Wikileaks Releases U.S. Afghanistan War Files; Partners With NY Times, UK Guardian, Der Spiegel

Sunday, July 25, 2010 | Kristinn

[kristinn]

Read reports on the files at:

Der Spiegel

The New York Times

The Guardian

Intro by Der Spiegel:

Close to 92,000 US documents have been uncovered that shed new light on the war in Afghanistan. In an unprecedented development, close to 92,000 classified documents pertaining to the war in Afghanistan have been leaked. SPIEGEL, the New York Times and the Guardian have analyzed the raft of mostly classified documents. They expose the true scale of the Western military deployment -- and the problems beleaguering Germany's Bundeswehr in the Hindu Kush.

A total of 91,731 reports from United States military databanks relating to the war in Afghanistan are to be made publicly available on the Internet. Never before has it been possible to compare the reality on the battlefield in such a detailed manner with what the US Army propaganda machinery is propagating. WikiLeaks plans to post the documents, most of which are classified, on its website.

Britain's Guardian newspaper, the New York Times and SPIEGEL have all vetted the material and compared the data with independent reports. All three media have concluded that the documents are authentic and provide an unvarnished image of the war in Afghanistan -- from the perspective of the soldiers who are fighting it.

The reports, from troops engaged in the ongoing combat, were tersely summarized and quickly dispatched. For the most part, they originate from sergeants -- but some have been penned by the occasional lieutenant at a command post or ranking analysts with the military intelligence service.

In a statement to Der Spiegel, Obama National Security Council spokesman Ben Rhodes blamed President George W. Bush:

... It is important to note that the time period reflected in the documents is January 2004 to December 2009. The war in Afghanistan was under-resourced for many years. ... On Dec. 1, 2009, President Obama announced a new strategy and new resources for Afghanistan and Pakistan precisely because of the grave situation.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Bush’s fault. /s

[TomasUSMC]

With a Traitor in the White House Oval Office.....

hell this was probably started from the White House to make it easier to get out of Afghanistan. The cries of massacre and human rights violations are starting already.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

PING!

[DariusBane]

Could be a poison barried in it somewhere. Intelligence games at this level are pretty convuluted.

Or

It could just be a big F up.

[Snerdley]

The SAME Wikileaks that tried to frame our troops by carefully editing flight footage and implying we were out to kill reporters and children for sport?!?

Remember this? http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2489925/posts

They have ZERO Credibility.

[Snerdley]

WIKI DECEPTION: Iraq “Collateral Murder” Video Rebuttal: Scenes WikiLeaks Edited Out!!
LiveLeak (Taking lessons from NYT) ^ | April 09, 2010 | Stopcyberterror

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2489925/posts

[nikos1121]

So it looks like the Obama administration leaks the documents obviously....

The Afghan was was not our priority while we were fighting in Iraq...

I’m not sure if we should be there now...

I do know, that the boob in office has no clue how to wage it.

My guess is that the release of the information was orchestrated by Obama...No doubt in my mind...esp it is to undermine the Bush years again for Obama’s gain...

Absolutely worse president in my lifetime...

This guy makes my blood boil everyday, worse that it with CArter.

[LucyT]

Wikileaks Releases U.S. Afghanistan War Files; Partners With NY Times, UK Guardian, Der Spiegel

Melancholy wrote:

"When I met you guys on 9/12 in D.C., I voiced my belief that 0b0z0 will create a crisis as an excuse to throttle or shutdown the communication between Americans to achieve total control towards a dictatorship.

"Communists can’t take over an armed population without first controlling the communication between the people.

"I believe that 0bagger gave the go ahead to his communists to “leak” the documents and to threaten more documents to be published.

"0b0z0 can’t face the November election losses and has to do something about it.

"The communists have huge problems with the Internet, talk radio and FNC. The drumbeat about closing FOX is getting louder with the Sherrod debacle, even she is piling on the only media outlet that defended her.

"The Internet could be throttled under the guise of protecting national security. 0b0z0’s regime could declare a moratorium for six months or a year on “chosen dangerous sites.”

"Talk radio is threatened by the “Fairness Doctrine” already.

"The Republic is facing a mostly contrived perfect storm that threatens its very existence."

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

What follows is an excerpt of an article describing a firefight explained best by Mary Ann Phillips HERE :

.....45 Heroes successfully fought off an organized attack by hundreds of heavily-armed Taliban and al Queda..

Matthew Phillips is but one of many men & women who gave their lives for their country. I honor everyone of them. [I do not think Ms. Phillips is related to SPC Matthew Phillips mentioned below.]

SPC Phillips' wife was one of my son's teacher the previous school year. The following year she was a graduation advisor for my son's graduating class.

Julian Assange's head would would explode if he saw the ovation Mrs. Phillips got at the graduation. Not a dry eye in the house. We honored her husband and wanted her to know we would never, ever take that sacrifice for granted..

How dare he try to dredge up allegations of war crimes. He should be named as a terrorist and should be drawn & quartered when he comes out of his hole. He can't even man up to face those he seeks to disparage.

=================

Soldiers recount firefight that left nine dead in Afghanistan

(excerpt & bold mine)

.....When the attack began, Stafford grabbed his M-240 machine gun off a north-facing sandbag wall and moved it to an east-facing sandbag wall. Moments later, RPGs struck the north-facing wall, knocking Stafford out of the fighting position and wounding another soldier.

Stafford thought he was on fire, so he rolled around, regaining his senses. Nearby, Cpl. Gunnar Zwilling, who later died in the fight, had a stunned look on his face.

