Leaks provide ground-level account of Afghan war
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/25/AR2010072502092.html
WikiLeaks page: http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Afghan_War_Diary,_2004-2010
By KIMBERLY DOZIER
The Associated Press
Sunday, July 25, 2010; 7:44 PM
WASHINGTON -- Some 90,000 leaked U.S. military records posted online Sunday amount to a 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.
The online whistle-blower WikiLeaks posted the documents on its website Sunday. The New York Times, London's Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel were given early access to the documents.
The White House condemned the document disclosure, saying it "put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk."
In a statement, White House national security adviser Gen. Jim Jones took pains to point out that the documents describe a period from January 2004 to December 2009, during the administration of President George W. Bush.
That was before "President Obama announced a new strategy with a substantial increase in resources for Afghanistan, and increased focus on al-Qaida and Taliban safe havens in Pakistan, precisely because of the grave situation that had developed over several years," Jones said.
The documents include detailed descriptions of raids carried about by a secretive U.S. special operations unit called Task Force 373 against what U.S. officials considered high-value insurgent and terrorist targets. Some of the raids resulted in unintended killings of Afghan civilians, according to the documentation.
It has been known for years that U.S. special operations forces target al-Qaida and other terrorist figures inside Afghanistan. The documents provided to WikiLeaks reveal an unusual level of detail about the classified operations.
Among those listed as being killed by the secretive unit was Shah Agha, described by the Guardian as an intelligence officer for an IED cell, who was killed with four other men in June 2009. Another was a Libyan fighter, Abu Laith al-Libi, described in the documents as a senior al-Qaida military commander. Al-Libi was said to be based across the border in Mir Ali, Pakistan, and was running al-Qaida training camps in North Waziristan, a region along the Afghan border where U.S. officials have said numerous senior al-Qaida leaders were believed to be hiding.
The operation against al-Libi, in June 2007, resulted in a death tally that one U.S. military document said include six enemy fighters and seven noncombatants - all children.
The Guardian reported that more than 2,000 senior figures from the Taliban and al-Qaida are on a "kill or capture" list, known as JPEL, the Joint Prioritized Effects List. It was from this list that Task Force 373 selected its targets.
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.
According to the Times, 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, however, interpreted the documents differently, saying they "fail to provide a convincing smoking gun" for complicity between the Pakistan intelligence services and the Taliban.
Jones on Sunday lauded a deeper partnership between the U.S. and Pakistan, saying, "Counterterrorism cooperation has led to significant blows against al-Qaida's leadership." Still, he called on Pakistan to continue its "strategic shift against insurgent groups."
Der Spiegel, meanwhile, reported that the records show Afghan security officers as helpless victims of Taliban attacks.
The magazine said the documents show a growing threat in the north, where German troops are stationed.
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.
While the documents provide a glimpse of a world the public rarely sees, the overall picture they portray is already familiar to most Americans. U.S. officials have already publicly denounced Pakistani officials' cooperation with some insurgents, like the Haqqani network in Pakistan's tribal areas.
The success of U.S. special operating forces teams at taking out Taliban targets has been publicly lauded by U.S. military and intelligence officials. And just-resigned Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was leading the Afghan war effort, made protecting Afghan civilians one of the hallmarks of his command, complaining that too many Afghans had been accidentally killed by Western firepower.
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.
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.
Another U.S. official said it may take days to comb through all the documents to see what they mean to the U.S. war effort and determine their potential damage to national security. That official added that the U.S. isn't certain who leaked the documents.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to comment on the release of classified material.
U.S. government agencies have been bracing for the release of thousands more classified documents since the leak of a classified helicopter cockpit video of a 2007 firefight in Baghdad. That leak was blamed on a U.S. Army intelligence analyst working in Iraq.
Spc. Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Md., was arrested in Iraq and charged earlier this month with multiple counts of mishandling and leaking classified data, after a former hacker turned him in. Manning had bragged to the hacker, Adrian Lamo, that he had downloaded 260,000 classified or sensitive State Department cables and transmitted them by computer to the website Wikileaks.org.
Lamo turned Manning in to U.S. authorities, saying he couldn't live with the thought that those released documents might get someone killed.
---
Associated Press writers Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.
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Guardian, NY Times, Der Spiegel: in depth coverage
Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/afghanistan-the-war-logs
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html
Der Spiegel
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,708311,00.html
I was just going to post the
I was just going to post the same thanks Mekt.
So much for the 911blogger few who think attacking Assange for disparaging our attempts to expose the 911 cover up is a wise strategy.
