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WikiLeaks Publishes Afghan War Secrets
A number of readers submitted word on the massive WikiLeaks release of Afghanistan war documents. "The data is provided in CSV and SQL formats, sorted by months, and also was rendered into KML mapping data." WikiLeaks provided the documents in advance to the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the UK's Guardian — the latter also has up a video tutorial on how to read the logs. From the Times: "A six-year archive of classified military documents... offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal. The secret documents... are a daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year. The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, and the German magazine Der Spiegel were given access to the voluminous records several weeks ago on the condition that they not report on the material before Sunday. The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001."
Wikileaks is doing great work for the world. It sickens me that the country that is supposedly so open and about democracy abuses rest of the world like this and tries to hide it. I remember that last year the German and French population support for the war started dropping, so US started a project where they tried to think how to manipulate them. They made specific, independent plans for both countries how to give the war better PR so the general population would support it again.
US is also the only country in the world that is constantly in war with other countries, bullies them and has a history of supporting enemies of its enemies. You know, the exact same thing that US considers as helping terrorists. Funny thing is that because of this, US put itself into this war.
What about ACTA and other laws US tries to push to the rest of the world? No one comes to US and tries to tell them what to do. So leave rest of the world alone too.
Last line of http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/:
"We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits."
So this archive isnt complete, come back later for more...
It's all about the Oil...
Sure hope no one finds out that war is an ugly business that squanders trillions of taxpayer dollars and wastes countless human lives in order to reap huge rewards for a few special interests. That would be a shame (to the few special interests).
... when those "newly" discovered mineral resources could be worth trillions to the right corporation to exploit them. What, you thought our presence there was to fight the Taliban and spread "democracy"? You must be new here.
Killing other people does not solve problems.
How the world would have been changed if this had happened during the 1940's.
...is how did someone manage to download, store and transfer 90,000 classified documents and not be noticed?
I know there will be a lot of finger-pointing at Wikileaks for publishing the data on their website, but for the information to have been leaked in the first place should raise even more questions.
I wonder what the US learnt from VietNam. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 80s the US termed Afghanistan Russia's Vietnam, and now.....
"Do not confuse the unusual with the impossible" - Psmith
According to the CIA World Fact Book:
So now, expenditure over six years (Jan 2004 - Dec 2009) is $300,000,000,000.00 divided by six is around $50,000,000,000.00 per year
Per capita is $1,716.96 or more than double the GDP per capita of the country!
I would think that the US would get better resultsif the money was simply given to each inhabitant, the $800 they already make plus $1,700 from the US, would triple the GDP per capita, no small feat.
Just smile for the camera and show that you have not handled explosives or fired guns in the last week (paraffin test) and you get your weekly expenditure; you don't show up for a week then you lose the privilege, i.e. you knew you couldn't pàss the test.
Who said "You Can Rent an Afghan But Never Buy One"? It would rent the whole lot of them for a long time!
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
I am surprised to see the Guardian plunge to the depths of New of the World. I personally am shocked at soldiers killing other soldiers without trial, the use of 'deadly' surface to air missiles rather than the fluffy kind, and the carnage that is being caused by the Taliban to... er 2000 civilians (eh, I thought they were stronger than any time since 2001 so why target civilians, and why is it the fault of the US?). As for the supposedly massive collateral damage by the Allies, 195 people over 10 years is tragic but not huge. Even then it's a mix of French, Polish, British, etc that are at fault so it's not a targetted campaign. Worth quoting a paragraph not unsurprisingly near the end:
"Most of the material, though classified "secret" at the time, is no longer militarily sensitive. A small amount of information has been withheld from publication because it might endanger local informants or give away genuine military secrets. Wikileaks, whose founder, Julian Assange, obtained the material in circumstances he will not discuss, said it would redact harmful material before posting the bulk of the data on its "uncensorable" servers."
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Similarly a New Yorker piece commented on the leaked video and noted that
Another article
Y'know what really puts the 300 billion figure in perspective? That the GDP of Afghanistan is ~13 billion. If you can't crush an adversary like a bug for almost a quarter-century's worth of its GDP(and that is comparing your military expenditures vs. their entire economy) there is some part of you technique that you really need to take a hard look at...
Worse, even if we were having it all our way in military terms, our best case scenario seems to be installing our ridiculously corrupt and dubiously competent puppet leader sufficiently securely that we can leave before he gets overthrown. Given what happened in Iran when our ridiculously corrupt and dubiously competent puppet leader fell, this strategy seems to have a strong structural weakness.
lol, you 9/11 conspiracy theorists are funny.
Is Wikileaks now part of the PR machine? The feeling you're obviously supposed to take away with you from this is: Americans are fighting an uphill battle and are lost against the steadily increasing forces of terrorism it tried to root out.
When in reality Americans rolled in there ridiculously outnumbering and, more importantly, ridiculously out-being-equipped the mostly half-civilian rabble that dared stand up against them. There is no Afghan War. A war implies two sides fighting, not one waltzing in with vastly superior technomagic, while the other one is hiding, showing their heads, getting beat to a pulp, running for cover and getting shot in the back, until the next round of civilians gets fed up with sights like that and picks up their weapons to meet a similar fate.
Much more importantly, this isn't the right question at all. It shouldn't be "Why is this so difficult?" but "Why are we over there, taking their stuff and murdering everyone who so much as raises his voice against us? And shouldn't we be stopping that?" We demanded it. We were promised it. Success. We did our thing and now we don't care anymore. So it doesn't happen. Yay us, yay humanity. We make me sick.
Fuck me and fuck every single one of you. If I had three wishes I'd wish for a plague on all our houses, then a deluge, and a rinse-repeat.
Citizens and proud patriots of America, look away! Such things are not for your eyes. It is not for you to know how our war (done on your behalf, my steadfast Americans!) is going. Such things will only hurt the morale of our troops--and recruitment numbers! We beseech you, our countrypeople, you have no right to any of this information, for we do not belong to you--you belong to us.
The US should just have annexed a strip of Afghanistan ten km wide and as long as necessary.
All the info loaded into Google Earth.
I just found what I'll be doing for the rest of the day
I would say that I'm downloading it right now, but it came down the tube quickly. I'm looking for a decent csv. viewer right now. I try to have my own opinion of world events, and gather information important to understanding.
There are no gods but ourselves.
The Afghani war was legitimate as an attack on US soil was planned and coordinated from there but the US didn't put enough resources when they could have, instead they turned to Iraq which caused them to lose the Afghan war. It has turned into an untenable situation exactly like Vietnam and the US is scrambling to get out while they still have a fig leaf on and don't repeat the airlift of Hanoi in Kabul.
To those who would object to the use of the word 'lose' with respect to the American army.. it has. A war is won or lost when the enemy has lost the will to fight and America has lost that. To oust the taliban now would take major commitment spanning another decade, and unfortunately Obama doesn't have the stomach for that.
In this he is showing his naivete when it comes to Geoploitics and is wrong when compared to the Republicans, they understand the bigger global picture(although their divisive politics are disgusting). There is a second cold war happening right now, except this one has multiple factions.. US/EU on one side with Islamists and their enablers the 'moderate Arab countries' and their Chinese enablers on the other. This will take another 20 years to resolve properly and by demurring now the US is emboldening the other side just like when Obama announced a pullback date prematurely, a huge strategic error from an inexperienced leader.
He is turning into Kennedy in too many ways.. and this comes from a guy who voted for him enthusiastically.
Repsting from another forum:
The data that was leaked was from a CERT database in the combat zone. Its just the headers, none of the ancillary information was included ( pictures, witness statements) . This is an operators account on the information, mostly e4 and below. It's a good tool to look at what has happened, but it doesn't give the whole story. This database is classified SECRET NOFORN and can be seen on any theater network. Some enlisted copies the headers and put it into a database, and give it to wikileaks. This would be traceable all the way to wikileaks, and I hope this guy will be sent to leavenworh for treason. This is a serious offense in the military.
Note that Iraq has a separate database just as accessible. I would guess this might come up later.
As it often seems to be the case on /., the discussion centers around "talking points" conveniently fed by originator based on fairly clear /. views and agenda.
So, I went and began reading these reports. My impression is that these do have operational value, and are probably of some interest to military buffs (and certainly to enemy intelligence, though they probably knew most of that anyway). What I did not find in these reports is 1) any particularly unvarnished picture that differs markedly of what my impression of war in Afghanistan was until now based on otherwise available data 2) any real insight into why the war is going the way it is
I think, in fact, that both these points were answered many times in variety of other media and in other types of discourse.
