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11th volume of Afghanistan watchdog report reflects 20 years of getting it all wrong

18 August 2021
Dan Ackermann

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction released (by coincidence) a new "Lessons Learned" report on Tuesday. My heart sankwhen I read the seven takeaways in "What We Need to Learn: Lessons from Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction." (The 11th in a series)

Why it matters: It's like we never knewor learned anything.

  1. "The U.S. government continuously struggled to develop and implement a coherent strategy for what it hoped to achieve."
  2. "The U.S. government consistently underestimated the amount of time required to rebuild Afghanistan, and created unrealistic timelines and expectations that prioritized spending quickly."
  3. "Many of the institutions and infrastructure projects the United States built were not sustainable."
  4. "Counterproductive civilian and military personnel policies and practices thwarted the effort."
  5. "Persistent insecurity severely undermined reconstruction efforts."
  6. "The U.S. government did not understand the Afghan context and therefore failed to tailor its efforts accordingly."
  7. "U.S. government agencies rarely conducted sufficient monitoring and evaluation to understand the impact of their efforts."

Go deeper: Interactive version ... Read the 140-page report.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

Section2

Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.