Afghanistan report says it's all been for nothing

I was talking to a guy at the bar the other day who said he was an Afghani war veteran.

He saw no action. All he was assigned to do was guard an opium poppy field for the CIA to grow opioids for heroine.

He said he likes to tell others that he served, even though he also feels guilty that he was tasked to contribute to the problem with our own corrupt government.

 

That's not his fault, his job was to follow orders. Technically he did serve and nothing to feel guilty about (as far as i know ): he should be glad he didn't saw or had to get into action as in killing others. It's not a given at all a soldier experiences that during serving and it doesn't make ones service less. Sometimes your job as a soldier entails guarding a field.

 

I had a friend who went there as a civilian translator and all he did was translate for contractors who had something or other to do with the poppy fields.
He got really drunk and gave me all the salacious, damning details once but I was really drunk too so it's all a bit fuzzy

 

And Clinton too! Two democrats and two republicans.

If this is true, the death toll is either inflated or on the conservative side. With the way media sources are today I am leaning towards conservative numbers, it will give them more info to make as front page, death toll rises, etc. , then when correct numbers are released people will think, if lower, at least it wasn’t as bad as we thought, many will look to the positive side of the situation, feel relieved. The media hypes things up. If the opposite is true, there will be more outrage about the needless deaths,

Sad, regardless.

Then others will put it in the perspective of, Over 20 000 people are killed in car accidents in the USA per year. Considering they are in a war zone, and chose that career, etc. To me, 2300 seems low for such a high risk career. No one dying would be better, but it is also unrealistic. We know it is a possibility. But 2300 seems really low, to me.

Vietnam war had 58,220 USA soldiers killed.

 

It's as if the government was culling much of the last batch of baby boomers. I can only imagine what all of those dead people might have accomplished if not for a useless war.