WikiLeaks and the "Afghan War Diaries"

[Warph]

I have not read the "Afghan War Diaries and probably wont.  My time is more valuable then to wade hours through something that I have no desire to.  I'll leave that to the news outlets and internet bloggers.  Believe me, this is big news and much will be said about the war daiaries in the weeks and months to come.  The following is from "War On Terror News" which I read from time to time.  I find this site quite informative as to what is going on in the middle east. ....Warph
http://waronterrornews.typepad.com/home/2010/07/afghan-war-diaries-courtesy-of-wikileaks.html




Monday, July 26, 2010

"Afghan War Diaries" Courtesy of WikiLeaks

"Called 'The War Logs', 92,201 secret US military documents spanning six years of the war in Afghanistan present the military's own raw data on the war, including numbers killed, casualties, threat reports and the like, according to whistle blower website WikiLeaks.org founder Julian Assange.

Three major media outlets, the New York Times, London's Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel,
were given access to the logs several weeks ago to review and verify their authenticity before their online release Sunday."  Afghanistan Sun

The US National Security Advisor had this to say:

"The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security," US National Security Advisor General James Jones said in a statement.

"Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents - the United States government learned from news organizations that these documents would be posted. These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people," he added.

It isn't too surprising that WikiLeaks didn't contact the government before releasing these documents to the news organizations, then later, online.  They knew there would be NO permission given for such a release, especially given the way that the documents were obtained.

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."  USA Today

I am a bit confused on the timeline these documents cover.  There seems to be some confusion as to whether they cover from 2004 thru 2009 or extend to the year 2010.  When looking at the site where the documents are listed, I see no entries for the year 2010.  Perhaps I have overlooked something there.

"The documents posted by Wikileaks reportedly cover a period of time from January 2004 to December 2009. On December 1, 2009, President Obama announced a new strategy with a substantial increase in resources for Afghanistan, and increased focus on Al-Qaeda and Taliban safe-havens in Pakistan, precisely because of the grave situation that had developed over several years," General Jones said.

"This shift in strategy addressed challenges in Afghanistan that were the subject of an exhaustive policy review last fall. We know that serious challenges lie ahead, but if Afghanistan is permitted to slide backwards, we will again face a threat from violent extremist groups like Al-Qaeda who will have more space to plot and train," he added. (ANI)  Afghanistan Sun

I was made aware of the fact that these dates and data occurred when former President Bush was in office, so that explains it all.  Right?  Hmmm....let's see now, the election took place in Nov 2008, President Obama took office in January of 2009 and there is documentation through December 2009 just released at the War Journals.  Okay, you draw your own conclusions there.

So today, just after Midnight, the latest splash from WikiLeaks hits the internet.  In a month long wait, while documents "were verified" and "names were removed to protect the innocent" our government and people around the world waited to see what the newest releases would be.

Yes, I spent some time looking over the documents.  No, I am not going to analyze what I saw over there.  First off, that is not my strong suit.  Secondly, these are documents that have been totally and completely taken out of context.  Therefore, any conclusions one might make, are based on only having partial facts in the case.

That is dangerous (in my opinion)!  These are documents classified as "secret" meaning they are not highly classified.  Does that mean there is no harm in releasing them?  No, in fact, a person(s) who might wish to study these documents would be able to pick out bits and pieces of information that taken individually have no value, but added together, might create a larger picture that would be of greater value.  OPSEC comes to mind!

"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.  USA Today

The Germans had this to say about the release of these documents.....

"Der Spiegel, meanwhile, reported  "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." USA Today

Pakistan is understandably upset over the release of these documents.

Ambassador Haqqani called the release of the file by web whistleblower site Wikileaks as "irresponsible," saying it consisted of "unprocessed" reports from the field.  Afghanistan Sun

One report, from Dec. 18, 2006, describes a cyclical process to develop the suicide bombers, The New York Times reports.

First, the suicide attacker is recruited and trained in Pakistan. Then, reconnaissance and operational planning gets under way, including scouting to find a place for "hosting" the suicide bomber near the target before carrying out the attack.

Several of the reports describe current and former ISI operatives, including Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, who headed the ISI from 1987 to 1989, visiting madrasas near the city of Peshawar to get recruits for suicide bombings.  Afghanistan Sun

Let's not forget that India is mentioned in these documents also.

"'But in July 2008, the CIA's deputy director, Stephen R. Kappes, confronted Pakistani officials with evidence that the ISI helped plan the deadly suicide bombing of India's Embassy in Kabul.'

