00:00We know the history of military conflict in Afghanistan.
00:07Long years of floundering and ultimate failure.
00:13We're not going to repeat that mistake.
00:162002, Donald Rumsfeld dictates out a memo saying,
00:19how are we going to get out of Afghanistan?
00:21And he ends it with one word, help, exclamation point.
00:25Completely at odds with what the public had been told.
00:28Privately, people were saying this war was a total disaster.
00:34This is off the record.
00:36But we offered anonymity to people who couldn't speak the truth publicly.
00:41We were never going to succeed.
00:43This isn't going to work.
00:45The White House says we're winning the war,
00:47but these interviews, it's clear we're not winning.
00:49We are winning, winning, winning this war.
00:52What bulls**t?
00:55Officials were under pressure to report only good news.
00:58This goal is achievable.
01:00But people knew the war could not be won.
01:02Every measurable activity is failing.
01:06We're spending $300 million a day for 20 years.
01:1025% is being stolen, and it's ending up in the hands of the insurgents.
01:15Corruption, bribery, stealing.
01:17And the embassy said, oh, don't go down that road.
01:19Don't go down that road.
01:21How about fixing the problem?
01:25There was this exaggeration after exaggeration of what we accomplished,
01:29and it went all the way up to the present.
01:32We have liberated village after village.
01:34We broke the Taliban's momentum.
01:36We are winning responsibly, deliberately, and safely.
01:39They're lying to you.
01:41They didn't care about what the reality of this war was.
01:44They cared about whether or not their narrative was going to be upset
01:46by somebody speaking to the press.
01:50Sometimes the truth is so precious,
01:52it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies.
01:54I don't want to be quoted on this.
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