Immediately, a grenade exploded beside Stafford, blowing him down to a lower terrace at the observation post and knocking his helmet off. Stafford put his helmet back on and noticed how badly he was bleeding.

Cpl. Matthew Phillips was close by, so Stafford called to him for help. Phillips was preparing to throw a grenade and shot a look at Stafford that said: "Give me a second. I gotta go kill these guys first."

This was only about 30 to 60 seconds into the attack.

Kneeling behind a sandbag wall, Phillips pulled the grenade pin, but just after he threw it, an RPG exploded at his position. The tail of the RPG smacked Stafford's helmet. The dust cleared. Phillips was slumped over, his chest on his knees and his hands by his side. Stafford called out to his buddy three or four times, but Phillips never answered or moved.

"When I saw Phillips die, I looked down and was bleeding pretty good, that's probably the most scared I was at any point," Stafford said. "Then I kinda had to calm myself down and be like, 'All right, I gotta go try to do my job.'"

The soldier from Parker, Colo., loaded his 9 mm handgun, crawled up to their fighting position, stuck the pistol over the sandbags and fired.

[freethinker_for_freedom]

“They are marked Top Secret, which means military leaders decided they could cause grave damage. Since they are the professionals risking their lives I’ll go with them.”

According to the classification scheme put in place during the Bush White House, EXECUTIVE ORDER 13292, the President and Vice-President have the authority to appoint bureaucrats to decide when and how to classify documents. Doesn’t say anything about military leaders who are risking their lives. So you ask yourself, do you really trust an Obama-appointed bureaucrat to make the right decision, not influenced by what is good for Obama?

I read a fair amount of the material that was classified. I didn’t see anything that seemed to me would “cause exceptionally grave damage to the United States (top secret) or even “serious damage to the national security” (secret). Did you?

[freethinker_for_freedom]

“Why are you defending the traitors at NYT?”

I could care less about the NYT. On the other hand, I care a lot about the right of the people to have a free press and to know what their government is up to. That’s why we have a First Amendment. If some government bureaucrat can defeat the First Amendment by stamping everything “Secret” then we don’t have a First Amendment.

[driftdiver]

“On the other hand, I care a lot about the right of the people to have a free press and to know what their government is up to”

So you support traitors releasing Top Secret information because you “wanna know”.

You disgust me. You can hang right next to the New York Times and the traitor releasing this information.

[GodBlessTheLittlePeople]

So you support traitors releasing Top Secret information because you “wanna know”. I think this individual asked the group what information was considered a grave threat to soldiers in the field due to its release. I have yet to hear anyone mention specifics from the files to challenge his claims, but rather kneejerk emotional reactions. You disgust me. You can hang right next to the New York Times and the traitor releasing this information. You're entitled to your opinion. I personally think that many of the folks in this thread who get fired up about hanging and summary shooting are LBJ-esque closet Obama fanboys, considering how quickly they are rushing to the rescue of government bureaucrats who stamped this "classified" information in the first place.

[driftdiver]

‘I think this individual asked the group what information was considered a grave threat to soldiers in the field due to its release. I have yet to hear anyone mention specifics from the files to challenge his claims, but rather kneejerk emotional reactions. “

Kneejerk? The material is marked Top Secret. The proper process is to challenge the classification and have it released through FOIA requests. Anything else is treason.

“You’re entitled to your opinion.”

Opinion backed by federal law and decades of lessons written in blood.

I cannot believe anyone on FR is backing the release of Top Secret military documents.

[GodBlessTheLittlePeople]

Kneejerk? The material is marked Top Secret. The proper process is to challenge the classification and have it released through FOIA requests. Anything else is treason.

Like I said, some of us are interested in hearing the specific to the challenge presented. What specific pieces of information, given their release, necessitate a danger to our troops? Inquiring minds want to know. :-) A government unchecked can call anything it wants treasonous, doesn't mean it's so. I would've thought that the powers from the unPatriot Act that Obama inherited and the nefarious uses he made of it would be evidence of that by now. I cannot believe anyone on FR is backing the release of Top Secret military documents.

Believe it.

[driftdiver]

“What specific pieces of information, given their release, necessitate a danger to our troops? Inquiring minds want to know. :-) “

Simple, anything marked Top Secret or is that too complicated for you.

[GodBlessTheLittlePeople]

Simple, anything marked Top Secret or is that too complicated for you. Just because your hero, Obummer, has bureaucrats that mark everything under the rising sun top secret, doesn't make it so. When you're ready to discuss specific subsets of this leak, I'll be here sweetheart. ;-)

[driftdiver]

“Just because your hero, Obummer, has bureaucrats that mark everything under the rising sun top secret, doesn’t make it so. “

No its actually because true blue heros who have risked their lives to protect ours have decided it should be kept secret.

Releasing military secrets while we have men in the field and you are supporting it. Amazing, I hope you hang with the rest of the traitors. Just because you want a little light reading, like you understand anything you’re reading.

[GodBlessTheLittlePeople]

No its actually because true blue heros who have risked their lives to protect ours have decided it should be kept secret. If that were actually true, I'd support a more militant approach. Releasing military secrets while we have men in the field and you are supporting it. Amazing, I hope you hang with the rest of the traitors. Just because you want a little light reading, like you understand anything you’re reading. I'm going to hang with millions of others who have read this stuff? That would take an effort only surpassed by your other heroes, Stalin and Mao. Thanks for the entertainment though, but it's time for some supper with the Mrs.

[william clark]

You know, treason used to be a crime. Now it’s a photo op.