My personal opinion is that other than sensationalist value, primarily due to the fact that classified information has been released, there isn't much here that will further any decent causes in our world. There is, however, a clear boon to stature of mr. Assange and his site and he is the one that benefits the most.
Since it is clear that he let his original source in US military down (essentially letting him be a fall guy who will probably be charged with various offenses), I think it is safe to say that mr. Assange is in it for himself and himself alone.
For my part, I will not patronize or support his venture. While in theory openness is good, it is only good if it is for the right reason. "Openness" for the sake of personal ulterior motives is just as bad if not worse than what it purports to fight.
You, Sir, are the exception. :p
And I'm a troll, apparently.
While I would agree that your math indicates that our long-term war in Afghanistan hasn't exactly been of great value to neither Afghanistan nor the United States, I see one fault in your logic. Rewarding warlords with "peace-time hush-money" only sets precedence for other countries at conflict with the United States.
I think that as soon as these guys get wind of the Afghan-US welfare program, I promise you that they're going to start raising hell w/ US troops, expecting the same type of hush money in return.
Except they have 177 million people. And plenty more radical Muslims. And nukes. Don't forget the nukes.
Personally, if we fuck up Afghanistan, it's not the end of the world. But I sure as hell wouldn't want to piss off Pakistan.
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
-Benjamin Franklin
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
deceptive how?
These csv files and reporting data are identical to US Army reporting database systems. Most likely an MI soldier grabbed this data off a SIPR computer and sent it to Wikileaks. There's really nothing critical to national security in those logs but unit SOPs which change regularly. I'm surprised someone ended up doing this, if whoever did it gets caught, there will be hell to pay.
Oh and hey idiots, these are SIGACTs not proof of clandestine abuses. Read the material before you go spouting your liberal/conspiracy theory bullshit.
If I cared about this kind of trivia I would, ya know, read Wikileaks. Seems every time someone posts something new there, the Slashdot editors have to post it here...
I think I would have hanged the bankers and industrialists who supported him, and also the same guys who supported stalin and the bolsheviks. Basically their progeny today do the same thing, push for wars, bankroll wars. War is *crime*, planned, run and operated by, and profited from, outright criminals masquerading as leading business people, politicians and political military officer corp. In Germany's case, we had plenty of those criminals in black suits in the nations that were not Germany, but gave him aid and comfort and much needed $cratch to get going. Another point would have been to slacken up on the previous war reparations, and not keep Germany in economic thralldom, the people there were in pitiful shape and wanted any out they could find. they were staring at generations of debt they couldn't pay, on top of suffering during the depression like everyone else.
The real bottom line is though, every individual human being has to make a choice, go along with insane leaders and fight their wars for them, take orders from cuckoos, or personally live in peace. No soldiers, then all you have is a few madmen arguing with each other, they can be dismissed like any other rambling drunk on the sidewalk.
I believe in self defense, I am not a pacifist by nature, but after a lot of research and contemplation about this subject, I have determined that almost all wars the last long time now, a couple/few centuries at least, probably longer, are pushed by a pathetic few insane people who somehow are able to convince millions to "follow their orders" like some cult leader..and it's funny how the same clique of money changers and industrialists and professional high level "soldiers" who get cushy jobs after they retire in the war industries, always profit from all these wars and all these cult followers doing what they are told like trained monkeys.
"War is a Racket" by General Smedley Butler, everyone should read this. He did it, fought what he called the banker's wars, for a long time, and finally it really dawned on him what was going on and how much he had been brainwashed and used and abused by the profit system. This same system is all over, been a successful racket for generations now. the only way to stop it is two fold: don't participate yourself, and encourage others to not participate, all the way to do not work in war industries, don't join up, don't own stock in war industries or war pushing banks, all of it. Do the research and you'll find the main motive for war is almost always "profit" of some kind. The war pushers-any side-will come up with all sorts of complete nonsense why their next planned war is so important, but dig just a little bit deeper, you'll find the profit angle hiding in plain sight.
It was the same in WW2. That's what would have beat Hitler, not supporting the profit angle that built him up, along with the "allies" war machines.
Secrets are sometimes necessary, and yes that includes to the government. As a simple example: Would you want a criminal getting a hold of information relating to an active investigation against them? How about the locations and identities of people in witness protection?
If you think any of that should be kept secret, then you agree that secrets can be necessary, including for the government. In that case the question is when should they be allowed to keep a secret. Then you have to start exercising discretion about what you release. You need to weigh the public's need to know versus the damage it could do.
Wikileaks just wants to release any and everything. They don't seem to give any consideration as to public good or need, they just want to leak everything. That I cannot agree with, be it for public or private entities. Anyone who says "There should be no secrets," is just the other side of the "If you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide," coin.
Also, as noted, they seem to have a political agenda. The helicopter video is a great example. It is possible that you could feel the public needed to know about it. Fine, but then the unaltered, uncommented video would be what to release. If you really believe the public needs to see what happened then that is what to show them. The unedited truth. When you edit and comment on it, you are trying to use it as a tool to present a point of view. You aren't interested in telling the truth, you are interested in pushing an agenda.
Using facts to do that doesn't make it any better. Bill Orielly is nearly always factual in his presentation. He rarely fabricates stuff. However it isn't true. What he does is pick and choose the facts he likes, and choose how to frame them to push a point of view. So while it isn't lying per se, it is still misleading. Wikileaks seems to be willing to do the same.
So between those two things, I really can't support them. They try to pretend to be the good guys but to me their actions do not show them in that light.
Who else is going to change the world, Marty? Greenpeace?
-
Actually, if you watch the video on guardian, Assange specifically addresses the problem of "safety" that is being lauded here, noting how wikileaks take great care not to endanger people, other then politicians and military making the decisions leading to these occurrences of course. He points out why "this endangers the safety" argument is beating on a dead horse - the data here is so old, that the real meat that could in fact endanger lives of NATO soldiers, namely positional info is long beyond any reasonable secrecy requirements, while names are being redacted.
Anyone parroting the "endangers lives of out troops" is doing nothing but repeating drivel meant to discredit wikileaks at this point. Sensitive negotiations on the other hand usually imply "crimes behind them", which brings us to judicial responsibility - i.e. how many children are you willing to have raped, mutilated and killed in the name of Aghanistan, before it gets to be too many? Perhaps it's time to note that NATO has quite a few sociopaths installed in positions of power, and they need to be replaced rather then be taking part in "sensitive negotioations"?
On the other hand, the people dead because of what NATO is doing in Afghanistan are actually dying, in droves. And as these documents show, NATO sweeps many of them under the rug, and who are the people responsible for that accountable for, and who are people covering them accountable for?
And mind you, he's not American. He's Australian, and he claims to speak for no one least of all Americans. He simply offers facts, and allows everyone to formulate their opinion on their own. This is quite different from most modern mass media, that tends to be opinionated to no end nowadays rather then offer facts and let people think for themselves.
No you're not stupid! We should all aim to improve ourselves and our countries! And, I can't believe all the assholes that say that other countries have been as bad or worse. Who cares, everyone is responsible for their own actions! Otherwise all you're saying is that it's ok to be an asshole because there were and are other assholes! Highly unethical, if you ask me!
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
I know, according to the official story, the original mission was to go to Afghanistan and kick the Taliban out of power and get Osama Bin Laden.
I don't really think that's the mission right now. I haven't heard anything about Osama Bin Laden in quite a while. What exactly are they trying to do? Perhaps these documents can shed some light on that?
There's a big difference. The US military is the best of the best at destroying shit. If things need to get blown up, people need to die, etc, they can do it quickly and professionally. Never before has there been a military with such raw power.
What the US military is not good at is conquest, going in and taking a place over. For that you need lots and lots of troops on the ground, and a willingness to be fairly ruthless. None of that guarantees a conquest is successful, of course, history is full of people pushing out oppressors, but it is needed for it to work. That's not what the US army does, never has except for maybe in Japan in WWII.
So what they US army can do, and has done well, is act as an army of liberation. A country has a powerful occupying force, the US can smash that force and liberate the populace. France in WWII is a good example. That is what the US tried to do in Afghanistan and Iraq. Come in, toss out the assholes in power.
The problem is that liberation only works when people want to be liberated, and are willing to work for it. It worked in France because of two reasons:
1) The French people wanted the Germans out, pretty much to a man. There weren't a whole lot of Nazi supporters there, relative to the total population.
2) They were willing to work together. When the Nazis were kicked out, the worked as a country to untie and rebuild. They understood that freedom meant sacrifices.
