US says Wikileaks could 'threaten national security'

[da1]

US says Wikileaks could 'threaten national security'

The United States has condemned as "irresponsible" the leak of 90,000 military records, saying publication could threaten national security.

The documents released by the Wikileaks website include details of killings of Afghan civilians unreported until now.

Three news organisations had advance access to the records, which also show Nato concerns that Pakistan and Iran are helping the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has denied claims its intelligence agency backed the group.

The Pakistani presidential spokeswoman, Farahnaz Ispahani, said the leaks might be an attempt to sabotage the new strategic dialogue between the US and Pakistan.

A spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he was "shocked" at the scale of the leaks, but thought that "most of this is not new".

The huge cache of classified papers - posted by Wikileaks as the Afghan War Diary - is one of the biggest leaks in US history. It was also given in advance to the New York Times, the Guardian and the German news magazine, Der Spiegel.

The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, said he had no reason to doubt the reliability of the reports.

"When we publish material, what we say is: the document as we describe it is true," he said at a news conference in London.

"We publish CIA reports all the time. They are legitimate reports, but they don't mean the CIA is telling the truth."

Mr Assange said there was no one overarching revelation to come out of the cache.

"The real story of this material is that it's war - it's one damn thing after another," he said. "It is the continuous small events, the continuous deaths of children, insurgents, allied forces, the maimed people. Search for the word 'amputation' in this material, or 'amputee', and there are dozens and dozens of references."

He compared the impact of the released material to the opening of the archives of the East German secret police, the Stasi.

Taliban-ISI meetings?

In a statement, US National Security Adviser Gen James Jones said such classified information "could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk".

He said the documents covered the period from January 2004 to December 2009, before President Barack Obama "announced a new strategy with a substantial increase in resources for Afghanistan".

But Mr Assange was sceptical, saying: "A new policy by Obama doesn't mean new practice by the US military."

He also said Wikileaks had "tried hard to make sure that this material does not put innocents at harm".

"All the material is over seven months old so is of no current operational consequence, even though it may be of very significant investigative consequence."

After being asked repeatedly by reporters whether he believed some of the incidents described in the documents constituted war crimes, Mr Assange said: "It is up to a court to decide, clearly, whether something is, in the end, a crime."

"That said, prima facie, there does appear to be evidence of war crimes in this material," he added.

He cited as an example an attack in June 2007 by a secret US special forces unit, Task Force 373, which used a Himars (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) to begin a raid on a compound where a senior al-Qaeda leader, Abu-Laith al-Libi, was thought to be hiding. Seven children died.

The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force acknowledged the deaths of the children at the time, but stated that coalition troops had attacked because of "nefarious activity" there.

It did not mention they had targeted al-Libi nor used a Himars before any shots had been fired at them, and has not commented on the details included in the Wikileaks papers.

Pakistan's government meanwhile denied claims its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency backed the Taliban in the war in Afghanistan.

One of the leaked documents refers to an alleged meeting between insurgents and the former ISI chief, Lt Gen Hamid Gul.

He dismissed the Wikileaks material as "pure fiction which is being sold as intelligence".

"It's not intelligence," Gen Gul, who ran the agency from 1987 to 1989, told the BBC. "It may have a financial angle to it but more than that it is not hardcore [intelligence]. I'm an old veteran. I know."

"It is all wrong. It's precisely as their intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein keeping weapons of mass destruction in his closet," he added. "This is all based on falsehood. That is why they are not winning, because they have no cause."

Pakistani officials have denied that Gen Gul still works for the ISI.

The reports also suggest:

The Taliban has had access to portable heat-seeking missiles to shoot at aircraft
A secret US unit of army and navy special forces, Task Force 273, has been engaged on missions to "capture or kill" top insurgents
Many civilian casualties - caused by Taliban roadside bombs and Nato missions that went wrong - have gone unreported
Iran is engaged in an extensive covert campaign to arm, finance and equip the Taliban and Afghan warlords allied to al-Qaeda
'Civilian deaths'

But the head of the Foreign Relations Committee in the US Senate said the leak came at a "critical stage" for US policy in the region.

