WikiLeaks has released of thousands of pages of military reports and diplomatic dispatches regarding Afghanistan from 2004-2010. The Afghani government has already responded to some of the things it is reading, so has Pakistan.
What is really fascinating to me is for example the documents relating to Pakistan's "double-game." The US State Dept would under almost any circumstance never make that public. But when documents are leaked regardless of how the government feels about the matter, it has a huge impact on the diplomatic game. Certain Afghani leaders have read they were targeted for assassination and that Pakistan's intelligence community was assisting in logistics. Now they are demanding a fierce response.
WikiLeaks is of course blocked by the Great Firewall, but I'm sorely tempted to work my way through the documents anyway, I just don't really have the time. Still if they keep leaking bombastic documentation such as this, I wonder if governments are going to try stop up the leaks by dealing with the website, or changing the way intelligence is distributed.
quote:National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones issued a statement Sunday calling the documents' release "irresponsible."
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: WikiLeaks is of course blocked by the Great Firewall, but I'm sorely tempted to work my way through the documents anyway, I just don't really have the time.
quote:Still if they keep leaking bombastic documentation such as this, I wonder if governments are going to try stop up the leaks by dealing with the website, or changing the way intelligence is distributed.
Well. Certainly the Obama Administration has stepped up its persecution of whistle-blowers. Second, Wikileaks itself has already leaked information on a government plan to deal with Wikileaks in that manner.
Ex:
quote: In 2008, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center prepared a secret report -- obtained and posted by WikiLeaks -- devoted to this website and detailing, in a section entitled "Is it Free Speech or Illegal Speech?", ways it would seek to destroy the organization. It discusses the possibility that, for some governments, not merely contributing to WikiLeaks, but "even accessing the website itself is a crime," and outlines its proposal for WikiLeaks' destruction as follows ...
As the Pentagon report put it: "the governments of China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam and Zimbabwe" have all sought to block access to or otherwise impede the operations of WikiLeaks, and the U.S. Government now joins that illustrious list of transparency-loving countries in targeting them.
posted
The main thing that I find interesting is that most of this really does not seem to be news, in the sense that it is new information. The big thing is that now the information is available from a first-person POV, which is almost always a great deal more inflammatory.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I am angry about the release of such important information to the world at large. What's stopping, say, an intelligence officer in Yemen from looking at it and seeing the problems on a tactical level the U.S. faces, and using that to their advantage in an invasion? I think that Tom Clancy's books, while often very anti-media , provide a good perspective of the diffculties of command with regards to the media.
Posts: 19 | Registered: Jul 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Gee, the US could have trouble if it invades yet another country. *plays world's smallest violin*
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
What's stopping, say, a government-military complex from misleading its populous by dramatically mischaracterizing a war?
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
My question is: how much can WikiLeaks get away with before it's forced to move to Iceland and our government starts deliberately feeding it misinformation and/or obviously damaging information to discredit it?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
I haven't read the articles but I just heard something about the guy that allegedly stole all this info and leaked it to wikileaks put it all onto a DVD labeled "Lady Gaga." That kills all his credibility for me, haha.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
There's information that's sensitive because it endangers existing operations, and then there's information that's sensitive because it discloses information about previous operations that makes people look bad. As far as the latter goes, I heartily applaud WikiLeaks. Enough sunlight, and maybe, just maybe, the folks up the chain of command will think twice about starting up something that will make them look like callous, power-abusing miscreants if revealed before they start.
(And as far as "This hurts our diplomatic relationship with the countries we've been messing with behind their backs"... I believe that's the equivalent of "Doctor, it hurts when I do this".)
How long they can go on without one of the big boys making a focused effort on leaving them a smoking crater is another question, of course... But one that certainly means it's in their best interests to stay in the spotlight where such efforts could just mean further ugly disclosures for those involved.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:At first, the outpost reported that Keating and the observation post were IN HEAVY CONTACT.
Typing in the casual familiarity of Internet chat, on a secure server, a soldier immediately asked that an Air Tic Be Opened.
