Afghan War Leaks Expose Costly, Deceitful March of Folly
by Ray McGovern
The brutality and fecklessness of the US-led war in Afghanistan have been laid bare in an indisputable way just days before the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on whether to throw $33.5 billion more into the Afghan quagmire, when that money is badly needed at home.
On Sunday, the web site WikiLeaks posted 75,000 reports written mostly by US forces in Afghanistan during a six-year period from January 2004 to December 2009. The authenticity of the material – published under the title “Afghan War Diary” – is not in doubt.
The New York Times, which received an embargoed version of the documents from WikiLeaks , devoted six pages of its Monday editions to several articles on the disclosures, which reveal how the Afghan War slid into its current morass while the Bush administration concentrated US military efforts on Iraq.
WikiLeaks also gave advanced copies to the British newspaper The Guardian and the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, thus, guaranteeing that the US Fawning Corporate Media could not ignore these classified cables the way it did five years ago with the “Downing Street Memo,” a leaked British document which described how intelligence was “fixed” around President George W. Bush’s determination to invade Iraq.
The Washington Post also led its Monday editions with a lengthy article about the WikiLeaks’ disclosure of the Afghan war reports.
Still, it remains to be seen whether the new evidence of a foundering war in Afghanistan will lead to a public groundswell of opposition to expending more billions of dollars there when the money is so critically needed to help people to keep their jobs, their homes and their personal dignity in the United States.
But there may be new hope that the House of Representatives will find the collective courage to deny further funding for feckless bloodshed in Afghanistan that seems more designed to protect political flanks in Washington than the military perimeters of US bases over there.
Assange on Pentagon Papers
WikiLeaks’ leader Julian Assange compared the release of the “Afghan War Diary” to Daniel Ellsberg’s release in 1971 of the Pentagon Papers. Those classified documents revealed the duplicitous arguments used to justify the Vietnam War and played an important role in eventually getting Congress to cut off funding.
Ellsberg’s courageous act was the subject of a recent Oscar-nominated documentary, entitled “The Most Dangerous Man in America,” named after one of the less profane sobriquets thrown Ellsberg’s way by then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger.
I imagine Dan is happy at this point to cede that particular honorific to the WikiLeaks’ leaker, who is suspected of being Pfc. Bradley Manning, a young intelligence specialist in Iraq who was recently detained and charged with leaking classified material to WikiLeaks.
An earlier WikiLeaks’ disclosure – also reportedly from Manning – revealed video of a US helicopter crew cavalierly gunning down about a dozen Iraqi men, including two Reuters journalists, as they walked along a Baghdad street.
WikiLeaks declined to say whether Manning was the source of the material. However, possibly to counter accusations that the leaker (allegedly Manning) acted recklessly in releasing thousands of secret military records, WikiLeaks said it was still withholding 15,000 reports “as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source.”
After Ellsberg was identified as the Pentagon Papers leaker in 1971, he was indicted and faced a long prison sentence if convicted. However, a federal judge threw out the charges following disclosures of the Nixon administration’s own abuses, such as a break-in at the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.
In public speeches over the past several years, Ellsberg has been vigorously pressing for someone to do what he did, this time on the misbegotten wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ellsberg also has praised Assange for providing a means for the documents to reach the public.
Ellsberg and other members of The Truth-Telling Coalition established on September 9, 2004, have been appealing to government officials who encounter “deception and cover-up” on vital issues to opt for “unauthorized truth telling.” (At the end of this story, see full text of the group’s letter, which I signed.)
Emphasizing that “citizens cannot make informed choices if they do not have the facts,” the Truth-Telling Coalition challenged officials to give primary allegiance to the Constitution and noted the readiness of groups like the ACLU and The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to offer advice and support.
What’s New?
In a taped interview, Assange noted in his understated way that, with the Internet, the “situation is markedly different” from Pentagon Papers’ days. “More material can be pushed to bigger audiences and much sooner.”
Also, the flow of information can evade the obstructions of traditional news gatekeepers who failed so miserably to inform the American people about the Bush administration’s deceptions before the Iraq war.
People all over the world can get “the whole wad at once” and put the various reports into context, which “is not something that has previously occurred; that is something that can only be brought about as a result of the Internet,” Assange said.
However, Assange also recognized the value of involving the traditional news media to ensure that the reports got maximum attention. So, he took a page from Ellsberg’s experience by creating some competitive pressure among major news outlets, giving the 75,000 reports to the New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel. Beginning Sunday afternoon, all three posted articles about the huge dump of information.
Assange noted that the classified material includes many heart-rending incidents that fit into the mosaic of a larger human catastrophe. These include one depicted in Der Spiegel’s reportage of accidental killings on June 17, 2007, when US Special Forces fired five rockets at a Koran school in which a prominent al-Qaeda functionary was believed to be hiding. When the smoke cleared, the Special Forces found no terrorist, but rather six dead children in the rubble of the school and another who died shortly after.
Role of Pakistan
Perhaps the most explosive revelations disclose the double game being played by the Pakistani directorate for Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). Der Spiegel reported: “The documents clearly show that this Pakistani intelligence agency is the most important accomplice the Taliban has outside of Afghanistan.”
The documents also show ISI envoys not only are present when insurgent commanders hold war councils, but also give specific orders to carry out assassinations – including, according to one report, an attempt on the life of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in August 2008.
Former Pakistani intelligence chief, Gen. Hamid Gul, is depicted as an important source of aid to the Taliban and even, in another report, as a “leader” of the insurgents. The reports show Gul ordering suicide attacks and describe him as one of the most important suppliers of weaponry to the Taliban.
Though the Pakistani government has angrily denied US government complaints about Gul and the ISI regarding secret ties to the Taliban and even to al-Qaeda, the new evidence must raise questions about what the Pakistanis have been doing with the billions of dollars that Washington has given them.
Two Ex-Generals Got It Right
We have another patriotic truth-teller to thank for leaking the texts of cables that Ambassador (and former Lt. Gen.) Karl Eikenberry sent to Washington on November 6 and 9, 2009, several weeks before President Barack Obama made his fateful decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
In a somewhat condescending tone, Eikenberry described the request from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then commander of allied forces in Afghanistan, for more troops as “logical and compelling within his narrow mandate to define the needs” of the military campaign.