"However illegally these documents came to light, they raise serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan," Democratic Senator John Kerry said.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said he did not think the leaks would damage the international effort in Afghanistan.

Wikileaks says it delayed the release of about 15,000 reports from the archive as part of a "harm minimisation process demanded by our source".

The Guardian and the New York Times say they had no contact with the original source of the leak, but spent weeks cross-checking the information.

Earlier this year, Wikileaks posted a video on its website which it said showed the killings of civilians by a US military helicopter in Baghdad in 2007.

A US military analyst, Bradley Manning, is awaiting trial on criminal charges of leaking the video.

A former hacker, Adrian Lamo, said Mr Manning boasted to him about handing over military videos and 260,000 classified US embassy messages to Wikileaks.

Wikileaks has refused to identify its source for the video or the US military documents.

Meanwhile, Nato says it is investigating reports that as many as 45 civilians died in an air strike in Helmand province on Friday. A BBC journalist has spoken to villagers in Regey who said they witnessed the incident.

A Nato spokesman said international forces went to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10758578

[SamFisher]

I read some of this stuff this morning - pretty interesting and depressing.

This seems like it will turn out to be the Afghan war's Pentagon Papers.

[rhadamanthus]

More like "threatens our credibility".

Kudos to wikileaks.

2. The initial response from the White House was extremely unimpressive: * This leak will harm national security. (As if those words still had some kind of magical power, after all the abuse they have been party to.) * There’s nothing new here. (Then how could the release harm national security?) * Wikileaks is irresponsible; they didn’t even try to contact us! (Hold on: you’re hunting the guy down and you’re outraged that he didn’t contact you?) * Wikileaks is against the war in Afghanistan; they’re not an objective news source. (So does that mean the documents they published are fake?) * “The period of time covered in these documents… is before the President announced his new strategy. Some of the disconcerting things reported are exactly why the President ordered a three month policy review and a change in strategy.” (Okay, so now we too know the basis for the President’s decision: and that’s a bad thing?)

More at link.

[rimrocker]

Greenwald writes well...

