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Afghan War Logs: Weight of Pages, but the Best Is Yet to Come
How big is big? Attempting to give the Afghan War Logs their place in history requires that this explosion of top secret documentation in the public domain be measured against the yardstick of the sensational 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers, which changed the course of the Vietnam War.
Video grab from Rethink Afghanistan Part 4: Civilian Casualties That effort, which prompted Henry Kissinger to dub Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the papers, as the most dangerous man in America, was a paltry 7000 pages. But apart from revealing how badly the war in Vietnam was going, it also revealed one of Washington's dirtiest secrets: the US was carpet-bombing neighbouring Cambodia and Laos.
By comparison, the logs are enormous - a mind-boggling 92,201 military, intelligence and diplomatic documents - but a first skim by teams from The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel has revealed more of the grinding detail of Barack Obama's unwinnable war than it has uncovered unknown dimensions of the conflict.
That said, Washington is sweating, because WikiLeaks is preparing another tranche of 15,000 documents for release that reportedly include up to 10,000 cable messages from US embassies around the world on fraught issues such as arms deals, trade talks, covert meetings and unvarnished assessments of governments.
But already it can be said that the logs will be to Afghanistan what the Pentagon Papers were to Vietnam.
To date, the logs' single new revelation on the conduct of the war is that the Taliban appears to have heat-seeking, surface-to-air missiles - one of which brought down a US helicopter.
However, the logs' greater service to disclosure and transparency is the extent to which they reveal how the governments with troops in Afghanistan sanitise their public account of how badly the war has been going.
These are the raw accounts, soaked in the blood and sweat of combat, before they have been prettied up by the triage teams in the Washington and allied PR clinics. We knew there were civilian casualties, but not this many; we had heard of the secret CIA ground missions to assassinate Taliban leaders, now it is confirmed; we have had guarded reports on the use of unmanned drone aircraft in attacks on al-Qaeda and the Taliban, now the picture is fleshed out.
And with the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, last week dropping another $US500 million ($558 million) on Washington's ally Pakistan, there is enough new dirt in the logs on Islamabad's two-timing with the Taliban to make Americans wonder who is getting the bang for their buck.
Washington and its forces on the ground are still recovering from the shock sacking in June of their Afghanistan commander, General Stanley McChrystal - and now this.
It makes no difference to the public understanding of the progress of the war that the most recent of the logs is dated December 2009. Their sheer weight on being dumped in the public arena will cement the sense of a war being lost and give rise to further demands that the troops be brought home.
Obama has been trying to wriggle out of the words he uttered last year which were read as a promise to start bringing troops home from Afghanistan in July next year.
With the release of the logs, the president has just lost a lot of wriggle room.
Ellsberg, a strategic analyst with the Rand Corp, famously concluded in his decision to leak the classified history of the Vietnam War: ''We weren't on the wrong side, we were the wrong side.''
At a February screening in Washington of the film The Most Dangerous Man in America, the now grandfatherly whistle-blower appealed for his contemporary equivalent in the US security establishment to take courage and hit the send button.
It seems his call was answered.
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28 Comments so far
Show AllWikiLeaks is tremendously overloaded.
Please use http://bit.ly/9RlJQA
above was copied from
http://twitter.com/wikileaks/
WikiLeaks deserves the support of all good people!
Yes, this is called "journalism." But media "sanitization?" How about ignoring? We can go for days and days without hearing anything about Iraq and Afghanistan. Are these still going on? I thought they were over. Instead I hear about fat people being the cause of all problems in our health system, Lindsay Lohan going to jail, the latest PR report from some drug company about how "such and such" will kill you even though you don't have the symptoms, latest recipes from celebrity chefs, antics of over-hyped sports jocks and, let's not forget, Lindsay Lohan going to jail. God bless Wikileaks!
Obviously you can't stay away from Puffington Post. :-)
If all these sordid details are true, such as the great number of civilians who have killed by the U.S. military, then there is absolutely no excuse why political leaders such as Kucinich and Bernie Sanders and Russ Feingold and Jim McGovern and Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee, who are supposed to be antiwar, are not using these plethora of documents as their raison d'etre to end the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq by cutting off the funds for those countries. Will the so-called liberals in the news media such as Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have these congress men and women and senators on their programs in order to ask them if they are finally going to demand on the House and Senate floors that the U.S. begin immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces [including civilian contractors] from the Middle East? Unfortunately, I would not bet the mortgage on this happening anytime soon.