But then Eikenberry warned repeatedly about “unaddressed variables” like militants’ “sanctuaries” in Pakistan. For example, the ambassador wrote:
“More troops won’t end the insurgency as long as Pakistan sanctuaries remain … and Pakistan views its strategic interests as best served by a weak neighbor.”
In Eikenberry’s final try at informing the White House discussion (in his cable of November 9), the ambassador warned pointedly of the risk that “we will become more deeply engaged here with no way to extricate ourselves.”
At the time, it seemed that Eikenberry’s message was getting through to the White House. On November 7, Der Spiegel published an interview with National Security Adviser (former Marine Gen.) James Jones, who was asked whether he agreed with General McChrystal that a substantial troop increase was needed. Jones replied:
“Generals always ask for more troops; I believe we will not solve the problem with more troops alone. You can keep on putting troops in and you could have 200,000 troops there and Afghanistan will swallow them up as it has done in the past.”
However, McChrystal and his boss, then-Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus, pressed the case for more troops, a position that had strong support from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, former Vice President Dick Cheney, key hawks in Congress and Washington’s neoconservative-dominated opinion circles.
After months of internal debate, President Obama finally caved in and gave McChrystal nearly all the troops that he had requested. (McChrystal has since been replaced by Petraeus as commander of forces in Afghanistan.)
Despite the fact that the WikiLeaks disclosures offer fresh support for the doubters on the Afghan war escalation, Jones acted as the good soldier on Sunday, decrying the unauthorized release of classified information, calling WikiLeaks “irresponsible.”
Jones also lectured the Pakistanis:
“Pakistan’s military and intelligence services must continue their strategic shift against insurgent groups. The balance must shift decisively against al-Qaeda and its extremist allies. US support for Pakistan will continue to be focused on building Pakistani capacity to root out violent extremist groups.”
(Note: O.K. he’s a general. But the grammatical mood is just a shade short of imperative. And the tone is imperial/colonial through and through. I’ll bet the Pakistanis are as much swayed by that approach as they have been by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s admonitions not to be concerned about India – just terrorists.)
And regarding “progress” in Afghanistan? Jones added, “the US and its allies have scored several significant blows against the insurgency.”
However, that’s not the positive spin that Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen was offering just four weeks ago. On his way to Kabul, again, Mullen spoke of “recent setbacks in the Afghan campaign.”
“We underestimated some of the challenges” in Marja, the rural area of Helmand province that was cleared in March by US Marines, only to have Taliban fighters return. “They’re coming back at night; the intimidation is still there,” Mullen said.
Of the much more ambitious (and repeatedly delayed) campaign to stabilize the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, Mullen said: “It’s going to take until the end of the year to know where we are there.”
Would you say yes to an additional $33.5 billion for this fool’s errand?
***
Text of 2004 Appeal from The Truth-Telling Coalition follows:
September 9, 2004
APPEAL TO: Current Government Officials
FROM: The Truth-Telling Coalition
It is time for unauthorized truth telling.
Citizens cannot make informed choices if they do not have the facts – for example, the facts that have been wrongly concealed about the ongoing war in Iraq: the real reasons behind it, the prospective costs in blood and treasure and the setback it has dealt to efforts to stem terrorism. Administration deception and cover-up on these vital matters has so far been all too successful in misleading the public.
Many Americans are too young to remember Vietnam. Then, as now, senior government officials did not tell the American people the truth. Now, as then, insiders who know better have kept their silence, as the country was misled into the most serious foreign policy disaster since Vietnam.
Some of you have documentation of wrongly concealed facts and analyses that – if brought to light – would impact heavily on public debate regarding crucial matters of national security, both foreign and domestic. We urge you to provide that information now, both to Congress and, through the media, to the public.
Thanks to our First Amendment, there is in America no broad Officials Secrets Act, nor even a statutory basis for the classification system. Only very rarely would it be appropriate to reveal information of the three types whose disclosure has been expressly criminalized by Congress: communications intelligence, nuclear data and the identity of US intelligence operatives. However, this administration has stretched existing criminal laws to cover other disclosures in ways never contemplated by Congress.
There is a growing network of support for whistleblowers. In particular, for anyone who wishes to know the legal implications of disclosures they may be contemplating, the ACLU stands ready to provide pro bono legal counsel, with lawyer-client privilege. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) will offer advice on whistle blowing, dissemination and relations with the media.
Needless to say, any unauthorized disclosure that exposes your superiors to embarrassment entails personal risk. Should you be identified as the source, the price could be considerable, including loss of career and possibly even prosecution. Some of us know from experience how difficult it is to countenance such costs. But continued silence brings an even more terrible cost, as our leaders persist in a disastrous course and young Americans come home in coffins or with missing limbs.
This is precisely what happened at this comparable stage in the Vietnam War. Some of us live with profound regret that we did not at that point expose the administration’s dishonesty and perhaps prevent the needless slaughter of 50,000 more American troops and some 2 to 3 million Vietnamese over the next ten years. We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public and the young men and women put in harm’s way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties.
A hundred forty thousand young Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq for dubious purpose. Our country has urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials. Truth telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.
SIGNATORIES
Appeal from the Truth-Telling Coalition
Edward Costello, Former Special Agent (Counterintelligence), Federal Bureau of Investigation
Sibel Edmonds, Former Language Specialist, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Daniel Ellsberg, Former official, US Departments of Defense and State
John D. Heinberg, Former Economist, Employment and Training Administration, US Department of Labor
Larry C. Johnson, Former Deputy Director for Anti-Terrorism Assistance, Transportation Security and Special Operations, Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counter Terrorism
Lt. Col Karen Kwiatowski, USAF (ret.), who served in the Pentagon’s Office of Near East Planning
John Brady Kiesling, Former Political Counselor, US Embassy, Athens, Department of State
David MacMichael, Former Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council, Central Intelligence Agency
Ray McGovern, Former Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency
Philip G. Vargas, Ph.D., J.D., Dir. Privacy & Confidentiality Study, Commission on Federal Paperwork (Author/Director: “The Vargas Report on Government Secrecy” — CENSORED)
Ann Wright, Retired US Army Reserve Colonel and US Foreign Service Officer
This article appeared first on Consortiumnews.com.
