The Political Spinning of the WikiLeaks Release: Anti-war Whistleblowing or War Propaganda

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By Larry Chin, Global Research

Since the release of classified US military papers by WikiLeaks, the material has been aggressively spun by various political factions. Meanwhile, virtually no attention has been devoted to investigating the source of this “leak”, or questioning the agenda behind it.

According to the Associated Press, a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity stated that the US government is not certain who “leaked” the 91,000 documents to the online whistle blowing web site.

Unlike a previous WikiLeak exposing the murder of Iraqi civilians in a US airstrike, , nobody has been apprehended, arrested or pressured by the Pentagon, the CIA or any US agency.

The White House has expressed no intense concern. It did not block the release or deny the material. Government officials, led by President Obama, have almost casually dismissed the expose as nothing new.

The major mainstream newspapers that had full early access to the material---The New York Times, Der Spiegel and the Guardian---also had ample time to frame and steer the discourse surrounding it, and (particularly in the case of the White House-friendly New York Times) conduct damage control.

Leak as anti-war fodder

The new material obviously adds to what is already known for years: US forces are mired in a dirty and horrific war, and committing atrocities and war crimes. Corruption is rampant, allies are despicable and untrustworthy, and there appears no end in sight.

For critics of US policy, the expose reinforces their tired call for the war to end. However, the value of these particular papers (in terms of turning public opinion against the war) is questionable. This is not a potent high-level Pentagon Papers-type leak, and today’s society is a far cry from the 1970s.

Today’s acquiescent, ignorant and grossly manipulated mass populace---one that fully embraces and supports the manufactured “war on terrorism”---wholeheartedly supports any and all means to “prevent another 9/11”. A decade of Bush-Cheney criminality and mass murder failed to trigger any interest from a general US population that has been shocked into servitude, and further brain-addled by ubiquitous corporate right-wing media. Another day, another massacre.

Leak as imperial war propaganda

Where the WikiLeaks papers gain significance is in the detail revealed about the operations of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) and, more specifically, the manner in which leading government figures and the media have interpreted these items.

The ISI is being accused of “undercutting” US operations, “conspiring with’ and aiding the “powerfully resurgent” Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, aiding the killing of US forces, and organizing “networks of militants” across the region. An all-out propaganda attack against Pakistan led by the White House is underway.

Essentially, Pakistan is being branded as a terrorist state and a worthy target of military attack, along with Iran, which is also fingered by the WikiLeak for backing Taliban militants within Afghanistan.

Hamid Gul, former ISI chief and major regional player, accuses the US of orchestrating the expose to shift attention away from the US government’s “own failings”, in order to “force Pakistan's hand on policy in Afghanistan”.

According to Gul “they [the Americans] want to bash Pakistan, at this time to come up with this leak. I refuse to believe it is not on purpose.”

The Obama administration, eager for a pretext to escalate the Central Asia/Middle East (resource) war into Pakistan and Iran, has certainly found ammunition with the WikiLeak expose.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the “leak” occurred just prior to a new $33 billion/30,000 troop surge for Afghanistan was signed in the US Congress, and ahead of a possible military attack on Iran, which former CIA Director Michael Hayden says is "inexorable".

The glaring omission

As accusations and attacks on Pakistan and its “terrorist ISI” rise in intensity, not one mainstream media report mentions the fact that the ISI is a virtual branch of the CIA, and one that operates on behalf of Anglo-American policy.

It is fact that the ISI, with full Anglo-American direction, has long been a driving force behind “Islamic militants” and “terrorists” throughout the world, including “Al-Qaeda”. The CIA and ISI have cooperatively fomented instability and tension throughout Central Asia and the Middle East, playing all sides for geostrategic gain. This “strategy of tension” is one of the hallmarks of the “war on terrorism”. The ISI was also directly involved with the false flag operation of 9/11.

According to Michel Chossudovsky:

“The ISI actively collaborates with the CIA. It continues to perform the role of a ‘go-between' in numerous intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA. The ISI directly supports and finances a number of terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda.”

If the ISI is responsible for terrorism, the funding and aiding of “Islamic militants”, and the killing of US forces, logic dictates that its big brethren---the CIA and officials in Washington---are also guilty and involved.

The manner in which the ISI is under fire, while omitting any mention of the ISI’s guiding superiors in Washington speaks to a deliberate anti-Pakistan/pro-US bias.

Whose political weapon?

Until the source of this WikiLeak is revealed, along with the motive for the “leak”, all that remains is a political Rohrschach Test, open to interpretation.

The ultimate beneficiary is whatever faction controls the interpretation.

In the end, only Pakistan and Iran have been politically damaged, while the Obama administration has a new pretext to escalate and intensify its continuing resource war.

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Formation Of Al Qaida: US-Israel Collaboration

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SPECIAL REPORT: The top secret Israeli-US program to establish “Al Qaeda”

By Wayne Madsen

Press clips gathered by the CIA and discovered in the National Archives’ stored CIA files point to an agency keenly interested in any leaks about the highly-classified CIA-Mossad program to establish Osama Bin Laden and the most radical elements of the Afghan Mujahidin as the primary leaders of the anti-Soviet rebels in the 1980s.

WMR has pored through the CIA files and a complicated picture emerges of America’s and Israel’s top intelligence agencies, in cahoots with Saudi Arabia, establishing financial links and carve out intelligence programs to provide manpower and financial support to Bin Laden and his allies in Afghanistan. It was these very elements that later created the so-called “Al Qaeda,” which the late British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook described as nothing more than a “database” of CIA front organizations, financial supporters, and field operatives. However, one component omitted by Cook in the Al Qaeda construct is the Israeli participation.

Thanks largely to the CIA station chief in Riyadh in 1986-87, millions of dollars from the Saudi government, particularly then-deputy Prime Minister Prince Abdullah, now King Abdullah, and wealthy Saudi businessmen were funneled to the most radical leader of the Afghan rebels, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, for whom militant southern Philippines Muslim rebels named their organization, the Abu Sayyaf group.

Accounting for only two percent of the mujahidin guerrillas in the field in Afghanistan, Sayyaf’s group began receiving hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of recruits from other countries, more than other six major mujahidin groups fighting the Soviets. The tilt to Sayyaf was a result of the intercession of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Saudi intelligence, the CIA, and Mossad. Another key Saudi intermediary was Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who the Bush family has dubbed “Bandar Bush” because of his close links to the Bushes, and who was the Saudi ambassador to the United States on 9/11.

