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Wikileaks - Exposing Dark Side of Afghan War

said by Kimberly Dozier :

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Massive U.S. military leak exposes dark side of Afghan war: reports

Some 90,000 leaked U.S. military records amount to an blow-by-blow account of six years of the Afghanistan war, including unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings as well as covert operations against Taliban figures, two newspapers with access to the documents reported Sunday.

The online whistle-blower organization WikiLeaks was planning to post the documents on its website Sunday. The New York Times and London's Guardian newspaper, as well as the German weekly Der Spiegel, were given early access to the documents.

The documents — including classified cables and assessments between military officers and diplomats — describe U.S. fears that ally Pakistan's intelligence service was actually aiding the insurgency.

The New York Times said the documents suggest Pakistan “allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.”

The Guardian said the documents show “how a secret ‘black’ unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for kill or capture without trial” and “how the U.S. covered up evidence that the Taliban has acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.”

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said by Anna Doble, Ed Fraser :

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Secret files: Wikileaks exposes 'unseen Afghan war'

In one of the biggest security breaches in history, secret details have been made public by Wikileaks, revealing execution squads, an alleged plot to kill President Karzai and previously unreported civilian deaths. In an exclusive Channel 4 News interview Wikileaks editor Julian Assange defends his decision to leak 200,000 pages of classified military data onto the internet.

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said by Monica Lawrence :

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Statement by U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones on Wikileaks documents on Afghanistan

U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones on Sunday released the following statement after three newspapers, including the New York Times, released classified documents about the war in Afghanistan. The documents were obtained from Wikileaks.

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That's interesting. Just a few days ago he was quoted as follows:

"Assange denied reports that WikiLeaks had received hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. cables in addition to the Iraq video. He said the site would have released the cables if it had received them." »"Hero" or "dangerous troublemaker"?

Surprise, surprise. Why was he sitting on them? What will he say tomorrow?

It may be for the best of motives but some explanation should be provided when he contradicts himself.

reply to SUMware
BoingBoing provides informative links to the Wikileaks archive, as well as others.

Task Force 373 and Targeted Assassinations
US Elite Unit Could Create Political Fallout for Berlin

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The war logs provide new information about the targeted killings done by the secretative US Task Force 373. The fact that the force has a unit stationed on a German base could prove embarrassing for Berlin.

The unit of elite soldiers, which includes members of the Navy Seals and the Delta Force, get their orders directly from the Pentagon in Washington and operate outside of the chain of command of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The TF 373 unit works according to classified lists of enemies compiled by the coalition troops that are called "Joint Prioritized Effects Lists" (JPEL) in military jargon. In the close to 92,000 logs leaked, 84 pertain to JPEL-related actions, and together they provide a bounty of information about a force whose work has at times resulted in civilian deaths.

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reply to SUMware

reply to SUMware

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A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extra-judicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign. These killings are often conducted in ways meant to ensure the secrecy of the killers' identities, so as to avoid accountability.

Death squads are often, but not exclusively, associated with the violent political repression under dictatorships, totalitarian states and similar regimes. They typically have the tacit or express support of the state, as a whole or in part. Death squads may comprise a secret police force, paramilitary group or official government units with members drawn from the military or the police. They may also be organized as vigilante groups.

Extrajudicial killings are the illegal killing of leading political, trades union, dissidents, and social figures by either the state government, state authorities like the armed forces and police (as in Liberia under Charles G. Taylor), or criminal outfits such as the Italian Mafia.

A Salon.com post by Greg Grandin accuses United States of being responsible for training and setting up death squads in South and Central American countries. The CIA was accused of making extensive use of death squads in the Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War. It is estimated that as many as 19,000 alleged Viet Cong were killed during this program.

In February 2010, the Obama administration acknowledged it would continue a George Bush-era policy authorizing the killing of US citizens abroad. The confirmation came from Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair in congressional testimony in February 2010. Blair said, "We take direct action against terrorists in the Intelligence Community. If... we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that."

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reply to SUMware
More information about what was made public:

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The New York Times said the documents -- including classified cables and assessments between military officers and diplomats -- also describe U.S. fears that ally Pakistan's intelligence service was actually aiding the Afghan insurgency.

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The classified documents are largely what's called "raw intelligence" -- reports from junior officers in the field that analysts use to advise policymakers, rather than any high-level government documents that state U.S. government policy.

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WikiLeaks said the leaked documents "do not generally cover top-secret operations." The site also reported that it had "delayed the release of some 15,000 reports" as part of what it called "a harm minimization process demanded by our source," but said it may release the other documents after further review.

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reply to SUMware
One of the greatest dangers to ungoverned release of genuine "raw intelligence" within less than 25 years or so of its creation is that some of the original foreign sources of certain of that intel will very often die as a result. And not merely if their names or titles appear openly in some report... more often because there's such an obvious circumstantial trail in the information details back to the source that he will be readily sniffed out by hostile parties. I've seen it happen before, and I have an extremely difficult time imagining that among 90,000 leaked reports (or especially the 15,000 'delayed' reports not yet released), there will not be significant deadly information to compromise human sources. I can only wonder if the 'greater good' of releasing this stuff will be worth the very real cost to lives that will result. And I have even greater hesitation that Assange or his souce(s) have the insight, experience, or perspective to make such serious judgements on those kinds of details within so many reports.
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"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!" -- P.Henry, 1775

reply to SUMware
I'm pretty sure the government had advance notice of what was going to be released.

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One U.S. official said the Obama administration had already told Pakistani and Afghan officials what to expect from the document release, in order to head off some of the more embarrassing revelations.

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reply to DarkSithPro

reply to fatness

said by The Washington Post :

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The Obama administration hasn't formally decided whether to take legal action against Wikileaks, but likely will review the documents this week before reaching any conclusions. Senior administration officials said they had been anxiously awaiting release of the documents ever since news organizations began calling to inquire about them last week.

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reply to SUMware

reply to SUMware

said by TBogg :

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Massive Wikileak document dump to spawn Sarah Palin Facebook outrage post as soon as someone writes it for her

As Spencer notes, there is not too much surprising here:

I’m old enough to remember a time when Russia’s ill-fated invasion, six year occupation and long slow retreat from Afghanistan was considered to be a contributing factor to the eventual dissolution of Soviet Union. “Russia’s Vietnam” it was called, I believe. I’m not sure why , having had our own Vietnam (it was in all of the papers) we thought we could do a better job.

Personally I’m waiting on an internal document dump from a Halliburton/KBR or Blackwater/Xe wherein we find that they have been slipping the insurgents a little cash and some weaponry just to grease the wheels of the profiteering gravy train. It’ll probably be listed as a “marketing expenses” like giving out those little sample packs of cigarettes.

It’s hard to believe that sometimes I think I’m not cynical enough.

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reply to SUMware
Ethan McCord recounts aftermath of Iraqi civilian massacre | UNPC 7/24/2010

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Re: Wikileaks - Exposing Dark Side of Afghan War

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