This is not the case in Afghanistan. It is a very, very tribal mindset over there. For the most part people care about what is good for them and their tribe. There is little sense of national identity, little cohesion. To them, freedom means freedom to take your neighbour's shit and make your tribe richer/stronger. As such liberation is near impossible. They aren't willing to work for it.
So if the objective was to kill every person in the country, I've no doubt the US military could accomplish that goal quickly and efficiently, with little loss on their own part. That's not the goal though.
He is a journalist engaging in what American's call "free speech". Here in America we don't believe in government control of the media, it's one of the founding principles of our nation. I don't know how things work in your country, but electing or appointing only government approved reporters is something we consider to be a very serious crime. I encourage you to study our history and reconsider how things work in your country.
Handing out money would accomplish nothing. Few reasons:
1) True wealth is not in having money, it in having the ability to produce things. Rich countries are rich not because they have cash, they are rich because they have strong economies. While cash could be used to buy that, it won't be. Direct handouts are never used in that fashion.
2) It would just fall in to the hands of warlords. When you get an anarchy situation where the strong can prey on the weak that is what happens. Happens all the time in Africa with aid. You can hand it out to individuals if you send in guys with guns to make sure that happens, but when they leave it'll get taken.
3) It would just be used to fuel further fighting. Afghanistan is highly tribal. What this means is people don't really have a large scale, national, identity. They identify just with their "tribe" which in this case is basically extended family living together. By and large they see no problem with stealing from, killing, etc other tribes to their own gain.
Unfortunately, there is no real solution to the problems there. You cannot help people that do not want to help themselves. This is true with individuals who have addictions, and it is true with cultures, with nations, as well. Help only works when the group you are trying to help wants it, and is willing to worth with you. The Afghans don't, so help will do nothing.
The Taliban offered to hand over bin Laden, the US turned them down. There was never a prospect of going in until we got bin Laden, they were in it for the long haul from the start. They wanted to transform Afghanistan into a proxy state as part of their grand strategy.
They refused to abide by the laws of war and we responded in kind.
I find that statement pretty funny given that I grew up about 15 minutes away from where a bunch of colonial farmers basically engaged in guerrilla warfare and pretty well obliterated almost a thousand British troops. What did those wild heathens do? Why, they didn't respect the proper rules of war by moving around in proper tidy columns and shooting in volleys (the procedure is truly hilarious to watch.) The bastards...they fired from spread out positions! And from behind rock walls! Cowards! And then, as the British retreated, they were picked off militia hiding in the woods all along the road back to Boston.
So. The standards of war are rewritten by whoever wins...and it's not like we went into Iraq and Afghanistan not knowing what we were getting ourselves into. The Soviets did a pretty good job of discovering that a decade or two prior.
Please help metamoderate.
Oh, so wikileaks are censored and those being exposed still decide what and when it is released.
As for the supposedly massive collateral damage by the Allies, 195 people over 10 years is tragic but not huge. Even then it's a mix of French, Polish, British, etc that are at fault so it's not a targetted campaign.
I don't know where that number came from, but to me, it seems extremely... inaccurate. Every time there's report of a drone "misfiring" the number of casualties are in dozens and it seems to be a rather common occurrence. Case in point:
Source
That is just 2009 and the trend is, at least at the time of article's publication, upward.
I'd be inclined to blame the governments and the media that make a service like Wikileaks necessary.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
In Texas we shoot sons of bitches who endanger our country.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Real power exists in the minds of the subjugated! Power is given not taken.
Total defeat means breaking the will of the people to resist. Winning wars has always been about subjugation.
Their will can not be broken by any means ever employed in the history of warfare; you can kill 100% of them and turn the nation into crater but you will have NOT broken their will and therefore your mission/purpose will have been a complete failure. The ONLY way to "win" against an enemy that will not yield is to redefine success (such as genocide or a retreat covered by narrow goals.) This is why there was that stuff about "winning their hearts and minds" has been out there - not to raise the level of discourse but because the officials were forced to allude to concepts they usually ignore publicly; furthermore, its timing was a concession at the difficulty of the situation which the clever insurgents noticed.
Aside: Mind control has never been employed full scale and for the good of humanity a completely successful method will never be discovered so that answer is not a possible option.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Nobody elected him. And I don't have the information necessary to represent his ethical position. However, in general a democracy only really works when the people have visibility regarding the activities of its leaders and military. So, I can guess that he believes he has an ethical position. Can we trust him? No. But we can do our best to verify the data. Can we trust our own leaders? Same answer, unfortunately. This much is clear from history.
Next, is our country better off or not for this release? If there really is some care being taken regarding names and the age of data, it may well be better off for the people to have another look at the war.
Bruce Perens.
war is hell. dah....! mike meanwhile on the internet we pretend to know the real answers.
How can this asshat know what is harmful and what is not?
From the Wikileaks article (Afghan War Diary)
We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from the total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source.
It seems the source of the documents may be deciding what is harmful, although that is not conclusive from the statement. I dare say that the source is likely to understand what can "harm" than you or I (or Julian) may be.
Reply to That ||
This is not a "troll" post, it is a post that basically reiterates what Wikileaks said about the collateral murder video. Information about a war in a foreign country is not secret from the people living in that country, but for some reason our government wants to keep it secret from us.
Palm trees and 8
noting how wikileaks take great care not to endanger people,
I'm so glad that some jack ass with a political axe to grind will "take great care" to not endanger people.
If it's all the same to you, I'd rather let the professionals in the armed forces decide what is potentially harmful.
Sensitive negotiations on the other hand usually imply "crimes behind them",
So negotiations to perhaps ensure that the nukes don't fall into the terrorists hands is hiding some crime?
The bottom line here is that we elect people who's job it is to decide what happens, when and how and they appoint others to do the same. If things go bad, then they are ultimately held accountable. Maybe not as fast as you want and maybe not to the degree you want, but that's the system that we have.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Who is he accountable to?
Himself. the only person anybody should ever be required to be held accountable to.
Your conscious will do worse things to you than any other person ever can.
It would be better if you were inclined to change the governments and the media that make some people feel Wikileaks is necessary.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
tablecloth head is making a strong case against the might-is-right delusion.
$300B over 10-years is like $100M-a-day.
How can I get in on some of this lucrative(but macabre) Ponzi action?
Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal I read that and the utter DUH hit me so hard I laughed out loud to the chagrin of my monitor. Soda sucks to get off too.
Like these guys?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The bottom line here is that we elect people who's job it is to decide what happens, when and how and they appoint others to do the same. If things go bad, then they are ultimately held accountable. Maybe not as fast as you want and maybe not to the degree you want, but that's the system that we have.
Your naivete is charming. These are the people that will NEVER be brought to justice - even now they'll just let someone else take the fall. Instead they will be very, very rich, and live long and prosperous lives, like most proper successful sociopaths do in modern western society.
And no, it's not all the same to me. When you put a fox to guard the hen house, and then claim that it's "proper and right, because he's been democratically elected there by the local fox community", it's not a correct thing to do - it's a travesty and a rape of justice.
Frankly, I could care less what Assange's motivations are, so long as his acts stick to delivering the facts, rather then opinionated crap. The video released some time ago was borderline material for me, because it wasn't ALL of the relevant material. In this case, he clearly learned his lesson and went for what people are asking for - as many relevant facts as possible.
for your excellence in http skills you have achieved the grand prize of 1 (one) internet. Your internet.com is in the mail.
Actually, if you watch the video on guardian, Assange specifically addresses the problem of "safety" that is being lauded here, noting how wikileaks take great care not to endanger people, other then politicians and military making the decisions leading to these occurrences of course. He points out why "this endangers the safety" argument is beating on a dead horse - the data here is so old, that the real meat that could in fact endanger lives of NATO soldiers, namely positional info is long beyond any reasonable secrecy requirements, while names are being redacted.
Anyone parroting the "endangers lives of out troops" is doing nothing but repeating drivel meant to discredit wikileaks at this point. Sensitive negotiations on the other hand usually imply "crimes behind them", which brings us to judicial responsibility - i.e. how many children are you willing to have raped, mutilated and killed in the name of Aghanistan, before it gets to be too many? Perhaps it's time to note that NATO has quite a few sociopaths installed in positions of power, and they need to be replaced rather then be taking part in "sensitive negotioations"?
On the other hand, the people dead because of what NATO is doing in Afghanistan are actually dying, in droves. And as these documents show, NATO sweeps many of them under the rug, and who are the people responsible for that accountable for, and who are people covering them accountable for?