The Reagan White House’s intermediary with Sayyaf’s group during 1986 and 1987 was Michael Pillsbury, the Assistant Undersecretary of Defense for Policy who continues to serve as a Pentagon consultant. Eventually, with the urging of Salem Bin Laden, and his older brother Osama, the CIA gave the green light for Sayyaf to bring into Afghanistan a dedicated group of Arab fighters, recruited from countries such as Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab countries. Some of the Syrian volunteers were refugee survivors of Syrian President Hafez Assad’s massacre of Sunni Muslims in Hama in 1982. Ironically, the first Arab training camp was established in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border and was known as Maasada, or the “Lion’s Den.” Masada is the site of the Roman siege of Jewish forces in 72 where the Jews committed suicide rather than surrender to the Romans. Masada is Hebrew for “fortress.”

Although the roles of Oliver North, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, Iranian Jewish interlocutor and con-artist Manucher Ghorbanifar in using the Israelis as a pass-through for weapons transfers to the Iranians are well-known, not much has been reported on Israel’s role in providing financial and military assistance to Bin Laden’s and Sayyaf’s mujahidin forces at Maasada in Afghanistan during the war with the Soviets.

The CIA kept articles, mainly written by Jack Anderson and Andrew Cockburn, on the highly-classified but leaked CIA-Mossad-Saudi operation. Two CIA front companies, Associate Traders of Vienna, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland, and Sherwood International Export Company, a license State Department arms broker with offices in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Miami, and London, arranged for 60,000 rifles, bought for $3.6 million from the Indian Defense Ministry in September 1983, to be shipped with a false end-user certificate for Portugal, to be shipped to “Any UK Port.” In fact, the rifles were actually delivered to Saudi- and Pakistani-controlled mujahidin forces in Afghanistan, including those controlled by Bin Laden and Sayyaf.

Sherwood also used what was believed to be a Mossad front, Shimon Ltd., registered in the Cayman Islands, to ship $1.8 million worth of Brazilian rifles to Nicaraguan contras in Honduras and Costa Rica. Again, a false end-user certificate was used, one that stated the ultimate destination of the Brazilian rifles was Baltimore. Another Israeli firm, Tahal Consulting, and the Israeli ambassador in San Jose, Costa Rica, David Tourgeman, were involved in providing further military logistics support to the contras in Costa Rica and Honduras.

Sherwood’s Cayman Islands subsidiary Cromwell, Ltd., used the same registration agent in the Caymans that was used by Shimon Ltd. Shimon was discovered to have shipped $9.4 million in military equipment to Lagos, Nigeria, a shipment that was actually destined to Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA guerrillas in Angola. Joint CIA-Mossad operations to send weapons to guerrilla groups in Asia, Latin America, and Africa was code-named KK MOUNTAIN by the CIA. The specific CIA-Mossad operation to transfer weapons to the Nicaraguan contras and other forces around the world during the 1980s was called Operation Tipped Kettle by the CIA. Among the recipients of Israeli expertise and weapons in Tipped Kettle were the Medellin drug cartel’s death squads and Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. Tipped Kettle also involved the secret transfer of arms by Israel to Iran. Some of the key Israeli players in Tipped Kettle were Lt. Col. Amatzia Shuali; Noriega adviser Michael Harari; Amiram Nir, counterterrorism adviser to then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres; and former Mossad deputy director general David Kimche.

The money laundering for the arms shipments was conducted through the First National Bank of Maryland in Baltimore, which initiated the money transfers through off-shore banks in the Cayman Islands and Panama. The ultimate destination of the funds was Switzerland, from where the weapons purchases were made without either the CIA’s or Mossad’s fingerprints. Tipped Kettle also involved the laundering of Saudi proceeds for the radical Sayyaf and Bin Laden mujahidin groups through Swiss bank accounts.

Another firm used in Tipped Kettle was Bophuthatswana International Ltd., a joint CIA-Mossad front, with a “do business as” [DBA] name of B International, operating from an office on Madison Avenue in New York. The firm was listed by the Justice Department as a registered agent of the apartheid-era self-proclaimed Republic of Bophuthatswana, an entity only recognized by South Africa. Mossad also used other apartheid republics in South Africa, including Ciskei and Transkei, to mask their illegal weapons smuggling operations. Tipped Kettle also involved the apartheid regime of South Africa and the military dictatorship of Argentina. The network was also used to smuggle arms to Argentina during that nation’s Falklands war with Britain.

CIA’s Operation Tipped Kettle: The trinity of CIA, Mossad, and Saudi Arabia provided weapons and cash to Osama bin Laden and Rasul Sayyaf in Afghanistan during 1980s.

Now, some 25 years later, there appears to be another Mossad weapons smuggling operation, operating with a wink-and-a-nod from Langley, that has appeared in the Pacific Northwest.

An individual named Oliver King was arrested May 19 in Washington State. King, charged with weapons smuggling, was reported to be an Iranian-born citizen of Canada. However, King, 35, is a veteran of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and has alleged links to the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the National Security Agency, according to published press reports. According to a July 15 report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, King’s McMinnville, Oregon gun shop partner said King told him he was an agent of Mossad. King earlier told an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives that he was a veteran of the IDF.

The Post-Intelligencer reported that INTERPOL records consist of a rap sheet for King that includes convictions for fraud, assault, and weapons charges while living in Denmark. INTERPOL files also reveal that King has claimed phony degrees from the Danish Technical Institution. Seattle-based Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Roe has insisted that King was born in Iran, although his reported service in the IDF and Mossad would negate such a claim, unless King is an Iranian Jew. King is said to have been born Hamid Malekpour in Tehran.

King was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after he was tracked from the Canadian border to his associate’s gun shop in McMinnville, called McMinnville Hunting and Police Supplies, and then to a rented storage unit in Ferndale, Washington, south of Blaine. The gun shop, located at 1000 Office Plaza on Highway 99 West, turned out to be an empty office. The Yamhill Valley News Register reported on May 24 that the gun store serves customers by appointment only. Local McMinnville and Yamhill County law enforcement officials were not aware of the federal investigation of the gun shop, which had failed to re-file for its Oregon state corporate license in February. The situation is reminiscent of local law enforcement seeing local criminal cases against Israeli art students and movers pre-empted by the FBI and other federal agencies before and after 9/11.

