Mattis: Afghan War Reports Not 'All That Revelatory'

The Washington Post's Afghanistan war papers revealed U.S. lies and misuse of funds, but former Defense Secretary James Mattis downplayed their significance as not "all that revelatory," according to The Hill.

"Well, it is investigative reporting; I think it's been well done in that sense, but I have a hard time seeing it as all that revelatory," Mattis told the Post.

"The difficulty of Afghanistan was well understood very early on. The idea that there was any kind of an effort to hide this perplexes me."

Officials in the administrations of former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama reportedly spun overly positive reports on what has become the longest running war in American history, despite reported misuse of funds and questionable actual gains.

Mattis rejected the latter, however.

"The Taliban's goal is to take over this country and they've been stopped in that at great cost to the Afghan people, at great cost to the Afghan army," Mattis reportedly told the Post. "If you read [the articles], you'd almost think it's a total disaster, and it's not that at all. It's been hard as hell, but it's not just one undistinguished defeat after another. They are the ones on the back foot."

Mattis did admit the U.S. forces "weren't that good at" nation building, according to the report, but there needs to remain a presence in Afghanistan and the Middle East to keep radical Islamic groups from rising again.

"We'll need to keep counterterrorism troops there for some time to keep al-Qaida from regenerating and to keep ISIS down," Mattis told the Post.

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