5 Passages from the WikiLeaks "Afghan Diary" That Bring the Bizarre, Tragic Reality of War to Life | World August 6, 2010 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Much has been made of the unfolding scandal surrounding the WikiLeaks Afghanistan war cache. Putting to the side the political debates swirling around the leak, the material is rich on its own terms, rich in a way that second-hand round-ups and editorializing syntheses simply cannot capture. Below are five memos that gave this reader pause, each for different reasons. #1. Prisons and prisoners are running motifs in the memos. On the night of 28 May between 1500Z and 2400Z Mohammed Wali Jan, a detained suspected ACM (Anti-Coalition Militia) was able to use his blanket as a tool and pull in the roof of his cell. Zawahiri's Gift of Grammar There are not many Al Qaeda cameos in the WikiLeaks cache, but among them include this arrest made in January of 2004: The Curse of UX Numerous documents detail the deaths of young LN's (Local Nationals).
Julian Assange, monk of the online age who thrives on intellectual battle | Media | The Observer How many people had even heard of WikiLeaks a week ago? Or Julian Assange? And yet, seven days after the biggest intelligence leak of all time – the publication of over 75,000 files amounting to an entire history of the Afghanistan war – he is everywhere; in every newspaper, on every news broadcast, in what appears to be every country in the world. Could it be the week that changed the war in Afghanistan? By last Wednesday, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan had branded Assange "irresponsible". Perhaps the most surprising and confusing aspect of all this is that Assange didn't leak the material. By the time I come to talk to Assange, his very last interview of the week, the backlash is in full swing. "It would be a bit silly for me but I'm tempted to. There's a photo of Assange below a headline that reads "'Taliban hitlist' row: WikiLeaks founder says he did right thing". "Is it clear?" Maybe. But what if it's too late? "Well, we will review our procedures." Not everyone agrees.
WikiLeaks | Afghan War Please support our site by enabling javascript to view ads. ANTIBES, France — Now that the dust has settled, what was the impact of tens of thousands of classified Afghanistan War documents dumped on the internet by WikiLeaks.org? Was it — as most of the mainstream media immediately pronounced — the biggest intelligence leak since the Pentagon Papers? It was certainly the most voluminous. In fact, you could find ammunition to make any point you want from the WikiLeaks. Obama supporters said the leaks showed what a mess the Bush administration's counter-terrorism strategy left behind in Afghanistan, and pointed out that the current administration is now pursuing a potentially more successful counter-insurgency strategy. It sounds as if the Obama administration does not know how to extricate itself from the war it inherited and even embraced as the “good war.”
Barry Eisler: Militarization and the Authoritarian Right Yes, former Bush administration speechwriter and current Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen's demand that "WikiLeaks Must Be Stopped" is, as his colleague Eva Rodriguez notes, "more than a little whacky." But it's useful, too, because an infatuation with the notion of using the military in non-military operations, particularly domestic ones, is a key aspect of the modern American right and of the rightwing authoritarian personality. Examining Thiessen is a good way to understand both. Thiessen lays out his premise in his first sentence: "WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a criminal enterprise." The premise is silly -- unless the Washington Post -- for whom Thiessen writes, and every other news organization that seeks and publishes leaks -- is a criminal enterprise, too. Apparently Thiessen didn't bother to read 18 USC 793, which he cites as the basis for his opinion about criminality, citing it instead just to sound authoritative.
State of the Nation Well, it's a good bet the dying newspaper industry would reap benefits, given who's helping to write the proposed amendment to the Media Shield law awaiting Senate approval: From sponsor Sen. Chuck Schumer's website: Schumer and Feinstein are working with representatives of the newspaper industry in crafting the new language that will explicitly exclude organizations like Wikileaks—whose sole or primary purpose is to publish unauthorized disclosures of documents—from possible protection. So of all the people with skin in the game -- whistleblowers, digital media, television journalists, First Amendment experts, the citizen public who may just like to know what their government is up to -- it's one portion of a dying industry advising on this. Paul J. And we all remember what great editorial controls and "experience in news judgment" the newspaper industry gave us in the deplorable case of Judith Miller, the New York Times and the fevered march to war. To summarize:
WikiLeaks Puts Afghanistan Back on Media Agenda by Mark Jurkowitz, Associate Director, Project for Excellence in Journalism The war in Afghanistan — a subject that has generated periodic spikes in media interest but not a high level of sustained coverage — was back atop the mainstream news agenda last week. And this time, the catalyst was neither violence on the ground nor deliberations in Washington, but the leak of about 90,000 classified war reports by a whistleblower website. Driven by WikiLeaks’ dissemination of those documents — which highlighted the difficult challenges faced by NATO forces — Afghanistan led the news for the week of July 26-Aug. 1, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Taken together, coverage of the WikiLeaks saga and the overall war effort combined to fill 19% of the newshole. Afghanistan coverage has generally followed a roller-coaster trajectory in the past year. The WikiLeaks story triggered a renewed debate over the wisdom of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. U.S.
