War With the Truth

09 December 19

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The Road to Urgent Fundraising

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09 December 19

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DISASTROUS DAY OF FUNDRAISING IN PROGRESS - On Sunday we got just a little traction on donations, today it’s right back to a complete standstill. No folks, someone else will not do it. You have to actually get involved and help out. That’s what makes this a community, and why this process serves the community. We need donations! / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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Craig Whitlock | The Afghanistan Papers: At War With the Truth

Craig Whitlock, The Washington Post
Whitlock writes: "A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials 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."

EXCERPTS:

The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials.

The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.

In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare. 

With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting. 

“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers in 2015. He added: “What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”

“If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction . . . 2,400 lives lost,”Lute added, blaming the deaths of U.S. military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. “Who will say this was in vain?”

Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures. 

Since 2001, the Defense Department, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development have spent or appropriated between $934 billion and $978 billion, according to an inflation-adjusted estimate calculated by Neta Crawford, a political science professor and co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University. 

Those figures do not include money spent by other agencies such as the CIA and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is responsible for medical care for wounded veterans. 

“What did we get for this $1 trillion effort? Was it worth $1 trillion?” Jeffrey Eggers, a retired Navy SEAL and White House staffer for Bush and Obama, told government interviewers. He added, “After the killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in his watery grave considering how much we have spent on Afghanistan.”

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House Judiciary Committee. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Partisan Fireworks as House Panel Readies Trump Impeachment
Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press
Excerpt: "The House Judiciary Committee received a detailed summing up of the impeachment case against President Donald Trump Monday as Democrats prepare formal charges against him. Trump and his allies lobbed fresh assaults on the proceedings they dismiss as a hoax and a sham."
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Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren speaks during an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday in Charleston, South Carolina. (photo: Sarah Blake Morgan/AP)

Warren Says All-Women Democratic Presidential Ticket Can Beat Trump, Points to Harris
Martin Pengelly, Guardian UK
Pengelly writes: "Elizabeth Warren believes an all-women Democratic presidential ticket can beat Donald Trump next year."
READ MORE

Abortion rights rally. (photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

SCOTUS Leaves Kentucky's Anti-Abortion Ultrasound Law in Place
Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
Stern writes: "In early pregnancies, they will be forced to insert a transvaginal probe. The Supreme Court's refusal to consider the legality of H.B. 2 indicates the liberal justices do not trust that the conservative majority will affirm the constitutional rights to abortion providers and patients."
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Buckingham Correctional Center. (photo: VICE)

Prison Officials Made an 8-Year-Old Girl Get Strip-Searched Before Visiting Her Dad
Emma Ockerman, VICE
Ockerman writes: "Prison staffers in Virginia made an 8-year-old girl strip naked to search her before she could visit her father ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. And they didn't find any contraband on her."
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WADA Director, Intelligence and Investigations, Gunter Younger, President-Elect, Witold Banka, WADA resident, Sir Craig Reedie, Director General, Olivier Niggli and Chair of the CRC, Jonathan Taylor QC attend a news conference after World Anti-Doping Agency's extraordinary Executive Committee meeting that has banned Russian athletes from all major sporting events in the next four years, in Lausanne, Switzerland, December 9, 2019. (photo: Denis Balibouse/Reuters)

Russia Banned From Next Two Olympics, Soccer World Cup for Cheating Over Dope Tests
Brian Homewood and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber, Reuters
Excerpt: "Russia was banned from the world's top sporting events for four years on Monday, including the next summer and winter Olympics and the 2022 soccer World Cup, for tampering with doping tests."
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Sections of steel pipe lie in a staging area before being inserted underground as part of Energy Transfer's Mariner East 2 pipeline in Exton, Penn., on June 5, 2019. (photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

Pipeline Giant Energy Transfer and Its Private Security Contractors Face Bribery Charges in Pennsylvania
Alleen Brown, The Intercept
Brown writes: "Security personnel working for Energy Transfer, one of the largest and most controversial oil and gas pipeline companies in the U.S., have been charged with bribery and criminal conspiracy for allegedly recruiting, hiring, and hiding payments to Pennsylvania state constables."