And mind you, he's not American. He's Australian, and he claims to speak for no one least of all Americans. He simply offers facts, and allows everyone to formulate their opinion on their own. This is quite different from most modern mass media, that tends to be opinionated to no end nowadays rather then offer facts and let people think for themselves.
I am one of these troops. If you knew anything about operational security, you'd know that an enemy can use the most mundane information to gain advantages over an opponent. I'm sure that in these documents there are numerous references to things that will potentially endanger troops lives, from procedures, to defensive capabilities, to weapons system operation and employment.
I'm all for a free press.. but this is one step too far. These documents were classified for a reason and they were stolen. Maybe someone can steal your information and post it on the interwebs in the name of "transparency". I think that would be sound journalism..
I don't know. I don't think that Afghanistan is capable of invading and conquering the United States. They pose no great threat to us. Given that, I'd really rather have the $300 billion.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
So an enemy knowing what our countermeasures are doesn't risk lives? I call BS. These documents in many cases detail how our troops are trained to respond and if you don't think that kind of information "endangers lives" then I have a bridge to sell you.
By reading the documents and watching the videos you can learn a great deal about how our military reacts, thresholds that have to be met before engaging the enemy, and basic rules of engagement. All of these things can be used to plan attacks on our forces.
If you know how we deploy our troops you don't have to be told exact locations, you can deduce that information based on historical information. The more historical information you have the better you can model it.
OK, so you got Kennedy, but wasn't Reagan shot in Washington?
Assange also explained the decision not to include commentary on the RPG, which was that in their opinion, the supposed RPG may have been a camera tripod.
Right - the opinion of people who are not trained AT ALL to analyze and identify weapons from poor quality video.
That goes to the heart of the problem, is that these untrained people are the ones who are deciding what is sensitive and what is not. Apart from the glaringly obvious they have no idea.
Wikileaks is going to get a lot of people killed if they have not done so already.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
o apply this tool to the one-on-one guerrilla fighting that is Afghanistan ...Or, just simply to say that the US military is the wrong tool for that job,
Except that the tool was already "re-honed" if you will in Iraq.
The Tool can be used for this job. It's already shown it works quite well, once all the retraining you mentioned took place. It just needs to be used by the right worker.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
All of this information is long known to taleban though their massive contact network and extensive history of skirmishes. This is news to us, sitting in living rooms and never having taken part in combat there. Taliban know US SOP probably better then many US servicemen.
Remember, the data here is OLD. We're talking 2004-2009, which means that SOP from those times is well known, documented and trained to counter by vast majority of taleban foces. And those still not trained are not going to be people with access to internet to get those documents, nor language skills to study them.
Really, this is a dead animal. Don't beat on it.
Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety
What you and so many other people miss in there is the key word "Temporary".
Think about it, because factoring that in often totally changes the applicability of the quote (that I have seen anyway).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In Texas we shoot sons of bitches who endanger our country.
It's so old now it's not even funny. Look, everyone knows about Austin. Everyone knows that terrorists hang out in Austin, I even dated one from there - she was with the radical-faux-minimalist front... or something.
Anyhow, until you handle Austin I don't want to hear anymore of this Red White and Blue Texas crap.
US is known to put civilians into dangerous territory just to get innocent people killed and US involved in the war. Think about it: you have a towering giant that, by law, is forced to be neutral as two neighboring midgets fight over some range. US gets involvement by impelling *collateral* into harms way while providing cover of any error in it's doing, so as to prove it's inclusion into the war to recompense the damages allegedly incurred.
War is much more profitable than any domestic economy or Free Market(tm) would ever provide: it being both fiscal, expansive to land rights and jurisdiction increases, supposedly *necessary* population-control, documents/domesticates freemen if not foreigners (say goodbye to Several States since the United States killed non-incorportated American towns), and especially the echo of war reverberating over time will provide all kinds of incentives for infrastructure to erect their butthurt cultural integration schemes.
inB4 jews, Little Saigon, Koreatown, Chinatown, Elohym City, Jamestown, Father Abraham had many Sons, Jamaican Bobsled team, derp.
Of course I anticipate the open-minded responses criticizing my "dualistic" thinking. All of the open mindedness in the world will not change who the Taliban are or what they stand for (and it is not open mindedness). They hate us because we are free. We are not required to hate them back, but we are required to prevent them from any killing more of us. If that is not a "national security" issue, then I don't know what is.
You have a valid point HOWEVER it puzzles me why you then forget to mention the OTHER side in this conflict. The Taliban/Al Queda (or dare I say it, Islam) is involved in far MORE wars then the US.
Odd that you leave that bit out. There are two sides to every conflict. Oh and other countries are close seconds, lets not forget that the US is not fighting this war alone.
War mongering is a common business of countries. It is just that Joe Public doesn't notice much of it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
heya,
While I think the parent to your post is a bit sensationalist - his daughter isn't going to become a slave, he has got a point in that Afghanistan is a hotbed of Islamic extremism.
Gee, 9/11...hmm...something about planes....remember? I'm not even American, and I've heard of that. Actually, I think most people, except maybe a few tribes in the Amazonm, and a family or two in Lichenstein have heard of it, with the way you guys hit the news with it.
Anyway, the point is, you have a country vast poppy fields used by drug cartels that are used to fund terrorists intent on killing you. And training camps. And hideouts. And weapon caches. All of which are probably pointed at your ever-so-joyful country, as well as most other countries not currently worshiping Allah. Not to say *all* Muslims want that, but at least a sizeable minority do, and as history has shown, enough to cause you guys no end of pain.
So no, I don't think it's exactly out of place to say - gee whiz, these guys want to kill us, umm...let's...err...do something about it?
Now Iraq's another kettle of fish, I suppose, and I'm sure all the leftwing hippies will come out and cry "It's the OIL, it's the OIL!!!" or another of their similar conspiracies. I lump them in the same category as those that think 9/11 was some weird CIA conspiracy orchestrated to kill US citizens And Roswell. Fact of the matter is, Saddam *did* try and threaten the United States (as well as kill his lovely chums in Kurd), but how credible that threat was...well, that's up for debate. The thing is, if you keep saying "I HAVE WMDS, GIMME MONEY OR ELSE!", eventually *somebody* is going to call your bluff. He tried to play poker and lost. Maybe the decision to oust him was poorly planned. But meh, he was an annoying git, and he did kind of have a bunch of raping/pillaging sons and cronies, as well as a tendency to torture his own people...so...?
Last time I checked, I don't see any of the Iraqi people crying for Saddam to return. Sure, they might not like the Americans, but I think they find them annoying and just want them to piss off, as opposed to psychopathic and murderous like Saddam.
Cheers,
Victor
Where does most of the world's supply of heroin come from?
I hope you die, coward asshole. Your genes should be eliminated from the pool.
If you're actually on the ground in Afghanistan, then you know that mujahideen learn fast, and know SOP described in the documents to a tee without ever having access to them. Again, information here isn't fresh - it's mostly several years old. If there's any real military value in it, then it's something that every single raghead knows as is relevant to his position and has known for a while. You know that they know what weapons are deployed and where within days or weeks tops, they know of troop deployments etc. That's why they are so damn effective - they have eyes everywhere, because every single afghan you hire to help you is likely talking to them after he's done working for you. This isn't new, this is exactly how Soviets lost their war too.
The only way to remain blind to this is to not be on the ground. Hell, don't take it from me, the documents leaked tell this same story many times over.
Several year old deployment and weapon info isn't going to endanger anyone in a meaningful way, and those that can be endangered by in some way can be taken care of through minor force shifting (which will still likely to be found out and accessed very fast by mujahideen anyway). And even so, the needed transparency and corruption purge is well worth the risk - especially considering the total death toll and the adventurous "let's go hit Iran next" rhetoric. If anything, the documents leaked are not enough, but sadly it's highly unlikely that those really responsible, sitting high up will leave incriminating trails that are this easily taken.
All in all, this is a VERY dead animal. It won't come to life no matter how you try beat the poor thing. Although I imagine the western media will try very very hard. Reminds me of the "yes men" video where media tried to nail them real hard for "raising false hopes" when they duped BBC into believing that DOW would pay for the clean-up of the worst chemical spill in the history of the world. "They caused pain to the locals" screamed every western news outlet. When the guys responsible headed to the site, they were taken in as guests of honor, publically thanked for raising awareness of the issue.