From the storage unit, ICE agents seized a sniper rifle, semi-automatic weapons, high-powered scopes, and ammunition from King’s storage unit and car. King is said to have been a resident of Canada since 2003 but his firearm’s dealers license was revoked by Canadian authorities because of suspicions he was smuggling weapons. King’s firearms license in Canada was issued under the name Hamid Malekpour. ICE’s arrest of King capped an investigation that lasted for over a year. A previous search of King’s car at the Blaine, Washington border crossing in February 2009, yielded a resume that claimed King operated businesses in Switzerland, Denmark, and the United States.

An Iranian visa issued this year and two issued last year were found in King’s passport, which was not due to expire until 2013. Subsequently, the passport was revoked for unknown reasons. King gave ICE agents conflicting stories on the reason for his last visit to Iran: consulting for an unnamed company, a hunting trip, and to visit relatives. After the questioning, King returned to his stated home in Vancouver, Canada. The similarities between King’s operations and Operation Tipped Kettle are striking. In the subsequent months, King crossed the border to the U.S. 18 times and said he was visiting a post office in Blaine.

In March of this year, ICE agents witnessed King stop on the shoulder of Interstate 5 and witnessed him performing “counter-surveillance” tactics. On May 19, at the Blaine crossing, King produced a newly-issued Canadian passport, without the Iranian visas that appeared in his original passport. In fact, the new Canadian passport bore the issue date of May 19, the same day King was arrested. King was then arrested at a storage unit in Ferndale after he picked up several boxes from the McMinnville “gun shop.” King claimed he was a “consultant” and that the guns did not belong to him but the owner of the McMinnville gun shop, a man named Amir Zarandi. When arrested, King denied being a Canadian citizen and said that he lived in Seattle. An BATF agent said King told him that he was a veteran of the Israeli army and that he was born in Israel.

King paid the rent for the gun shop with Canadian cashier’s checks and no required federal firearms license logbooks or export licenses for weapons were found when federal agents searched the premises. Agents found no office equipment except for a single stool. Empty boxes from established weapons manufacturers and distributors were found in the shop. McMinnville Hunting and Police Supplies’ actual owner said he met King at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam and said King told him how he got around export controls to move ammunition from Iran to Israel. King also said he knew how to ship guns and ammunition via the Netherlands and Israel to Chile because Israel has no requirement for tracking such shipments. The owner reiterated that King told him that he worked for Mossad.

The Seattle PI also reported that Danish officials had a record of King being born in Germany, not Iran or Israel but also a huge rap sheet, including forgery, violence, assault, offenses against public authorities, fraud, extortion, and violations of Denmark’s weapons laws. King’s attorney, who recently withdrew from the case, said King had official contacts within the CIA, NSA, and Department of Defense prior to his arrest. Roe admitted that a search of King’s computer turned up evidence on “foreign parties” operating in foreign countries. King has been indicted on charges of being an alien in illegal possession of firearms and ammunition and making false statements to federal officers. King remains in federal custody.

Aside from the Seattle P.I., most main stream media has been downplaying King’s Israeli nationality, with KOMO-TV in Seattle reporting on May 26 that King was an Iranian with three Iranian visas in his Canadian passport. No mention was made of Israel. A recent report in the Seattle Times also made no mention of Israel or Mossad. However, Roe has convinced a federal judge to postpone King’s trial, originally scheduled for August 9, because the government is seeking an additional indictment against King and others. Roe says the investigation is complex and involves witnesses in several other countries, including Iran, Denmark, and Canada. But curiusly, Roe did not mention Israel. King fits the profile of an Israeli Unit 269 or Sayeret Matkal agent, a special commando assigned by the IDF to agencies like Mossad to carry out special missions deep within foreign locations.

The King case has all the markings of a renewed Operation Tipped Kettle, with the govermnent dragging its feet on prosecution and the Israeli connection being buried by everyone, save the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. As with the Israeli movers and “art students” detained before and after 9/11, a covert Israeli intelligence operation, involving Iran and U.S. security agencies is being swept under the carpet.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. He has written for several renowned papers and blogs.

Madsen is a regular contributor on Russia Today. He has been a frequent political and national security commentator on Fox News and has also appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and MS-NBC. Madsen has taken on Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity on their television shows. He has been invited to testify as a witness before the US House of Representatives, the UN Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and an terrorism investigation panel of the French government.

As a U.S. Naval Officer, he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation.

Madsen is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Association for Intelligence Officers (AFIO), and the National Press Club

"Protocols of Zion"-- Damage Control

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By Henry Makow Ph,D.


Mankind is slipping into a permanent coma according to a diabolical plan that has been public knowledge for over a century.

When The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" were leaked in the 1890's, Masonic Jewish bankers did effective damage control.

They tricked the gullible goyim into believing it was a "forgery" written by "anti-Semites."

The bankers couldn't exactly admit the truth, that they were enslaving humanity, could they? ( Their whole system is based on deception and secrecy.)

Thus they turned the disaster into an advantage by using it to incite more "anti-Semitism."

In the Protocols, they boast that anti-Semitism is used to "manage [their] lesser brethren." They fund anti-Semites to ensure that all Jews are blamed.

By conflating their demented ambition with Jews in general, they cleverly shifted the blame onto unwitting Jews, using them as Trojan horse, human shield and human sacrifice. Many gentile anti-Semites oblige by blaming all Jews regardless of individual responsibility. (And these critics have great moral pretensions.)

I speak for Jews who oppose this secret plan which was concocted by Cabalist bankers and rabbis centuries ago and revised periodically.

These self-appointed Jewish leaders have put all Jews in jeopardy. They are establishing their world tyranny by stealth -- manipulating world events, re-engineering society and controlling perception. All Jews will be blamed for the disproportionate role many Jews play unless more speak up and are counted.

Many Jews, (especially Zionists/Neo Cons/Communists/socialists/liberals and feminists) are agents for the Illuminati bankers. The bankers tricked them into thinking they were"changing the world" into a socialist utopia. Unfortunately, this utopia is a mask for the tyranny of monopoly capital and Cabalism (i.e. Communism.)

But everyone, not just Jews, is implicated in this diabolical plan. The Protocols' Jewish world government is the British Empire repackaged. British imperialism was always a marriage of English aristocracy and Jewish finance under the rubric of (Cabalist) Freemasonry. American imperialism and Zionism serve the same cause.

Freemasons, organized Jewry, Christian Zionists and most everyone of prominence are collaborators in the Illuminati bankers' fraud. Selling out is a condition of "success." The banksters reward complicity.