That was military jargon for shifting available close-air support to troops taking fire. The sense of urgency was clear; the reason chilling.
We need it now, another soldier typed. We have mortars pinned down and fire coming from everywhere.
The battle escalated from there. The outpost relayed details. We are taking casiltys, the first soldier typed within minutes the first reports of wounded troops. He added: GET SOMETHING UP!
The consequences of decisions made in distant headquarters were now taking shape for young enlisted men. The enemy had the high ground. The outpost had the low ground. The troops were outnumbered, and starting to drop. Fire support was far away.
The arrival of attack helicopters, the outpost was told, would take time. ITS A 40 MINUTE FLIGHT.
And here's more on that [url=http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/26warlogs.html#report/1892FD4E-1517-911C-C5601B60F44B345B ]incident:[/url]
quote:[02:15] < Keating2OPS > our mortars are still pinned down [02:16] < OP_MACE > AAF ACTIVLEY TALKING ABOUT BREECHING WIRE FREQ [02:18] < Keating2OPS > we need aaf is attemtping to breech ana side of keating [02:19] < Keating2OPS > aaf took one of the ana [02:19] < Keating2OPS > according to the ana commander 0218z Fritsche is 100% equipment and personel [02:19] < Keating2OPS > enemy in the wire at keating [02:20] < BlackKnight_TOC > ENEMUY IN THE WIRE ENEMY IN THE WIRE!!! [02:21] < Keating2OPS > how long until cca [02:21] < Keating2OPS > we need support [02:22] < Keating2OPS > we have enemy on the cop
Though I'm not sure I understand what's going on here -- it reads like a chat transcript. Are they communicating using a portable computer or something?
quote:Originally posted by Sterling: (And as far as "This hurts our diplomatic relationship with the countries we've been messing with behind their backs"... I believe that's the equivalent of "Doctor, it hurts when I do this".)
I agree in general outlines, but you take as assumed a fact which is hardly in evidence. The US government and nation, as a rule, does not function as a singular apparatus. Often our diplomatic and military goals are in conflict. Often this is because we as a country operate on so many levels, no one individual and no group of people has any idea how many irons we might have in the fire, and to what ends they are being employed. I think a legitimate concern about Wikileaks is that it can be used cynically to damage good works that our government is trying to do by exposing bad works that other parts of the government have already done. Rob Peter to pay Paul, and punish Paul for the things that Peter is doing. Wikileaks is yet another way that foreign governments or individuals can use media to manipulate the U.S. relationship with other foreign powers. It is not a free and open source of information, and it is not democratic. It's an arbitrary and unstable force, and a potentially powerful one. I would have no confidence in our government if they *didn't* take a pro-active stance towards dealing with it.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
And yet... the world is better because this exists. I truly believe that. And I've followed through with that belief by donating to wikileaks in the past, and I will again in the future.
Posts: 1577 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
"There's a wide discrepancy, and we need to know." Canadian military: The loss of four Canadian soldiers in September 2006 was the result of insurgent activity. Newly released WikiLeaks document: The Canadian soldiers weren't killed by the Taliban but rather by friendly fire from U.S. forces. (cbc.ca)
posted
I would certainly argue with the world being a better place due to this specific leak. A lot of this is just putting the realities of a war into some kind of a context that some people can digest. To no surprise war is not fun or nice, it actually tends to be weighted towards the bad side of things.
The large problem, at least from my perspective, is that people are very uneducated when it comes to military history ( history in general to be honest ) or military operations. Is one civilan casuality acceptable, a thousand? It is a hard thing to be a firm number on, however many people will simply go the unrealistic route of saying none. Friendly fire has always been a major killer in warfare, in WWII the numbers were insanely high. Western militaries in general have gotten much better at stopping such incidents from occuring, however they still do as it is part of the package that is war.
People simply do not want conflict to be a part of the modern world, but it most certainly is. Whenever the world points out that war is horrible we simply want to stop our involvement in whatever conflicts we are engaged in, which does little to solve the underlying problems that create most of these conflicts in the first place. Of course some people would call one of those underlying problems America.