Demonising people who bring up things that western elite really doesn't want to be brought up is nothing new. Try to think critically beyond the arguments presented in mainstream media, to see if there's really any trace of truth in it. Like now, when the entire Afghan war strategy has been shifted MASSIVELY in 2010 (which you would also know if you were on the ground), essentially meaning that this materials will most likely cause confusion for taleban intelligence rather then help as it renders most of the things you describe above changed.
And a metric shitload of Lithium, Copper and other precious metals.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The US lives in a dream, it starts with the "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." and deteriorates from there.
If you don't get what is wrong with the above sentence written by slave-owners, then you are an American. Congrats, stop reading, you will never get the rest of this post.
Americans believe at their core that everyone wants to be an American. They must because if they didn't, then they might have to look to other countries and perhaps ask, why are they doing better? Why are there fewer child deaths in Cuba? Why can the EU afford free universal healthcare, why are other car companies not on a government bailout?
Dangerous thoughts that could all to easily lead to, is working 80 hours a week to afford to suvs and a 50 inch TV really all that life is about?
Vietnam is not just a strategy lesson, learning from it would involve questioning the "American Dream". 8 million civilians killed by US soldiers, when you know the inefficiency of bombing vs gas chambers comes dangerously close to the Holocaust. That doesn't fit with the "American Dream".
The US can never learn from these wars because it would have to stop being the US, and start being a regular country.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm sorry, but the more things change, the more the stay the same. The parallels are eerie:
1) Daniel Ellsberg / Pentagon papers == whoever / This stuff
2) Operation Phoenix == "capture / kill" CIA operations in Afghanistan.
3) The corrupt Ngo Diem == The corrupt Hamid Karzai.
4) French war in Vietnam == Russian war in Afghanistan
5) Corrupt, worthless army == The corrupt, worthless Afghanistan army.
6) Support for the war from North Vietnam == Support for the war from Pakistan
7) Death from above via B-52's, AC-47's, Hueys == Death from above from F-16's, Predators, Reapers
8) Massive civilian casualties == Massive civilian casualties
9) Nationalism / Religion fueling the fire == Nationalism / Religion fueling the fire
10) Slow build up over years, with too little to start with == Slow buildup over years, with too little to start with
11) Humiliating defeat for the US, with a small fig leaf == ????
Without lots more soldiers sent in, and perhaps even then, this war is lost. When are we going to recognize it?
----- Why sig when you can sign? PGP key id 7675D05E
If he were shot in Texas, he'd have been shot dead.
Learn to love Alaska
The thing is, if you keep saying "I HAVE WMDS, GIMME MONEY OR ELSE!", eventually *somebody* is going to call your bluff.
Yeah. Too bad we didn't have an organization that gathers information or "intelligence" about countries to help us make decisions about things like going to war.
Learn to love Alaska
Ever heard of Hellenistic Bactria. Their kings did not wear Macedonian royal berets on their coin stampings for nothing.
From Wikipedia:
In July 2000, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, collaborating with the United Nations to eradicate heroin production in Afghanistan, declared that growing poppies was un-Islamic, resulting in one of the world's most successful anti-drug campaigns. As a result of this ban, opium poppy cultivation was reduced by 91% from the previous year's estimate of 82,172 hectares. The ban was so effective that Helmand Province, which had accounted for more than half of this area, recorded no poppy cultivation during the 2001 season.
By November 2001, the collapse of the economy and the scarcity of other sources of revenue forced many of the country's farmers to resort back to growing opium for export
In other words, if heroin supply was the problem (and it was), then keeping Taliban around was a very efficient and cheap way of handling it. Cutting off hands and feet for growing poppy does wonders to curb its spread...
Yup, when being attacked by an gang of street thugs, grab one by the neck and slit their throat in front of their fellow team mates, allowing the blood to spill all over them and triggering the shock reaction buried in the animal inside them. This will make them think about attacking you again.
But the US is not doing this. They are going for the oil and resources, killing or defacing anyone who stands in their way. Their own citizens are not the priority here, but the owners of those citizens. Or so they like to think. It's up to YOU and ME to make this thing stop, not anybody else. I cannot change anyone else other than myself, so it's my choice to stand against attacks against the nature of being human that US is conducting all the time. It's up to YOU to make the change, not anybody else. Take the responsibility to allow change to come.
GeoKone.NET
If your daughters would have died because they refused to convert to Islam, wouldn't it be cheaper, safer and easier to move them to some country other than Afghanistan?
Money? All the poppies go to keep Obama drugged so that he doesn't realize what's going on. That's why they originally invaded Iran. Or maybe not.
GeoKone.NET
I don't know. I don't think that Afghanistan is capable of invading and conquering the United States. They pose no great threat to us. Given that, I'd really rather have the $300 billion.
How dare you say a nation with a roughly $10-$15 Billion GDP cannot conquer a nation with roughly a $15 Trillion GDP. Such gall!
On a serious note, we've known for over 30 years that Afghanistan is an untapped nation of massive minerals that can be used for military and commercial applications. The conservative $1 Trillion recently discussed is confirmation to what we always suspected was the main reason the USSR wanted to control it. Same goes for us so it seems.
If someone was able to get these, please mirror them to a freesite at Freenet network (www.freenetproject.org).Very strange indeed.WikiLeaks appears to be busied for good...or taken down by NSA/CIA perhaps ;)
I always suspected this was the case. now that I have read it on /. I know it to be true and can relax. Thanks
This man speaks the truth. There are not only documents, but NEWSPAPER WARNINGS in major US newspapers - the Germans tried to warn the public. Of course, the US government wanted those people to go there and die. That is how you entered the war.
Which is fine, as long as you and your loved ones don't become a problem. If you're afraid of reaping what you sow, then by God you fucking deserve to.
The special interest group I represent is my daughters, who will be chattel (that's "slave" for the illiterate) if we lose this war
You may or may not be a coward, but you're a fucking credulous idiot. Or did you not know that Saudi Arabia is a theocracy, the financial foundation of Al Qeada, and home of 80% of the hijackers? And for some reason you think you're defending democracy by imposing your worldview on some tribal civilization halfway around the globe who can barely afford to make ends meet, much less launch an assault on the soil of the US.
I hope you reap what you sow.
"an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal"
I guess if the `Taliban' didn't execute all those non-embedded journalists we would have found out a lot sooner?
You mean conscience, and the difference is important because not everybody has one.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Really there's an aspect of the security issue that you aren't taking into account. It's that revealing information also provides insight into how that information was collected. For example, if there was a piece of vital information that led to disastrous results for the Taliban back in 2004 and that channel of information is still being used today. Perhaps leaking this piece of information will dry up that well of information. Perhaps it will get someone killed today.
I agree that the "in the name of national security" argument is horribly abused but it really does still serve a purpose.
grandparent was being sarcastic :P
The conspiracy is covering up fraud. The design of the buildings was to withstand just this scenario.
However, how likely is it? At the time it was considered "nil".
So (and here's the conspiracy), whoever did the building skimped. It was NEVER going to be tested that hard, so save money and pocket the difference. It happens all the time in building industry. Then when it WAS tested that hard, the evidence would have shown the deception and fraud. That had to be covered up and so all the evidence was taken away and destroyed.
This explains
1) why the towers went down
2) why the evidence was taken and not examined
3) why there are so many strange things that point to a cover-up
no big "lets kill thousands of 'merkins and scare them into doing our will" conspiracy, but a common-or-garden "Friend of the powerful gypped the public and we have to save his ass" conspiracy that you see every day.
"The Afghani war was legitimate as an attack on US soil was planned and coordinated from there"
.. potentially significant petroleum and natural gas reserves in the North
Except the attack was planned and funded by Islamic radicals in Saudi Arabia, where Bin Laden and most of the hijackers came from. And Bin Laden was one of the CIAs best assets in Afghinstan, while he was fighting the Russians. And the US was planning to `liberate' mid-east Oil long before 9/11.
"I wrote an award-winning online essay that asserted Saddam Hussein sealed his fate when he announced in September 2000 that Iraq was no longer going to accept dollars for oil being sold under the UN's Oil-for-Food program, and decided to switch to the euro as Iraq's oil export currency"
"The country's natural resources include
the Core and the Gap
Oil, Conflict and the Future of Global Energy Supplies
You must be mistaken, Sir. I was told that 9/11 was planned by Saddam Hussein, and that this justified the Iraq invasion. It is what I heard from Rumsfeld and Fox in 2003, so that had to be true. Or is it now one of those conspiracies that you are denouncing?
I see you have a moral imperative in this matter, you other post's on this matter where also quite vehement if I remember correctly.
