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**Manzareh** · 12-10-2010, 11:17 AM

Wikileaks publishes Afghan war secrets

The White House has attacked online whistleblowing site Wikileaks after it published some 200,000 pages of secret American military files about the war in Afghanistan.
The files, published online by The Guardian, the New York Times and Germany's Der Spiegel, include details of 144 incidents in which Coalition forces have killed civilians.
The Guardian says the leaks show that troops killed hundreds of civilians in previously unreported incidents.
In one example cited by the British paper, French troops fired at a bus full of children, injuring eight.
A US patrol was involved in a similar incident that wounded or killed 15 passengers, and in 2007 Polish troops fired mortars at a village, apparently in a revenge attack, killing guests at a wedding party which included a pregnant woman.
According to the New York Times they also "suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban."
Describing the talks as "secret strategy sessions," the newspaper said they "organise networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders."
The Guardian says the files revealed a secret black-ops unit which hunts down Taliban leaders for "kill or capture" without trial; how the US covered up evidence of surface-to-air missiles acquired by the Taliban; and how the Taliban have caused growing carnage with their roadside bombing campaign, killing more than 2,000 civilians to date.
US national security adviser James Jones says the publication of the documents puts the lives of soldiers and civilians at risk.
"The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk and threaten our national security," he said in a statement.
"Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents - the United States government learned from news organisations that these documents would be posted."
Much of the information is not new, but what has angered officials in Washington is the detail and the scope of the information.
The New York Times said it, along with the Guardian and Der Spiegel, had received the leaked material several weeks ago from Wikileaks, a secretive web organisation headed by Australian Julian Assange.
The news organisations agreed to publish their reports, based on the files "used by desk officers in the Pentagon and troops in the field when they make operational plans," on Sunday.
"Most of the reports are routine, even mundane, but many add insights, texture and context to a war that has been waged for nearly nine years," the Times said in a note to readers describing the leaks.
"Overall these documents amount to a real-time history of the war reported from one important vantage point - that of the soldiers and officers actually doing the fighting and reconstruction."

**Manzareh** · 12-10-2010, 11:27 AM

AFGHANISTAN: WHY ARE WE IN AFGHANISTAN?? BY EXPERTS

MP3 AUDIO:

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podca...01018_0741.mp3

**Catya Sher** · 12-10-2010, 11:25 PM

Regarding the first, YES! I saw that immediately when the news broke.

Here was the article, which furnished some detail.

The whole event was so outrageous that I still remember the video really well all these months later.
[My sarcastic comments are inside the brackets.]

By MARK THOMPSON / WASHINGTON

"The Pentagon has for years allowed the world an occasional peek through its keyhole as U.S. aircraft generated video while bombing their targets. But the military was always able to cover that keyhole when it wanted, allowing outsiders a look only when public viewing was deemed to serve the Pentagon's interests. All of that apparently changed on Monday, after at least one Pentagon insider leaked a bloody video that appeared to show the killing of two reporters by a U.S. helicopter gunship in Baghdad to WikiLeaks, an independent website.

"It's hard to recall now, in our video-saturated world, the dramatic impact of that first grainy videotape of real combat operations. U.S. Army General Norman Schwarzkopf wowed the world 19 years ago during the first Gulf War, when he swapped his maps and pointer for a large video screen. "I'm now going to show you a picture of the luckiest man in Iraq," the general said as the screen showed the fellow [any old civilian who happened to be in the wrong place when the home audience needed to be impressed with American fireworks ] crossing a bridge moments before a U.S. bomb obliterated it. The effect was instantaneous, putting anyone with a TV inside the cockpit to witness death and destruction up close.

"But the tables were turned on Monday, when WikiLeaks posted a video that showed the U.S. military in a less favorable light. WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange said his organization got the videotape of "the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people" and verified its authenticity from "a number of military whistle-blowers"; the videotape was ultimately confirmed as genuine by U.S. military officials. There was as much irritation inside the Pentagon at whoever leaked the videotape as there was for WikiLeaks' posting of it.