The bankers' fraud lies in the fact that our currency is created in the form of debt to them. No one can own currency. It is a medium of exchange like beads or shells. But they are leveraging their fraudulent ownership of currency into ownership of everything and everyone.



THE "HOUSE' VERSION: CONSPIRACY OF THE RICH

The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" repays constant rereading because it eerily described one hundred years ago what is happening today. Most versions are based on a 1920 translation by Victor Marsden, the Morning Post correspondent in Moscow.

I have been comparing it with a typescript version found by Stanley Monteith in the Edward Mandell House papers at Yale University. This one dates from about 1914. Although House was one of the conspirators, the typescript originated with people opposed to Jewish banker domination. This is indicated by sarcastic footnotes. For example, one lists some of the Jews and crypto Jews in power at the time.

I have already described some differences between the Marsden and House versions.

The Protocols were originally written in French and delivered at workshops of the Mizraim Lodge in Paris.

They were translated from French to Russian and then from Russian to English. There's room for error.

For example, the Marsden version says they will create class conflicts, and dupe and co-opt the poor. The House version says the opposite. They will play on the "hatred" of gentile elites for the poor.

Marsden: "Then will the hour strike when not for the sake of attaining the good, not even to win wealth, but solely out of hatred toward the privileged, the lower classes of the goyim will follow our lead against our rivals for power, the intellectuals of the goyim." (page 159, end of Protocol Four)

House: "Then, not for the sake of good, not even for the sake of riches, but only owing to the privileged class hatred towards the lower classes of the GOYS will follow us against the intellectual Goys, our competitors to power." (p.13, end of Protocol Three; Protocol Three in Marsden is entirely missing in House.)

In fact, the bankers co-opted both the rich and poor of the goyim but it is significant that the Protocols actually speak of co-opting the rich, not the poor.

Think about this next time you wonder why Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are pooling their money to vaccinate Africans, and all the foundations, mass media and corporation sing from the same New World Order/ diversity song book.

It seems counter-intuitive that the rich would seek Communism, but Communism is really a method of institutionalizing inequality. Government is the ultimate monopoly and monopoly capitalists want to run it. Thereby they extend their credit monopoly to power and thought itself, i.e. tyranny.

Unlike Marsden, the House version actually uses the word "Communism."

House: We will govern the masses "by means of cunningly constructed theories and phrases, by rules of communism and other traps not understood by the Goys..." (p.15)

Marsden: We will govern the masses "by means of cleverly manipulated theory and verbiage, by regulations of life in common, and all sorts of other quirks in all which the goyim understand nothing..." (p.161)

CONCLUSION

The world is a stage play written by Illuminati bankers and staged by their actors in media, government, education and the social sciences.

The bankers want us to think humanity has achieved a kind of Nirvana, the "end of history," a level of reason and sophistication that renders obsolete the forces that have caused war and suffering.

These historical forces have disguised one satanic force which has emerged triumphant. This is the conquest of mankind by Cabalistic bankers who have a satanic need to own and control everyone. They have bought the world, and the birthright of future generations.

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War against Iran more likely — thanks to Wikileaks

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by Paul Woodward

Ellsberg: ‘These documents are not the Pentagon Papers’

If the release of the Pentagon Papers epitomized the value of government leaks as a means of speaking truth to power, Wikileaks at this point can claim no such distinction.

As if to underline the extent to which the Afghan war logs are making the fog of war more, not less, dense, Katrina vanden Heuvel says: “more than a few commentators — including Daniel Ellsberg himself — have called [the war logs] a 21st-century Pentagon Papers.”

She may understandably have been misled by a headline in The Guardian that read: “Daniel Ellsberg describes Afghan war logs as on a par with ‘Pentagon Papers’.” However, “These documents are not the Pentagon Papers — we still await their equivalent for Afghanistan,” is what Ellsberg unambiguously told the Financial Times.

While Wikileak’s founder, Julian Assange, is no doubt sincere in his hope that these intelligence revelations will expose the futility of war, the fact is, because intelligence is not intelligent it can very easily be used to serve a host of diverging political agendas.

If opponents of the war in Afghanistan now feel better armed, so do proponents of an expanding war in Pakistan. Likewise, those pushing for military action against Iran will welcome a new supply of ammunition served by Wikileaks.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported:

Cooperation among Iran, al Qaeda and other Sunni extremist groups is more extensive than previously known to the public, according to details buried in the tens of thousands of military intelligence documents released by an independent group Sunday.

U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said some of the most explosive information contained in the WikiLeaks documents detail Iran’s alleged ties to the Taliban and al Qaeda, and the facilitating role Tehran may have played in providing arms from sources as varied as North Korea and Algeria.

The officials have for years received reports of Iran smuggling arms to the Taliban. The WikiLeaks documents, however, appear to give new evidence of direct contacts between Iranian officials and the Taliban’s and al Qaeda’s senior leadership. It also outlines Iran’s alleged role in brokering arms deals between North Korea and Pakistan-based militants, particularly militant leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and al Qaeda.

Here we see one of the most bizarre twists in the story: US government sources now using the leaked documents to buttress the current anti-Iran narrative and in the process acting as though the intelligence reports are providing information that hadn’t been accessible inside government until they were leaked!

At the very same time, the State Department’s leading expert on Iran, John Limbert — a genuine source of intelligence and “the most qualified person on the Iran team at State in the three decades I have lived in the United States,” according to Haleh Esfandiari, head of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars — is about to resign.

At Foreign Policy, Barbara Slavin writes:

[I]t’s hard not to view Limbert’s departure as a turning point and yet another missed opportunity in U.S.-Iran relations. A number of players with more skeptical views about the prospect of rapprochement with Tehran — such as White House aide Dennis Ross and nonproliferation experts like Robert Einhorn and Gary Samore — appear to be driving U.S. policy now, and the president himself blames the Iranian government for failing to respond to his outreach.

What could please the attack-Iran lobby more than to see the departure of the most skilled American proponent of engagement and at the same time to be served a prize piece of propaganda by an outfit aligned with the anti-war movement?!