I think a more reasonable course would be to not choose between two evils but to condemn both?
You do see you're defending torture because you think rape is worse?
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
It regularly amazes me how eager the average American is to use the term "we" to describe decisions made by the elite at the very top of the pyramid, even in reference to events that happened 60 years ago.
This is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Using the term "we" to describe decisions made by the elite is exactly what the elite hopes you keep doing, so that the blame doesn't fall squarely on them (as it should) but rather on "us".
The first step in realizing why government does what it does is to realize that you aren't the one making the decisions. It reminds me of a football fan talking about his team in terms of "we" -- as if he actually participated in the game himself -- except that here we're talking about mass murder, destruction, and breach of human rights.
(overlapped with s/o else and 0 is unfair)
One was the Japanese culture itself. Very much a national identity, and sacrificing for the greater good and so on. Very much on following orders. That sort of an ideal is one that is easier to build up a nation, so long as they listen. They weren't interested in fighting each other and causing trouble.
The other, probalby bigger, reason is that they were completely crushed. There was a belief and propaganda that their forces were invincible, and were crushing all enemies. This shit continued even after it was becoming very clear that soldiers were going off to war and not returning. Their were having their fundamental views challenged. They'd prepared to defend that, after a fashion, by simply making the conquest of Japan as bloody as possible. Fight to the last man, and all that. However then came the bomb. Nobody was prepared for that, people had trouble comprehending its awesome power. Yes cities were destroyed in war (Tokyo was firebombed and more lives were lost there than in the atomic weapons strikes) but it was with hundreds of bombers in massive runs taking days. Here a single plane came in and leveled a large part of a city. This was real "shock and awe". What's more the US successfully convinced Japan that they had tons of the things in warehouses, that they would just keep the bombs coming and destroy the country in days. They didn't know that all three bombs had been detonated and it would take a good bit to get more.
Basically Japan was broken, subjugated. They were totally crushed, and in a rather ruthless fashion (though I don't blame the US one bit for its choice, it was the right one). They were then able to be rebuilt.
I don't think such a thing would work in Afghanistan, due to the cultural differences (the tribalism). Were it to have a chance though, it would require similar tactics. Totally break the will of the populace, and then build it back up. I don't think people find that acceptable.
the rules of the game are this: protect your secrets. be constantly paranoid about evolving threats. protect against those threats and anything else you can imagine. once you've locked every door you can possibly conceive of 5 different ways, then look for more doors and make 6 different locks. rinse and repeat
this game is called the game of national security. there is no sympathy if china loses its national secrets. there is no sympathy if russia loses its national secrets. why do you think there should be any sympathy about fairplay and decency if the usa loses its national secrets?
"its not fair"
not fair? is there or has there ever been anything fair in the game of national secrets?
if you don't protect your secrets, and they get out, guess what? you lose. simple as that. no other recourse, no blame game
whining about whoever released the secrets, wherever they were hosted, and whoever reported on them, etc., is completely besides the point and marks you as insufficient in character for the nature of the hardcore game you are commenting on
we are not talking about the civil behavior of government officials or your reputation in high school. arenas where concepts such as fairplay, decency, reciprocity, trust, etc., have valid meaning. we are talking about the game of national secrets. nothing matters except vigilance
that means you take responsibility for the integrity and the maintenance of your secrets, and if they are released, then you, and you alone, have failed, and no one else is to blame, because such a blame game is completely besides the point: you can't put the genie back in the bottle, so the game is completely over at the point of release of secrets
so stop whining. or admit you don't have the stomach for such a hardcore game, and go comment on an easier game
but you have absolutely zero right to complain and no basis to complain, because you clearly do not understand the hardcore nature of the game you are commenting on
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Zip it weeaboo faggot. The holy Japanese aren't innocent here.
Currently it appears that the main wikileaks site is unavailable. Thankfully wikileaks is actively mirrored, a list of which can be found on http://wikileaks.info/, http://mirror.wikileaks.info/wiki/Afghan_War_Diary,_2004-2010/ ought to take you straight to the original page. On a side note, the guardians' data blog have a nice writeup and sample of the data: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/datablog/2010/jul/25/wikileaks-afghanistan-data
So, if you want to make a vast collection of statements without supporting them individually, or arranging them together into a coherent position, that's fine. It's your buckshot. Besides, for folks who agree with enough of your statements, you sound reasonable.
To folks who disagree, there are a mess of little things to poke at. In a verbal conversation, since there is no thesis, you can use the 'yer all nitpicking and not talking about what I meant.' defense. Luckily, this is not a verbal conversation - it is a moderated forum.
To folks who attempt to look at what your are saying and understand your point - just a few lame cliches will break their trust of you, so if you don't spell out your thesis clearly, they will not even have the option of understanding what you meant.
I feel that you are only intending to reach the people who agree or who disagree with you - but are making no attempts to actually support your case to those undecided.
Normally, this would either be an effective trolling technique, or something a politician might ramble.
These are the reasons I think you are a tool.
I wonder what is the excuse your colleagues that fight in Iraq give to exactly the same accusations? Will you play the Christians against Muslims card as well? I wonder if any American still remembers how the war on Iraq started? I can assure you ion Europe we have that very well present.
You must be dumb if you think Afghanistan has any chance of going to the US and imposing their will on the entire populace. Jesus fucking christ, do you even have higher brain function.
Well, do you know why it was relatively easy to trial so many Nazi army war criminals, from the highest general to the lowest soldier? It's simple, it was the German obsession for efficiency and reporting. There where reports of practically all the acts committed, so it was easy to get profs of all the misdeeds when you found the person in question.
Thankfully, new technologies are doing the same for every 1st world country now-a-days. And since USA is the only 1st world country constantly involved in wars, hopefully it will be possible in the future, in case there is a change for the better in USA government and administration, to bring to courts and have a real trial of some war criminals from there. And we all know there are certainly some around.
I guess G.W. Bush hasn't been back to Texas in a long time then.
Thought thinks itself.
Frankly, I could care less what Assange's motivations are, so long as his acts stick to delivering the facts, rather then opinionated crap
That's the point entirely. There is NOTHING that ensures he will stick to facts.
If there is ANYTHING you believe should be kept secret then you would not be supporting wikileaks.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
enjoy the internet while you have it. the government is not going to ignore wikileaks or other internet problems. wont be long before the internet is very locked down and there's nothing we can do about that.
Its Obvious... Isn't it ? You have been brainwashed to think that you're doing good to America, and you're protecting your daughters.
You are a canon-fodder, and the "special interest groups" need you. You're NOT part of them, you are the means for them... they achieve their goal thru you.
You're standing the ground and fighting this war..... not realizing whom you're actually helping, and not realizing how much the US is bleeding financially.
The alternative was Operation Downfall.
I suggest you read-up on it.
Regards;
You're incredibly naive. The fact you're flying armed aircraft scares the crap out of me..
Or weapons inspectors from the UN who went to Iraq, looked around, found nothing, and told us all about it.
The thing is, that's not what is going on. If that were the goal, the US would be at war simultaneously with many African and Middle Eastern countries. But we're not. We're at war only where we have current or potential future strategic interests - oil, mineral resources, etc.
In every case, you will see that we go to war where it benefits us financially. Even war itself has been tuned to benefit us financially -- just look at how our government allots funds. We have built a huge military-industrial complex that depends on continuing conflict, and coincidentally, we are continuously involved in conflict that keeps those funds flowing.
The naive -- like you -- are easily deceived by tales of what the bad guys do in places like Afghanistan; but these things are done just as enthusiastically (or more so) in countries with no strategic value to us, and we roundly ignore them at the government level. Sudan, for instance, has recently engaged in wholesale internal violence of a nature completely unknown in Afghanistan. And we, the USA, the "world's policeman", did what? Not a damned thing. Why? Simple: Sudan has minimal strategic value to us.
Follow the money. It's that simple. It's been that simple for many decades. All talk of "child rape" is cover designed to satisfy the majority of citizens, who pay very little attention to anything but the surface issues they are presented with.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
And?
There's no constructive point in trying to get revenge (nor is it good for the soul), that method of terrorism stopped working 3/4 of the way through that particular attack, and it didn't actually pose any sort of existential threat to us.
The real harm caused by the attack wasn't crashed planes or collapsed buildings; the real harm was that it goaded us into doing stupid, self-destructive things, like pissing away a lot of money that we really need for other projects, or systematically tearing down our own carefully built, hard won civil liberties.