The WikiLeaks Afghanistan leak By Glenn Greenwald http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/ (updated below - Update II) The most consequential news item of the week will obviously be -- or at least should be -- the massive new leak by WikiLeaks of 90,000 pages of classified material chronicling the truth about the war in Afghanistan from 2004 through 2009. Those documents provide what The New York Times calls "an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal." The Guardian describes the documents as "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 neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fueling the insurgency." In addition to those two newspapers, WikiLeaks also weeks ago provided these materials to Der Spiegel, on the condition that all three wait until today to write about them. These outlets were presumably chosen by WikiLeaks with the intent to ensure maximum exposure among the American and Western European citizenries which continue to pay for this war and whose governments have been less than forthcoming about what is taking place [a CIA document prepared in March, 2010 -- and previously leaked by WikiLeaks -- plotted how to prevent public opinion in Western Europe from turning further against the war and thus forcing their Governments to withdraw; the CIA's conclusion: the most valuable asset in putting a pretty face on the war for Western Europeans is Barack Obama's popularity with those populations]. The White House has swiftly vowed to continue the war and predictably condemned WikiLeaks rather harshly. 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. Ellsberg's leak -- though primarily exposing the amoral duplicity of a Democratic administration -- occurred when there was a Republican in the White House. This latest leak, by contrast, indicts a war which a Democratic President has embraced as his own, and documents similar manipulation of public opinion and suppression of the truth well into 2009. It's not difficult to foresee, as Atrios predicted, that media "coverage of [the] latest [leak] will be about whether or not it should have been published," rather than about what these documents reveal about the war effort and the government and military leaders prosecuting it. What position Democratic officials and administration supporters take in the inevitable debate over WikiLeaks remains to be seen (by shrewdly leaking these materials to 3 major newspapers, which themselves then published many of the most incriminating documents, WikiLeaks provided itself with some cover). Note how obviously lame is the White House's prime tactic thus far for dismissing the importance of the leak: that the documents only go through December, 2009, the month when Obama ordered his "surge," as though that timeline leaves these documents without any current relevance. The Pentagon Papers only went up through 1968 and were not released until 3 years later (in 1971), yet having the public behold the dishonesty about the war had a significant effect on public opinion, as well as the willingness of Americans to trust future government pronouncements. At the very least, it's difficult to imagine this leak not having the same effect. Then again, since -- unlike Vietnam -- only a tiny portion of war supporters actually bears any direct burden from the war (themselves or close family members fighting it), it's possible that the public will remain largely apathetic even knowing what they will now know. It's relatively easy to support and/or acquiesce to a war when neither you nor your loved ones are risking their lives to fight it. It's hardly a shock that the war in Afghanistan is going far worse than political officials have been publicly claiming. Aside from the fact that lying about war is what war leaders do almost intrinsically -- that's part of what makes war so degrading to democratic values -- there have been numerous official documents that have recently emerged or leaked out that explicitly state that the war is going worse than ever and is all but unwinnable. A French General was formally punished earlier this month for revealing that the NATO war situation "has never been worse," while French officials now openly plot how to set new "intermediate" benchmarks to ensure -- in their words -- that "public opinion doesn't get the impression of a useless effort." Anyone paying even mild attention knows that our war effort there has entailed countless incidents of civilian slaughter followed by official lies about it, "hit lists" compiled with no due process, and feel-good pronouncements from the Government that have little relationship to the realities in that country (other leak highlights are here). This leak is not unlike the Washington Post series from the last week: the broad strokes were already well-known, but the sheer magnitude of the disclosures may force more public attention on these matters than had occurred previously. Whatever else is true, WikiLeaks has yet again proven itself to be one of the most valuable and important organizations in the world. Just as was true for the video of the Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad, there is no valid justification for having kept most of these documents a secret. But that's what our National Security State does reflexively: it hides itself behind an essentially absolute wall of secrecy to ensure that the citizenry remains largely ignorant of what it is really doing. WikiLeaks is one of the few entities successfully blowing holes in at least parts of that wall, enabling modest glimpses into what The Washington Post spent last week describing as Top Secret America. The war on WikiLeaks -- which was already in full swing, including, strangely, from some who claim a commitment to transparency -- will only intensify now. Anyone who believes that the Government abuses its secrecy powers in order to keep the citizenry in the dark and manipulate public opinion -- and who, at this point, doesn't believe that? -- should be squarely on the side of the greater transparency which Wikileaks and its sources, sometimes single-handedly, are providing. * * * * * UPDATE: NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen has some extremely insightful observations about WikiLeaks and why it frightens so many officials and their media spokespeople. UPDATE II: The New Yorker's Amy Davidson has a very perceptive analysis explaining the significance of these documents, along with how and why they reveal clear official deception about the war. In terms of what we're "accomplishing" there, compare this recently released study documenting that our killing of civilians is what causes Afghans to take up arms against the U.S. with this morning's report that a NATO airstrike in Southern Afghanistan last week killed 45 innocent civilians, many of them women and children.

[ToyCen428]

This information is weeks old TBH.

Reports came out about a month ago that the owner of Wikileaks has now escaped the U.S. because the U.S. government was looking for him after he announced he would soon be releasing "history-making information" exposing our government.

This guy has balls of steal!

[Sweet Lou 4 2]

I don't think there is anything surprising in these documents.

We all know the Afgan war hasn't been going in the right direction and started with a terribly flawed strategy. I think you have to give Petreaus time to make changes and see if he can turn the tide of this war because what's at stake.