Ellsberg: ‘These documents are not the Pentagon Papers’ by Paul Woodward In an interview with Der Spiegel, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange when asked why he published the Afghan war logs, said: These files are the most comprehensive description of a war to be published during the course of a war — in other words, at a time when they still have a chance of doing some good. They cover more than 90,000 different incidents, together with precise geographical locations. They cover the small and the large. A single body of information, they eclipse all that has been previously said about Afghanistan. They will change our perspective on not only the war in Afghanistan, but on all modern wars. Those are very grand claims which appear to be based more than anything on the sheer quantity of information that has been released. Even so, Assange is probably over-estimating the capacity of the American public to become deeply politically engaged on an issue with which most people lack personal involvement. Comparisons are being made between the war logs and the release of the Pentagon Papers which were leaked to the New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, yet the content of the documents and the contexts in which they appeared are vastly different. The Pentagon Papers revealed a massive level of deception through which US governments had led, by that point, 54,000 Americans to their deaths in Vietnam. “These documents are not the Pentagon Papers — we still await their equivalent for Afghanistan,” Ellsberg told the Financial Times. “But they do add to the strong doubts that most of us have about a war that has cost us more than $300bn so far in which the Taliban only appears to get stronger with each passing year. They reinforce the question: What is the point of this war?” Ellsberg told the Wall Street Journal he had mixed feelings about the release of so many documents: “To put out such a large amount of material is of some risk if you haven’t read it all,” said Ellsberg, reached in Mexico where he was attending a screening of “The Most Dangerous Man in America,” a documentary about his Pentagon Papers ordeal. Because the leaker was taking a risk in releasing the material, Ellsberg concluded it was released quickly and not likely carefully vetted… Ellsberg said he had studied every word of the Pentagon Papers and carefully weighed whether their release would harm anyone. “I had read all of it and made a judgment of the 7,000 papers and concluded they deserved to be out and would not harm any Americans,” he said. However, Ellsberg said, such a volume of material can be noteworthy for what it lacks: in this case, a justification for the U.S. continuing to wage war in Afghanistan.

David Cameron Warns Pakistan

A Thorough, Detailed History Of Zionist Crimes

The Last Bastion of American Morality Is Under Assault

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By Paul Craig Roberts

The morality of the American people now resides, insecurely, in the Presbyterian Church. Every other institution of American society -- the evangelical churches, the bought-and-paid-for American media, both houses of Congress, the executive branch, both political parties, the corporations, the financial sector, the universities -- all support Israel's genocide against the Palestinians. Only the Presbyterians dissent.

The genocide is cloaked behind the propaganda that no Palestinians lived in Palestine until after the Israelis arrived, that all Palestinians are terrorists who want to murder innocent peace-loving Israelis, and that the terrorist Palestinians are armed by the few remaining Muslim governments that so far have escaped becoming American puppet states.

The solution, of course, is for the few remaining independent countries in the Middle East to be brought by force under US and Israeli hegemony.

The Presbyterian Church, as it is the only US organization that is not under the Israel Lobby's suzerainty, is included among the independent institutions that must be brought to heel.

The Presbyterian Church, which alone in America has a moral conscience, has been disturbed for some time by the Israeli/American policy of Palestinian extermination. In violation of international law and under the protection of US diplomacy and America's UN veto, Israel has evicted Palestinians from their homes and villages since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967 and even before. The remaining small parts of the West Bank in which Palestinians still reside have been turned by Israel into ghettos cut off from the rest of Palestine.

The Presbyterians, being meek Christians, have only mild criticisms of Israel, which are packaged together in the church's Middle East Study Committee's report with the Presbyterians' commitment to Israel's continued existence and to "our American Jewish Friends." The Presbyterian report even disavows divestment from Caterpillar, the US company that supplies Israel with the machines that destroy Palestinian homes, thus driving Palestinians from their lands so that zionist settlers can confiscate their properties. It was a Caterpillar bulldozer that killed the American Rachel Corrie who was protesting Israel's destruction of Palestinian homes.

The Presbyterian report expresses concern that "the window of opportunity for an end to the occupation and the viability of a two-state solution is rapidly closing." The Presbyterians fear that violence begets violence, and that the two sides are sliding into wanton willful murder of one another in violation of God's commandments.

The Presbyterian document states: "We do affirm the legitimacy of Israel as a state, but consider the continuing occupation of Palestine (West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem) to be illegitimate, illegal under international law, and an enduring threat to peace in the region. Furthermore, we recognize that any support for that occupation weakens the moral standing of our nation internationally and our security."

For Israel and the vast media and American political apparatus that Israel controls, this was too much. Israel is never guilty of anything. Only Palestinians are guilty. Anyone who criticizes Israel is anti-semitic and aligned with terrorists who want a second Holocaust.

The extreme Zionist Jerusalem Post; the moderate American Jewish newspaper, the Forward, and even a Mormon blog declared war on the Presbyterian Christians.

Israel, of course, denies that there is any illegal occupation of Palestine despite this being the finding of every country, the UN, and even Israel's American protector, the US government. The Jerusalem Post accuses the Presbyterians of expressing "contempt for Israel" attempting "to delegitimize Israel" and justifying "Palestinian terror against the Jewish state."

And there you have it. Any person or organization that is not all apologies for Israel's dispossession of Palestinians from their homes, villages, and lands, any person or organization that does not accept that 5-year old Palestinian children shot down in the streets by Israeli soldiers or zionist settlers were terrorists about to bring down the Israeli state, anyone who does not genuflect before the Israeli line on everything is an anti-semite who wants to renew the Holocaust and exterminate the Jewish people.

The Rabbis in every American community will buttonhole the Presbyterian ministers and ask them to explain why they are anti-semites and beat their wives. The Presbyterian General Assembly, which meets in July, will again be intimidated, as it was previously, and vote down the recommendations in the church's report on the Israeli/Palestinian issue.

The weak forces of morality will again be defeated by the Israelis, and the extermination of the Palestinians will continue.

WikiLeaks, a source of disinfos?

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Is the War Diary being used to justify a war in Pakistan?



Osama bin Laden 'hiding in Pakistan': Admiral Mullen
US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen has supported US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement about the presence of Osama Bin Laden and other top Al-Qaida leadership in Pakistan.


John Young Alex Jones WikiLeaks Cryptome




cryptogon

WikiLeaks Founder, “Constantly Annoyed that People Are Distracted by False Conspiracies Such as 9/11″

People often ask me if I think this source or that source is disinfo…

My response is always: TREAT EVERY SOURCE AS DISINFO.

You’ll avoid disappointment when the thing starts serving up rat poison—which, unfortunately, happens a lot.

I haven’t shared this before, but in early 2008, someone from WikiLeaks wrote to me. This person wondered why I hadn’t mentioned WikiLeaks on Cryptogon. He wondered if maybe I hadn’t heard of it, or had concerns that it was a front of some sort.

