# WikiLeaks and Guardian leak 92,000 secret documents on Afghan War **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 26, 2010, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033 "2010-07-26T12:17:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/21 "2010-07-26T15:32:21Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > > [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > > > Hmmm…this seems to have garnered less attention than it deserves!? > > What groundbreaking news are being unearthed? It seems to me the most important point being “revealed” in the documents, is Pakistan’s close involvement with the Taliban. That Pakistan has financed, armed, trained and shared intelligence with the Taliban – all the while receiving billions of US dollars in aid is however not really news. It only strengthen my belief that the West should cut all attempts to form any kind of meaningful cooperation with Pakistan and cut all aid to Pakistan and instead try to involve India in stabilising Afghanistan. While India has a good deal of influence in Pakistan, one thing it doesn’t have is a(n accessible) shared border- and the people we were never really looking all that hard for aren’t running to India. ---
**Author:** ![Indian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@Indian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indian)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/22 "2010-07-26T15:37:45Z")
With neighbours like these … ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/23 "2010-07-26T15:40:33Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > While India has a good deal of influence in Pakistan, one thing it doesn’t have is a(n accessible) shared border- and the people we were never really looking all that hard for aren’t running to India. That should read, “…influence with Afghanistan…”, not Pakistan. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/24 "2010-07-26T15:49:45Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > What groundbreaking news are being unearthed? It seems to me the most important point being “revealed” in the documents, is Pakistan’s close involvement with the Taliban. That Pakistan has financed, armed, trained and shared intelligence with the Taliban – all the while receiving billions of US dollars in aid is however not really news. It only strengthen my belief that the West should cut all attempts to form any kind of meaningful cooperation with Pakistan and cut all aid to Pakistan and instead try to involve India in stabilising Afghanistan. None of that should be a surprise to anybody, since the links between the ISI and the Taliban go back to the beginning of the Taliban. This is getting a lot of coverage right now from what I can see, and WikiLeaks has been getting more attention since the Collateral Murder video. The difference between this and the Pentagon Papers appears to be that the most damning part of the Pentagon Papers was a strategic assessment that said the war was going a lot worse than the government had let on, and that it might not be possible to win. These documents don’t seem to have anything like that. It’s mostly a swath of individual reports, not an overall assessment. Some of it is very negative and a lot of it is interesting to have as first-hand information, but that’s a different kind of viewpoint. And public opinion on Afghanistan is not nearly as divided now as public opinion on Vietnam was in 1971. It’s also true that the WikiLeaks documents are from some time in 2004 to the end of last year. So the Obama administration gets two excuses: they weren’t in power for most of that time, and for the year where they were, they hadn’t done their super-important change in strategy (which maybe isn’t working anyway). ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/25 "2010-07-26T17:44:23Z")
Well, the Afghanistan files _might_ say that the war is unwinnable, but nobody has gotten through all 92,000 pages yet. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/26 "2010-07-26T18:00:03Z")
> [@Wallenstein](#): > > So far there doesn’t seem to be any major “WTF?!” revalations… just a confirmation that things are going pretty badly and that we’ve not quite had the whole story given to us by the military. > > The fact there are e.g. covert teams trying to take out top Taliban commanders isn’t exactly earth-shaking, nor is the fact that official reports don’t mention them explicity. > > One of The Guardian’s splashes is a list of all the IEDs between 2004-2009, with a nice little graphic to show you them all. Apart from going “wow, what a lot of IEDs” that doesn’t actually tell us much about the war as a whole. Well, actually it does, I just looked at the list, and it seems the epicentre of violence coalesces around Kandahar and Kabul areas. Which makes sense since Kandahar is the spiritual capital of Mullah Omars Taliban, and Kabul the centre of Government power and most of the population is centralised. The bomb attacks seem to be in those areas then start, slowly to branch out, coincidentally around the ‘Ring road’ which goes around the whole of Afghanistan. However again, most of the attacks are limited to those two areas. The rest, such as the north and the west bordering Iran, seem to be, in relative calm. But this is stating the obvious. But it does tell you about the pattern of violence. ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/27 "2010-07-26T18:11:53Z")