That and the chat lines come from the whole Blue Force Tracker system, due to the long ranges in Afghanistan a lot of small outposts only have tacsat connections or chat through the BF tracker. Since TAC SAT is set for entire region ( we used to listen to the Brits and Canadians doing fire missions on ours ) and tends to be full ( one speaker at a time ) we sent in a lot of CAS requests that way.
That and I feel for the guys at that COP/FOB; the FOB I was at was in many similar situations. We were about an hour out for AH-64 support, Three hours minimum for QRF response by vehicle, and getting CAS could take sometime to get on station and then they would generally only be able to stay around for 15-20 minutes at a time. During the summer we had somthing like 58 straight days in contact with the enemy ( short breaks during the day of course ).
Either way, war is not fun, but neither are some of the consequences from not prosecuting it in the first place.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I agree in general outlines, but you take as assumed a fact which is hardly in evidence. The US government and nation, as a rule, does not function as a singular apparatus. Often our diplomatic and military goals are in conflict. Often this is because we as a country operate on so many levels, no one individual and no group of people has any idea how many irons we might have in the fire, and to what ends they are being employed. I think a legitimate concern about Wikileaks is that it can be used cynically to damage good works that our government is trying to do by exposing bad works that other parts of the government have already done. Rob Peter to pay Paul, and punish Paul for the things that Peter is doing. Wikileaks is yet another way that foreign governments or individuals can use media to manipulate the U.S. relationship with other foreign powers. It is not a free and open source of information, and it is not democratic. It's an arbitrary and unstable force, and a potentially powerful one. I would have no confidence in our government if they *didn't* take a pro-active stance towards dealing with it.
You have a point, but while activities the U.S. might want to conceal may not come from the U.S. as an organized whole and may effect organizations and diplomatic efforts from branches that aren't responsible for those activities, it's hard not to feel that the decision to conceal wrongdoing usually comes from much higher up the chain.
I agree that the governement has reasons to respond to WikiLeaks, but I think they'd be much better served by setting up better internal means of protecting whistleblowers and acting on potentially damaging information from within (making it less likely that those who provide leaks will feel that such leaks are the only way to bring about action on their information) than by simply attempting to discredit, damage, or destroy WikiLeaks itself.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:The logs and information on the Battle of Kamdesh are riveting
They are certainly interesting, but I must say I rather dislike the NYT's spin. They present the action as a barely-contained disaster, movie style. It reads to me like a textbook example of a tribal skirmish for a Great Power trying to hold down an outlying region. Take away the air support and instant communications, and you could have read the like in a Victorian boys' paper, minus the intimations of disaster because our soldiers were being shot. (Although if an officer got shot, that would have been A Tragedy, to be sure.) The British would have responded with a punitive expedition, though; and whatever you think of the morality of collective punishment, when the redcoats had been through, that district was pacified.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Turns out a hacker revealed the identity of the man currnetly being held in custody.
There's a strange sort of irony where one uses the internet to disseminate information, while another uses that same internet to make sure you do not do so anonymously.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
In the time of the Romans, if a conflict dragged on this way, they wouldn't leave one stone on top another.
Posts: 19 | Registered: Jul 2010
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by youngnapoleon: In the time of the Romans, if a conflict dragged on this way, they wouldn't leave one stone on top another.
We're not Rome. I mean, last time I checked, the field manuals didn't include actionable Roman tactics and strategy to combat modern insurgencies. Maybe to their detriment, but probably not.
Posts: 1156 | Registered: Jan 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Wikileaks put up an encrypted 'insurance' file, likely in the event that the government takes action against its (crazy) founder.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Gee, the US could have trouble if it invades yet another country. *plays world's smallest violin*
<sarcastic> Im sure if the U.S. acts like it did in Rwanda in 1994, Yugoslavia in 1992, Cambodia in 1979, or Darfur in 2006, the world would be a better place.