Erroll, I can't resist tacking on most of a comment I posted elsewhere yesterday. IMO, it resonates with your comment here.
__________________________________
It's getting harder and harder to figure out who's using who, and where the modified limited hangouts-- hangsout?-- starts and stops.
I'm sure the Powers and Principalities will come out shooting, smearing, slandering, and scapegoating Assange and Wikileaks. As with other whistleblowers, the authorities will strive to dismiss, discredit, and demonize the messenger and the messenger with extreme prejudice.
Maybe the nominal anti-war contingent in Congress will be emboldened enough to support the material's release and flog its appalling content. But I don't see many Elected Misrepresentatives snapping out of their fetal CYA crouch to stand with whistleblowers and comparable colorers-outside-the-lines against the Warlord-in-Chief and the Generals.
O.S.
I very much agree that it most certainly does resonate. It is heartening to see so many articles on Common Dreams regarding this topic. As one of the article stated, I believe, when Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and it was covered by The New York Times it seemed [although it is still early yet] to mean much more than it does now. One can say, with probably much credibility, that there is more of a mainstream media now than there was forty some years ago. But that should really be no excuse for this story not to be covered in great detail by the major newspapers and the more ubiquitous media such as the cable and television news programs. It remains to be seen if they will do so and if they do will, as Glenn Greenwald points out, I believe, they avoid the core of this issue which is the number of civilians who have been slaughtered by the U.S. military or will they simply spin it by claiming that this will somehow be a breach of national security.
One also wonders if this might finally awaken the moribund antiwar movement by coming out and protesting against Obama. Perhaps these alleged liberals should be reminded that another Democratic president by the name of Lyndon B. Johnson also conducted another illegal and immoral war against another Third World country over forty years ago and that is is way past the point that they put aside the excuse that there is no military draft and start speaking out against these quagmires before more innocent continue to get blown to pieces by 500 lb. American bombs.
"War! that mad game the world so loves to play"-Jonathan Swift
I would alter that above quote by Swift by stating that it is the mad game that the United States loves to play.
The substance of the difference between the past forty years, in my humble opinion, is that everyone is so cynical, they don't expect anything better. All illusions are gone and it doesn't matter to most people.
It is a different society now. Post modern. The mass attitude is "what else is new, so they lie".......And most don't care. Unless the dots are connected to their purse strings. But even then. "Those terrorists are out to get us".
And as everyone knows, there was a draft back then. Everyone is a mercenary now. Some just make more money than others.
Truth just doesn't matter as much now. There needs to be a deep, deep shift within the human psyche. Or else.................The fat lady is about to sing.
"war crimes" is a redundancy.
Peace.
If those missing CIA tapes were discovered and showed Dick Cheney personally ass-raping every renditioned detainee's 3-year old kid in front of them, most Americans couldn't be bothered to raise their voice in protest.
I'm beginning to think that American indifference to war crimes is the ultimate war crime.
readyto transform and ned,
i agree with you both. the indifference to war crimes and deaths to civilians by people in our dick country is frankly screwed up and it angers me.
too many depraved assholes have no problem with the shit our country is doing again in another country and at the same time we live in a police state. both things sound very much like germany or italy leading up to WWII.
as a supporter of the green party both dick dems and repugs are guilty of the endless funding of war and the police state and should be held accountable.
matt
This is all part of the collapse of the fascist amerikan empire; it IS what must happen for World Peace !
I am sure that Kucinich and his Aids are pouring through the documents right now.
This is what Jack Layton said:
>>The approximately 90,000 documents released shine disturbing new light on how this war has been conducted. “Canadians deserve responsible leadership that can broker peace and reconciliation, not a government committed to keeping Canadians in the dark,” said Layton.
>>Layton acknowledged that the leak was a serious security breach that the US administration will have to deal with. It is also of concern that this appears to be the only way parliamentarians and Canadians can get a glimpse at the truth.
http://www.ndp.ca/press/layton-reacts-to-massive-leak-afghanistan-documents
How many days do you predict that it will be before Naomi Klein gives her two cents?