From the current trove, one report according to the Times shows that Polish intelligence warned of a complex attack against the Indian Embassy a week before that bombing, though the attackers and their methods differed. The ISI was not named in the report warning of the attack." Afghanistan Sun

But wait a minute.....is the New York Times suddenly backtracking on how important these documents are?

"Much of the information — raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan— cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place."  NYTimes

Ambassador Haqqani said, ""The documents circulated by Wikileaks do not reflect the current on ground realities,"

"These reports reflect nothing more than single-source comments and rumours, which abound on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and are often proved wrong after deeper examination," he added.

"The United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan are strategic partners and are jointly endeavouring to defeat Al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies militarily and politically," he added.

He [Haqqani] further claimed that over the years Pakistan has deepened its bilateral partnership with the U.S., and joint counter-terrorism operations have led to significant blows against 'violent extremist groups'.

Haqqani also highlighted that the Pakistan government "is following a clearly laid-out strategy of fighting and marginalising terrorists, and our military and intelligence services are effectively executing that policy". (ANI)  Afghanistan Sun

Why does this statement by the NY Times NOT make me feel better about this whole situation?

"The Times has taken care not to publish information that would harm national security interests. The Times and the other news organizations agreed at the outset that we would not disclose — either in our articles or any of our online supplementary material — anything that was likely to put lives at risk or jeopardize military or antiterrorist operations."  NYTimes

"The New York Times reports that WikiLeaks, an organization that says its goal is to promote transparency in governments by leaking secret information that reveals unethical behavior, did not release 15,000 of the documents until it could redact names of people who might be harmed were their identities revealed. The Guardian reports that "most of the material, though classified 'secret' at the time, is no longer militarily sensitive." -- The Christian Science Monitor

And then I read this.....

For example, one of the revelations of the cache is the existence of Task Force 373, a group of special forces US soldiers who report directly to the Pentagon, rather than the coalition command structure on the ground in Afghanistan, and are tasked with killing top Taliban and terrorist leaders, reports Der Spiegel. But the existence of such a force had been previously suspected and reported on.

"For years, a major effort was made to keep a lid on the details of their deployment," reports the German paper. "With the leaking of the war logs on Sunday, however, their work is an open secret." --The Christian Science Monitor

Perhaps it has something to do with their past track record on reporting events truthfully.  Or even just the lack of coverage on any given day of various items that are deemed "good news" or not "breaking news" which might translate to a lower interest or more importantly, a lack of revenue on their part!

Justification smells bad to me, how about you?

"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."  NYTimes

Amazing isn't it, that they actually sat on this information for so long without leaking any of it???

"Three major media outlets, the New York Times, London's Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel, were given access to the logs several weeks ago to review and verify their authenticity before their online release Sunday." Afghanistan Sun

Why was I not surprised to learn from Wired.com that WikiLeaks was in financial trouble prior to their release of "the Apache video during a six-month fundraising drive."  

Do you honestly think this was purely motivated?

'Afghan War Diaries, 2004-2010'   WikiLeaks, the whistle-blower organization that posted over 90,000 classified US military reports about the Afghan war, has said that its aim was to reveal "unethical behaviour" by governments and corporations.  Afghanistan Sun

Here are two examples of such "unethical behaviour" by governments and corporations.   Perhaps you might even go so far as to say money was squandered here.  I found one such item here.

"53 y/o female underwent emergent surgery on 19 Nov 09 for strangulated femoral hernia on the right side.  DVT right leg on lovnox and Coumadin awaiting evaluation  by KBR.  Admitted 30 Nov 09 for lower GI  bleed, anemia, now post transfusion, 3 units PRBC's and 2 units FFP.  Plan to evac to Bagram-Lanstuhl-Conus."

Here is another one.....

"TF Devil requests medevac at FOB Orgun-E.  PT1 is a LN newborn, 2hrs old, in respiratory distress and will require a ventilator. "

If you have the patience of a Saint, perhaps you won't mind waiting to visit the site where WikiLeak has the War Diary available for viewing: http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/   Yes that is the link, even if the page takes forever and a day to load.

====================================================================
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100726/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_afghanistan_wikileaks

Pentagon scrambles to assess Wikileaks damage

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon said Monday it was trying to assess the damage caused by the Internet leak of some 91,000 classified documents on the Afghanistan war.

The documents are described as battlefield reports compiled by various military units that provide an unvarnished look at combat in the past six years, including U.S. frustration over reports Pakistan secretly aided insurgents and civilian casualties at the hand of U.S. troops.

Wikileaks.org, a self-described whistleblower organization, posted the reports to its website Sunday night.

Col. Dave Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, said the military would probably need "days, if not weeks" to review all the documents and determine "the potential damage to the lives of our service members and coalition partners."

