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Wikileaks: Massive Leak of Secret Files Exposes Truth of Occupation
A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and NATO commanders fear neighboring Pakistan and Iran are fueling the insurgency.
The war logs reveal civilian killings by coalition forces, secret efforts to eliminate Taliban and al-Qaida leaders, and discuss the involvement of Iran and Pakistan in supporting insurgents. Photograph: Max Whittaker/Corbis The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers' website Wikileaks in one of the biggest leaks in US military history. The files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel, give a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over the last six years, which has so far cost the lives of more than 320 British and more than 1,000 US troops.
Their publication comes amid mounting concern that Barack Obama's "surge" strategy is failing and as coalition troops hunt for two US naval personnel captured by the Taliban south of Kabul on Friday.
The war logs also detail:
- How a secret "black" unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for "kill or capture" without trial.
- How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.
- How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.
- How the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of their roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.
In a statement, the White House said the chaotic picture painted by the logs was the result of "under-resourcing" under Obama's predecessor, saying: "It is important to note that the time period reflected in the documents is January 2004 to December 2009."
The White House also criticized the publication of the files by Wikileaks: "We strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations, which puts the lives of the US and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security. Wikileaks made no effort to contact the US government about these documents, which may contain information that endanger the lives of Americans, our partners, and local populations who co-operate with us."
The logs detail, in sometimes harrowing vignettes, the toll on civilians exacted by coalition forces: events termed "blue on white" in military jargon. The logs reveal 144 such incidents.
Some of these casualties come from the controversial air strikes that have led to Afghan government protests, but a large number of previously unknown incidents also appear to be the result of troops shooting unarmed drivers or motorcyclists out of a determination to protect themselves from suicide bombers.
At least 195 civilians are admitted to have been killed and 174 wounded in total, but this is likely to be an underestimate as many disputed incidents are omitted from the daily snapshots reported by troops on the ground and then collated, sometimes erratically, by military intelligence analysts.
Bloody errors at civilians' expense, as recorded in the logs, include the day French troops strafed a bus full of children in 2008, wounding eight. A US patrol similarly machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers, and in 2007 Polish troops mortared a village, killing a wedding party including a pregnant woman, in an apparent revenge attack.
Questionable shootings of civilians by UK troops also figure. The US compilers detail an unusual cluster of four British shootings in Kabul in the space of barely a month, in October/November 2007, culminating in the death of the son of an Afghan general. Of one shooting, they wrote: "Investigation controlled by the British. We are not able to get [sic] complete story."
A second cluster of similar shootings, all involving Royal Marine commandos in Helmand province, took place in a six-month period at the end of 2008, according to the log entries. Asked by the Guardian about these allegations, the Ministry of Defense said: "We have been unable to corroborate these claims in the short time available and it would be inappropriate to speculate on specific cases without further verification of the alleged actions."
Rachel Reid, who investigates civilian casualty incidents in Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, said: "These files bring to light what's been a consistent trend by US and NATO forces: the concealment of civilian casualties. Despite numerous tactical directives ordering transparent investigations when civilians are killed, there have been incidents I've investigated in recent months where this is still not happening.
Accountability is not just something you do when you are caught. It should be part of the way the US and NATO do business in Afghanistan every time they kill or harm civilians." The reports, many of which the Guardian is publishing in full online, present an unvarnished and often compelling account of the reality of modern war.
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.
Wikileaks published in April this year a previously suppressed classified video of US Apache helicopters killing two Reuters cameramen on the streets of Baghdad, which gained international attention. A 22-year-old intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, was arrested in Iraq and charged with leaking the video, but not with leaking the latest material. The Pentagon's criminal investigations department continues to try to trace the leaks and recently unsuccessfully asked Assange, he says, to meet them outside the US to help them. Assange allowed the Guardian to examine the logs at our request. No fee was involved and Wikileaks was not involved in the preparation of the Guardian's articles.
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156 Comments so far
Show AllThree Cheers for Assange the Truthgiver !!!!!!!!!
Isn't it great to have Mr. Transparency in the White House ?
