Massive leak of millitary documents on War in Afganistan

^ The public are not qualified to make certain decisions in the first place.

edited 26th Jul '10 12:29:47 PM by CDRW

Oh joy. Now we're going to have a stream of stories about our servicemen being bastards, without the media contextualizing it with how our enemies are totalitarian bastards who commit far worse atrocities not as exceptions, but as a matter of principle.

Welcome back to Vietnam.

^ So one side's atrocities excuse the other side's? I guess one hand washes the other.

edited 26th Jul '10 12:38:41 PM by DonZabu

^ The ideal is the enemy of the best real people.

In any case, the media aren't going to cover our the few atrocities of our servicemen and the social context wherein they're anathema vs. the huge number of atrocities of our enemies and the social context wherein they're defended as pious, letting audiences make up their own minds. They're just going to make us look bad and ignore the other side's atrocities.

I'm not afraid of attempted objectivity. I'm afraid of the journalists on the enemy's side.

edited 26th Jul '10 12:42:18 PM by Rottweiler

How come? Is it just Wikileaks, or whistleblowers in general, or what?

I'd personally shoot whoever leaked all those documents if I could, military intelligence isn't meant to just be thrown out in public like that. I'm completely supportive of attached journalists inside military units the way Generation Kill was done, but whoever leaked all those documents is extremely guilty of treason, especially the documents with Secret and up in clearance. Nobody else in this thread seems to realize the gravity or seriousness of that action.

So Yeah, attach journalists all over the place, let them report as long as they aren't being an operational liability, but if you start releasing documents that haven't been unclassified you're guilty of not just treason, but a serious breach of personal integrity. Attaching journalists means they don't have the same level of bias they have just looking at a bunch of impersonal reports and newsreels. That isn't getting our side of things, you need to actually talk to the troops and spend time being exposed to the same things they are to really write an accurate report.

Which is why I once again wanted to cite Generation Kill. Every marine in that unit told Evan Wright not to omit any of the things he saw, so he reported on civilians accidentally being schwacked and why those incidents happened, as well as internal strife between officers and enlisted, the environmental conditions, and issues with the upper echelons of command that created complications.

edited 26th Jul '10 12:54:00 PM by Barkey

^ Agreed, in principle. Leaking classified documents is treason, and treason is still a capital crime just about everywhere. Firing squad-style.

Well, analysts will have a hard time making a competent report out of this mass of data. God, I have newfound respect for the Three Letter Agencies; they've got a lot of work...

But "turning a blind eye to the taliban"??? I thought the alledged goal of the entire business was to eradicate them?

Oh, no, Pakistan's supported them out of the side of its mouth for ages.

Oh joy. Now we're going to have a stream of stories about our servicemen being bastards, without the media contextualizing it with how our enemies are totalitarian bastards who commit far worse atrocities not as exceptions, but as a matter of principle.

How are people getting this message or this idea from the leak? This is, so far as I know, only a leak pertaining to intelligence gathering and particularly Pakistan's ISI's involvement in things on the side of the Taliban and the U.S. feelings of distrust and frustration with their actions.

There might be a message in the odd 75,000 that is something egregious but...has anyone found one yet and reported on it?

Raw, you're not believing what the politicians are saying are you? I thought you were better than that.

I said the alledged goal.

Otherwise, why in the FUCK are they still there?

No, WHY IN HELL DID THEY GO THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?? I thought that war was entirely about revenge for 9/11, and, when that failed, about not leaving the country if doing so would cause a bloody civil war. Since when was I under such an impression, you ask? Since the start: I had no testable alternative hypothesis, so I provisionally accepted what I was given.

If things are so, then I am very grateful to the people who leaked this: I mean SHIT, that put the entire purpose of the thing into question.

"The public is not qualified to know or decide": BULLSHIT. In a true democracy, when engaging into a freaking WAR, you need to justify it. ALL of it. Not only is it literally A Matter Of Life And Death, it costs massive amounts of money. If you're afraid the public won't understand, then make yourselves understood: EXPLAIN yourselves.

I'd use an emoticon, but there's none to show how pissed off I am.

And journalists attached to platoons is just not sufficient: they'll only see what the soldiers see. Not the purpose, not the reason nor the cause or the purpose.

Fuck.