9 Comments
Leave a Response
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Afghanistan Funding: Time to Make a Fuss
Tuesday 27 July 2010
by: Maya Schenwar, Executive Director, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Sgt. Mark Fayloga / U.S. Marine Corps, steve.grosbois)
In a moving statement before Congress in February 2009, President Obama made a promise. “For seven years, we have been a nation at war,” he said. “No longer will we hide its price.”
Obama was referring to the Bush administration’s devious practice of using supplemental spending bills – emergency cash transfusions that are separated from the annual federal budget – to funnel off money for war. This parliamentary trick masks the yearly cost of war, which would otherwise appear as one massive lump sum, by breaking it up into bite-size, deceptively digestible chunks.
Supplementals are intended for emergencies in which large amounts of money are suddenly needed: a huge-scale natural disaster, an unexpected war of defense, a Mars attack. The Bush administration used a supplemental to fund the early stages of the war in Afghanistan, then kept doing it … and doing it and doing it. Throughout his tenure, Bush sent 17 war supplementals to Congress, and they all passed with flying (bipartisan) colors.
As someone who’d spent the previous four years chronicling Bush’s slimy war funding ways, I was particularly relieved by Obama’s words in 2009. Maybe, I thought, when Congress and the American people are confronted with that giant, ugly price tag for war hanging from the frail skeleton of our federal budget at the start of the year, reality will hit and plans to bring the troops home – for real – will become more than just a progressive talking point floating in the legislative ether.
However, less than two months after his bold pronouncement, the president slipped in a request for $76 billion in off-the-books war funds. He helped ease the sting of this hypocrisy slightly by promising that the ol’ supplemental shortcut would never happen again.
“We must break that recent tradition and include future military costs in the regular budget so that we have an honest, more accurate and fiscally responsible estimate of federal spending,” he wrote in a letter to Congress.
But 16 months later, the tradition hasn’t been broken. It’s been broken in.
Obama’s latest supplemental spending request, which would sign away $33 billion more for Afghanistan and Iraq, is hovering on the brink of passage. Those billions would be heaped on top of the $159.3 billion that Congress approved (with little fuss) for the wars in May.
Now, if ever, Congress should be fussing – and so should the rest of us. The “Afghan War Diary” released by WikiLeaks Sunday night confirms what we’ve known for years: we’re mired in a war that is failing more and more by the day, a war of hopeless destruction and pointless death. Alliances are ever-muddling, corruption is status quo. It’s clear that, despite our gracious imperial assistance, democracy won’t be flowering out from the graveyard of empires anytime soon.
Going into this week’s vote on the supplemental, the House has particular reason to fuss. Last week, the Senate stripped the war funding bill of most of its cheerier components: domestic economy boosters like funds for teacher jobs, assistance for youth summer job programs and aid for needy families. In the interest of passing a “clean bill,” Republicans and Republican-minded “Democrats” have turned the supplemental into a pure, untainted bad idea.
Do you like this? Click here to get Truthout stories sent to your inbox every day – free.
This round of supplemental decision making is a rough scene. Obama has settled into his predecessor’s war funding routine. Congress members haven’t kicked the nasty habit of smashing piggy banks every time war funding is running low. And activist groups – the same ones that rallied around this issue with fervor just two years ago – haven’t been shouting nearly as loud.
So, what now?
Just because Obama has gotten comfy with the idea of endless funds for war doesn’t mean that Congress and the rest of us need to mirror that inertia.
Sometimes it’s a time to compromise, sometimes, a time to ask nicely. Now it is the Time to Fuss.
This week’s House debate on the supplemental could be an exercise in depressive apathy, with the blessed Dennis Kuciniches of the chamber calling passionately (but practically solitarily) for withdrawal from the War of Error. But, in the wake of the WikiLeaks release and the Senate job-funding massacre, not to mention the wars’ diminishing public approval ratings, this debate could take a creative turn.
This supplemental vote could mark a turning point. It could present a real opportunity to consider and discuss the on-the-ground implications of these $33 billion dollars, piled atop the $159 billion, weighing down on the more than a trillion dollars already exhausted by almost ten years of hubris and senseless violence.
A true dialog in Congress about where this money is going is long overdue. For the past 18 war supplementals, much of Congress has bent over backwards to justify the “emergency” nature of the spending, the standard line being a refusal to “abandon the troops.” However, as numerous Congressional Research Service reports and Truthout analyses have shown, the troops will get their paychecks – and their body armor – even if a supplemental never passes again. The president can invoke the Feed and Forage Act and draw funds from the Treasury if the mess hall cupboards (or the payroll bank) ever go bare.
If Congress members would look past that “emergency” logic, they’d see the supplemental for what it is: simply another round of fuel for the engine of ongoing war. They’d also recognize their own power to cut the tank short.
Congress’s “power of the purse” is its No. 1 check on executive blunders, especially on enormous, deadly, long-lasting blunders like the Vietnam War, which Congress ended by halting military funding for South Vietnam.
The war in Afghanistan has already surpassed Vietnam in length. It’s time for Congress to take a hint from history, to stop loosening the purse strings and start fussing – starting with this week’s supplemental debate.
WikiLeaks: Time to Celebrate, Time to Mourn
Tuesday 27 July 2010
by: Jeff Cohen, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Staff Sgt. Andrew Smith / DVIDSHUB, Guillaume Brialon)
It’s time to celebrate.
It’s a big win for Internet-based, indie media that WikiLeaks.org posted its “Afghan War Diary,” based on 90,000 leaked US military records detailing a failing war in which US and allied forces have repeatedly killed innocent civilians. This on-the-ground material is vaster than the Daniel Ellsberg-leaked Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War and was much faster in reaching the public.
Thanks to the Internet and new technologies, it’s easier than ever for a whistleblower to anonymously leak documents exposing official abuses and deception, easier to copy and disseminate vast quantities of material and easier for journalists and citizens to cull through all the data.
I spent hours with Ellsberg this weekend at the Progressive Democrats meeting in Cleveland, where he spoke after a screening of the brilliant documentary, “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.”
In 1971, it was Henry Kissinger who called Ellsberg “the most dangerous man in America.” The movie shows how Ellsberg (aided at times by his own kids and pal Tony Russo) laboriously copied 7,000 pages of classified high-level documents – which exposed that every president from Truman to Johnson had publicly lied about Vietnam. It took many months before a newspaper published the documents, and much longer before they all were gathered in a book.
