Declassified CIA documents reveal how disastrous America’s post-9/11 plans really were

[bemildred]

Scholars working on the contemporary Middle East are living through something of a golden age where evidence is uniquely plentiful for three reasons.

First, the disastrous failures of US policy in Afghanistan and Iraq have led to an unprecedented programme of declassification of documents (some with significant redactions) as part of the cathartic process of trying to understand how so many mistakes were made before and after 9/11.

Second, the cache of cables dumped by WikiLeaks, coupled with further revelations from material leaked by Edward Snowden, has provided an exceptional level of insight into the workings of the intelligence agencies over the past three decades, together with priceless new information about the decision-making processes and about operational activities.

And third, there has been a cache of materials found locally following the military interventions of the past 12 years – such as audio tapes recovered from the presidential palace in Baghdad in 2003 that recorded thousands of hours of meetings, discussions and even phone calls made by Saddam Hussein and his inner circle, or boxes of cassettes that belonged to Osama bin Laden that were retrieved from a compound in Kandahar two year earlier.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/declassified-cia-documents-reveal-how-disastrous-americas-post911-plans-really-were-10474882.html