Posts: 19 | Registered: Jul 2010
| IP: Logged |
quote: We're not Rome. I mean, last time I checked, the field manuals didn't include actionable Roman tactics and strategy to combat modern insurgencies. Maybe to their detriment, but probably not.
I don't see any mention of decimation so we certainly haven't copied the Roman playbook.
Then again, any commander who doesn't know the exploits of Caesare, Scipio and Belisarius is a detriment to the war and to his troops.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Gee, the US could have trouble if it invades yet another country. *plays world's smallest violin*
<sarcastic> Im sure if the U.S. acts like it did in Rwanda in 1994, Yugoslavia in 1992, Cambodia in 1979, or Darfur in 2006, the world would be a better place.
See, now you're not arguing about invasion per se, but over whose interests are best served by intervention. In those situations, the United States had no direct interest in intervening other than for the sake of human life, but this was deemed insufficient by the administrations in charge at the time. In Iraq and Afghanistan, it was only self-interest that prompted our invasions, and in both cases, it came to the detriment of the people involved, especially in Iraq. And you could argue that in neither care were we made any safer, yet managed to sow incredible discord in the nation in question, arguably leaving them worse off than before we started.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Gee, the US could have trouble if it invades yet another country. *plays world's smallest violin*
<sarcastic> Im sure if the U.S. acts like it did in Rwanda in 1994, Yugoslavia in 1992, Cambodia in 1979, or Darfur in 2006, the world would be a better place.
See, now you're not arguing about invasion per se, but over whose interests are best served by intervention. In those situations, the United States had no direct interest in intervening other than for the sake of human life, but this was deemed insufficient by the administrations in charge at the time. In Iraq and Afghanistan, it was only self-interest that prompted our invasions, and in both cases, it came to the detriment of the people involved, especially in Iraq. And you could argue that in neither care were we made any safer, yet managed to sow incredible discord in the nation in question, arguably leaving them worse off than before we started.
I am against the Iraq war, since it is an obvious waste of blood and money, and stopped us from decisively beating the Taliban. However, for the sake of arguement, 1) another Iran-Iraq war could have broken out, which would have been catastrophic. 2) genocide could have again been committed against the Kurds. 3) Saddam Hussien could have provided refuge for bin Laden and Al-Qaida, and funding and weapons for terrorist groups.
Afganistan, in my opinon, was justified. After 9/11, we demanded that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden. They refused, and provided weapons, support, funds, and training to terrorist groups. Are you suggesting that we should have let fanatical extremists tell us, the world's only superpower, what we can and cannot do?
The point I made in my previous post was that armed intervention can't always be looked down on. It wasn't only the administration, plenty of Americans feared "another Vietnam" against the Khmer Rouge's teenage guerrila army (defeated in fact, by the army of Vietnam), a bloody stalemate against the Serbs (defeated by Slovenia), or sending Americans into harm's way. Liberals and Conservatives both have opposed armed intervention to genocide in the past. We couldn't stop Darfur because we had so many troops in Iraq. The only time we were really sucessful in stopping a genocide was in Kosovo in 1999.
posted
*shrug* So if we accept your description (which I do not) and if we accept your premise (which I do not), Wikileaks has made it more difficult for the US to stop genocide if it felt like it (which it rarely does with your one provided exception) and more difficult for it to invade when American interests are actually at stake.
posted
A rather stronger criticism is that the leaked documents include names of collaborators, and thus makes targeting easy for the Taliban. Indeed, they have announced that they will specifically target several village chiefs who are outed as US allies by the leak. This, it seems to me, is rather a high price to pay for stuff that was, basically, known already. Whatever one may think of the rights and wrongs of the invasion itself, these are people who allied themselves with the US, on the promise of protection. Now a soldier of the US has broken that promise, or at the very least made it much harder of fulfilment, on his own authority, for a fairly small gain in transparency. What does this teach the world about the advantages of being friendly to the US?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
That it is a bad idea? But that seems to be a feature, not a bug.