"The video showed U.S. firepower on brutal display, this time from the gunsight of an AH-64 Apache helicopter, as the crew converses casually about those they are about to kill. It appears to show the pilots mistakenly identifying a man carrying a camera - 22-year-old Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, along with his driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40 - as armed insurgents, and then blowing them and 10 others to smithereens in July 2007.

"The crews of the two Apaches can be heard speaking about a handful of men, saying some are armed with AK-47s and one with a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher, although it's not clear from the video as released that such weapons are being carried. For alleged insurgents carrying weapons while a U.S. attack helicopter circles overhead, the men seem remarkably nonchalant, strolling unhurriedly along a Baghdad street. After getting command approval to attack the armed group, an initial volley from an Apache's 30mm cannon blows some of them apart.

An Apache crewman says, "Ha, ha, ha - I hit 'em." Another comment: "Look at those dead ----[deleted the semi-swear word. Impression one gets is that to this American military guy that every non-American is a non-human]." When a wounded man is seen crawling for cover, a [shockingly bloodthirsty] Apache crew member hopes he [the wounded man] reaches for a gun to justify shooting [the wounded Iraqi] again. "All you got to do is pick up a weapon," he says.

"Suddenly a van appears and Iraqis hop out to help the man. The helicopter crew seeks and receives permission to fire on the vehicle. In the ensuing barrage, two children inside the vehicle are apparently wounded, and their father, a Good Samaritan who had stopped to take the wounded man to the hospital, is allegedly killed. When U.S. ground troops arrive later, they discover the youngsters. "Well, it's their fault," a member of the Apache crew says, "for bringing kids into a battle." Initially, the U.S. said the dead were all insurgents and had been killed in battle, but the video as released seems to offer no evidence of hostile intent by those on the ground.

"While it may be true that a camera never lies, it certainly can be misleading. The video is harrowing, and a viewer armed with nothing more than 20/20 hindsight can feel the knot in his stomach tighten as death draws near on Baghdad's outskirts. But viewed in isolation, lacking any insight into what else was going on in that neighborhood on that particular day, what may have seemed at the time to be a justified military action looks wanton and possibly against the rules of war.

"Several hours after WikiLeaks posted the video, the Pentagon fired back with large pieces of its own 2007 investigations into the attack. It concluded that the Reuters employees had joined up with several armed insurgents on a day that had been filled with attacks on U.S. troops in the vicinity. One knelt to take a photograph, without wearing any vest or other apparel indicating he was a reporter. From the Apache, the camera was mistaken for an RPG launcher. The Apache crews had "neither reason nor probability to assume that neutral media personnel were embedded with enemy forces," a probe concluded.

Reuters, in a statement, didn't criticize the Pentagon, instead saying that its employees' deaths "were tragic and emblematic of the extreme dangers that exist in covering war zones." But Assange said the attack was unjustified. "If those killings were lawful under the rules of engagement," he told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington, "then the rules of engagement are wrong."

"WikiLeaks is a nonprofit organization that went online in 2006. Since then, it has irritated governments and companies around the world by posting information on its website; a 2008 U.S. Army report warned that it could pose a threat to national security. WikiLeaks has no official headquarters and has had its information posted on a Swedish server that practices so-called bulletproof hosting to protect its sources. It generates the bulk of its $600,000 annual budget from contributions by individuals, human-rights groups, assorted other nongovernmental watchdogs and press organizations.

"After decrypting the Apache video, WikiLeaks posted it on Collateral Murder, a site whose name indicates its assessment of the attack. U.S. military personnel, speaking privately, have a different view. "Sounds like propaganda to me," a Central Command official said. Unfortunately, propaganda can also turn out to be true."

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Wikileaks: Collateral Murder

Wikileaks: Collateral Murder

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