EXCERPT:

According to a complaint filed December 3 by Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan, Energy Transfer illegally hired 19 constables to guard the Mariner East 2 natural gas pipeline, which has faced opposition from residents over the project’s ecological impact, explosion risks, and violations of their property rights. The constables were encouraged to wear their uniforms and badges and carry their guns, in what Hogan described as an intimidation tactic.

While it is not uncommon for companies to hire uniformed off-duty police officers to provide security services, in Pennsylvania, constables are elected officials barred from private security work. Furthermore, they are required to report outside income of more than $1,300. None of the seven who met that threshold did, according to the complaint. And in what appeared to be an attempt to hide the illegal activity, Energy Transfer paid the constables via a series of subcontractors, in many instances using handwritten checks that were not claimed for tax purposes.

Hogan charged an Energy Transfer security manager, two contractors for the security firm TigerSwan, and two former state troopers for involvement in what his office called a “buy-a-badge scheme.”

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Robert Reich | George Kent and Bill Taylor's Testimony Was Devastating

15 November 19

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HELP OUT, DANG IT! Sorry but long slow fundraisers are the worst for everyone, and the project itself. We can easily finish this fundraiser TODAY. Why not? / Marc Ash, Founder, Reader Supported News

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Robert Reich | George Kent and Bill Taylor's Testimony Was Devastating

Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page
Reich writes: "Today the House conducted the first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry, and Republicans behaved just as expected."
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Rudy Giuliani. (photo: Getty)

DOJ Opens Investigation Into Giuliani for Failure to Register as Foreign Agent, Campaign Finance Violations
Chris Strohm and Jordan Fabian, Bloomberg
Excerpt: "Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, is being investigated by federal prosecutors for possible campaign finance violations and a failure to register as a foreign agent as part of an active investigation into his financial dealings, according to three U.S. officials."
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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have introduced a bill that would upgrade public housing to be more energy efficient and run on renewable energy. (photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty)

Bernie and AOC Introduce $172 Billion Public Housing Plan as Part of Their Green New Deal
Ella Nilsen and Umair Irfan, Vox
Excerpt: "The $172 billion proposal aims to upgrade 1.2 million units of public housing to curb emissions."
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Students are escorted out of Saugus High School as some parents join them after reports of a shooting on Thursday in Santa Clarita, California. (photo: NBC)

Republicans Blocked a Bill for Universal Background Checks as the Santa Clarita High-School Shooting Was Unfolding
Paul McLeod and Kadia Goba, BuzzFeed
Excerpt: "Sen. Chris Murphy attempted to pass a gun control package Thursday morning, watched it get blocked by Republicans, and then gave a speech about the need to do something about the regular mass shootings in America. He didn't know until he walked out that another mass shooting had just happened, this time at a high school in California."

“I found out as soon as I walked off the floor,” Murphy told BuzzFeed News.

Two students were killed and several others were injured when a 16-year-old went on a shooting spree at a school in Santa Clarita on Thursday morning.

Murphy had asked for the Senate to unanimously agree to pass universal background checks for firearms, as he’s done repeatedly for months. “The American public are not going to accept silence from the body week after week, month after month in the face of this epidemic carnage that is happening in this country,” he said.

But even after news of the shooting spread through the Senate — Sen. Richard Blumenthal found out via a note from a staffer while he was giving a speech about gun violence — Murphy said he doesn’t believe it will change anything.

“I wish this weren’t the case, but Republicans’ interest in working on guns is driven by casualties of 15 or more. It’s so awful that it works like this,” he said. “I don’t doubt that we’ll be back in a conversation about background checks, but it probably won’t happen until there’s another epic-scale shooting.”

Some Republicans have long opposed the bill, arguing that universal background checks violate Second Amendment rights. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, the Republican who objected to Murphy trying to get a vote on the bill Thursday morning, argued that the legislation “should not be fast-tracked by the Senate.”