Today, the “most dangerous man in the world” may be Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. At least that’s how he’s seen by the various governments that have threatened to prosecute him for revealing their secrets. But as a stateless and officeless news organization operating in cyberspace, WikiLeaks is almost untouchable.
Click here to sign up for Truthout’s FREE daily email updates.
Throughout this decade of war, Ellsberg has been an evangelist beseeching government employees to engage in leaking and “unauthorized truth telling.” His prayers have now been partially answered – with Assange boasting that the 2004-2009 Afghan war logs constitute “the most comprehensive description of a war to have ever been published during the course of a war.”
The Internet has changed the game since the Pentagon Papers, says Assange: “More material can be pushed to bigger audiences, and much sooner.”
If Ellsberg is the most important whistleblower in US history, Internet activist Assange is probably the most important aider and abetter of whistleblowers – using technology that Ellsberg couldn’t have imagined as he labored over his now ancient Xerox machine.
Launched less than four years ago with a focus on helping Chinese dissidents, the donation-supported WikiLeaks has continuously posted material embarrassing to business and governments. In April, WikiLeaks posted horrific video of a 2007 US Apache gunship attack in Baghdad that killed a dozen civilians, including two Reuters journalists.
The video leak led to the jailing of 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning – suspected now in the Afghan leak. To its credit, WikiLeaks is raising money for Manning’s defense.
This is also a time to mourn.
Because some things don’t seem to change – like endless war, based on deceit.
Nearly 40 years after the Pentagon Papers were leaked by Democratic military analyst Ellsberg, a Democratic White House seems bent on public deception and cheerleading on behalf of an immoral war that can’t be won.
Team Obama decided to escalate the Afghanistan folly, knowing all that the public now has access to thanks to WikiLeaks – such as NATO killing of so many civilians (“blue on white” events); Task Force 373, a “black” special forces unit that sometimes kills kids or Afghan allies as it hunts down insurgents; widespread Afghan animosity toward US forces; allied troops firing on each other (“blue on blue” incidents); a steady increase in Taliban attacks.
All the color-coded military jargon can’t obscure the reality that dishonesty often infects the original incident reports or intervenes soon after, before any public statements are issued. Remember the lies about Pat Tillman’s death.
From Vietnam through Afghanistan, deceiving the public has been the government’s knee-jerk response. The Ellsberg documentary shows US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara going before TV cameras and boldly lying about all the military progress in Vietnam – just minutes after McNamara had told Ellsberg privately that he agreed there’d been no progress.
When Ellsberg leaked the papers, the Nixon White House prosecuted him for espionage and burglarized his psychiatrist’s office searching for dirt – after failing in court to prevent newspapers from publishing the papers.
The Obama White House didn’t try to stop The New York Times from publishing the Afghan logs (hopeless since WikiLeaks had also provided them to foreign publications – Germany’s Der Spiegel and the British Guardian, whose initial coverage focused much more on civilian casualties than did the Times.)
But the Obama administration denounced WikiLeaks as “irresponsible” and nonobjective – and argued that the president had announced “a new strategy” for Afghanistan last December “precisely because of the grave situation that had developed over several years.” The “new strategy” claim is hardly more credible than Nixon’s claim in 1968 that he had a plan to end the Vietnam War.
Asked by Der Speigel whether he, following in Ellsberg’s footsteps, was “today’s most dangerous man,” Assange responded, “The most dangerous men are those who are in charge of war. And they need to be stopped.”
Obama recently asked Congress for $33 billion more to pay for his 30,000 increase in US troops to Afghanistan. That vote could happen any day.
Will they be stopped?
Defense News: War Supplemental Not Needed to Fund Troops
Tuesday 27 July 2010
by: Robert Naiman, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
According to a plausible AP report last Thursday, heavy political pressure was expected on the House Democratic leadership this week to approve a war supplemental for Afghanistan that contains no money to avoid impending layoffs of schoolteachers and other public employees, nor any kind timetable for military drawdown from Afghanistan. No doubt, many Republicans who support the endless and pointless war and who oppose spending to avoid layoffs of teachers and other public employees and to boost the domestic economy might be sorely tempted to try to bully House Democrats into quickly approving the war money by accusing them of “not supporting the troops” if they refuse to approve the money this week, trying to imply that if the war supplemental is not approved this week, pay or supplies for the troops might be endangered.
But this claim has now been objectively refuted by Obama administration officials. If the war supplemental is not approved this week, the troops will still be paid and the troops will still be fully supplied. There is no “emergency” requiring action this week; there is plenty of time for the House Democratic leadership to insist on provisions in the war supplemental different from those preferred by the Senate, including money for teachers and some kind of timetable for military drawdown in Afghanistan.
Defense News reports:
[Army Undersecretary Joseph] Westphal said that if the Army doesn’t get the supplemental money soon, Army operations and maintenance accounts will begin to run dry in mid-August. Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq won’t be affected, he said, but training, equipment maintenance and other activity on bases in the United States could be curtailed, he said.
[...]
Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., asked, “Are we really looking at not paying” troops who are fighting the wars?” Westphal assured him that soldiers will get paid. “What we’re concerned about is civilians.”
Navy Undersecretary Robert] Work and [Air Force Undersecretary Erin] Conaton said that Navy and Air Force uniformed personnel might, indeed, encounter pay problems late in September.
That sounds scary, but it’s not likely. Legislation passed 150 years ago ensures that troops won’t go unpaid. The Feed and Forage Act of 1861 allows the government to pay for essential national security expenses, including pay for troops, even without an appropriation passed by Congress. [Emphasis added.]
Under current law, the government can continue to pay for “essential national security expenses, including pay for troops” without a Congressional appropriation. Furthermore, we are informed, some uniformed personnel “might” encounter pay problems “late in September.” Even if Congress leaves town this week without passing the war supplemental, Congress is coming back in early September, in plenty of time to make sure that no uniformed personnel “encounter pay problems.”
