Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor

By DEXTER FILKINS and CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan — For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

More interesting to me was the acknowledgment that the Times was holding back information about the identity of the Taliban impostor at the request of U.S. officials:

Last month, White House officials asked The New York Times to withhold Mr. Mansour's name from an article about the peace talks, expressing concern that the talks would be jeopardized — and Mr. Mansour's life put at risk — if his involvement were publicized. The Times agreed to withhold Mr. Mansour's name, along with the names of two other Taliban leaders said to be involved in the discussions. The status of the other two Taliban leaders said to be involved is not clear.

Of course it's impossible to say for sure what may have happened if the Times had reported these details, but it's at least plausible that the the whole fraud could have been exposed sooner.

The most dramatic moment came when Rep. Patrick Kennedy chastised the press corps for skipping out on the discussion:  "There's two press people in this gallery.... We're talking about Eric Massa 24-7 on the TV, we're talking about war and peace, $3 billion, 1,000 lives and no press? No press."

He added: "The press of the United States is not covering the most significant issue of national importance and that's the laying of lives down in the nation for the service of our country. It's despicable, the national press corps right now."

Watch the video:

Liberals in the House, who have spent much of the past year complaining that other congressional Democrats and the White House are insufficiently progressive, will get a chance this week to vent about one of their biggest concerns: the war in Afghanistan.

To say that lawmakers are "venting" is a short way of saying that they're wasting time with pointless complaining.

And what are they whining about, anyway? Nothing special--just whether or not the war complies with the law.

The resolution will invoke the 1973 War Powers Act, which Congress passed in protest of the escalation of the Vietnam War by a series of presidents without formal congressional authorization. It requires congressional approval for a president to put troops in a military conflict for more than 90 days. Congress passed a resolution authorizing military force in Afghanistan in 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, and some congressional scholars doubt Congress can invoke the act now to force changes to President Obama's war policy.

As Robert Naiman wrote: "The Pentagon doesn't want Congress to debate Afghanistan. The Pentagon wants Congress to fork over $33 billion more to pay for the current military escalation, no questions asked, no restrictions imposed for a withdrawal timetable or an exit strategy."

The media don't seem to want to have a debate over Afghanistan either.

Greenwald quotes from a response that media critic Charles Kaiser got from Times op-ed editor David Shipley when he asked about Dadkhah's op-ed: "We found Ms. Dadkhah from work she did in Small Wars Journal, work that was part of her Ph.D. dissertation at Georgetown." As Greenwald notes:

Shipley's answer strongly suggests that Dadkhah did not submit her op-ed unsolicited, but rather, the NYT purposely sought out an op-ed to urge more civilian deaths in Afghanistan....  Why would they do that?  Maybe tomorrow the NYT editors can actively solicit an op-ed urging the use of biological agents and chemical weapons on civilian populations in Yemen.  After that, they can search out someone to advocate medical experiments on detainees in Bagram.  Perhaps the day after, they can host a symposium on the tactical advantages of air bombing hospitals and orphanages as a means of keeping local populations in line.

Greenwald writes, "When Dadkhar reads things like this from today -- 'Airstrike kills dozens in Afghanistan . . . . Ground forces at the scene found women and children among the casualties' -- she presumably thinks:  'Yes, that's exactly what we need more of.'" One wonders if Shipley and the rest of the team at the New York Times felt a similar sense of satisfaction.