I simply wrote back that I was aware of WikiLeaks, and that I was hopeful and skeptical at the same time.

That remains my stance today; on WikiLeaks and every other source.

So, who knows… I’ve read interesting things on WikiLeaks, many of which I have linked to from here. Does that mean that I’m sure it’s not some kind of front or honeypot? Not at all. How could I know for sure, given what’s knowable in the public domain about WikiLeaks?

Julian Assange’s recent comment in the Belfast Telegraph about 9/11, however, may be a more tangible source of concern for me. I know Assange isn’t an idiot, so I see three other possibilities:

1. He is profoundly ignorant of the vast body of material that demonstrates that the 9/11 spectacle was a false flag operation.

2. He’s “picking his battles” and not wanting to have to deal with the inevitable conspiracy theory stigma that could threaten his media access

3. He’s running a limited hangout/honeypot

Of these three options, I doubt that it’s number two.

Also, I’m aware of all the stuff John Young has up over at Cryptome from some anonymous mole on a private WikiLeaks list. Again, who knows.

Vet the data as you would anything else from any source. Use your skills of discernment. For me, the most worrying thing about WikiLeaks is the promotion it receives from the corporate media. Even the trash talking Wired is promoting Wikileaks by constantly mentioning it.

In the end, though, obsessing about disinfo this and disinfo that is generally a waste of time. It’s safe to assume that damn near everything we come across contains disinfo.

There is the issue of stench, however. Sources that say, categorically, that there’s nothing to see here on 9/11 smell really bad to me. As bad as anything can smell. (See my maggot bucket if you think that I don’t know what smells bad.)

We just saw the the WikiLeaks release of the Afghanistan information,, does Assange forget the pretext that was used for the invasion?

9/11 remains the elephant in the room.

Via: Belfast Telegraph:

His obsession with secrecy, both in others and maintaining his own, lends him the air of a conspiracy theorist. Is he one? “I believe in facts about conspiracies,” he says, choosing his words slowly. “Any time people with power plan in secret, they are conducting a conspiracy. So there are conspiracies everywhere. There are also crazed conspiracy theories. It’s important not to confuse these two. Generally, when there’s enough facts about a conspiracy we simply call this news.” What about 9/11? “I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.” What about the Bilderberg conference? “That is vaguely conspiratorial, in a networking sense. We have published their meeting notes.

Wikileaks whistleblower guidelines Julian Assange, the editor of Wikileaks, provides guidelines to whistleblowers in the video below, after speaking at the Centre for Investigative Journalism’s Summer School 2010. Julian is the main architect of the remarkably successful public interest project Wikileaks. This is a web-based platform for whistleblowers that for offers a secure place to publish internal and often secret documents that disclose injustice, corruption and murder, in the public interest. Wikieaks provides something entirely new. It provides a secure, military grade protection programme for whistleblowers which has enabled the safe transmission of important evidence to the public. So far, not one amongst the thousands of submissions in the public interest has been compromised or its author disclosed. It’s fair to say that Wikileaks has produced as many scoops as any major newspaper has produced in their entire lifetime, and in a matter of just four years. The release of the footage from the Apache helicopter attacks on civilians and Reuters journalists, toxic waste dumping by Trafigura, emails on climate change from University of East Anglia, the major Peruvian oil scandal, are just a fraction of what WikiLeaks has been producing and what is yet to come.

Osama bin Laden is dead Here’s 10 flashpoints from the 91,000 documents to get you started. NATO uses a secret "black" unit of special forces to “kill or capture” Taliban leaders without trial NATO has a "black" unit of special forces called Task Force 373. It focuses on more than 2000 senior figures from the Taliban and al-Qaeda named on “Jpel” - the joint prioritised effects list. In some cases, the unit has simply killed them without attempting to capture, along with civilian men, women and children. The Taliban have deadly surface-to-air missiles The war logs show the US military covered up a surface-to-air missile strike by the Taliban that shot down a Chinook helicopter over Helmand. Seven soldiers were killed, including a British military photographer. The strike showed the Taliban had much more sophisticated anti-aircraft capabilities than previously thought. The war logs detail at least 10 near-misses by missiles in four years against coalition aircraft. Under-reporting civilian deaths There are many instances where the war logs seem to point to much higher civilian casualties than reported. One instance in 2008 notes a ground attack by a AC-130 "Spectre" gunship on the village of Azizabad, targeting a Taliban commander. The report said that no civilians had died, yet according to the UN, 90 civilians died, including 60 children. The Taliban were paid to kill Indian police The Hindustan Times claims it’s found intelligence of attacks on the Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7, 2008. They say that Pakistan’s intelligence service – the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) - offered the Taliban $15,000-30,000 to kill Indian contractors in Afghanistan. The Hindustan Times says the war logs confirm the embassy attack was deliberate and carried out on ISI orders. Osama bin Laden is dead One of just a handful of reports mentioning Osama bin Laden. The fact there are so few in a log of 90,000 files has many believing the al-Qaeda leader is in fact dead. An intelligence report from the Afghanistan National Directorate of Security reported in June 2007 that bin Laden had died in a Peshawar hospital. Bin Laden advisor has bought chemical weapons off North Korea The Guardian’s reprint of the log reads suggests bin Laden’s financial advisor Dr Amin flew to North Korea in Decmber 2005, where he “confirmed a deal with the North Korean Government for remote-controlled rockets for use against American and Coalition aircraft". The deal was closed for an “undetermined amount of money”. Bin laden gives away a wife The Guardian reports: “A report in July 2007 suggests Bin Laden is willing and able to exercise the patronage of a great chief. Thus, in Kunduz province, it is reported that an insurgent called Abdullah won distinction and favour for his skill in making remote-controlled IEDs. His reward: An Arab wife presented to him by bin Laden. The US pays Pakistan $1 billion a year to meet with Taliban and organise fights with US soldiers The New York Times claims Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its aid. However, the nature of that aid is controversial – the leaked files suggest that Pakistan allows representatives of its spy service to meet with the Taliban and organise networks of militant groups that fight against US soldiers. Civilian casualty details The vast majority of reporting on the leaked documents concerns the extent of civilian casualties. Such events are known as "blue on white" in military jargon. The Guardian claims the logs reveal 144 “blue on white” incidents, ranging from controversial air strikes, to the deaths of unarmed drivers and accidents involving convoys. Officially, 195 civilians have been killed and 174 wounded. Some are blatant, such as an incident where 15 people were killed or wounded when a bus was machine-gunned for ignoring an order to stop, and an airstrike which killed seven children. Others are incidental, such as this detail of a child run over by a Humvee and the US military actions to make reparations to the family. As Assange says, expect plenty more to follow. He told Der Spiegel, The New York Times and The Guardian that he got a kick out of poking the eye of the powerful. "I enjoy creating systems on a grand scale, and I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable,'' he said. "And I enjoy crushing bastards. So it is enjoyable work.'' The Pentagon says it is still investigating the source of the documents. The military has detained Bradley Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst in Baghdad, for allegedly transmitting classified information. But the latest documents could have come from anyone with a secret-level clearance, a spokesman said http://www.news.com.au/technology/osama-bin-laden-is-dead-giving-away-wives-the-quick-guide-to-the-wikileaks-war-logs/story-e6frfro0-1225897322159?from=public_rss

Biggest leak in intelligence history

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WikiLeaks released over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.


