The Not-So-Free Press

Trey Smith

A damning report authored by Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis should be blowing the lid off the Obama administration's claim that things are going swell in Afghanistan these days. Davis, a 17 year veteran with 4 tours of duty since Desert Storm, clearly states that the American public as well as the US Congress are being lied to.

You would think that -- regardless of one's opinion of his scathing report -- it would be front page news in every newspaper in the country AND would be the lead story on every single televised news report. And yet, almost no one in the mainstream media has as much as mentioned it!

About the only places you can learn about this report are at Rolling Stone or The Young Turks on Current TV.

Here's some of what Michael Hastings wrote at Rolling Stone:

Davis last month submitted the unclassified report – titled "Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leader’s Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort" – for an internal Army review. Such a report could then be released to the public. However, according to U.S. military officials familiar with the situation, the Pentagon is refusing to do so. Rolling Stone has now obtained a full copy of the 84-page unclassified version, which has been making the rounds within the U.S. government, including the White House. We've decided to publish it in full; it's well worth reading for yourself. It is, in my estimation, one of the most significant documents published by an active-duty officer in the past ten years.

Here is the report's damning opening lines: "Senior ranking U.S. military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the U.S. Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable. This deception has damaged America’s credibility among both our allies and enemies, severely limiting our ability to reach a political solution to the war in Afghanistan." Davis goes on to explain that everything in the report is "open source" – i.e., unclassified – information. According to Davis, the classified report, which he legally submitted to Congress, is even more devastating. "If the public had access to these classified reports they would see the dramatic gulf between what is often said in public by our senior leaders and what is actually true behind the scenes," Davis writes. "It would be illegal for me to discuss, use, or cite classified material in an open venue and thus I will not do so; I am no WikiLeaks guy Part II."

Following Hastings' suggestion, I downloaded the pdf and I've read through the first 30 pages or so thus far. From what I've read to this point, I can tell you that it doesn't paint a pretty picture!!

But, as indicated above, what really gets me is the dearth of mainstream media coverage. We hear incessantly that the mainstream media has a "liberal bias," yet the supposedly liberal media isn't touching this report with a ten foot pole!

Why is that, do ya think?