Tens of thousands of alleged Afghan war documents go online

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

(CNN) -- A whistle-blower website has published what it says are more than 90,000 United States military and diplomatic reports about Afghanistan filed between 2004 and January of this year.

The first-hand accounts are the military's own raw data on the war, including numbers killed, casualties, threat reports and the like, according to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org, which published the material Sunday.

"It is the total history of the Afghan war from 2004 to 2010, with some important exceptions -- U.S. Special Forces, CIA activity and most of the activity of other non-U.S. groups," Assange said.

Read More at the Source

[slim 1,530]

So basically they just published everything that's available in a FOIA request?

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

I don't know if this is like a FOIA request or if this is going to be as big as the Pentagon Papers. It has allegedly secret information by the CIA and others and is considered a "whistle blower". I'm on wiki-leaks now trying to sift through it and figure it out. It's so much information that I guess I'll be waiting to see how big this actually gets and if there are any affects on the public from it.

Afghan War Diaries 2004-2010

Edited July 26, 2010 by Cleocatra

[slim 1,530]

Well, get ready to hear these big surprises in the news in the next few days -

We knew where Osama was but let him go.

We conducted operations in Pakistan.

We shifted allegiances often and paid millions of dollars to warlords we're now fighting.

We're not really winning the war.

Whooptidy freakin dooo.

[IndigoSkies 168]

Abu Garib?

[alienlovechild 75]

Abu Garib?

That's not in Afghanistan.

[mawilson 2,133]

That's not in Afghanistan.

I think he's talking about his father.

[Nagishkaw 510]

I think he's talking about his father.

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

It seems some news papers were already given access to the documents prior to posting it on Wiki Leaks.

The detailed news of what is in the reports is already starting:

Leaks provide ground-level account of Afghan war

US condemns massive leak of Afghan war files

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Anything that means that the government can't control the information that comes out of war zones is fine with me. I bet they're hopping mad in the White House.

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

It seems like the White House is mad about it because once secret operations have become an open secret.

I've been reading through the articles as they progress today. The Christian Science Monitor brought up an interesting aspect at the end of its article that I've been waiting to see about Wiki-leaks and website/internet legalities as they evolve. I knew that eventually something big being leaked like this is going to have an impact on the internet by shaping the laws about its use.

In May, US military intelligence analyst Bradley Manning was arrested for allegedly leaking to WikiLeaks a video of a US military helicopter attack in Iraq that killed civilians. In June, The New Yorker profiled the founder of Wikileaks, an Australian man named Julian Paul Assange. The magazine said that Mr. Assange would soon need to confront "a deeper question that WikiLeaks must address: What is it about?

The Web site's strengths—its near-total imperviousness to lawsuits and government harassment—make it an instrument for good in societies where the laws are unjust. But, unlike authoritarian regimes, democratic governments hold secrets largely because citizens agree that they should, in order to protect legitimate policy. In liberal societies, the site's strengths are its weaknesses.

Lawsuits, if they are fair, are a form of deterrence against abuse.

Soon enough, Assange must confront the paradox of his creation: the thing that he seems to detest most—

power without accountability

—is encoded in the site's DNA, and will only become more pronounced as WikiLeaks evolves into a real institution.

Read the full article at the source

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I'm waiting for someone to leak the files about what really happened to David Kelly.

[elmcitymaven 9,712]

I'm waiting for someone to leak the files about what really happened to David Kelly.

Man, me too.

The person I'm seeing right now is very, VERY pro-Wikileaks -- in fact we had a long discussion about the site on Friday night, well before this disclosure. His feeling is that knowledge, information, once out in the open should remain in the open. Then again, he's a self-described anarcho-syndicalist, so I'm not surprised.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I'm fine with it. If there are less secrets then it becomes more difficult for governments to fight these sorts of wars.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

It's amazing that this thread hasn't gotten more attention. Too busy talking about hookers I guess.