Kucinich has already taked advantage of these documents
92,000 Reasons to Get Out of Afghanistan and Pakistan
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54250
Erroll, the Democrats support the wars. Read this important article on how so-called "antiwar" Democrats voted to continue to fund the wars. It will open your eyes.
http://www.counterpunch.org/
vickrey07092010.html
-TIA
My, my, lucky for Olbermann and Maddow, they are on vacation this week, perfect timing.
truly amazing..
God help Julian Assange
And how come so many people on CD do not know how many civilians are getting killed in these wars. It does get reported. Iraq is up to over one and a quarter MILLION and I am sure that Afghanistan is not far behind. I would expect readers here to be more informed!
And are you so informed? I notice that you provide neither numbers for Afghanistan nor a source for your estimate for Iraq.
q
Quickstepper
Here is information that over a million Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invaded their country in 2003. The Lancet printed their findings back in 2006 while the British organization published their findings the following year.
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq
President Obama is clearly responsible for war crimes knowingly being committed under his command since he assumed the Presidency on January 20th, 2009 and for which he since has had the ability and authority to not allow. Beginning on March 19th, 2005, VFP National had called for the Impeachment (now arrest and prosecution) of President Bush for the same war crimes in violation of U.S. and International Law, and we believe that Veterans For Peace must apply the same standard to any U.S. President, whether that president is Republican or Democrat, male or female, white or black.
The majority of us feel that calling for the Impeachment of President Obama for war crimes is our duty as a members of Veterans For Peace, consistent with the VFP statement of purpose to restrain our government from intervening, overtly or covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations, to seek justice for veterans and victims of war, to increase public awareness of the costs of war, and to abolish war as an instrument of national policy. We also feel the same sense of duty to call for the Impeachment of President Obama for war crimes as those who swore an oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic and simply as Americans who have a responsibility for what our President and servant government does in our name.
IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT BARACK H. OBAMA FOR WAR CRIMES
Whereas Barack H. Obama is Commander In Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces and the head of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government; and,
Whereas the illegal U.S. invasion, bombing and occupation of Iraq initiated by the Bush administration continues under the Obama administration; and,
Whereas the U.S. government is currently engaged in illegal wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and Obama has pledged to increase the number of military personnel and the amount of tax dollars spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan; and,
Whereas the U.S. military has used and continues to use depleted uranium munitions, cluster bombs and white phosphorous in densely populated areas in violation of U.S. and international laws and treaties prohibiting the indiscriminate killing of civilians; and,
Whereas the Geneva Conventions specifically prohibit the use of especially injurious weapons and materials that cause unnecessary harm by remaining active and deadly after a battle and over large areas of land; and,
Whereas a large number of babies born in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from illness and deformity like Down’s syndrome, weak hearts, severe disfigurement and brain damage that doctors believe are caused by the U.S. military’s massive and widespread use of toxic and radioactive materials; and,
Whereas millions upon millions of Iraqi, Afghani and Pakistani civilians have been killed, maimed, poisoned and displaced from their homes as a direct result of the U.S.’s ongoing, illegal acts of war; and,
Whereas illegal, immoral and counterproductive detainee torture and brutalization at the hands of the U.S. military’s Immediate Reaction Force continue at Guantanamo under the Obama administration; and,
Whereas Obama is an accessory after the fact for obstructing justice by not initiating an investigation into numerous and blatant U.S. war crimes committed by the Bush administration for which it is manifestly accountable under the rule of law; and,
Whereas Veterans For Peace supported the impeachment of Bush/Cheney for the same war crimes that are now being committed by Obama in violation of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. federal laws, the United Nations Charter, the Hague Convention, the Geneva Conventions, The United Nations Convention Against Torture and the Nuremberg Tribunal Charter; and,
Whereas Veterans For Peace is committed to its stated mission to restrain our government from intervening, overtly or covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations, to seek justice for veterans and victims of war, to increase public awareness of the costs of war, and to abolish war as an instrument of national policy; and, therefore be it...
http://current.com/1jek84c
What I would like to know is:
Have our elected reps in congress had access to information indicating that the US military has been committing war crimes/atrocities?
