Epic FAIL: "It's not him... and we gave him a lot of money"

Attention Bloggers:  Warning!  As you prepare to jot down a cheery Thanksgiving post, full of mostly good cheer, do not stop along the way to peruse the front page of any major newspaper.

Honest to God, can the intelligence community lay claim to a more epic FAIL?  Well, yes, I guess they could, so that opportunity needs to be left open... But, come on, this is so freaking absurd, so indicative of exactly how clueless and inept the United States, NATO, Afghanistan, and the usual cadre of Middle East suspects are.

Once upon a time, this would have been a great story for the cocktail hour. It would have been an embarrassment worth a chuckle and a gosh darn.  Back when the consequences were posited as abstract and when a story's foreign nature meant it could be dismissed by our cultured xenophobia.  {clink:clink go the crystal glasses}

Now, it is the stuff that may launch hostilities; It is definitely the stuff that prolongs a confusing and poorly prosecuted war.  It bleeds the blood of someone's particular son and someone's actual daughter; It disrespects and scoffs at the labor of citizens, disguised as money fleeing on a desert wind. 

The message to the Taliban?  How can it be anything but a confirmation of their most dismissive assumptions?

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.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

American officials confirmed Monday that they had given up hope that the Afghan was Mr. Mansour, or even a member of the Taliban leadership.

NATO and Afghan officials said they held three meetings with the man, who traveled from in Pakistan, where Taliban leaders have taken refuge.

The fake Taliban leader even met with President Hamid Karzai, having been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace, officials said.

The episode underscores the uncertain and even bizarre nature of the atmosphere in which Afghan and American leaders search for ways to bring the nine-year-old American-led war to an end. The leaders of the Taliban are believed to be hiding in Pakistan, possibly with the assistance of the Pakistani government, which receives billions of dollars in American aid.

Many in the Taliban leadership, which is largely made up of barely literate clerics from the countryside, had not been seen in person by American, NATO or Afghan officials.

American officials say they were skeptical from the start about the identity of the man who claimed to be Mullah Mansour — who by some accounts is the second-ranking official in the Taliban, behind only the founder, Mullah Mohammed Omar. Serious doubts arose after the third meeting with Afghan officials, held in the southern city of Kandahar. A man who had known Mr. Mansour years ago told Afghan officials that the man at the table did not resemble him. “He said he didn’t recognize him,” said an Afghan leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Western diplomat said the Afghan man was initially given a sizable sum of money to take part in the talks — and to help persuade him to return.

While the Afghan official said he still harbored hopes that the man would return for another round of talks, American and other Western officials said they had concluded that the man in question was not Mr. Mansour. Just how the Americans reached such a definitive conclusion — whether, for instance, they were able to positively establish his identity through fingerprints or some other means — is unknown.

As recently as last month, American and Afghan officials held high hopes for the talks. Senior American officials, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, said the talks indicated that Taliban leaders, whose rank-and-file fighters are under extraordinary pressure from the American-led offensive, were at least willing to discuss an end to the war. [read the rest HERE...]