Afghanistan can't really hurt us, and neither can Al Qaeda. But we can hurt ourselves, and that's just what we've been doing.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
*bing* Brainwash complete.
I actually think you believe what you just said...it makes me sad.
It's not futile any longer. Today, nuclear weapons enable (a) killing everyone, (b) destroying the infrastructure, (c) poisoning the land, (d) all at extremely low financial cost as compared to even a minor invasion. For a few million dollars, we can clear out hundreds of square miles (air burst of 25-to-350 kt dial-a-yield cruise missiles at the high end.) It costs more than that to even put a smallish special-ops group boots-on-ground.
The fact that it hasn't been done points you to the real reason we make war: For profit. It is far more beneficial to pump a huge military-industrial complex in the undertaking of a half-hearted "occupation" of a nation with valuable strategic resources (oil, minerals, etc.), plus it retains access to the resources, than it is to actually win and get it over with. So we don't even try. We just prime and re-prime the war pump until the public won't have it any longer, then we start a new war.
The fact is, if we wanted to win in Afghanistan today, and that were the only criteria -- we would have won by tomorrow. Ergo, that's not why we are there, or even primarily why we are there. Follow the money. Works every time.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
but I lost my login details and am waiting for my password.
Anywho, has WikiLeaks been Slashdotted or have they been struck by yet another DOS attack?
Yes, because god knows USSR was so strapped for mineral resources!
If there is ANYTHING you believe should be kept secret then you would not be supporting wikileaks.
This is a hyperbole, and they are keeping 15k+ reports specifically because they don't think that "nothing should stay secret".
Actually, if you watch the video on guardian, Assange specifically addresses the problem of "safety" that is being lauded here, noting how wikileaks take great care not to endanger people, other then politicians and military making the decisions leading to these occurrences of course. He points out why "this endangers the safety" argument is beating on a dead horse - the data here is so old, that the real meat that could in fact endanger lives of NATO soldiers, namely positional info is long beyond any reasonable secrecy requirements, while names are being redacted.
Anyone parroting the "endangers lives of out troops" is doing nothing but repeating drivel meant to discredit wikileaks at this point. Sensitive negotiations on the other hand usually imply "crimes behind them", which brings us to judicial responsibility - i.e. how many children are you willing to have raped, mutilated and killed in the name of Aghanistan, before it gets to be too many? Perhaps it's time to note that NATO has quite a few sociopaths installed in positions of power, and they need to be replaced rather then be taking part in "sensitive negotioations"?
On the other hand, the people dead because of what NATO is doing in Afghanistan are actually dying, in droves. And as these documents show, NATO sweeps many of them under the rug, and who are the people responsible for that accountable for, and who are people covering them accountable for?
And mind you, he's not American. He's Australian, and he claims to speak for no one least of all Americans. He simply offers facts, and allows everyone to formulate their opinion on their own. This is quite different from most modern mass media, that tends to be opinionated to no end nowadays rather then offer facts and let people think for themselves.
This is BS. People life's are at risk and this fool is trying to make headlines. The devil is a busy man.
"True wealth is not in having money, it in having the ability to produce things.
Oh, I certainly agree with that. And the U.S. is learning that quickly now.
The U.S. is NOT a rich country. If I got myself a thousand credit cards I could be rich in the sense that the U.S. is rich. Everything about it has been financed not on production, but on ever-increasing debt. They produce little, and they're seeing the result. Every part of the states is heavily debt-laden, from the individual to the federal government.
This is the end of the U.S. as a financial superpower. I'm surprised it's taking this long to unwind, frankly. For a long time the only thing the U.S. has had to offer is ideas and finances, and now they're underperforming in both.
I predict that in five years the U.S. dollar will be relegated to the U.S. alone (if it exists at all). I'm concerned, however, that a broke-ass nation in need of resources will still have awesome military might.
The only thing that protects the neighbours of the U.S. is that Americans view themselves as right and good and just. Canada is the greatest example of the benevolance of the states. Vast energy resources, scant population (less than 4 people per square kilometre), no practical way to defend itself, and rather than simply seizing what they want, the U.S. actually buys the resources from that country.
That is the current state. When the U.S. is officially destitute (it's unofficially destitute now, but first you have to admit you have a problem) they might have to show up with guns instead of dollars, at which point Canada raises the U.S. flag and business goes on as usual.
I think there's a pretty good chance that when everything falls apart, the U.S. will turn expansonist for real.
I doubt many Chinese cried tears over the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
>The thing is, if you keep saying "I HAVE WMDS, GIMME MONEY OR ELSE!", eventually *somebody* is going to call your bluff.
Sure, but the thing is, they *didn't* say that. In fact, they were saying exactly the opposite.
"December 5, 2002..."The declaration will repeat that in Iraq there are no weapons of mass destruction," Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, said at a news conference.
Iraq's denial that it possesses any such weapons puts it on a direct collision course with the United States, which insists it knows Iraq has them, demands a full and frank confession from Baghdad and warns it will disarm Iraq by force if necessary."
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
It wasn't a tripod, it was one of these: (first photo) http://www.karlgrobl.com/EquipmentReviews/StrapsRstrapBlackRapid.htm
Canon Mark II or similar long-range professional grade camera. The preferred camera for photo journalists.
The photographer poked the lens around the corner of a building. I can see how that thing could look like part of an RPG, on grainy black & white video footage. The question is, should innocents die because grainy B&W video footages is not accurate enough?
Disclosing tactics, procedures, and strategy to the enemy makes us safer how? Also if the data is that real and that valuable, why not hold onto it until after the war is over?
I'm a 2000 man.
Yeah, because THEY think...
You don't seem to get that THEY is a group of people who 1) have a political agenda and 2) are not accountable to anyone.
While their political agenda currently matches yours, at some point it time I'm sure it won't. I expect you will have a completely different opinion then
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
With the Wikileaks site swamped, the raw data is best served using BitTorrent. Here is one torrent.
The reports show that the smaller incidents were just as insidious and alienating, turning Afghans who had once welcomed Americans as liberators against the war.
Afghan police officers shot a local driver who tried to speed through their checkpoint on a country road in Ghazni Province south of Kabul. The police had set up a temporary checkpoint on the highway just outside the main town in the district of Ab Band.
“A car approached the check point at a high rate of speed,” the report said. All the police officers fled the checkpoint except one. As the car passed the checkpoint it knocked down the lone policeman. He fired at the vehicle, apparently thinking that it was a suicide car bomber.
“The driver of the vehicle was killed,” the report said. “No IED [improvised explosive device] was found and vehicle was destroyed.”
The police officer was detained in the provincial capital, Ghazni, and questioned. He was then released. The American mentoring the police concluded in his assessment that the policeman’s use of force was appropriate. Rather than acknowledging the public hostility such episodes often engender, the report found a benefit: it suggested that the shooting would make Afghans take greater care at checkpoints in the future.
“Effects on the populace clearly identify the importance of stopping at checkpoints,” the report concluded
.
Insidious? Let me get this straight. The dude sped his car so fast at a police check point that all but one of the officers fled in fear of their lives, that officer got KNOCKED OVER by the speeding car, and then he shot the driver. And we're supposed to feel like this is unnecessary use of violence that turns the population against us? Really? Of all the things that are happening over there we're going to complain that civilians can't safely run over policemen with their cars?
I don't know about the rest of the world but I don't think there's a state in the US where I would expect to run a DUI checkpoint and knock a cop over with my car without getting shot dead and I think that's perfectly fair. If your driving a 2 ton chunk of metal right at me you can bet your ass I wouldn't think twice about firing a couple 7g chunks of metal at you
The Taliban made a preliminary offer to discuss handing over bin Laden. This is how any negotiation begins. From your own link, the Taliban requested evidence, also a typical requirement for extradition. The US refused these standard requests.
If Australia requested a suspect be extradited, the US would offer to discuss this and also require evidence of a crime. If Australia rejected these proposals, then the US would reject Australia's request. (If Australia threatened to destroy the US, the US would not stop laughing; Afghanis aren't laughing.)
To use your awful director/actress analogy: this is (somewhat) equivalent to a director offering an actor to become a life-long sex slave without hope for any part. If the actor refuses, the director will kill the actor's family, village, nearby wedding parties, schools, and a large portion of the actor's country.
The consequences are out of proportion to the offense, and unreasonable.
How come you only release documents concerning the United States? Have you ever heard of China? Or Cuba? Did you know both of those countries beat their citizens and shoot them without trial?
See, if you're so effin' smart, how come you haven't dug up any stuff on them? I mean, I'm just askin'....