“Many questions about this legislation need to be answered before it’s forced upon law-abiding gun owners," Hyde-Smith said.

In September, House Democrats advanced three additional gun bills following mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, which left a total of 31 people dead. There was also momentum toward a bipartisan gun control package negotiated with the White House.

But Murphy said he hadn’t heard from the Trump administration about background checks since September.

Lindsey Graham, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said there is bipartisan support for one part of a gun control package — a grant program that encourages states to set up “red flag” programs that allow law enforcement officers to preemptively seize a person’s firearms if they are deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. But he said progress on background checks has stalled, and blamed, in part, the House impeachment inquiry.

“Impeachment has sucked all the oxygen out. But I hope we will revisit. I really do. I am ready to do something yesterday,” said Graham.

The House passed universal background checks in late February. The bill received bipartisan support with eight Republicans crossing the aisle to vote for the legislation. Since then, universal background checks have remained stalled in the Republican-led Senate at the behest of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Attorney General Bill Barr blamed the House impeachment hearings for derailing the progress on gun control during an event in Tennessee on Wednesday. But Murphy refuted those claims Thursday morning.

“That’s not true,” Murphy said, addressing Barr’s comments on the Senate floor. “The impeachment proceedings right now are in the House of Representatives; the discussion on the future of the background checks bill was in the Senate.”

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Government contractors erect a section of Pentagon-funded border wall along the Colorado River, in Yuma, Arizona, Sept. 10, 2019. (photo: Matt York/AP)

Trump Admin Preparing to Take Over Private Land in Texas for Border Wall
Courtney Kube and Julia Ainsley, NBC News
Excerpt: "The Trump administration is preparing court filings to begin taking over private land to build its long-promised border wall as early as this week - without confirming how much it will pay landowners first, according to two officials familiar with the process."
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A supporter of former Bolivian president Evo Morales holding a Wiphala flag takes part in a protest in La Paz. (photo: Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

Morales Supporters Reject New Government in Bolivia and Demand Reinstatement of Left-Wing Leader to Power
Manuel Rueda, Al Jazeera
Rueda writes: "Two people were killed on Wednesday in clashes between Bolivian police and supporters of former president Evo Morales, as the interim government of Jeanine Anez struggled to contain the political unrest sweeping the South American country."

EXCERPT:

'On the streets until Evo returns'

Morales supporters marched through La Paz, Cochabamba and several other cities to denounce Anez on Wednesday. 

"This woman does not represent us," said Rolando Balboa, a teacher from El Alto, a sprawling working-class area that is perched above the capital city of La Paz.

"Evo was a good man who built roads and gave homes to the poor, and they have forced him to resign," Balboa told Al Jazeera.

Protesters said they were outraged by recent incidents in which they said police burned the Wiphala flag and tore it off their shoulder patches after Morales was removed. The checkered, rainbow-coloured flag is an indigenous symbol that was placed on all government buildings, and stitched on police uniforms along with the national flag after Morales became president.

Morales became the country's first indigenous leader when he was first elected president in 2006. He remains a highly popular figure among the country's indigenous population.

"They are racists, who do not respect indigenous people," said Sabina Paz, a street vendor from El Alto who attended the protest.

Paz said her mother relies on a monthly subsidy of about $50 that Morales created for elderly people from poor and rural areas. She feared that Bolivia's new government would now revoke her benefit.

"We will be on the streets until Evo returns," she said.

Meanwhile, protests in the eastern province of Santa Cruz were markedly more violent.

The director of Bolivia's Institute for Forensic Science, Andres Flores said that in the town of Yapacani a man died from a bullet wound to his stomach on Wednesday. In nearby Montero, a teenager died from injuries to his skull after being beaten. It remains unclear who was responsible for the killings.

Flores said up to 10 people have been killed so far since political turmoil broke out in Bolivia following the elections.

