DoD Study Contradicts Charges Against WikiLeaks

Voline writes "Last Summer, after WikiLeaks released 90,000 leaked internal US military documents in their Afghan War Log, Pentagon officials went on a media offensive against WikiLeaks, accusing it of having the 'blood on Its hands' of American soldiers and Afghan collaborators who are named in the documents. The charge has echoed through the mainstream media (and Internet comment threads) ever since. Now, CNN is reporting that after a thorough Pentagon review, 'WikiLeaks did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods, the Department of Defense concluded.' And, according to an unnamed NATO official, 'there has been no indication' that any Afghans who have collaborated with the NATO occupation have been harmed as a result of the leaks. Will the Pentagon's contradiction of the charges against WikiLeaks get as much play in the media as those original accusations did?"

Comments

Hmmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the Pentagon's contradiction of the charges against WikiLeaks get as much play in the media as those original accusations did?

Thats not how FUD & propaganda work.

It doesn't sell.

[AnonymousClown]

Will the Pentagon's contradiction of the charges against WikiLeaks get as much play in the media as those original accusations did?"

No.

Rational discourse doesn't sell.

Re:It doesn't sell.

[Sir_Lewk]

And more accurately, while this will get extremely little to no press, we'll still constantly be hearing character assassinate stories. Crap like, "I would totally be behind wikileaks but I hear Assange is a total tool", as if the only way someone can support what an organization does is if the members of the organization are saints.

These kind of comments are no less trolls/flamebaits than comments like "I'd totally use OpenBSD but Theo de Raadt is a meanie.", yet I see them modded insightful every time there's a wikileaks story.

Re:It doesn't sell.

[sourcerror]

here has been no indication' that any Afghans who have collaborated with the NATO occupation have been harmed as a result of the leaks

The word that was left out was "yet".

On the other hand the Pentagon killed half a million civilians (collateral damage) in war based on false premises. Sorry, Assange wins.

Re:It doesn't sell.

[Anonymous Coward]

He's referring to the war in Iraq I believe. It's not totally irrelevant if his point is that the Pentagon/DoD/US government/whatever you call it has done much worse than what Assange/Wikileaks are accused of. It doesn't make endangering people's lives justified, but the irony of the Pentagon talking about morality is just unbelievable. It really sends the message that it's OK if the Pentagon do something, but if someone else does a fraction of what they do then it's a scandal.

Also, the actual number of dead civilians is 100k I believe, not half a million. Note also that this number includes all civilians who died as a consequence of the war regardless of who directly killed them. All these 100k civilians were not shot/bombed by US troops, they may have been killed by Talibans. I'm not sure if this number includes people who died as an indirect consequence of the war, for example people who died of illness/hunger because the war may have made medication/food unavailable. If not, then the total number of civilian war casualties is higher and may in fact reach half a million.

And by the way, it's not entirely unfair to pin these 100k deaths on the Pentagon/US gov. since it doesn't take a genius to realize that a war like that one is going to cause so many deaths one way or another (they knew Talibans would not mind shooting in crowds and hiding among civilians), and of course it's common sense that a war will cause a shortage of medical supplies, especially in a third-world country. I remember quite a few European countries (the one that comes first to mind is France) were warning the Bush administration that such a high death toll would result from this war.

Hilarious

[Anonymous Coward]

to note seemingly half of ./ comments were dead set against Wikileaks for exactly this reason...

Re:Hilarious

[Hope Thelps]

Frankly, it's no skin off my back whether any afghans were hit by the Taliban as a result of the wikileaks disclosure. I'm just against wikileaks on general, but that's because I hate snitches and they basically take snitching to an absurd extreme.

You don't care either way whether people have been killed but you do have it in for snitches??? What are you, a twelve year old sociopath?

Re:Hilarious

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, it's no skin off my back whether any afghans were hit by the Taliban as a result of the wikileaks disclosure.

Thanks for establishing your low ethical boundaries.

But strangely, you're still trying to imply that there's a basis to the claim that the leak endangered innocent people. I hope people can see through your bullshit.

I'm just against wikileaks on general, but that's because I hate snitches

Riiight. How noble of you. You support torture, brutal military killings of foreign civilians, and spying on American civilians, but you nobly oppose "snitches" who disclose the torture, killings, and spying.

But on the other hand what this means is that they basically released a bunch of primary source material that wasnt news to anyone ...