"The White House also criticized the publication of the files by Wikileaks: "We strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations, which puts the lives of the US and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security."
The irony here is so palpable I can smell it. It smells like bullshit.
Yeah, I feel sooooo sorry for our US government!
Well, if no one else is going to say anything, I will. Shame on the MSM. This is supposed to be THEIR job, not a single guy with a web site. It's a real shame that in order to get the TRUTH about something, we have to rely on a single individual who has the BALLS to do what the press with all their 24 hour news channels won't go near.
Word to the MSM, your job is to INFORM US, so we can make intelligent decisions at the ballot box. NOTHING ELSE MATTERS. To hell with Lindsay Lohan, we need to be able to hold our leaders accountable. We can't do that if you sit on the sidelines and root for those who you're SUPPOSED to be reporting on. SHAME ON YOU. But then, the 5 corporations that you work for are the ones who decide what news is, not you. Gee, that's ANOTHER place you LOSE.
SHAME. Good luck Mr Assange. I hope you live to see 30.
http://www.clowncrack.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/NoseForTrouble.jpg
http://www.clowncrack.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/SundayMorning.jpg
Right on!
peace
Sorry to repost from above, but it's important to remember that the MSM doesn't merely work for the neoliberal agenda - it IS the neoliberal agenda. The media in the United States IS the monster. They are not mere cheerleaders. Looking to them for illumination is moronic. Their function is to lie to, manipulate and distract you while pushing their sponsors' products (everything from shoes to wars).
Good point. The corporate media IS the problem. It's "job" is not to inform but to distract, and to minimize and distort important stories that reflect poorly on "our" military campaigns.
"Good luck Mr Assange. I hope you live to see 30."
Uh, I believe he is already 38.
Truth will out.
As Rachel Reid points out in the article, the United States has deliberately obfuscated and covered up the deaths of these civilians which then means that this truth from Wikileaks now opens an opportunity for the Bush and Obama administrations to be charged with war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. It would appear that the rules of law apply to every other nation in the world except the United States. In a just and honest world the corpses of those people, both in the present and past governments and in the military, should be hanging high in The Hague for all the world to see. The families of those victims of the United States, both in Afghanistan and Iraq, deserve nothing less.
Isn't that the reason for punishment? To stop bad behavior.
So the next "leader" is reluctant to lie about crimes they are aware of!
The shear stupidity of any war, let alone this war, is clear even without these leaked details. We are liberating nobody, nor are we protecting ourselves; we are running an active campaign to advance the economic power of the military-industrial complex.
The end of the opening sentence says it all;
"...and NATO commanders fear neighboring Pakistan and Iran are fueling the insurgency."
An accurate sentence would have said;
... and NATO commanders are fueling the insurgency.
That sentence raised a red flag for me too. It seems actually to confirm the official line and 'justify' the attacks on Pakistan and the threats on Iran. What does this mean?
NATO IS the insurgency; the invaders, the occupiers. To be an insurgent, you have to surge in.
'Fraid not.
"From Latin īnsurgentem, accusative singular of īnsurgēns, present active participle of īnsurgō (“‘I rise up against, revolt’”); compounded from in (“‘against’”) + surgō (“‘I rise’”)"
Those spinning the war picked the word because it sounded like that's what it meant. That made it easier to convince others that the "insurgents" were surging in from Iran, Pakistan etc. and that the "Afghans" and "Iraqis" were all on the side on the West.
Old trick.
In the good old days of WW II movies, the "insurgency" (organization of local people against foreign invaders) would have been called the "resistance'. They would have been the heroes of the film.
Joe
Joe
Excellent observation. Carl Boggs and Tom Pollard basically echo what you have said in their well written book The Hollywood War Machine: U.S. Militarism and Popular Culture.
A toast to whatever brave soul(s) gave the info to Wikileaks. That act is truly heroic.
Sláinte!
I recommend clicking on the "war logs" link, and taking a look at the section concerning the disclosures of Pakistani ISI involvement in both secretly helping the Taliban while simultaneously helping CIA spooks and US military forces in the region target Predator drone strikes against the Taliban.
