Petraeus ignored danger signs on Taliban impostor

The revelation that the man presumed to be a high-ranking Taliban leader who had met with top Afghan officials was an impostor sheds new light on Gen. David Petraeus's aggressive propaganda about the supposed Taliban approach to the Hamid Karzai regime. Ever since August, Petraeus had been playing up the Taliban's supposed willingness to talk peace with Karzai as a development that paralleled the success he had claimed in splitting the Sunni insurgency in Iraq in 2007. It is now clear, however, that Petraeus was deceiving himself as well as the news media in accepting the man claiming to be the second-ranking Taliban commander Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour as genuine, despite a number of indications to the contrary. Petraeus's failure to heed those signals was certainly driven by his strong desire to establish yet another narrative emphasising his brilliance as a war strategist, judging from his public statements prior to the revelation of the fraud.