The Afghanistan War Logs

Biggest leak in intelligence history

From US military computers to a cafe in Brussels, how classified papers found their way to online activists

Afghanistan war logs: Secret CIA paramilitaries' role in civilian deaths

Secret CIA units kill deaf mute and other civilians in Afghanistan

Innocent Afghan men, women and children have paid the price of the Americans' rules of engagement

WikiLeaks today released over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.

The Afghan War Diary an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. They include the number of persons internally stated to be killed, wounded, or detained during each action, together with the precise geographical location of each event, and the military units involved and major weapon systems used.

The Afghan War Diary is the most significant archive about the reality of war to have ever been released during the course of a war. The deaths of tens of thousands is normally only a statistic but the archive reveals the locations and the key events behind each most of these deaths. We hope its release will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and provide the raw ingredients necessary to change its course.

Most entries have been written by soldiers and intelligence officers listening to reports radioed in from front line deployments. However the reports also contain related information from Marines intelligence, US Embassies, and reports about corruption and development activity across Afghanistan.

Each report consists of the time and precise geographic location of an event that the US Army considers significant. It includes several additional standardized fields: The broad type of the event (combat, non-combat, propaganda, etc.); the category of the event as classified by US Forces, how many were detained, wounded, and killed from civilian, allied, host nation, and enemy forces; the name of the reporting unit and a number of other fields, the most significant of which is the summary - an English language description of the events that are covered in the report.

The Diary is available on the web and can be viewed in chronological order and by by over 100 categories assigned by the US Forces such as: "escalation of force", "friendly-fire", "development meeting", etc. The reports can also be viewed by our "severity" measure-the total number of people killed, injured or detained. All incidents have been placed onto a map of Afghanistan and can be viewed on Google Earth limited to a particular window of time or place. In this way the unfolding of the last six years of war may be seen.

The material shows that cover-ups start on the ground. When reporting their own activities US Units are inclined to classify civilian kills as insurgent kills, downplay the number of people killed or otherwise make excuses for themselves. The reports, when made about other US Military units are more likely to be truthful, but still down play criticism. Conversely, when reporting on the actions of non-US ISAF forces the reports tend to be frank or critical and when reporting on the Taliban or other rebel groups, bad behavior is described in comprehensive detail. The behavior of the Afghan Army and Afghan authorities are also frequently described.

The reports come from US Army with the exception most Special Forces activities. The reports do not generally cover top-secret operations or European and other ISAF Forces operations. However when a combined operation involving regular Army units occurs, details of Army partners are often revealed. For example a number of bloody operations carried out by Task Force 373, a secret US Special Forces assassination unit, are exposed in the Diary -- including a raid that lead to the death of seven children.

This archive shows the vast range of small tragedies that are almost never reported by the press but which account for the overwhelming majority of deaths and injuries.

We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.

Additional information from our media partners:

• Der Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html
• The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/afghanistan-the-war-logs
• The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html

Afghan War Diary - Reading guide

Browse by Type

air mission (431) counter insurgency (4) counter-insurgency (39) criminal event (480) detainee operations (1208) enemy (13) enemy action (27078) explosive hazard (23082) friendly action (13734) friendly fire (148) non-combat event (7719) other (2752) suspicious incident (208) unknown initiated action (12)

Browse by Category

accident (836) air assault (3) air movement (8) ambush (538) amf-on-ana (2) amnesty (1) ana-on-anp (6) anp training (283) arrest (50) arson (41) arty (77) assassination (48) attack (2283) black list (1) blue-blue (18) blue-green (10) blue-on-white (2) blue-white (6) border ops (11) breaching (2) cache found/cleared (2742) carjacking (33) cas (123) casevac (14) cca (5) checkpoint run (37) close air support (95) convoy (53) cordon/search (80) counter insurgency (8) counter mortar fire (41) counter mortar patrol (7) counter narcotic (6) counter terrorism (1) criminal activity (27) defecting (5) deliberate attack (69) demonstration (237) detain (185) detained (683) detainee release (60) detainee transfer (517) direct fire (16293) downed aircraft (13) drug operation (6) drug vehicle (2) elicitation (1) enemy action (13) equipment failure (81) erw recovered (24) erw/turn-in (58) escalation of force (2271) evidence turn-in/received (50) extortion (5) finance (3) food distribution (4) frago (404) graffiti (1) green-blue (16) green-green (72) green-white (6) hard landing (9) idf counter fire (5) idf interdiction (137) ied ambush (350) ied explosion (7202) ied false (550) ied found/cleared (8581) ied hoax (185) ied suspected (895) ied threat (10) indirect fire (7237) insurgent vehicle (9) interdiction (488) internal security forces (2) kidnapping (110) looting (11) medcap (160) medevac (3301) medevac (local national) (428) medevac (other) (64) medevac patient transfer (162) meeting (1405) meeting - development (988) meeting - security (753) mine found/cleared (396) mine strike (321) movement to contact (4) mugging (1) murder (100) narcotics (1) natural disaster (55) nbc (1) negligent discharge (19) none selected (2) other (4693) other (hostile action) (418) other defensive (30) other offensive (132) patrol (365) planned event (404) poisoning (1) police actions (24) police internal (3) premature detonation (259) project closeout (81) project start (88) propaganda (100) psyop (190) psyop (tv/radio) (2) psyop (written) (4) qa/qc project (400) raid (44) recon (33) reconnaissance (169) recruitment (willing) (1) refugees (12) released (110) repetitive activities (8) reported location (1) resupply (7) rpg (76) sabotage (6) safire (1697) search and attack (7) sectarian violence (30) security breach (1) sermon (5) show of force (2) small unit actions (32) smuggling (23) sniper ops (154) snow and ice removal (49) supporting aif (4) supporting cf (15) surrendering (4) surveillance (369) tcp (3) tests of security (22) theft (40) threat (1) transfer (399) tribal (7) tribal feud (12) turn in (840) uav (16) unexploded ordnance (2770) unknown explosion (156) vandalism (11) vehicle interdiction (11) vetcap (13) voge (29)