Let Assange proceed. He's earned the trust of some high level sources. If this is a sophisticated cointel pro set up by
US intelligence forces-government or private, the ultimate canary in the mine test will be 911. Perhaps on the other hand this will lead to a bigger truth opening than anyone expected....
Let's all sit back and watch how this plays out.
From The Nation
SPECIAL: WikiLeaks Bombshell on Afghan War Boosted by 'NYT,' Hit By White House
Greg Mitchell | July 25, 2010
Despite advance claims of secret documents coming soon, it still felt like this bombshell arrived almost out of nowhere Sunday afternoon: WikiLeaks not only released more than 90,000 docs related to the U.S. and the war in Afghanistan, but The New York TImes played it for all it was worth (as it turns out, quite a lot). In fact, the Times, The Guardiian in London and Der Spiegel had been studying the documents and preparing for this for weeks.
The Times highlighted it as "The War Logs" -- Pentagon Papers, anyone? -- with the subhed, "A six-year archive of classified military documents offers an unvarnished and grim picture of the Afghan war." It also raises questions about the media coverage of the war to date.
The White House has slammed [1] the release of classified reports, pointing out the documents end in 2009 just before President Obama set a new policy in the war, and claiming that it is all suspect because WIkileaks is allegedly against the Afghanistan war.
In a fascinating passage, the Times revealed it also served as a kind of unofficial intermediary for the White House: "We have avoided anything that might compromise American or allied intelligence-gathering methods such as communications intercepts. We have not linked to the archives of raw material. At the request of the White House, The Times also urged WikiLeaks to withhold any harmful material from its Web site."
It will be interesting to see how the three top newspapers decided, separately, which documents to publish--and which to withhold. Here's Der Spiegel's main page. [2]
There's so much to read and digest we will simply point you in a few directions here, beyond the WikiLeaks site [3] itself.
-- The main [4] NYT piece, on the Pakistani collaboration: "The documents, made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban [5] 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." A trove of documents, separated by subject matter, here. [6]
-- One key Times assessment: "The Taliban have used portable heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft, a fact that has not been publicly disclosed by the military. This type of weapon helped the Afghan mujahedeen defeat the Soviet occupation in the 1980s."
-- A shocking account [7]in The Guardian of the CIA and paramilitary roles in horrific number of civilians deaths in Afghanistan, most cases obviously covered up until now.
-- Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, says the outfit [8]is studying another 15,000 docs it will release after redacting some names. He comments on the release so far: “It shows not only the severe incidents but the general squalor of war, from the death of individual children to major operations that kill hundreds."
-- The Times editors published a special note [9] to readers on the release explaining how it had obtained and independently verified the documents: "Deciding whether to publish secret information is always difficult, and after weighing the risks and public interest, we sometimes chose not to publish. But there are times when the information is of significant public interest, and this is one of those times. The documents illuminate the extraordinary difficulty of what the United States and its allies have undertaken in a way that other accounts have not."
--Politico's Ben Smith has this interesting background [10] on the Times: "Washington Bureau Chief Dean Baquet, reporter Mark Mazzetti and a third Timesman presented senior administration officials with synopses of the reports they planned to use, if not the actual documents, at a meeting in the White House late last week, the person said." Mike Calderone of Yahoo: Baquet told him [11] WH praised paper "for being responsible" with WikiLeaks docs.
--The Guardian carried a tough editorial [12] on its Web site, calling the picture "disturbing" and raising doubts about ever winning this war, adding: "These war logs – written in the heat of engagement – show a conflict that is brutally messy, confused and immediate. It is in some contrast with the tidied-up and sanitised 'public' war, as glimpsed through official communiques as well as the necessarily limited snapshots of embedded reporting."
--Glenn Greenwald weighs in [13]: "The White House has predictably condemned WikiLeaks rather harshly [14], and it will be most interesting to see how many Democrats -- who claim to find Daniel Ellsberg heroic and the Pentagon Papers leak to be unambiguously justified -- follow the White House's lead in that regard."
-- Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic: The leak reveals the new state of the media [15], a kind of Pentagon Papers in real time, with all docs out there and anyone can join in publishing and/or analyzing them.
-- One U.S. memo [16]: "The general view of Afghans is that current gov't is worse than the Taliban."
--The Washington Post, left out of the original document dump, belatedly catches up here [17], and also publishes docs.
-- Philip Shenon: So, who was the leaker [18]? Bradley Manning? Or, more than one?
-- Spencer Ackerman at Wired probes [19] the new docs deeply: "This massive storehouse has the potential to be strategically significant, raising doubts about how and why America and her allies are conducting the war. It not only recounts 144 incidents in which coalition forces killed civilians [7] over six years. But it shows just how deeply elements within the U.S.’ supposed ally, Pakistan, have nurtured the Afghan insurgency. In other words, 2010’s answer to the Pentagon Papers is a database you can open in Excel, brought to you by the now-reopened-for-business [20] WikiLeaks."
--Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic analyzes here [21] -- along with political fallout.. He notes response by [22] Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee: "However illegally these documents came to light, they raise serious questions...."
--NYT's C.J. Chivers focuses on [23] story told by documents about one base: "Nothing in the documents made public on Sunday offers as vivid a miniature of the Afghan war so far — from hope to heartbreak — as the field reports from one lonely base: Combat Outpost Keating."
Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/blog/37935/special-wikileaks-bombshell-afghan-w...
Links:
[1] http://jr.ly/zucp
[2] http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html
[3] http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Afghan_War_Diary,_2004-2010
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26isi.html?hp
[5] http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/t/tali...
[6] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/26warlogs.html#report/0B4F081B-...
[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-civilian-deaths-...
[8] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/26wiki.html?_r=1
[9] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/26editors-note.html?pagewanted=all
[10] http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0710/Times_trio_visited_West_Wing...
[11] http://yhoo.it/aT6X3z
[12] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs...
[13] http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
[14] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40202.html
[15] http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/07/wikileaks-may-have-ju...
[16] http://nyti.ms/bWXIjG
[17] http://www.washingtonpost.com/
[18] http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-25/wikileaks-afgh...
[19] http://bit.ly/dDwn8Z
[20] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/wikileaks_repair/
[21] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/10/07/assessing-wikileakss-r...
[22] http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/the-war-logs/
[23] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26keating.html?hp
if wikileaks is publishing it, don’t trust it
re the ny times' headline: “pentagon papers, anyone?” among other atrocities, the times helped cover up all of the key assassinations (jfk, rfk, mlk) and continues to do so, prompted the u.s. into war with iraq, and continues to be an accessory after the fact re 9/11. until fairly recently, the pentagon papers seemed to be the times' saving grace, but as has been pointed out elsewhere, there may have been a lot more involved with the pentagon papers than has come to light in the mainstream media, see e.g., http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html. while the pentagon papers led to the downfall of richard nixon, that event also triggered the ascent of ex-warren commissioner gerald ford to the presidency. and with ford along came cheney and rumsfeld.
from here, it appears that the real powers that be simply have extended the left gate a bit and installed wikileaks as the guardian there, and directed their latest puppet assange to belittle and discredit 9/11 truth, as discussed here previously. thus, if wikileaks is publishing it, the default should be, “don’t trust it.” just like with mainstream media in general, and the ny times in particular.
You don't trust it? Is that a
You don't trust it? Is that a gut response or do have information you could cite for making that assertion?
This just in from Assange:
The Pentagon says it is still investigating the source of the documents. The military has detained Bradley Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst in Baghdad, for allegedly transmitting classified information. But the latest documents could have come from anyone with a secret-level clearance, Lapan said.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange promised on Monday that the release of documents — one of the largest unauthorized disclosures in military history — was just the beginning.
Assange told reporters in London that he believed that "thousands" of U.S. attacks in Afghanistan could be investigated for evidence of war crimes, although he acknowledged that such claims would have to be tested in court.
Assange pointed in particular to a deadly missile strike ordered by Taskforce 373, a unit allegedly charged with hunting down and killing senior Taliban targets. He said there was also evidence of cover-ups when civilians were killed, including what he called a suspiciously high number of casualties that U.S. forces attributed to ricochet wounds.
The Defense Department declined to respond to specifics contained in the documents, citing security reasons.
But Lapan said that coalition forces have made great strides in reducing the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan.
White House national security adviser Gen. Jim Jones said the release of the documents "put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk," while Pakistan dismissed the documents as malicious and unsubstantiated.
There's more on the way. I fail to see why this leak is being criticized here until the full impact of it is played out. We stand a better chance at whistle blower revelations coming from the "back end" of the 9/11 wars rather than the "front end", which is of course, direct re-examination of the contradictions and lies of the official 9/11 story. These Afghanistan "back end" leaks have a strong potential to enable more revelations with the ultimate direction leading to the events of September 11. No?
Once again, I say dumping hate and negative criticism on Mr. Assange from our movement is counter-productive at this point in time. WikiLeaks has the potential to be a source for many other disclosure episodes. Let's encourage that. BTW, you can tell that the corporate news and their masters in corporate controlled government are freaked out by this because the main story running in the MSM now is "how to identify the source of the leaks", rather than study the true horrors & extent of these war crimes known as the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions.