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In this July 5, 2017 file photo, pipes for the Sunoco Mariner East pipeline are placed in South Lebanon Township, Pennsylvania. (photo: Jeremy Long/AP)

FBI Begins Corruption Investigation of Another Energy Transfer Pipeline Project
Marc Levy, Associated Press
Levy writes: "The FBI has begun a corruption investigation into how Gov. Tom Wolf's administration came to issue permits for construction on a multibillion-dollar pipeline project to carry highly volatile natural gas liquids across Pennsylvania."

FBI agents have interviewed current or former state employees in recent weeks about the Mariner East project and the construction permits, according to three people who have direct knowledge of the agents’ line of questioning.

All three spoke on condition of anonymity because they said they could not speak publicly about the investigation.

The focus of the agents’ questions involves the permitting of the pipeline, whether Wolf and his administration forced environmental protection staff to approve construction permits and whether Wolf or his administration received anything in return, those people say.

The Mariner East pipelines are owned by Texas-based Energy Transfer LP, a multibillion-dollar firm that owns sprawling interests in oil and gas pipelines and storage and processing facilities. At a price tag of nearly $3 billion, it is one of the largest construction projects, if not the largest, in Pennsylvania history.

However, the construction has spurred millions of dollars in fines, several temporary shutdown orders, lawsuits, protests and investigations. When construction permits were approved in 2017, environmental advocacy groups accused Wolf’s administration of pushing through incomplete permits that violated the law.

Wolf’s administration declined comment on the investigation Tuesday. In the past, Wolf and his administration have said the permits contained strong environmental protections and that the Department of Environmental Protection wasn’t forced to issue the permits.

An Energy Transfer spokeswoman said the company had not been contacted by the FBI about the Mariner East.

The chief federal prosecutor in Harrisburg, U.S. Attorney David Freed, declined comment.

The Mariner East project, along with the overhaul of the Marcus Hook refinery and export terminal near Philadelphia, have had the support of leading public officials and business trade groups.

Wolf himself has said that the pipeline’s economic benefits would outweigh the potential environmental harm, and that the Mariner East would be part of a distribution system that the industry needed.

The state’s building trades unions have seen a huge influx of work on the Mariner East pipelines and Marcus Hook. Exploration firms drilling in the booming Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale fields shipping natural gas liquids through Mariner East pipelines and Marcus Hook have helped the U.S. become the world’s leading ethane exporter.

The roughly 300-mile (480-kilometer) Mariner East 1 was originally built in the 1930s to transport gasoline westward from Marcus Hook. It was renovated and, in 2014, began carrying natural gas liquids eastward to the refinery from southwestern Pennsylvania’s drilling fields.

Construction permit applications were submitted in 2015 for two wider pipelines, the 350-mile-long (563-kilometer) Mariner East 2 and 2x, designed for the same purpose, but stretching farther, through West Virginia’s northern panhandle and into Ohio.

Both were projected to be open in 2017. But Mariner East 2 began operating in late December, and Mariner East 2X could be complete in 2020.

The pipelines run past houses, parks and schools in southeastern Pennsylvania, and have been met with protests by alarmed neighbors worried that one leak could ignite a deadly explosion. Sinkholes along the pipelines’ route have opened on lawns and construction has contaminated streams and private water wells.

Meanwhile, county and state prosecutors are investigating the pipeline.

Chester County’s district attorney, Tom Hogan, opened an investigation last December. In March, Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro, said his office had opened an investigation on a referral from Delaware County’s district attorney. His office already had an environmental crimes investigation under way into the natural gas industry.

Wolf’s administration also has had run-ins with Energy Transfer in which it accused the company of willfully violating state law.

Still, when the Department of Environmental Protection issued the permits, environmental advocacy groups warned that it would unleash massive and irreparable damage to Pennsylvania’s environment and residents. In general, the permits are required to protect waterways and wetlands from pollution, runoff and obstruction stemming from heavy construction.

Within hours, the Clean Air Council and other environmental advocacy organizations appealed the permits, saying the DEP had approved incomplete and inaccurate permit applications that violated the law “in response to heavy and sustained political pressure.”

At the time, Wolf denied applying pressure to approve the pipeline permits. Rather, he said he had simply insisted the department stick to its own timeline to consider them and that he believed the department had done its due diligence.

