Lying the whole time.

When you hear the pronouncements from officialdom that nobody could have foreseen the debacle in Afghanistan, remember that lying to the public about the situation became a reflex.

 Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul — and at the White House — to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.

“Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible,” Bob Crowley, an Army colonel who served as a senior counterinsurgency adviser to U.S. military commanders in 2013 and 2014, told government interviewers. “Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable but reinforced that everything we were doing was right and we became a self-licking ice cream cone.”

John Sopko, the head of the federal agency that conducted the interviews, acknowledged to The Post that the documents show “the American people have constantly been lied to.”

As always, follow the money. As in, the most recent disbursement for the former Afghan government was not delivered to the government, contrary to expectations.

In a sign of the monetary difficulties any future Afghan government will face, the head of Afghanistan's Central Bank said the country's supply of physical U.S. dollars is "close to zero." Afghanistan has some $9 billion in reserves, Ajmal Ahmady tweeted, but most is held outside the country, with some $7 billion held in U.S. Federal Reserve bonds, assets and gold.

Ahmady said the country did not receive a planned cash shipment amid the Taliban offensive.

"The next shipment never arrived," he wrote. "Seems like our partners had good intelligence as to what was going to happen." 

So it seems. A smart move, stopping the wastage of funds. But it shows someone saw what was going on and acted accordingly, suggesting that the "UNFORESEEABLE!" mantra being repeated all over the place was far from universally shared.