The same Defense News article says that the Navy “might” have to furlough some civilian employees in mid-August if the war supplemental is not passed. While I would not wish an involuntary furlough on any civilian employees of the Navy in mid-August, the mere possibility that this might take place does not constitute a national emergency that should cut off debate on the war supplemental. Certainly, any civilian employees of the Navy who might face a temporary furlough in mid-August are in a much better position to make adjustments than the nation’s unemployed who had to wait for Congress to extend unemployment benefits, thanks to the obstruction of Senate Republicans.
Since there is no emergency, there is no reason for House Democrats to get rolled by Senate Republicans without a fight. Existential issues are at stake about the war and about our national priorities. Is the indefinite pursuit of the war in the interest of the majority of Americans? Is it more important than saving the jobs of schoolteachers and other public employees?
WikiLeaks has just released a trove of information about the war in Afghanistan. Congress and the American people need time to digest this information before Congress gives up its key leverage on the administration until the next funding request.
Reporting on the trove of documents, The New York Times leads with:
A six-year archive of classified military documents made public on Sunday offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal.
This is an important and damning claim. We need time to evaluate it. If it is true that the administration has misled us about how grim the situation is in Afghanistan, then the July 1 vote in the House on the McGovern-Obey-Jones amendment requiring a timetable for military withdrawal – which three-fifths of House Democrats supported – took place in the context of a misleading official portrayal. Congress and the American people have the right and responsibility to digest this information before Congress passes the war supplemental.
According to the web site icasualties.org, which tracks the deaths of US soldiers in Afghanistan, by the end of this week, we will likely have passed a key milestone: the point at which the number of US soldiers who have died in Afghanistan under President Obama has exceeded the number of US soldiers who died in Afghanistan under President Bush. Congress should use this opportunity to re-evaluate what we are doing and try to force a change in course.
House Democrats have distinct interests from the Senate and the White House. Every one of them has to run for re-election in November. It’s time for them to stand up. You can urge your representative to oppose a jobless and timetable-free war supplemental by using Friends Committee on National Legislation’s toll free number: 1-888-493-5443.
Congress’ Response to WikiLeaks: Shoot the Messenger
Tuesday 27 July 2010
by: Gail Russell Chaddock | The Christian Science Monitor | Report
Washington – Despite the release of some 92,000 classified documents that cast doubt on the success of the US war effort in Afghanistan, all but the staunchest antiwar members of Congress focused their most scathing words Monday on WikiLeaks, the website that published the material.
The controversy is far from over – it remains unclear how Americans might react to revelations about apparent indiscriminate killing of Afghan civilians and potential double-dealing by Pakistan. But Monday’s comments from Congress suggest that, for now, Capitol Hill is unlikely to use the WikiLeaks revelations to try to recast US involvement in Afghanistan.
Taking a cue from the Obama White House, some top Democrats dubbed the decision to leak the documents “irresponsible” and a threat to American lives. Others called on the Pentagon to launch a major investigation and bring leakers to account.
“This was a clear and pronounced effort to secure several years’ worth of communications, e-mails, and reports, and without any approval put it out to the world,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Republicans were, if anything, more critical of WikiLeaks.
House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R) of Indiana said that publication of the documents by news organizations was indefensible. “The fact that thousands of classified documents were leaked in a clear violation of law is an outrage,” he said in a briefing with reporters on Monday.
But he added that he did not believe that the documents would change the war debate. “My constituents back in Indiana remember who attacked us on 9/11,” he said.
Old News?
As for new reports that the Pakistan intelligence services were helping the Taliban, he said: “These references in classified documents don’t belong in the public domain, but are not consistent with any briefing I’ve received,” he said, citing a January visit to the region.
Unlike the leaked Pentagon Papers that fired up a congressional debate on the war in Vietnam in 1971, lawmakers say that these documents include no bombshell revelations. Reports that Taliban insurgents were gaining ground and working with Pakistani intelligence were already part of the congressional debate, although reports that the Taliban have used heat-seeking, surface-to-air missiles against US helicopters set off alarms.
“The emerging picture from this leak adds up to little more than what we knew already – that the war in Afghanistan was deteriorating over the past several years, and that we were not winning,” said Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
In fact, the dispiriting accounts of how poorly the war was going is precisely why Congress and the Obama administration authorized a surge of troops into Afghanistan, he said. “This is why a concerted effort has been made since 2009, both in the Administration and in the Congress, to make changes to our strategy, to increase our commitment of troops and resources, and to bring new and better leadership to the mission. As a result, we are finally beginning to address many of the problems highlighted within these leaked documents,” he added in a statement.
Both opponents and defenders of the war noted that the leaked documents end in December 2009 – just before the Obama administration announced its decision to a new Afghanistan strategy.
Crucial Moment
The controversy comes at crucial moment for funding a surge of US forces into Afghanistan, as Democrats press to complete a war funding bill this week.
The Senate last week rejected $22.8 billion in domestic spending that the House added to the Senate’s $58.8 billion war-funding bill for fiscal year 2010. The House measure, including $10 billion to avoid teacher layoffs in the fall, failed even to win a majority in the Senate, which sent its initial bill back to the House on July 22.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi commented to reporters today that she did not expect controversy over the leaked documents to delay completion of a war funding bill this week. The documents “predate the change in the president’s policy,” she said.
But antiwar Democrats say they hope to use the controversy to recharge the war debate this week.
“These documents provide a fuller picture of what we have long known about Afghanistan: The war is going badly,” says Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D) of Ohio. “We have to show the ability to respond to what’s right in front of our face: This war is no longer justifiable under any circumstances.”
Others have suggested that the documents might prove more important to American foreign policy.
“However illegally these documents came to light, they raise serious questions about the reality of America’s policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan,” said Sen. John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a statement. “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.”
Dear MoveOn member,
Yesterday, whistle-blowers released a huge trove of government documents about the War in Afghanistan—many of which raise grave questions about the U.S. strategy and whether it can ever succeed.1 Some are calling these documents “The New Pentagon Papers.”2
This is a critical moment for Congress to review Afghanistan policy. But instead, without even considering the new information, they’re about to vote on a bill to spend an additional $33 billion on the war. The vote could even happen today.3
Can you call Representative Raul Grijalva today? Tell him that Congress must not pass the $33 billion war spending bill until they’ve at least held public hearings on these shocking new revelations. Here’s where to call:
Representative Raul Grijalva
Phone: 202-225-2435
Then, please report your call by clicking here:
http://pol.moveon.org/call?tg=FHAZ_07&cp_id=1412&id=22066-331193-W0uQORx&t=3
The New York Times reports that “the documents sketch a war hamstrung by an Afghan government, police force and army of questionable loyalty and competence, and by a Pakistani military that appears at best uncooperative and at worst to work from the shadows as an unspoken ally of the very insurgent forces the American-led coalition is trying to defeat.”4
Perhaps most troubling is evidence that Pakistan—supposedly our ally and the recipient of over $1 billion a year in U.S. taxpayer dollars—is secretly supporting attacks on U.S. troops by the Taliban.