Small wonder the Afghan war is out of control.
Bill from Saginaw
One of my current bumper stickers is actually half of that one: "War is Terrorism".
I have a similar bumper sticker which says:
"War Creates More Terrorists"
as well as this one:
"We Are Creating More Enemies Faster Than We Kill Them"
one more for the road......"Killing one person is murder. Killing thousands is foreign policy". Although, now....It all sort of blends.
I wonder what will be the reaction in Poland to news that their troops have bombarded a village holding a wedding, and doing so as revenge. Poles have living memories of the Nazi and then the Soviet occupations. It seems like Poland is now the Nazi occupying power, doing what the Nazis used to do to them.
Yeah, just like Israel. Wrong lessons learned.
One of the victims at the wedding was pregnant. Poland has many deeply conservative, anti-abortion Catholics. Let's see how they try to spin this away. This might give a real impetus to getting the Poles out of there.
This is Hell.
Kinda seems that way. Either that or it's heaven for maggots.
pithy post, fake_french.
Am I missing something? Didn't we already know all of this stuff was going on? Martha Raddatz on MSM said the leak was "huge." Somebody tell me why. We're using drones? Killing Taliban, killing Afghan civilians is going to turn off the American public? I don't think so.
The thing that makes it huge, is that it is in your face , not suger coated, and these wars have not been shown to us much, the Media is owned by the Goverment, and corporations, so yes you are right, many of us know this stuff but perhaps because this kid did this and gave it to us saying "the public needs to know" maybe people will take it more seriously or something. For most Americans that work all day they only see the tiny pieces that the news tells them, and I don't think they realize how wrong this war is. Lots of people think we are there because of 9/11,and the Republican war machine teaches their folks how these people are our enemy,not how we are the terrorist of the world. How we won't leave them alone. The 19 terrorists trained in the mountains of Afghanistan but they were Pakistanie, and Saudi Arabians, This Country has no way of ever attacking us here in America, but so many Americans don't even know that.
I would be glad if people did take it more seriously because of this. But so far it looks to me like something the spinsters can handle easily.
Some bigshot is going to get up in front of the cameras this week and say something like this: War is nasty business. Mistakes happen. Nobody likes war. The enemy uses innocent civilians as human shields. Our soldiers are under great stress. The information in the leaks is (for reasons we cannot disclose) injurious to National Security. Giving classified information to the enemy is, let's not say treasonous, but irresponsible and criminal enough that this wikileaks bozo ought to go to jail with his pal John Walker Lindh. Things American dittoheads already believe.
We'd better hope this is a nothingburger. Government action after Abu Ghraib was to ban cameras in military prisons. If this actually does worry the Pentagon the internet could get ugly.
Our casualty rate is in the acceptable range to main street USA. Compared to what you'd see in a real war (20-1) it is indeed trifling. Measured in dead bodies we're really getting our money's worth this time. Unless the revelations are more scandalous than that wars are vulgar and nasty I can't see this getting any traction. Most folks are fascinated by war and want more gory details like they used to get on combat TV shows in the seventies. Assange could be throwing blood at a vampire.
"We'd better hope this is a nothingburger. Government action after Abu Ghraib was to ban cameras in military prisons. If this actually does worry the Pentagon the internet could get ugly."
The recent US Government actions and intentions vis a vis the 'Net have been spelled out. Leiberman's proposed 'InterNet Kill Switch' is not just a proposal. In recent days thousands of blogs, many of them of progressive bent, have been erased or denied access by their providers. The excuse offered is accident or 'following DHS orders'.
Events are happening at a rate far to high to be written off as coincidence or 'tin-foil-hat weirdness'. The PTB know that the game is over, and that a growing number of the populace is waking up to their manipulations and crimes. Why else the dictatorial shift to cable only TV, 'proposed' control of the 'Net, silencing of print media voices, mass firings of teachers, mass real-time intercepts and analysis of e-mail, text messages, land line and cell calls etc.?
It all has to do with the CONTROL of *information*.
If you control the media in it's various forms, you control the message.
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
.