Could WikiLeaks story put a damper on battlefield intell? Could WikiLeaks story put a damper on battlefield intell? Most of the reaction to the dumping of classified Afghan war documents at the WikiLeaks whistleblower Web site has so far focused on the broader damage the release might cause to the U.S. in that fight. But might the affair also impact the future ability of frontline troops to do their job? A story published in MIT’s Technology Review implies that it could. Technology Review links this to a clampdown on information flowing across DOD’s Secret IP Router Network (SIPRNet), which carries secret information and was presumably where Bradley Manning, the Army private and intelligence analyst who has been charged with an earlier release of documents to WikiLeaks and could be implicated in the latest Afghan affair, got much of that data. The recent WikiLeaks debacle poses a big problem for DOD. Another Technology Review piece suggests that the bird has already flown when it comes to putting a lid on leaks.
TomDispatch Pakistan under US and UK attacks: A look at history Saturday, August 7, 2010 Strategic Issues Photo: Adnan Abidi, ReutersM. Serajul Islam Pakistan has suddenly become the scapegoat for what is going wrong in Afghanistan. The latest documents released on WikiLeaks (92,000 documents in total) reveal that in Afghanistan USA is losing the war and the truth is far removed from what the Obama administration has been telling the people. A current view in Washington is that the US administration may have leaked the WikiLeaks documents to shift the responsibility of losing the war in Afghanistan on Pakistan's shoulders. It was the US that had encouraged Pakistan to get involved in the Afghan war after the Soviet invasion in 1979. History makes David Cameron's accusation more ironic than the US's accusations of Pakistan. The British Prime Minister could perhaps have taken a look at history before making the statement in public against Pakistan. The author is a former Ambassador to Japan and a Director of Centre for Foreign Affairs Studies.
Wyoming most conservative state, D.C. most liberal (though it's not a state) | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times Get out your U.S. map and your favorite red and blue crayons. Color in red that big square of Wyoming (kids, it's the one above the four squarish states on the left side of the map). The home state of the lovable Dick Cheney is the most conservative in the union, with 53% of respondents saying they're conservative, according to a recent Gallup poll. The pollsters asked more than 90,000 to identify their political beliefs during the first half of this year. The most liberal state is not actually a state at all. The District of Columbia, where a Democratic president, his Democratic cabinet and the Democrat-heavy Congress does their work, has the most liberals, with 42% identifying as such. Behind Washington in the liberal rankings is a bunch of tiny northeastern states -- Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont and Massachusetts. After Wyoming on the conservative list is Mississippi, which also has about 53% conservatives. -- Mark Miliantwitter.com/markmilian
Ensign blocks, then releases, Iceland nominee on Wikileaks - The Political Eye Luis Arreaga is on his way to Iceland as the new ambassador from the United States. But only after he said the right things in a meeting yesterday with Sen. John Ensign. Ensign, R-Nev., clamped a hold on Arreaga's Senate confirmation on Thursday, and removed it only after a face-to-face in the senator's office. The reason? The Nevadan wants the Obama administration to pressure Iceland to crack down on the Wikileaks.org network that posts troves of classified or otherwise unobtainable material gathered by whistleblowers or through leakers. Time Magazine has said Wikileaks "could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act." In April, Wikileaks released video showing civilians being killed in a U.S. helicopter attack in Iraq. Ensign argued the Afghanistan leaks, which Wikileaks shared first with the New York Times, the Guardian newspaper in London and Der Spiegel in Germany, has damaged U.S. and NATO prosecution of the war.