You now regurgitate the other military propaganda line against the leak, immediately after the "innocents endangered" one was admitted to be a fraud.

It sounds a little silly, you have to admit. All you war supporters stridently vocal, railing against wikileaks due to the leak's "unimportance" and "lack of new information." One would think that, if this were actually the case, you wouldn't even care about the leak.

I.e.: your words pronounce themselves a lie.

Let us get the word out...

[PmanAce]

Let us get the word out since the media sure as heck won't.

It's the nature of the beast.

[khasim]

People wouldn't change their behaviour even if X was different. They're just using X as an easy rationalisation for their existing bias.

Pentagon Reaction Was Self Preservation Mode

[bkmoore]

I'm a military veteran and I may have authored some of the documents that were leaked. But pretty much all of the information was already publicly available in some form or another. We all knew Pakistan was playing a double game. We all knew that the CIA was operating secret drones along the boarder - who else could it be, the Mongolians? If you drop a bomb on somebody, you can keep it secret from the press, but everybody on the ground will know about it. It just takes a little investigative journalism to get at the truth. The main problem the Pentagon has is one of credibility. The fact that a low level intelligence clerk could smuggle out many GBs of classified documents while lip syncing to Lady Gaga makes the military and the entire chain of command look like a bunch of incompetent boobs. It just goes to show that WallMart has better protection against shoplifters than the military has against internal leaks. So the initial reaction is one of self-preservation. "If you leak this, people will die." Which is another way of saying, we royally screwed up and we're placing the blame on you because we don't want to be the ones getting busted over this. I am no longer in the military, so I can speak my mind on this. I still think Julian Assange is an idiot, but that's another topic.

Re:Pentagon Reaction Was Self Preservation Mode

[HungryHobo]

It's also fascinating how they managed to entirely blame wikileaks.
The new york times and the guardian mirrored a lot of the material too and took part in organizing the data before the public release yet everything was wikileaks fault.
They military couldn't keep it's secrets secret but it was the fault of whoever the documents were sent to, not whoever was supposed to keep them secret.

I wonder how it would have gone had he anonymously posted a USB stick to the guardian or another big name newspaper directly rather than going through wikileaks.
They might have silenced it but they might not.
would we be seeing the newspapers vilified in the same way.

Re:Who Cares?

[Concerned Onlooker]

We? Please don't include me on your team.

Yes, pretty much everyone has an agenda. Having an agenda is not bad. I'd say that having an agenda of holding governments accountable for their actions is a good agenda.

If it were Pakistan...

[copponex]

If this training had been happening in Waziristan, would you still support going to war over failure of extradition?

We destroyed Afghanistan to make us feel better about 9/11, plain and simple. Afghanistan was an easy scapegoat for our own intelligence failures and bullshit foreign policy that contributed to 9/11 in the first place. It's a country that hasn't had a strong central government in decades, because every time one forms, a foreign power invades and dismantles it.

That's why Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon. Pakistan is home to Al Qaeda and the Taliban as well, but so far no American government has been dumb enough to consider invading a nuclear power that borders two other nuclear powers. North Korea's government is batshit insane but we don't invade because they have nukes, as well as their proximity to China. Pakistan's government is enormously corrupt and has close ties with terrorist organizations, but we don't invade because they have a nuke. Now, on two of Iran's borders, America has unilaterally invaded simply because we could without fear of repercussions. If you were an Iranian, what would you rather have? Nukes or a foreign army occupying your homeland?

If American planners are dumb enough to pursue terrorist organizations into third world nations that barely have electricity or running water every time there's a successful terror attack, then the War of the Flea tactic will destroy our economy within two decades. We're already spending one trillion a year on warfare and weapons research. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including interest, will cost well over two trillion dollars according to the CBO by 2014.

If we're serious about ending the use of terrorism as a military tactic, the first thing we should do is stop using terrorism as a military tactic. Stop threatening sovereign nations with invasion if they don't capitulate to our demands. Use international law to address international issues through peaceful and diplomatic means as outlined in the UN charter we signed. Stop giving money and weapons to Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia until they all sit down and settle their diplomatic relations. That will involve denying all aid to Israel until they formally agree to stop colonizing Palestinian land with settlements, and sign a treaty to accept the 1967 borders in exchange for full diplomatic relations with the Arab nations. Then we should push Israel and India and Pakistan to sign the NPT and open themselves up to international inspections.

Anything else is just pissing in the wind.