According to polls, Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with the nine-year-old war in Afghanistan.5 This latest bombshell makes clear the public’s concerns are well-founded and has reopened the debate over whether this war is really worth fighting.
But despite these new revelations, Congress is expected to vote as soon as today on an additional $33 billion for the war. Before spending one more dime on this war, Congress must hold full, public hearings on the new information that has come to light.
Can you call Rep. Grijalva and urge him to demand hearings on the WikiLeaks revelations before the vote on continued funding of the war? Here’s where to call:
Representative Raul Grijalva
Phone: 202-225-2435
Then, please report your call by clicking here:
http://pol.moveon.org/call?tg=FHAZ_07&cp_id=1412&id=22066-331193-W0uQORx&t=4
Thanks for all you do.
–Kat, Jeff, Steven, Joan, and the rest of the team
P.S. We urge you to read more about the WikiLeaks documents and recommend the coverage by The New York Times here: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html.
Sources:
1. “Pakistan Aids Insurgency in Afghanistan, Reports Assert,” The New York Times, July 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26isi.html
2. “Is WikiLeaks the Pentagon Papers, Part 2? Parallels, and differences, exist,” The Washington Post, July 27, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89654&id=22066-331193-W0uQORx&t=5
3. “White House pushes back on Wikileaks as House sets war vote,” The Hill, July 26, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89655&id=22066-331193-W0uQORx&t=6
4. Ibid.
5. “Poll: Outlook on Afghanistan war darkens,” Politico, July 15, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89651&id=22066-331193-W0uQORx&t=7
Want to support our work? We’re entirely funded by our 5 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here
Mitchell BardWriter and Filmmaker
Posted: July 26, 2010 10:17 PM BIO Become a Fan Get Email Alerts Bloggers’ Index
Is WikiLeaks’ Release of the War Logs Afghanistan’s Cronkite Moment?
diggfacebook Twitter stumble reddit del.ico.us
Read More: 9/11 , Afghanistan , Afghanistan War , Barack Obama , Civilian Casualties , Dithering , George W. Bush , Hamid Karzai , Iraq War , Lyndon Johnson , Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , New York Times , Osama Bin Laden , Pakistan , Republicans , Taliban , Vietnam , Vietnam War , Walter Cronkite , Wikileaks , Politics News
In light of this week’s bombshell revelations about the course of the war in Afghanistan, I read an interesting commentary that grabbed my attention:
“To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.”
The thing is, as persuasive as this commentary may be, it isn’t about Afghanistan. Rather, those words marked the conclusion of Walter Cronkite’s CBS Evening News on February 27, 1968, and Cronkite was talking about Vietnam. The trusted newsman’s assessment of the war is often credited as the turning point for American public opinion, moving opposition to the U.S.’s involvement in Vietnam into the mainstream. Reportedly, upon hearing this commentary, President Lyndon Johnson said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”
I can’t help wonder if the release of the Afghan War Logs by WikiLeaks is our Cronkite moment for Afghanistan. In fact, when I consider the totality of the recent news on our efforts in Afghanistan, I can’t reach any other conclusion, and if Cronkite was still alive, I think he’d agree.
I have not reached this pessimistic point easily. After the 9/11 attacks, I was a supporter of President Bush’s military response in Afghanistan. And when Bush turned his focus to Iraq, even before we knew of his administration’s efforts to manipulate intelligence and the non-existence of weapons of mass destruction, I was troubled that he had chosen to move our focus from a country that harbored the men who planned 9/11 to one that had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks on our country. And when President Obama made fixing this Bush blunder a center of his foreign policy proposals during the campaign, I agreed with his assessment of the situation and proposal to intensify American efforts there.
But there comes a time when you have to recognize when something isn’t working (a skill that Obama has demonstrated from time to time, and one the last president did not possess at all). A time when our leaders have to demonstrate the courage and sound judgment to do what is right, regardless of how political opponents will shamelessly and disgracefully spin the decision into something that is cowardly and risky. And that time, I fear, is now.
What has brought me to this conclusion? It’s not just the War Logs, but how they crystallize lessons we have been learning over the last year.
Afghanistan has a history of being unconquerable by foreign forces, something we witnessed first-hand when we helped the mujahideen repel the Soviet Union after its 1979 invasion. What was supposed to make our military action in Afghanistan different was that rather than impose our will on the country, we were there to support the wishes of the Afghan people through democratic elections. A worthy goal (especially in light of the Taliban’s role in harboring Osama bin Laden), but, it turns out, maybe not one that can be accomplished (especially after years of Bush neglect).
President Obama undertook a careful analysis of what to do in Afghanistan (something the Republicans shamefully portrayed as dithering), settling on the current counterinsurgency strategy that relies on building trust in government institutions as a way of winning the loyalty of the Afghan people (at the expense of the Taliban).
It was certainly worth a try. But, when the plan was put into practice, we ran into some roadblocks, many of which are highlighted in the War Logs. Generally, we can only do so much in Afghanistan if we don’t have a partner to work with, and if we don’t have the support of Pakistan.
It all starts with Hamid Karzai. His 2009 election was dogged by allegations of fraud. His government has been accused of being corrupt. He cozied up to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He even threatened to join the Taliban. It’s hard to argue that it is worth risking American lives (more than 1,000 so far) and treasure (more than $300 billion) to prop up Karzai.
Similarly, the War Logs illustrate what we have long been told: The Afghan police, army and local government officials are unwilling and/or unable to provide the kind of services the Afghan people need. James Traub, in a compelling piece in the New York Times Magazine on June 15, did a great job of demonstrating the problems U.S. commanders face in trying to support Afghan institutions, from the power of tribal leaders to the ability of the Taliban to intimidate locals.