Gee, considering how many government documents were STOLEN, makes one wonder why we'd be willing to turn over our health records to an agency of the government.
I'm just sayin....
Seems like they were perfectly capable of invading the US and killing thousands of people and costing us hundreds of billions of dollars...the threat they posed to us is exactly why we invaded. It was Afghanistan that facilitated that attack. Have you already forgotten 9-11?
Or, just simply to say that the US military is the wrong tool for that job, and that someone like Greg Mortenson is far better suited to the effort than George Bush.
You misspelled "Chuck Norris"
You'll note that most people like me don't care if the agenda matches mine or not if it sticks to the facts. I'm just as glad to be wrong as I am to be right, because if I'm wrong, then I have been educated on something I didn't know before.
It's the definition of scientific approach that many of us geeks take towards politics and history as well. And it always makes me sad when smart people prefer to dig in and defend their opinion even when they're clearly presented with evidence of them being wrong, instead of accepting the evidence and modifying their point of view, like yourself.
To slightly add to the above, the meaning is that when people present you with the facts, you should not necessarily care about their agenda. Agenda matters if it makes aforementioned people MODIFY the facts, to fit their point of view, such as what happened with the gunship video (to an extent).
In this case, it's clearly not so. Therefore I don't care if they're cannibalistic fascists, as long as facts presented are straight.
If world governments didn't have such a long and colorful history of lying to their own citizens, there would be no Wikileaks and nobody would care very much.
Does not their agenda color what facts they release?
Would they not be likely to ignore transgressions of their favorite political personality while calling out others?
You want the facts, but the people controlling "the facts" have good reason to provide selected facts or even make up facts.
In a sense, they are no different than your hated government controlling the facts except that you can't kick them out of office.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
From a VoA article downplaying the release:
Really? Lollipops at the dentist? Either he means they're not handed out at all, or his dentist is doing it very wrong. Knowing military dentists from firsthand experience, I'd go with the latter.
Not every war is for resources. China won the bid for copper over US and Canadian companies in 2007 and they are likely the ones to benefit most from the lithium deposits.
If your looking for a reason for the Afghan war you needn't look further than the thousands of graves we dug due to terrorist attacks on our soil perpetrated by an organization based in their country, and protected by their government. No nation with such overwhelming capability to respond would ever choose not to when faced with such an attack and I don't remember many American citizens feeling differently at the time. No one was going to accept some simple air strikes of the Clinton-Iraq style, people wanted troops on the ground, and everyone responsible dead or in prison. To claim it's all about the minerals would mean the 9/11 attacks were allowed or perpetrated just so we had an excuse to go get some minerals.
Like every idiot who serves in the Rich White Man's personal Military (it has not been the citizens of the United States military since the American Revolution).
On a side note, praise Jesus, God, Allah, Shiva, Zoroaster, and every other entity who made this leak possible and exposing our worthless military for what it is: A military hellbent on killing innocent civilians based on a 9/11 inside job.
Amazing how there is ZERO discussion here about the issue at hand. Has anybody here downloaded the leaked documents and looked at them or is this all pure nonsense?
I recommend this report
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/26/the_new_pentagon_papers_wikileaks_releases
They have also covered the war extensively on the past, so to the Democracy Now audience already knew many reasons why the USA is loosing the war. For example allegedly +10% of the military budget is spent bribing the insurgence for "security protection" paid by USA contractors. An the USA pays many time the prices of basic items (like fuel) that acquires through the same contractors. Yo don't need conspiracy theories or leaks: just follow the money and you'll see that is on the interest of capital that wars last as long as possible, the same way it's in the capital's interest to make medications that make your diseases chronic, rather than curing you.
There is a line between 'serving the public' and recklessly endangering the lives of our war fighters. They have crossed it and need to pay the piper.
The people who sent the information and the people who have decided to publish it deserve whatever awful experiences are in their future.
Hurricane Island Outward Bound
OB
Pick one. Or two.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
I'm one of those cowardly liberals who think we should get the hell out of there. I don't worry that we will become slaves to the Muslims if we don't kill lots of them. I simply don't agree with you that is what is at stake. I think the time and money could be better spent improving our country and let the Afghanistan people take care of their country. We have installed a corrupt leader there. Why should we fight and die for him?
A long time ago there was a war in Vietnam. We were told that if we didn't fight the communist Vietnamese that the Soviet Union would take over America and we would be their slaves. The communists won. Today we are friends with them. We trade with them. Somehow we never became their slaves.
I enlisted and spent 3 years on active duty. I was not in Vietnam but was in the military during the Vietnam era. In that time I became aware how much brainwashing goes on in the military and from our government. So I am skeptical when they tell me things. Especially something as bizarre as the idea that a small impoverished country like Afghanistan (even with the help of other small countries) could make us their slaves.
I'm glad wikileaks exists. Perhaps we can prevent or shorten wars which will save the lives of soldiers in the long run.
Does not their agenda color what facts they release?
Beauty of the difference between "fact" and "truth". Latter indeed does get coloured by agenda. Former does not.
This list is full of former and utterly devoid of latter.
...real meat that could in fact endanger lives of NATO soldiers, namely positional info...
Actually, broader tactical concepts could be just as harmful to US troops, as it would give the Taliban a blueprint for how they need to adapt their tactics. Luckily, it sounds like this stuff was leaked by a single Army PFC, and I doubt he had access to anything above "Secret", which is usually pretty trivial stuff as I understand it.
Th omission of facts is a form of bias. And that bias is a result an agenda.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
There are a lot of references to how brutal armies and wars used to be and that Afghanistan is nothing in comparison. Maybe the difference is that our expectations of how we should treat people and conduct ourselves in other areas of life have increased dramatically: Despite the advances in Rules of Engagement, we simply expect better treatment, and more humane tactics, even in war. This statement does not judge nor support either side of the argument. I'm just saying...
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
Agreed 100%. Now, two points based on that:
1. Wikileaks definitely cleaned up their act since the video release. This time we get everything but the damaging stuff, and they are promising to release the rest asap. There is no omission of facts going on on their side.
2. At the same time, as these documents prove, there is a massive omission of facts going on in both media (that claims that there's nothing new there in spite of not reporting much of the information until literally faced with it), as well as government. How are voters supposed to make choices when they are being fed half-truths with many facts omitted by both governments and the media that is supposed to be government watchdog?
The second part is the reason why wikileaks and similar organisations are necessary in modern world.
I dont know about you, but I dont kill children. I'm not personally responsible for what the Man Behind the Curtain does.
This animal is far from dead. The fact is that we don't know what they know and what they don't. The Taliban likely know some US SOPs, but certainly not all. Releasing classified information increases the chance that they will find a missing, sought-after piece to the puzzle that will indeed make life more difficult for servicemembers in harm's way.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Now you're just fooling yourself. Mujahideen have been doing this for decades, and yes, THEY KNOW. They have the experience, the agents on inside everywhere, the sympathy of the locals and support of at least ISI and Iran.
So don't be an ostrich and shove your head in the sand here - they know everything related to SOP when it comes to fighting.
You're assuming a lot. I don't underestimate them. Their performance speaks for itself. I also don't overestimate them, which you seem to. To presume, without proof, that they know a piece of classified information as the basis for releasing that information, is reckless and careless.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
The Times of London is reporting that the published documents include the names of confidential Afghan informants. I think that pretty much destroys your position...
Now you just show that you don't have a faintest clue what information was actually released.
Fact: it has nothing but combat reports. It's the stuff that is considered "confidential", not "classified".
US rating is "secret", which is the lowest possible secrecy rating. This has no major "wow, dangerous" stuff, and apparently most of the stuff that is being held back is about operations that may still be in progress, or people that can be identified.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38441360/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/
"US rating is "secret", which is the lowest possible secrecy rating."
That's simply not true. "Confidential" and "For Official Use Only" (FOUO) are both lower than "Secret". It is far from trivial for a person to obtain and maintain a clearance of "Secret" or higher. You clearly have no experience in this area.
You're the one who doesn't have a clue. Your arbitrary determination on the value of this intelligence is based on what others have told you as your own analysis is plagued by ignorance.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Confidential and for official use only in US army intelligence are very broad-access ratings and are not considered a "secrecy rating" per its actual meaning. US "secret" is same as UK's confidential, which is UK's lowest secrecy rating as well. BBC had a very good article on topic as the case broke out, but sadly I can't find it on google because of the massive flood of follow-up stories.
You'll just have to take my word for it. Or you can take your time and dig through google or BBC website for the early analysis.