The White House says it didn't try to stop news organizations who had access to secret U.S. military documents from publishing reports about the leaks. However, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said it did ask Wikileaks — through reporters who were given advanced copies of the documents — to redact information in the documents that could harm U.S. military personnel.

The Pentagon declined to respond to specifics detailed in the documents, including reports of the Taliban's use of heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles.

"Just because they are posted on the Internet, doesn't make them unclassified," Lapan said.

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 some 15,000 more files on Afghanistan were still being vetted by his organization.

He said 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.

Pakistan Ambassador Husain Haqqani said the documents "do not reflect the current on-ground realities." Islamabad's ministry of foreign affairs issued a similar statement, defending Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, against allegations it has supported insurgent networks.

"The people of Pakistan and its security forces, including the ISI, have rendered enormous sacrifices against militancy and terrorism," the ministry wrote.

NATO refused to comment on the leak, but individual nations said they hoped it wouldn't harm current operations in Afghanistan.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said there has been significant progress recently in building up the Afghan state "so I hope any such leaks will not poison that atmosphere."

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle warned about possible "backlashes" and urged all sides in Afghanistan to work toward national reconciliation.

Rep. Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the documents reflect his view that U.S. war strategy was adrift last year, before President Barack Obama's decision to retool the war plan and add tens of thousands of U.S. forces.

Skelton, D-Mo., warned Monday that the documents are outdated and "should not be used as a measure of success or a determining factor in our continued mission there."

U.S. government agencies have been bracing for the deluge of classified documents since the leak of helicopter cockpit video of a 2007 fire fight in Baghdad. That was blamed on Manning, the 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst who was charged with releasing classified information earlier this month.

Manning had bragged online that he downloaded 260,000 classified U.S. cables and transmitted them to Wikileaks.org.

Assange on Monday compared the impact of the released material to the opening of East Germany's secret police files. "This is the equivalent of opening the Stasi archives," he said.

He also said his group had many more documents on other subjects, including files on countries from across the globe.

"We have built up an enormous backlog of whistleblower disclosures," he said.

Assange said he believed more whistle-blowing material will flood in after the publicity about the Afghan files.

"It is our experience that courage is contagious," he said.

___

Associated Press reporters Raphael Satter in London, Kimberly Dozier in Washington, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

[Warph]

This is from Tom Bogan on http://www.downrange.tv/forum/index.php?topic=13439.0 :

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."

The leaked records include detailed descriptions of raids carried out 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.

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.

In a statement released Sunday, White House national security adviser Gen. Jim Jones 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."

Pakistan's Ambassador to the U.S. Husain Haqqani said the documents "do not reflect the current on-ground realities." The United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan are "jointly endeavoring to defeat al-Qaida and its Taliban allies militarily and politically," he added.

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.

Jones, the White House adviser, took pains to point out that the documents describe a period from January 2004 to December 2009, mostly 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.

But Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, "However illegally these documents came to light, they raise serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan."

A different 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.

Another official said teams of analysts started examining the documents the moment they were disclosed online.

All three 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.

[Warph]

"Founder Cites 'War Crimes' Evidence"

Video of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, 39, an Australian former hacker and computer programmer at:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/leak-review-will-take-days-if-not-weeks-pentagon/article1651723/


Let me ask you, did you see the "Da Vinci Code".... does Assange look like the albino assassin Silas in that flic... Assassin... Assange... Albino looks..... seems to me their is a lot of "similarities' between the two.  I can hear Julian recounting what Silas said in the "Code": "I am the messenger of G-d.  Each breath you take is a sin.  No shadow will be safe again, for you will be hunted by angels."



Seriously tho', getting back to the article, the editor who chose the headline has made a statement that is not supported by the article.  The headline says: "WikiLeaks founder says papers give evidence of war crimes"  The article only says that the Wikileak spokesperson said: "it is up to a court to decide really if something in the end is a crime.  That said ... there does appear to be evidence of war crimes in this material."  The phrase from a person saying "does appear to be evidence of war crimes" (quoted person) doe not have the same meaning as a person saying "papers give evidence of war crimes" (headline statement).

In English, the phrase "appear to" is a weasel phrase, meaning that it is equivocal: Something might be there really, or alternatively it may not be there at all, merely appearing to be, seeming to be.

The Wiki guy (Julian or Silas, take your pick) used the weasel phrase "appear to", and the headline should reflect that fact.  If the Wiki guy has ever stated this without the weasel words, to justify the headline, then that other quote needs to be in the article.  As it stands, the headline is a false statement, unsupported by the content of the article. That is, the Wiki guy never said what he headline claims (as far as what the article reports).

....Warph