Give the info a chance to mature before you condemn it.
John
neither. . .
. . .it's primarily assange's incredible failing of what has been dubbed here the "9/11 litmus test." that failure results in a default to untrustworthiness. if assange (chomsky, rivera, maher, et al) ever shows some credibility re 9/11, the default can be revisited. till then, i can't get too deeply into whatever it is wikileaks (ny times, wsj, etc.) has to "reveal."
hate no, critical examination yes
"I say dumping hate and negative criticism on Mr. Assange from our movement is counter-productive at this point in time."
I agree on the hate part, but criticism is necessary- though it should be with reasoned arguments and credible evidence. And it would be good to contact Assange and politely present evidence of cover up and other crimes in connection with 9/11, the unexamined license for the post-9/11 world- what he does/doesn't do w/ the info will be enlightening.
Top 5
'..main story running in the MSM now is "how to identify the source of the leaks"..'
Of course it will be used to increase the spook budget, and provide context for the 'war on the net'.
Top 5 most viewed in The Guardian today (according to its editor, The Guardian has the second largest online readership of any English-language newspaper in the world, after the New York Times.)
1. Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation (No, it doesn't)
2. Afghanistan war logs: live blog
3. Afghanistan war logs: our selection of significant incidents
4. Julian Assange on the Afghanistan war logs: 'They show the true nature of this war' (No, they don't)
5. Afghanistan war logs: Wikileaks founder rebuts White House criticism.
don't trust it, but keep an eye on it
whether wikileaks is what it claims to be or not, this is a significant development; first, wikileaks launched the site and were reported to be a scourge of corporate and govt corruption, even allegedly being declared a threat in a US report. Then they release the 'collateral murder' video, have said they'll be releasing video of a strike in Afghanistan that killed over 100 civilians and have just released close to 92K docs related to the Afghan war.
Wikileaks has become front page and headline news in the gatekeeper MSM, the same media that have done little to no honest reporting on the independent research into the 9/11 crimes, and no investigative reporting to speak of on 9/11, which was the license for the Afghan and Iraq wars, the 'war on terror', the post-9/11 world, torture, warrantless domestic spying and the general undermining of the Constitution. Is it really that this wikileaks story was too big for them to ignore, but the 9/11 lies too big to report, no matter what?
It could also be that the wikileaks drama/spectacle is being manufactured to create credibility for wikileaks, and/or some other agenda. We don't know who leaked this stuff, or why; was it Manning? He said State Dept cables; these are Afghan war logs- the timing is curious, as is his case- just a coincidence?
The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/18/wikileaks/i...
People are going to be digging thru these records to see what's in them- bloggers will report if there's anything significant that the MSM have ignored, and if there is the MSM may just ignore it- the NY Times has said there's stuff they chose not to report, and that they worked w/ the White House on this. It may be there's nothing much else of significance in these docs- it seems the most significant stuff reported so far is that hundreds of civilians have been killed in unreported incidents, the war hasn't gone as well as has been reported, assassination squads have been operating in Afghanistan, drones have been used to kill people, and it's believed that Pakistan's ISI was assisting the Taliban- really nothing that wasn't known or suspected. One measurement of the significance of this 'history-making' leak will be if it actually shifts public opinion or moves anyone in Congress toward ending the war.
WikiLeaks war logs show unreported plight of contractors
http://www.salon.com/news/afghanistan_war_logs/index.html?story=/politic...
The WikiLeaks war logs change everything
http://www.salon.com/news/afghanistan_war_logs/index.html?story=/tech/da...
New York Times reporters met with White House before publishing WikiLeaks story
http://www.salon.com/news/afghanistan_war_logs/index.html?story=/politic...
fair enough. . .
. . . thanks for the analysis and perspective.
Playbook
This is propaganda which will be used to increase the war budget and escalate tensions with Pakistan, and make the naive think this is the worst of what's going on (a 'blow-by-blow' account).
"If this is a sophisticated cointel pro set up by US intelligence forces-government or private, the ultimate canary in the mine test will be 911."
It's really not that sophisticated; unfortunately it doesn't have to be. Anyway I thought the subject of that other post was about how Assange has *failed* this litmus test?
"The New York TImes played it for all it was worth..."
9/11 litmus test and assange
I was very open to the role of wikileaks, especially giving a platform for Josh Stieber and other Iraq Veterans for Peace, to share how they have been trained as that wikileaks helicopter massacre film showed.
However, until he comes clean with such evidence as WTC-7 collapse announcement by the BBC, nanothermite in the dust, and other overwhelming evidence of a false flag operation, one should not trust the information and so-called humanitarian interests of Wikileaks.