When did they know it?
Why have the continued to fund the war?
Can congress be recalled en masse?
"Have our elected reps in congress had access to information indicating that the US military has been committing war crimes/atrocities?" Yes
"When did they know it?" Day One
"Why have the continued to fund the war?" Money
"Can congress be recalled en masse?" No
mccoyote, I completely agree.
en masse, would be at the ballot box, some states do have methods in their state constitutions which allow for the recall of elected officials, but not all states have this. Some US Senators have tried to argue that they can only be removed from office before their terms are up by a vote of their buddys in the Senate.
Even the War Logs are a sanitized version of war. Remember they are written by Americans self-reporting on themselves.
In any case, ¡Viva WikiLeaks!
The lack of truth in reporting and real journalism about the illegal occupations sets a horrifying precedent for justifying war as police actions.
There was never a war. A war is one nation attacking another nations sovereignty with troops and weapons.
Did Irag or Afghanistan army's attack the USA. No !!!
Did we attack two sovereign nations and occupy them, yes!!!!
Who is wrong here????
The war on terror or drugs is an improper use of language.
Yet , the main stream media in the USA has been peddling this crap for years.
Every police action that the USA initiates and calls a war on terror or drugs, is illegal and disingenuous.
I dont want my tax dollars spent on empire,war on terror, war on drugs, or warrant less surveillance of the American people.
For people who believe that the truth is not a function of national security I say, climb out of your cave, read a few books, and understand that the truth not secret wars,provides freedom.
War creates vacuums of space occupied by men who crave absolute power, on either side of battle.
And we all know that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The longer we stay in these two illegal occupations , the more power is given to those that will start new wars in the name of police action.
YOU CAN NOT HAVE A WAR ON DRUGS OR A WAR ON TERROR, THIS IS BULLSHIT!!
Its an excuse to brainwash Americans into a state of war like behavior and reaction.
Every solution the government needs when threatened will be called a war, a war on obesity , a war on religious institutions, a war on freedom of speech, a war on the constitution, a war on freedom.
Kill the patriot act, take away the executive powers that Bush gave the Presidency, impeach members of congress,the senate, or the the supreme court that breaks their oath of office to protect the constitution.
And create laws with sharp jail sentences for people who organize and conduct gang stalking vigilante warrant less surveillance torture.
Its nationwide and has created a very sick culture of torture freaks who think they are heroes.
BornFreeMen,
I have been followed and stalked 24/7 for three years by right wing militant republican Christians working for the Tampa Fusion center in Florida and local community watch, they have been trying to drive me crazy because I am a peace activist and very vocal about how they stalk me.And , because their slander and lies have been dis proven and they dont want to look like the liars that they are.
Julian you are my hero, America has gone a fowl with radical and sick minded holy warrior freaks, who operate above the law, and disrespect constitutional rights.
How many deaths of innocent civilians (men or women or children) would it take to finally wake up the Amercan electorate? Clearly hundreds of thousands in Iraq and thousands in Afghanistan are not sufficient, and we are still waiting to learn how many more thousands or millions must be killed.
How many displaced innocent civilians will it take in Iraq and Afghanistan to wake up the American public? Again, we still don't have the answer.
How many thousands of our military must be killed, horribly injured, or disabled with crippling mental injury to wake us up? Still again, we don't know.
How many TRILLIONS of dollars must be spent on illegal and immoral wars before the public comes to its senses and ends these atrocities.
When will it all end? No one knows.
Jim Shea
Question:
Will these document cause the government to sincerely investigate for war crimes?
Obama is lifting the rug while his bro, Rahm, is sweeping, no doubt.
See how so many criminals in the U.S. government act.
For example, Henry Kissinger (a war criminal who should have done the rest of his life in prison) hated Ellsberg for "revealing one of Washington's dirtiest secrets."
Isn't it typical when criminals don't like those who reveal the truth?
Hopefully, more and more patriotic Americans will INSIST that our government will STOP doing bullying, criminal actions and reveal the TRUTH about what they do to ANYONE who wants the truth.
Ray Berthiaume
As expected, the MSM is yakking about who and how and why these documents were leaked. They tell almost nothing about the content. What will the public know and when will they know it?