Was The War On Terror for nothing, just like The War On Drugs? Do you know with how much SHIT I've had to cope because of the goddamn wave of Islamophobia it brought? Do you know how many times I've had to answer questions like "Why won't you eat pig?" or "Do you support women wearing Hijab?", and people not accepting anything but a rotund NO for an answer to the latter no matter how well I explained myself? Do you know how much it hurt my general credibility? Not to mention all the identity, existential and spiritual crises I went through!!!. GRRAAAH!!!

I'll ask again: NATO has been in Afghanistan for nearly ten years, in Irak for like seven, WHAT DID THEY ACCOMPLISH, except fill the pockets of contractors? Rogue traders who en up using part of that GOVERNMENT, TAXPAYER money to BRIBE TALIBANS for example. Epic Fail...

edited 26th Jul '10 1:58:45 PM by RawPower

By the way, about the "what to do about Wikileaks" thing, there is a leaked CIA document (conveniently located on Wikileaks) outlining a plan to discredit it.

^ Isn't that a Crowning Moment Of Funny? What's the general outline?

edited 26th Jul '10 1:59:40 PM by RawPower

I didn't read the whole thing, but I think that it involved faking a lot of leaks and then refuting the "leaked" information to make it look like Wikileaks was lying to push an agenda.

That's kinda convulted, but comepared to the stuff I saw in Liar Game and Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality, it's pretty unimpressive. Should have been pretty easy to pull off. If it hadn't been leaked that is!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

That's convoluted? It seems like common sense to me. Maybe I know too much about how intelligence agencies operate

You don't think this mass is what the plan entails do you? This is starting to get mind screwy.

I doubt that they'd go through with that plan now. After all, if there's any inaccurate information discovered, Wikileaks can just claim that it was a CIA plant, and then the CIA gets in trouble.

^_^

I have serious, serious doubts about this having real consequences for US troops in the ground. Remember, the Afghan insurgents aren't the same thing as the Taleban, and neither the insurgency in general nor the Taleban are monolithic - they don't really have lines of communication, and the vast majority don't have ready access to the Internet. Even if they did, they don't have the means to comb through 75,000 military reports to find useful information. Even if they had, they probably would find very little or no information that is useful, relevant, and up-to-date.

My comment about treasonous behavior being rewarded by death is nothing new, I'm afraid, and it was the very first thing that jumped ot my mind when I heard about this. I might be biased, as I'm a veteran, and remember being told quite a few times what the punishment for treasonous acts are during times of war (and there was no war when I was in, '96 to '00). I highly doubt that the decision made to leak documents was made by an individual or several individuals that was/were unaware of the penalty they would face, if they got caught. When in the military, there's a whole different set of rules you must follow, that or be discharged with a Big Chicken Dinner Bad Conduct Discharge, Dishonorable Discharge, or even being shot for treason. They tend to beat those rules into your head, frequently, which is why I kind of remember them ten years after my enlisted commitment is ancient history.

That all being said, it would appear that the Afghanistan War is THE war now, and will be quite a tough nut to crack, on multiple levels.

Still violates OpSec though. Never a good thing.

I understand why service personnel would cry 'treason' when someone leaks active intelligence. But it's more than a little hypocritical for the administration (any administration) to take a hard line against leaks when the people at the top leak info anytime it suits their political purposes. It is, in fact, a very standard and expected policy tactic.

By the way, if it wern't for leakers, we might just still be fighting the Vietnam War. Literally.

Really, I wouldn't have thought people here hated whistleblowers so much.

Whistleblowers are always hated. Sometimes Doing The Right Thing goes way too far for people because blowing the whistle costs more than the whistleblower alone. Sometimes it means thousands of people just got thrown out of their only livelihoods. Or worse.

Whistleblowers themselves are not infallible either. If I recall correctly there is a fairly large percentage of whistle blowing claims that are fraudulent. Not the majority, but not an insignificant number either.

I'm not even sure if the impact on the nature of the data warrants drastic action, it would seem like a lot of it was old news anyway - might have been why it was leaked. That said, there are ways of blowing the whistle that are available to the servicemember, like making a phonecall to their Inspector General or JAG or whoever they have. Sometimes it's just raising your hand and saying "WTF, over?" to your platoon sergeant or section leader.

But this? Out of line, can't be tolerated, must be dealt with somehow.

...and I still can't think of any reasonable response to wikileaks themselves, aside from slapping them with a cease and desist on disseminating that information. Still, it's all over the place now, good luck with that.