The War Logs also reveal the civilian casualties caused by U.S. military and intelligence operations. In what is emerging as a Catch-22 situation, the longer we are there, the less we are wanted there by local Afghans, and the harder it is to convince citizens that they will be safe from the Taliban if they throw in their lots with the Americans and the Karzai government.
But the most problematic obstacle raised in the War Logs just may be the evidence that Pakistani intelligence is aiding the Taliban. President Obama has frequently noted that there is no solution to the Afghan question without also addressing Pakistan, a country that receives billions of dollars in American aid. If the Pakistani government is aiding the Taliban, it seems that we have bigger problems than just trying to prop up the Karzai government until it can take over governing the country without us.
So while the mission in Afghanistan began as a necessary operation (remove the Taliban government that supported and harbored the 9/11 perpetrators), was botched by the Bush administration (who shifted resources to Iraq) and was reassessed and refocused by President Obama, our moment may have already passed. We have a corrupt and ineffectual government in Afghanistan (including the police and military), and we have an ally in Pakistan that is aiding the enemy. And the result is an Afghan population that just doesn’t have an incentive to choose the government over the Taliban.
Afghanistan just may be the living embodiment of a no-win situation.
We were told if we let the Communists take over Vietnam, the repercussions would be severe. But history found those warnings to be unfounded. So it seems to me we can protect our interests in the region without surrendering American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up an odious government. After more than eight years in Afghanistan (and missed opportunities after early successes), a military solution may no longer be possible.
Which is why it is time to heed Cronkite’s 42-year-old words of advice to “negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.”
Time will tell if WikiLeaks’ release of the War Logs turns out to be a Cronkite-like turning point, the moment that the American people stop supporting the war in Afghanistan. It seems to me it should be.
Follow Mitchell Bard on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MitchellBard
Sunday, Jul 25, 2010 19:26 ET
The WikiLeaks Afghanistan leak
By Glenn Greenwald
AP
A U.S. flag hangs from the roof of an Army base, in the volatile Arghandab Valley in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Saturday.(updated below – Update II)
The most consequential news item of the week will obviously be — or at least should be — the massive new leak by WikiLeaks of 90,000 pages of classified material chronicling the truth about the war in Afghanistan from 2004 through 2009. Those documents provide what The New York Times calls “an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal.” The Guardian describes the documents as “a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fueling the insurgency.”
In addition to those two newspapers, WikiLeaks also weeks ago provided these materials to Der Spiegel, on the condition that all three wait until today to write about them. These outlets were presumably chosen by WikiLeaks with the intent to ensure maximum exposure among the American and Western European citizenries which continue to pay for this war and whose governments have been less than forthcoming about what is taking place [a CIA document prepared in March, 2010 -- and previously leaked by WikiLeaks -- plotted how to prevent public opinion in Western Europe from turning further against the war and thus forcing their Governments to withdraw; the CIA's conclusion: the most valuable asset in putting a pretty face on the war for Western Europeans is Barack Obama's popularity with those populations].
The White House has swiftly vowed to continue the war and predictably condemned WikiLeaks rather harshly. It will be most interesting to see how many Democrats — who claim to find Daniel Ellsberg heroic and the Pentagon Papers leak to be unambiguously justified — follow the White House’s lead in that regard. Ellsberg’s leak — though primarily exposing the amoral duplicity of a Democratic administration — occurred when there was a Republican in the White House. This latest leak, by contrast, indicts a war which a Democratic President has embraced as his own, and documents similar manipulation of public opinion and suppression of the truth well into 2009. It’s not difficult to foresee, as Atrios predicted, that media “coverage of [the] latest [leak] will be about whether or not it should have been published,” rather than about what these documents reveal about the war effort and the government and military leaders prosecuting it. What position Democratic officials and administration supporters take in the inevitable debate over WikiLeaks remains to be seen (by shrewdly leaking these materials to 3 major newspapers, which themselves then published many of the most incriminating documents, WikiLeaks provided itself with some cover).
Note how obviously lame is the White House’s prime tactic thus far for dismissing the importance of the leak: that the documents only go through December, 2009, the month when Obama ordered his “surge,” as though that timeline leaves these documents without any current relevance. The Pentagon Papers only went up through 1968 and were not released until 3 years later (in 1971), yet having the public behold the dishonesty about the war had a significant effect on public opinion, as well as the willingness of Americans to trust future government pronouncements. At the very least, it’s difficult to imagine this leak not having the same effect. Then again, since — unlike Vietnam — only a tiny portion of war supporters actually bears any direct burden from the war (themselves or close family members fighting it), it’s possible that the public will remain largely apathetic even knowing what they will now know. It’s relatively easy to support and/or acquiesce to a war when neither you nor your loved ones are risking their lives to fight it.
It’s hardly a shock that the war in Afghanistan is going far worse than political officials have been publicly claiming. Aside from the fact that lying about war is what war leaders do almost intrinsically — that’s part of what makes war so degrading to democratic values — there have been numerous official documents that have recently emerged or leaked out that explicitly state that the war is going worse than ever and is all but unwinnable. A French General was formally punished earlier this month for revealing that the NATO war situation “has never been worse,” while French officials now openly plot how to set new “intermediate” benchmarks to ensure — in their words — that “public opinion doesn’t get the impression of a useless effort.” Anyone paying even mild attention knows that our war effort there has entailed countless incidents of civilian slaughter followed by official lies about it, “hit lists” compiled with no due process, and feel-good pronouncements from the Government that have little relationship to the realities in that country (other leak highlights are here). This leak is not unlike the Washington Post series from the last week: the broad strokes were already well-known, but the sheer magnitude of the disclosures may force more public attention on these matters than had occurred previously.
Whatever else is true, WikiLeaks has yet again proven itself to be one of the most valuable and important organizations in the world. Just as was true for the video of the Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad, there is no valid justification for having kept most of these documents a secret. But that’s what our National Security State does reflexively: it hides itself behind an essentially absolute wall of secrecy to ensure that the citizenry remains largely ignorant of what it is really doing. WikiLeaks is one of the few entities successfully blowing holes in at least parts of that wall, enabling modest glimpses into what The Washington Post spent last week describing as Top Secret America. The war on WikiLeaks — which was already in full swing, including, strangely, from some who claim a commitment to transparency — will only intensify now. Anyone who believes that the Government abuses its secrecy powers in order to keep the citizenry in the dark and manipulate public opinion — and who, at this point, doesn’t believe that? — should be squarely on the side of the greater transparency which Wikileaks and its sources, sometimes single-handedly, are providing.