I think you're right Galenwainwright. The day of society relapsing into book burning is fast approaching.
Local ISP's even out here have recently installed huge in-line computer boards all over town. I now have a lot of trouble getting anything but large corporate sites.
I am afraid we are entering even Darker Ages than we've been in.
I hope some good nerds in White Hats are developing a net that we own that just hops from one laptop to another, therefore, un-censorable.
Thank God for good guys like Julian.
TJ
Between you and fake french, you're making me crazy. where two contradictory anti-government takes on it can both ring true. What was it Orwell said about that?
vox ... you are right ... none of this new ... its just new to a lot of people who have been living in apathy these last few years.
I have just been reading the files, and not that I am shocked, I know this is a bad war with no real purpose, that we should be conducting any activities in this Country, or poor Iraq that we have destoyed in the name of a RESCUE from a horrible Dictator. I must say to read it as it happened, is heart wrenching. We must go to the streets, and stop this madness. The MSM is a farce they all suck, and lie, and are owned by the corporations. Remember Vietnam every night on our T.V.'s we saw war, we went to the streets all the time, until they finally stopped, and brought our boys home. We all know they aren't being honest with us, so we must stop pretending we don't know any better.
Today C.N.N. had the balls to say that the oil is almost gone, and it might be cleared up in just a few weeks. My mouth dropped, and I started yelling at those sons of bitches. The oil is there all 128 billion gallons of it, the storm moved it around and that poisen they put in our water pushed the oil under the water plus, billions of gallons haven't even come to the surface yet. Point is we have to start to take matters into our own hands, we are on our own as far as saving this Country, if it can be saved at all.
I don't want to kill any more people. I don't want my tax dollars paying for one more penny towards murder.
It's important to remember that the MSM doesn't work for the neoliberal agenda - it IS the neoliberal agenda. The media in the United States IS the monster. They are not mere cheerleaders.
Over time it becomes more and more clear that there are not really any noble causes when it comes to war.
It is just murder for gain.
Well,
There it is in blue and white. The pentagram isn't interested in stopping civilian deaths nor in investigating illegal genocide under it's supervision; it's only interested in arresting whistle blowers and covering up even bigger war crimes.
Robert Gates wants to declare every media story a grave risk to national security, that way, he can just proclaim, like a king, that everybody in the region is a terrorist and carpet bomb the whole place like he did in Vietnam. If he had to do it his way, he'd probably even loose predator drones inside the Continental USA to combat "domestic terrorists" which is code for any reporter who dares to run a story Gates doesn't like.
Three cheers for Wikileaks and the very honorable and brave Julian Assange. We should all cut Wikileaks a check right now. There is something we can all do after all to stop this Obamanation against humanity. Since the cigarette-smoking government con-man won't do anything to end it, it is up to us.
Wikileaks is 1000 times more effective than any faux protest in a unconstitutional "free-speech zone" ever was.
TJ
"A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended.
Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretense of defending, have enslaved the people." - James Madison, speech at the Constitutional Convention, June 29, 1787
"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.
The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation
could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
- JAMES MADISON ("father" of the US Constitution)
"Political Observations"
April 20, 1795
Run, Julian. The wolves are coming.
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
His plane could always crash. Or car, for that matter.
Sorry. I just felt sick inside when i wrote this.
"His plane could always crash..."
Think about people inconvenient to *domestic* US policy who have 'conveniently' and 'coincidentally' died of plane 'crashes', car 'accidents', 'heart attacks' and 'suicide'.
Just for fun, here is a list of scientists who have died in the last ten years: http://www.stevequayle.com/dead_scientists/ UpdatedDeadScientists.html
It is interesting to note that most of the dead scientists worked on bio-weapons or bio-warfare. Curious, no?
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
Wellstone's plane crashed the day after i sent him an email, thanking him for voting against the iraq invasion.
!
Hey, RTT!
spooky coincidence...
Wellstone courageously took on great personal risk...
may we remember, and carry forward, his thinking, and courage...
There is nothing new here. This is just a chronicle of your usual atrocities committed by occupiers and fully sanctioned by their military command.