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Journalist/Historian Gareth Porter on Lt. Danny Davis’ Courageous Report on Afghanistan; Comments on Israel/US/Iran Tensions

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Gareth Porter returns to talk about the recent report from Lt. Col. Danny Davis about the real conditions in Afghanistan; will Obama’s spin hold till November?  Porter is a well-informed historian and journalist who comments on the recent scathing report about the sorry state of the Afghan military and police–belying the depictions from Petraeus, Panetta and others that the situation is improving and we will bring “combat troops” home next year.  We compare Davis to Walter Cronkite, whose reports opened eyes in the US about the failures in Viet Nam.  We also compare Panetta to Kissinger’s 1972 political lie, “Peace is at hand”.  Porter says the night raids conducted by the US cause a huge backlash, including today’s report of another incident where an Afghan soldier shot into a NATO unit. We talk about the prison at Bagram, and whether Karzai will win his struggle to take control of it.  And in the last few minutes, we talk about the tensions with Iran, and Porter says the recent reports of Iranian attacks on Israelis in India, Georgia and Thailand are “false flag” operations.