The environmental groups’ request to halt construction was denied, but they did win additional protective steps in a settlement.

In depositions and internal documents that became exhibits in the appeal, department employees said the schedule to consider the applications had been sped up, but none said they had been forced to approve permits over their objections.

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Jeffrey Toobin | Clarence Thomas's Astonishing Opinion on a Racist Mississippi Prosecutor

23 June 19 If You Do Not Donate If you - our readers - do not fund RSN, RSN does not get funded. The amount of money this thing takes to function on a monthly basis is a pittance. If you're not an active RSN donor, jump in here with a few bucks. Thank you in advance. Marc Ash Founder, Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! Update My Monthly Donation If you would prefer to send a check: Reader Supported News PO Box 2043 Citrus Hts, CA 95611

23 June 19

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
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WHY LARGER DONORS SHOULD SUPPORT READER SUPPORTED NEWS - So it looks like the big donors went to the Democratic Party during the 2016 election cycle and haven’t come back. But look who drove the the surge that took over the House, it was the new progressive energy. Think of the Democratic Party as the machine, think of Progressive energy as the battery. We haven’t seen a $1,000 online donation in 4 months. The small donors cannot do this alone, nor should they. Help! / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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Jeffrey Toobin | Clarence Thomas's Astonishing Opinion on a Racist Mississippi Prosecutor 

Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker
Toobin writes: "A Mississippi prosecutor went on a racist crusade to have a black man executed. Clarence Thomas thinks that was just fine."
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A protest against Donald Trump's racist immigration policies. (photo: David McNew/Getty Images)

Trump Now Says He'll Delay Massive ICE Raids For 2 Weeks
David Boddiger, Splinter
Boddiger writes: "Just hours after he defended his order for nationwide raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport thousands of families on Sunday, Donald Trump reversed course and said the raids would be delayed by two weeks pending negotiations between Democrats and Republicans."
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ICE enforcement and removal operations unit raid to apprehend immigrants without any legal status and who may be deportable in Riverside. (photo: Ifran Khan/LA Times/Getty Images)

ALSO SEE: US Cities Prepare for Possible ICE
Raids Targeting Undocumented Families

Here's What to Do if ICE Shows Up at Your Door
Elham Khatami, ThinkProgress
Khatami writes: "Ahead of mass raids planned by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in 10 U.S. cities Sunday, immigration advocacy groups are rushing to alert migrants of their rights if agents show up at their doors."
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A woman wears a t-shirt honoring the gay rights movement outside the Stonewall Inn on June 24, 2016 in New York City. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Why Stonewall Matters Today
Andy Thayer, Jacobin
Thayer writes: "The police raid on New York's Stonewall Inn fifty years ago this month is widely viewed as the most pivotal event in LGBT* history, spawning a movement which prompted many millions around the globe to come out of the closet and fight for their freedom."
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Mark Zuckerberg. (photo: B&T)

Big Tech's War for Your Wallet: Facebook Sparks Outrage After Announcing Plans for Digital Currency
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "I mean, first of all, do you trust Mark Zuckerberg with anything around privacy at this point, after years and years of these revelations?"





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A man protests against the imprisonment of Lula in 2018. (photo: Midia Ninja/Flickr)

Brazil: Corruption as a Mode of Rule
Benjamin Fogel, NACLA
Fogel writes: "Brazil is currently locked in a political crisis that threatens to undermine its democratic institutions."
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St. Martin Parish Sheriff's deputies arrest water protector Cherri Foytlin on Sept. 4, 2018 on a remote piece of land in the Atchafalaya Basin, Louisiana. (photo: Karen Savage)

This Louisiana Parish Allowed a Quarter of Its Sheriff's Deputies to Work Security for a Pipeline
Karen Savage and Sarah Lazare, In These Times
Excerpt: "As construction equipment roared back to life, opponents of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline—part of the larger project connecting the Dakota Access pipeline to refineries in Louisiana—shook their heads in dismay." 

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