Afghanistan: American Military Members’ Attempts at Manipulation

It’s a story straight out of Hollywood. In a story published Thursday, the great magazine Rolling Stone revealed that an American general in Afghanistan, William Caldwell, attempted to use techniques of “psychological manipulation” on elected officials visiting Afghanistan, in order to obtain more funding to sustain the war.

The magazine assures as well that Caldwell called in 2010 upon a special “psy-ops” unit of soldiers whose mission was to influence the enemy, notably through propaganda. He had notably asked to put together dossiers on half a dozen senators, one of them being the former presidential candidate John McCain, to do a “deeper analysis of pressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more funds.”

The affair caused a big storm in the United States, such that the targeted congressmen demanded an investigation to “look at the actions taken by Caldwell and his staff and determine whether they were inappropriate or illegal.” General David Petraeus, commander of the American forces in Afghanistan, was obliged to comply.