The blogger post says more than all the mainstream news combined:
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is 'annoyed' by 9/11 truth
I doubt this "new" info will have any effect on the war
Actually, I think this release of info might be pro-war disinfo. Some points (mostly referencing this piece from The Guardian):
QUOTE: 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." COMMENT: In other words, Obama can almost legitimately claim this "new" info has little to do with his admin & its policies, so carry on with the escalation & drone attacks, troops!
QUOTE: • How a secret "black" unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for "kill or capture" without trial.
[...]
• How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.
[...]
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. COMMENT: It's a war, isn't it? Carry on! More, war aficionados might find some interesting material here - cool for them!
QUOTE: • How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles. COMMENT: This can be interpreted as why there needs to be more troops there - we don't want to suffer the same fate as the Soviets, do we?
QUOTE: • 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. COMMENT: So we should save the civilians from the Taliban, poor souls. Of course, this goes without mentioning the tens of thousands killed by drones, air strikes & the general trigger-happiness of Western troops & contractors.
QUOTE: The White House also criticised the publication of the files by Wikileaks: "We strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations, which puts the lives of the US and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security... COMMENT: So what are you going to do about it - catch Goldstein?
QUOTE: ... 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." COMMENT: The part I bolded is sounding a bit like a PR effort to distance themselves from Wikileaks' activities, hmmm.
Overall, I doubt this "new" revelation will have any overall effect on the war effort, and I suspect quite the opposite. If the people of the western coalition countries can't be persuaded by a million unnecessary deaths in Iraq, what is going to persuade them to be merciful on the people of the country squarely associated with the 911 attacks?
“people of the country squarely associated with the 911 attacks?
Who would that be????
M. Usama Bin Laden ???
The Saudi-Arabians ??
The people who had security access to three of the United States most secured sky-scrapers in New-York, and who could quietly install tons of sol-gel-nanothermate to pulverize the buildings on Sept. 11th 2001, and then cover-up their criminal act of polical mass murder?
By the way : I could access http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Afghan_War_Diary,_2004-2010 this morning, but the server or proxy-server could not be located in the beginning of the afternoon. My WinZip 14 could not open the html.7z file, so that is why I went back? Did any-of you all save this??
Eric
Guardian in full swing
"Afghanistan war logs reveal hand of Osama bin Laden"
"The shadow of Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, hangs heavily over the US-led coalition's campaign in Afghanistan. Again and again, the secret watchers of American military intelligence, whose furtive and often confused attempts at information gathering are collated in the 2004-2009 war logs, glimpse the hidden hand of the al-Qaida chief or catch a tantalising whiff of his whereabouts, only for the trail to turn cold and peter out."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/26/afghanistan-war-logs-osama-bin-laden
yes, the leaks are used to reinforce the meme...
Excellent find and observation I.D..
bottom line is...
There's nothing in these reports which is strikingly new or likely to have a dramatic effect on policy. It's all just the fog of war.
By contrast, a simple acknowledgement that WTC Building 7 was brought down by explosives would force a re-evaluation of the entire military campaign in Afghanistan.
Agreed :awareness and media coverage of 9/11 Truth is needed NOW
This being said : I would like to have a look at the nitty-gritty content of those documents.
It seems Steve Watson had better luck than me today at extracting the 7z file : see his article written today: http://www.infowars.com/wikileaks%e2%80%99-war-logs-highlight-global-intelligence-facade-of-%e2%80%98war-on-terror%e2%80%99 Wikileaks’ War Logs Highlight Global Intelligence Facade Of ‘War On Terror’ CIA funds ISI – ISI funds Taliban, Al Qaeda by Steve Watson Infowars.com
(Monday, Jul 26th, 2010)
Eric
Give this a little more space and time
1- the helicopter video sent shockwaves around the world and put the US in an embarassing position. 2- He came out today and said that War Crimes may have been committed. He put the ISI in bed with the Taliban, while this may give the US some leverage it certainly sends a strong message to the American people that all is not right with our "al Lie" and it can't be good news for the war mongers. What is the white house saying,,,,,,, oh yeah american lives will be at risk.......like they really care. What about Valerie Plame? Who went to Jail for that when real patriotic people's lives were truly at stake! No we break out a Presidential Pardon and burn the trail which went to the VP's office. Sure we want these guys aboard on the WTC7 train, give them some time it may just happen. Right now people are just starting to find out what wikileaks stands for god's sake.
obama's neo pentagon papers problem
Source:http://www.newsfrombelow.com/the-war-on-terror-files--obama-s-pentagon-papers-problem
Propaganda
indeed!