* * * * *
For the next week, I’ll be on vacation, and away from the blog, returning here Monday, August 2. I’ll be spending the week (hopefully) completing several long-term writing projects (including my current book and a long-form magazine article). Daily blogging makes it difficult to devote one’s full attention to other work, and these blog “vacations” are thus occasionally necessary. It’s possible I’ll post a couple of podcast interviews I had planned to record last week, and I may weigh in once or twice on what I’m certain will be the twisted media coverage and government claims about this leak. Otherwise, absent some unforeseen cataclysmic news event, I’ll be back here next Monday. Feel free, as always, to use the comment section for any reasonable discussions.
UPDATE: NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen has some extremely insightful observations about WikiLeaks and why it frightens so many officials and their media spokespeople.
UPDATE II: The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson has a very perceptive analysis explaining the significance of these documents, along with how and why they reveal clear official deception about the war.
In terms of what we’re “accomplishing” there, compare this recently released study documenting that our killing of civilians is what causes Afghans to take up arms against the U.S. with this morning’s report that a NATO airstrike in Southern Afghanistan last week killed 45 innocent civilians, many of them women and children.
BLACKWATER AWARDED ANOTHER CONTRACT
Moveon.org
Enough is enough. It’s time for the Department of State to stop doing business with Blackwater. I urge you to take all necessary steps to ensure that no more taxpayer money is funnelled to a company with such a horrific record.
Dear Friend,
The U.S. State Department, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, just awarded Blackwater an 18-month contract worth $120 million to guard U.S. consulates in Afghanistan.
Remember, Blackwater was kicked out of Iraq by the Iraqi government after Blackwater mercenaries massacred 17 civilians in Baghdad’s al-Nissor Square. And that was simply the most notorious example of Blackwater acting in a manner that respected neither common decency nor American national interest.
When this incident came to light, then-Senator Clinton said, “These private security contractors have been reckless and have compromised our mission in Iraq.” She continued, “The time to show these contractors the door is long past due.”
Indeed.
Click here to sign our petition telling Secretary of State Clinton that it’s time for the U.S. Department of State to stop doing business with Blackwater.
It’s simply unconscionable that the American government would funnel more money to a company with such a horrific record. And it’s troubling that Secretary Clinton would permit the State Department to award a contract for private security functions when as a Senator she co-sponsored the Stop Outsourcing Security Act, which would require those functions to be performed by employees of the U.S. government.
Tell Secretary of State Clinton that it’s time for the U.S. Department of State to stop doing business with Blackwater. Click here to automatically sign the petition.
Pentagon Threatens to “Compel” WikiLeaks to Hand Over Afghan War Data
Friday 06 August 2010
by: Taylor Barnes | The Christian Science Monitor | Report
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. (Photo: New Media Days / Flickr)
With WikiLeaks on the verge of publishing another cache of secret Afghan war documents 20 times larger than its original leak, the Pentagon said Thursday that it may “compel them to do the right thing.”
With WikiLeaks now threatening to publish thousands more classified documents on the US war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon is demanding that the whistleblower website erase its extensive classified records and hand over all documents in its possession.
“The only acceptable course is for WikiLeaks to take steps to immediately return all versions of all of those documents to the US government and permanently delete them from its website, computers, and records,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said on Thursday, according to the Guardian.
He added: “If doing the right thing is not good enough for them, then we will figure out what alternatives we have to compel them to do the right thing.”
The White House had condemned the leak immediately after it appeared July 25, with National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones issuing a statement at the time that it “could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security.”
But now, with WikiLeaks threatening to release more classified documents, the Pentagon is upping the pressure. The New York Times reports:
Mr. Morrell’s appeal is the Obama administration’s latest response to the disclosure, which has set off a criminal inquiry by the Army and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, prompted a sweeping Pentagon review of the documents to hunt for any information damaging to troop safety and national security, and increased pressure on President Obama to defend his war strategy.
Adding to the urgency is that Wikileaks recently posted to its website a massive, encrypted file labeled “Insurance,” which is 20 times larger than its last leak. Some speculate this latest file could be the 15,000 intelligence reports that Wikileaks purports to have and says it’s holding back for vetting. Other guess they could be 260,000 diplomatic cables accessed by the now-imprisoned Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, the Associated Press reports.
Manning has been quoted as saying that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would “have a heart attack” when these files go public, and that they show “almost criminal political back dealings.”
Some further speculate that WikiLeaks may be using the threat to publish more files as “insurance” should the government go after their staff or shut down their website, Al Jazeera reports.
Pentagon spokesman Morrell further criticized WikiLeaks for encouraging US insiders to engage in espionage. He called the website a “brazen solicitation to US government officials, including our military, to break the law,” Al Jazeera adds.
But legal experts say that, other than going after individuals responsible for the leaks, there is little that the Pentagon can do, according to CNN. The opportunities to leak material has multiplied in the Internet era, compounded by the fact that the US military and 16 intelligence agencies are classifying more information and that more than 854,000 Americans have top-secret clearances, according to a recent Washington Post investigation.
Don’t miss a beat – get Truthout Daily Email Updates. Click here to sign up for free.
“The classifying of information has gone way up – it’s doubled or tripled since these wars began – and then we have nearly nine years and counting of Afghanistan and Iraq and the controversial practices associated with them,” Coleen Rowley, a former field-office legal counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation told The Christian Science Monitor.
WikiLeaks appears to be showing some restraint in what it publishes. Founder Julian Assange has said that the organization is redacting names of those who could be harmed in the 15,000 documents that could be leaked. Through The New York Times, the group has asked the Obama administration to guide it on what should be redacted, CNN reports.
Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst with the Federation of American Scientists who directs their Project on Government Secrecy, told National Public Radio that WikiLeaks made a “very important concession” to redact certain names and details from documents. “It means that transparency is not the unique and overriding value but that it needs to be factored in along with others, such as security and privacy.”