See above:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Newly released WikiLeaks document: The Canadian soldiers weren't killed by the Taliban but rather by friendly fire from U.S. forces. (cbc.ca)
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: That it is a bad idea? But that seems to be a feature, not a bug.
See above:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Newly released WikiLeaks document: The Canadian soldiers weren't killed by the Taliban but rather by friendly fire from U.S. forces. (cbc.ca)
That might be true if NO US soldier had never been killed by an allied friendly fire incident. Sadly, that is not the case.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: That it is a bad idea? But that seems to be a feature, not a bug.
Not sure I follow. Do you mean that you approve of alienating allies, or that you think the leaker would approve?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
On second thought, the first-order effects are a bit more interesting. The leaks will lead directly to people getting their heads cut off because they allied with the US. Are you prepared to defend this as a feature and not a bug?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Not sure I follow. Do you mean that you approve of alienating allies, or that you think the leaker would approve?
Well, both sorta.
From the Wikileaks POV, it seems to me from the media coverage was chosen specifically to alienate the US from its allies. It doesn't seem like a coincidence that they chose Der Spiegel as one of the three initial outlets when the German government is having a lot of trouble justifying their presence in Afghanistan for example. So if it happens that they also alienate potential collaborators for the US in Afghanistan itself, that seems like a bonus, albeit regrettable.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: I don't see how that is relevant either way.
I'm not sure what you were trying to say originally but it sounded like the intent of your post was to state that our allies should not be our allies because we have accidentally killed some of their soldiers. I was pointing out that the same has happened to us.
Should we no longer accept any help from any of our allies because they have accidentally killed some of our troops? I guess we should never again ally ourselves with the British, Germans, Japanese or Italians because of all the American soldiers that died at their hands in the past.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: *shrug* So if we accept your description (which I do not) and if we accept your premise (which I do not), Wikileaks has made it more difficult for the US to stop genocide if it felt like it (which it rarely does with your one provided exception) and more difficult for it to invade when American interests are actually at stake.
*whoop*
My post was about armed intervention, and where it could have helped for minimal cost. The point I made was that it is not always wrong to invade another country. I never said anything about Wikileaks.
Posts: 19 | Registered: Jul 2010
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Ummm, ok? That sounds like a good compromise.
Then the world just became a much more dangerous place for the US.
FTFY
Please don't put words in my mouth or change the meaning of my post. The idea you have advanced would affect much more than the US. If you have a legitimate point to make, please make it.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Wingracer, Mucus isn't a big fan of the US and would, I think, consider the world better if we, as a country, vanished.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Not sure I follow. Do you mean that you approve of alienating allies, or that you think the leaker would approve?
Well, both sorta.
So wait, you genuinely do think that it's better if the US has no friends? Or is it rather that you believe the US can't treat other nations nicely, and it's better for the other nations if they recognise this?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
As in it's not a general principle. As in I approve of the whole Wikileaks incident in specific alienating Germany and to a lesser extent, Canada from the war in Afghanistan, causing us to pull out our respective militaries.
This allows for what are now Canadian and German casualties to fall purely on American soldiers. Also, focusing the Muslim backlash more on the States rather than the rest of us as well.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: As in it's not a general principle. As in I approve of the whole Wikileaks incident in specific alienating Germany and to a lesser extent, Canada from the war in Afghanistan, causing us to pull out our respective militaries.
This allows for what are now Canadian and German casualties to fall purely on American soldiers. Also, focusing the Muslim backlash more on the States rather than the rest of us as well.
Funny, considering that Europe has been meddling in the Middle East since the fall of the Ottoman empire (not including the repeated British invasions of Afganistan), while America has just started.
Posts: 19 | Registered: Jul 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Kate: I don't think Mucus hates the US *that* much. He just isn't a big fan of our nation building policies.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by youngnapoleon: Funny, considering that Europe has been meddling in the Middle East since the fall of the Ottoman empire (not including the repeated British invasions of Afganistan), while America has just started.
1918 is a funny cutoff. Egypt, to take just one example, was an English colony since ~1880. And there were American troops in Tripoli as early as 1801.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
