Smart diplomacy meets fake Taliban

Peter Schweizer notes this strange report by Dexter Filkins in the New York Times that the supposed Taliban leader with whom we have been negotiating in Afghanistan — the man we thought was Mullah Mansour — was actually an impostor.
The negotiations don’t seem like a smart idea to begin with. But now American officials have discovered after three meetings (including one with Karzai) that they have been had. One of the diplomats involved in the negotiations complains that “we gave him a lot of money,” but not for value.
Peter comments: “How does something like this happen? It strikes me as incredibly bizarre that we could be fooled so easily. Also, why are we giving senior Taliban commanders ‘lots of money’ for what are simply negotiations?”