Hager exposes Kiwis' role in Afghanistan

 Newspaper article
We hardly needed Nicky Hager to tell us that "nearly everything controversial
or potentially unpopular [in Afghanistan] had been kept secret or concealed
by military public relations". Long before this book was published, I was ex-
asperated by TVNZ's "feel-good" coverage of the New Zealand war effort.
Watching its occasional documentaries, one might have imagined that the
New Zealand base in Bamiyan Province was a glorified Boy Scout camp. Too
bad that the Afghan interpreters took the gloss off the last attempt to show
that everything was hunkydory by approaching the TVNZ reporters and ask-
ing them to help the interpreters to get political asylum in New Zealand —
so that they wouldn't be killed by a vengeful Taliban after the Kiwis' withdrawal.