Browse by Region

none selected (19) rc capital (3191) rc east (38003) rc north (2143) rc south (30234) rc west (2934) unknown (359)

Browse by Affiliation

NATO (1342) enemy (50887) friend (13882) neutral (10471) unknown (1671)

Browse by Date

2004-01 (138) 2004-02 (101) 2004-03 (105) 2004-04 (89) 2004-05 (194) 2004-06 (175) 2004-07 (189) 2004-08 (191) 2004-09 (192) 2004-10 (232) 2004-11 (203) 2004-12 (178) 2005-01 (136) 2005-02 (143) 2005-03 (201) 2005-04 (221) 2005-05 (387) 2005-06 (432) 2005-07 (451) 2005-08 (435) 2005-09 (558) 2005-10 (413) 2005-11 (279) 2005-12 (314) 2006-01 (305) 2006-02 (403) 2006-03 (494) 2006-04 (713) 2006-05 (700) 2006-06 (663) 2006-07 (759) 2006-08 (936) 2006-09 (1050) 2006-10 (1248) 2006-11 (1145) 2006-12 (1020) 2007-01 (1416) 2007-02 (1251) 2007-03 (1263) 2007-04 (1514) 2007-05 (1777) 2007-06 (1788) 2007-07 (1833) 2007-08 (1784) 2007-09 (1902) 2007-10 (1694) 2007-11 (1536) 2007-12 (1362) 2008-01 (1222) 2008-02 (1040) 2008-03 (1230) 2008-04 (864) 2008-05 (885) 2008-06 (869) 2008-07 (930) 2008-08 (1244) 2008-09 (1076) 2008-10 (1529) 2008-11 (1676) 2008-12 (1418) 2009-01 (1290) 2009-02 (1164) 2009-03 (1453) 2009-04 (1436) 2009-05 (2004) 2009-06 (2429) 2009-07 (3078) 2009-08 (3645) 2009-09 (3123) 2009-10 (3282) 2009-11 (2938) 2009-12 (2573)

Browse by Severity

Read the Guardian's full war logs investigation

WikiLeaks Has Not Released the Complete Archive to the Public

Text From a Selection of the Secret Dispatches

UPDATE: WikiLeaks: Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010 :

Summary

25th July 2010 5:00 PM EST WikiLeaks has released a document set called the Afghan War Diary (AWD), an extraordinary compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010.

The reports, while written by soldiers and intelligence officers mainly describing lethal military actions involving the United States military, also include intelligence information, reports of meetings with political figures, and related detail.

The document collection will shortly be available on a dedicated webpage.

The reports cover most units from the US Army with the exception of most US Special Forces’ activities. The reports do not generally cover top-secret operations or European and other ISAF Forces operations.

We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from the total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.

The data is provided in CSV and SQL formats, sorted by months, and also was rendered into KML mapping data.

• All entries, CSV format
• All entries, SQL format
• All entries, KML format
• All NATO entries, KML format
• Entries by month, KML format
• Entries with scale filter, KML format

—End Update—

The War Logs: Reaction to Disclosure of Military Documents on Afghan War

The At War blog will be providing coverage of the reaction to the release of an archive of classified military documents described below that paints a grim portrait of the war in Afghanistan. The New York Times had access to the documents and published a series of reports that are gathered here.

A note to readers describes The Times’s process of reviewing the documents and deciding what to publish. Editors and reporters who worked on the articles will be answering questions about the material. E-mail your questions to askthetimes@nytimes.com and post a comment below.

1:21 a.m. |A New Approach for WikiLeaks

The Washington Post notes how WikiLeaks’ decision to let The New York Times and two European news outlets have access to the classified reports “reflects the growing strength and sophistication of the small nonprofit Web site.”

9:56 p.m. |Kerry Says ‘Serious Questions’ Raised by Documents

Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the documents released by WikiLeaks raised serious issues about the U.S.’s handling of the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“However illegally these documents came to light, they raise serious questions about the reality of America’s policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan. Those policies are at a critical stage and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent.”

6:46 p.m. |White House Offers Advice to Reporters

The White House e-mailed the following statement with the subject line “Thoughts on Wikileaks” to reporters on Sunday evening. In the memo, the White House advised journalists on possible reporting tacks to take on the documents and pointed them to an excerpt from The Guardian newspaper’s report:

You all should have received a written statement from General Jones [see update below] about the wikileaks release. Please let me know if you didn’t.

A few thoughts about these stories on background:

1) I don’t think anyone who follows this issue will find it surprising that there are concerns about ISI and safe havens in Pakistan. In fact, we’ve said as much repeatedly and on the record. Attached please find a document with some relevant quotes from senior USG officials.

2) The period of time covered in these documents (January 2004-December 2009) is before the President announced his new strategy. Some of the disconcerting things reported are exactly why the President ordered a three month policy review and a change in strategy.

3) Note the interesting graphs (pasted below) from the Guardian’s wikileaks story. I think they help put these documents in context.

4) As you report on this issue, it’s worth noting that wikileaks is not an objective news outlet but rather an organization that opposes US policy in Afghanistan.

From the Guardian:

But for all their eye-popping details, the intelligence files, which are mostly collated by junior officers relying on informants and Afghan officials, fail to provide a convincing smoking gun for ISI complicity. Most of the reports are vague, filled with incongruent detail, or crudely fabricated. The same characters – famous Taliban commanders, well-known ISI officials – and scenarios repeatedly pop up. And few of the events predicted in the reports subsequently occurred.

A retired senior American officer said ground-level reports were considered to be a mixture of “rumours, bullshit and second-hand information” and were weeded out as they passed up the chain of command. “As someone who had to sift through thousands of these reports, I can say that the chances of finding any real information are pretty slim,” said the officer, who has years of experience in the region.

If anything, the jumble of allegations highlights the perils of collecting accurate intelligence in a complex arena where all sides have an interest in distorting the truth.

The memo also provided excerpts of comments that President Obama has made on issues addressed in the documents. More