The past is just a sound reminder of how terrible and risky of an affair continued war is in a foreign country. What are the implications of this information? What policy should be changed?

You put in a new guy - you have to give that new guy a chance.

[OldManBernie]

New York Times did some pretty good analysis on the leaks yesterday. It's pretty long, so I won't put it in quotes. Here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/wo...o_interstitial

[Deckard]

"The archive is a vivid reminder that the Afghan conflict until recently was a second-class war, with money, troops and attention lavished on Iraq while soldiers and Marines lamented that the Afghans they were training were not being paid."

Yes, Afghanistan was a "second class war" thanks to a second class President, George W. Bush. Hell, make that a President with no class. This is exactly what I have been saying here for years. George Bush created a god-awful mess in Iraq and, success being just too much for the man in Afghanistan, proceeded to totally cock up the one foreign policy success worth mentioning post-9/11. What a freakin' idiot, but many have known that for a very long time.


The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001.

As the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, tries to reverse the lagging war effort, the documents sketch a war hamstrung by an Afghan government, police force and army of questionable loyalty and competence, and by a Pakistani military that appears at best uncooperative and at worst to work from the shadows as an unspoken ally of the very insurgent forces the American-led coalition is trying to defeat.

The material comes to light as Congress and the public grow increasingly skeptical of the deepening involvement in Afghanistan and its chances for success as next year’s deadline to begin withdrawing troops looms.

The archive is a vivid reminder that the Afghan conflict until recently was a second-class war, with money, troops and attention lavished on Iraq while soldiers and Marines lamented that the Afghans they were training were not being paid.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/wo...o_interstitial


And thanks to the OP for posting this. I've been generally staying out of threads started by people I have on ignore. This is a refreshing change.

[Invisible Fan]

Originally Posted by rimrocker WikiLeaks is one of the few entities successfully blowing holes in at least parts of that wall, enabling modest glimpses into what The Washington Post spent last week describing as Top Secret America.

Damn, I missed this

[Ottomaton]

This is why you don't trust claims of "state secrets" or "national security" at face value. The entire concept is predicated on a boldfaced lie.

[rocketsjudoka]

At the moment from what I have been hearing of these docs is that they need to be taken with a grain of salt. Most of this is raw data sometimes written in the heat of battle a lot of the material could speak more about the fog of war than it does about what is the actual state of things in Afghanistan.

That said from what I have seen so far of the documents in general they do corroborate things that have been known about Afghanistan in regard to problems with the ISI and civillian casualties. Lets keep in mind though that these documents are from prior to the latest strategy which places civillian safety over the safety of US troops.

Just to add I just saw on ABC News that the hacker that the US soldier leaked the info too turned in the soldier because he felt he was endangering lives.

[orbb]

funny how this "leak" is calibrated to a call for more funding. wikileaks is a 5th column.

[Bandwagoner]

Originally Posted by Sweet Lou 4 2 We all know the Afgan war hasn't been going in the right direction and started with a terribly flawed strategy. I think you have to give Petreaus time to make changes and see if he can turn the tide of this war because what's at stake.

I don't see what you think will change. It will probably always be a craphole where growing drugs is the best money maker for some seriously poor people.

We should GTFO asap.

[Sweet Lou 4 2]

Originally Posted by CaseyH I don't see what you think will change. It will probably always be a craphole where growing drugs is the best money maker for some seriously poor people. We should GTFO asap.

Patreaus has shown he can turn a really bad situation around. He did it in Iraq...and I think it is worth a year to see if he can do something in Afghanistan.

The stakes here are really high. We can lose this war, but the Taliban and Al Qaeda have attacked us numerous times, and they will continue to do so. To think if we just leave it will end everything is rather naive.

Emboldened by victory, the terrorist will once again turn Afganistan into a training ground for future attacks across the globe. And they will be even more emboldened and can claim victory.

We'd have lost the war on terror - at least the part with the sword. And when you deal with Al Qaeda, there is no pen.

