Welcome to this throwback edition of the award-winning Best of Left podcast, where we remember the past and choose to repeat it.

As the U.S. again finds itself having elected someone incapable of resisting the urge to attempt to bomb his way to some unidentified policy goal, I thought this would be a good time to look back to a forgotten story

that broke just before COVID struck and wiped all of our memories. In January 2020, we published

this episode about the Afghanistan Papers, which went beyond the scope of the more famous

Pentagon Papers of the Vietnam era. The Afghanistan papers featured interviews and documentation from top-ranking officials,

admitting from the start that they had no idea what they were doing in Afghanistan.

Just a reminder of the type of reveals,

we are all but certain to be told about years into the immediate disaster and long legacy

of Trump and Netanyahu's war on Iran.

And so, to look back, but with an eye on the future, sources today include Democracy

Now, on the media, the real news, the Brian Lerer Show, the Michael Brooks show, Eyes Left, and Newsbeat.

The modern-day Pentagon Papers, that's how people are describing a confidential trove of documents obtained by the Washington Post, revealing how senior U.S. officials have

lied throughout the 18-year U.S. war in Afghanistan, the longest war in U.S. history.

The first installation of the explosive report published Monday is headlined at war with

the truth. It documents how U.S. officials repeatedly lied about the war's progress, while hiding evidence

the war had become unwinnable.

It also shows how three successive presidencies, President George W. Bush, President Obama,

and President Trump have bungled the war in Afghanistan despite deploying

775,000 U.S. troops since 2001.

More than 2,000 U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan, and 20,000 have been wounded.

The papers also reveal how U.S. officials tried to hide the truth about the war from the American

public. In one interview revealed in the papers, Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general,

...