EXCLUSIVE: On Nobility and the CIA’s War in Afghanistan

OPINION — On December 31, The New York Times published a piece that claimed Afghan forces “trained and equipped by CIA agents or contractors” were conducting “torture and killings with near impunity.” The piece opens with the description of one such raid where an alleged CIA-trained strike force burst into a family’s home, separated the men from the women and children, and began shooting.

If the insinuation that the men and women were separated only for ease of execution was insufficiently evocative, we are then told that one woman had been shot three times in the head and a child had been burned to death in her torched bedroom.  In six unequivocal sentences, the murdered woman and immolated child become helpful journalistic tools for a case to be made; people whose suffering need not be embellished, but merely laid bare for the higher purpose: ending CIA atrocities.