[Phillyrocket]

Originally Posted by Sweet Lou 4 2 Patreaus has shown he can turn a really bad situation around. He did it in Iraq...and I think it is worth a year to see if he can do something in Afghanistan. The stakes here are really high. We can lose this war, but the Taliban and Al Qaeda have attacked us numerous times, and they will continue to do so. To think if we just leave it will end everything is rather naive. Emboldened by victory, the terrorist will once again turn Afganistan into a training ground for future attacks across the globe. And they will be even more emboldened and can claim victory. We'd have lost the war on terror - at least the part with the sword. And when you deal with Al Qaeda, there is no pen.

But what would be considered a victory? Killing Bin Laden? The problem with "The War on Terror" is that it can never be completely obliterated as long as one terrorist still lives. Even if you could kill them all new ones would just spring up. So what constitutes victory and justification to withdraw?

[Sweet Lou 4 2]

Originally Posted by Phillyrocket But what would be considered a victory? Killing Bin Laden? The problem with "The War on Terror" is that it can never be completely obliterated as long as one terrorist still lives. Even if you could kill them all new ones would just spring up. So what constitutes victory and justification to withdraw?

A victory would be leaving Afghanistan with a sane and stable gov't in place that wasn't bent on blowing up the world.

[Child_Plz]

Originally Posted by Sweet Lou 4 2 Patreaus has shown he can turn a really bad situation around. He did it in Iraq...and I think it is worth a year to see if he can do something in Afghanistan.

Iraq and Afghanistan are different tho. Iraq had a previously established somewhat organized police force and army, their infrastructure is more urban than that for Afghanistan, they also don't have the already established regional warlords so that means it is much easier to run the country with a strong central power. Above all it has something Afghanistan doesn't have, Oil.

We defeated Al Qada in Iraq easier because they didn't exist in Iraq until Sadam was overthrown, while in Afghanistan they and the Taliban have a established base.

[Child_Plz]

Originally Posted by Sweet Lou 4 2 A victory would be leaving Afghanistan with a sane and stable gov't in place that wasn't bent on blowing up the world.

That probably won't happen for another 10, 15 years, if not more.

Afghanistan's power still lie in the hands of regional warlords, and not with the current government (one that most Afghanis consider incompetent and corrupt, probably true on both counts).
Even with the troop levels we have now, the Afghanistan government and the US forces only have control over the major cities.

[Sweet Lou 4 2]

Originally Posted by Child_Plz That probably won't happen for another 10, 15 years, if not more. Afghanistan's power still lie in the hands of regional warlords, and not with the current government (one that most Afghanis consider incompetent and corrupt, probably true on both counts). Even with the troop levels we have now, the Afghanistan government and the US forces only have control over the major cities.

So we should leave and let Al Qaeda set-up it's camps again? Just let them plot attacks and use Afganistan as their "base" of operations?

[Sweet Lou 4 2]

Originally Posted by Child_Plz Iraq and Afghanistan are different tho. Iraq had a previously established somewhat organized police force and army, their infrastructure is more urban than that for Afghanistan, they also don't have the already established regional warlords so that means it is much easier to run the country with a strong central power. Above all it has something Afghanistan doesn't have, Oil. We defeated Al Qada in Iraq easier because they didn't exist in Iraq until Sadam was overthrown, while in Afghanistan they and the Taliban have a established base.

So there are differences. That's true, but I doubt Patreaus is using a cookie cutter strategy here.

It will take some radical new ideas to establish peace in Afghanistan such as allying with Taliban sympathetic warlords who actually still don't share their philosophy. But most of all, the U.S. have to give the Afghani people a reason to believe they have a shot at having a normal nation.

Patreaus won iraq not through some guerrilla strategy or military tactic, he won it through political alliances and an understanding of the different groups and their motivations. He'll need to do something similar, but not exactly the same, in Afghanistan. Give warlords reasons to stop fighting the u.s. He can do that.