Here is a great article by [Jay Rosen](http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2010/07/26/wikileaks_afghan.html) that discusses the significance of Wikileaks and its tactics in releasing these papers. Some observations: -Choosing to release the papers to The Guardian, the NYT, and Der Spiegel, and making them agree to publish stories on the papers simultaneously, was not only a canny move on the part of Wikileaks but is also a pretty damning indictment of the mainstream media. The reason the papers were selectively released to these outlets, and not disseminated freely for anyone to read and comment on, is because if a big story is freely available, journalists will pass on it because they can’t ensure their coverage will get enough attention. That says a lot, to me, about how the business side of the media overshadows their duty to report. In addition, Wikileaks released all the papers on their website. Thus, they release the papers to respected news organizations to ensure the information is respected and noticed, while publishing the full papers on their website just in case the newspaper editors let their own bias or fear get in the way of reporting certain information. -The White House is pretty clueless. -Perhaps most importantly: > [@](#): > > In media history up to now, the press is free to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the laws of a given nation protect it. But Wikileaks is able to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the logic of the Internet permits it. This is new. Just as the Internet has no terrestrial address or central office, neither does Wikileaks. I can think of no greater threat to the establishment right now than Wikileaks. Whether the revelations in these papers will lead to change is questionable. As Jay Rosen posits: > [@](#): > > The mental model on which most investigative journalism is based states that explosive revelations lead to public outcry; elites get the message and reform the system. But what if elites believe that reform is impossible because the problems are too big, the sacrifices too great, the public too distractible? What if cognitive dissonance has been insufficiently accounted for in our theories of how great journalism works… and often fails to work? That’s a depressing thought. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/28 "2010-07-26T18:33:04Z")
Does this leak contain methods and sources? If so, then it’s definitely not good. However, the article read in the paper today indicated (in the last paragraph) that these leaks are incomplete (ie, does not tell the whole story) and is not up to date (does not include stuff from 2010). ---
**Author:** ![CoolHandCox](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coolhandcox/32/16233_2.png) [@CoolHandCox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CoolHandCox)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/29 "2010-07-26T18:33:40Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > Here is a great article by [Jay Rosen](http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2010/07/26/wikileaks_afghan.html) that discusses the significance of Wikileaks and its tactics in releasing these papers. Interesting article, it’s a good read. I found this part somewhat, I don’t know, amusing: > [@](#): > > If you don’t know much about Wikileaks or why it exists, the best way to catch up is this New Yorker profile of Julien Assange. > > He is the operation’s prime mover, and it is fair to say that WikiLeaks exists wherever he does. At the same time, hundreds of volunteers from around the world help maintain the Web site’s complicated infrastructure; many participate in small ways, and between three and five people dedicate themselves to it full time. **Key members are known only by initials—M, for instance—even deep within WikiLeaks, where communications are conducted by encrypted online chat services. The secretiveness stems from the belief that a populist intelligence operation with virtually no resources, designed to publicize information that powerful institutions do not want public, will have serious adversaries.** An organization that wants to keep things secret because of what they do. Fight fire with fire I suppose. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/30 "2010-07-26T18:39:29Z")
We can’t handle the truth. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/31 "2010-07-26T18:40:21Z")
Meh. Wikileaks’ _raison d’etre_ is exposing government action, not private action (do they leak corporate documents too?) ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/32 "2010-07-26T18:47:41Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Meh. Wikileaks’ _raison d’etre_ is exposing government action, not private action (do they leak corporate documents too?) Governments are their main focus, but yes, they do. The news isn’t that they published some secret stuff, it’s in what they published. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/33 "2010-07-26T19:03:19Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > > > Meh. Wikileaks’ _raison d’etre_ is exposing government action, not private action (do they leak corporate documents too?) > > Governments are their main focus, but yes, they do. The news isn’t that they published some secret stuff, it’s in what they published. I think the point being made is that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander: Wikileaks seems to be opposed in principle to government and corporate secrecy, but the organization itself is deeply shrouded in secrecy. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/34 "2010-07-26T19:08:46Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > > [@Marley23](#): > > > > > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > > > > > Meh. Wikileaks’ _raison d’etre_ is exposing government action, not private action (do they leak corporate documents too?) > > > > Governments are their main focus, but yes, they do. The news isn’t that they published some secret stuff, it’s in what they published. > > I think the point being made is that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander: Wikileaks seems to be opposed in principle to government and corporate secrecy, but the organization itself is deeply shrouded in secrecy. Yes, well when they start wanting to run the world, then I’ll start worrying about that. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![CoolHandCox](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coolhandcox/32/16233_2.png) [@CoolHandCox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CoolHandCox)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/35 "2010-07-26T19:15:10Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > > [@Marley23](#): > > > > > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > > > > > Meh. Wikileaks’ _raison d’etre_ is exposing government action, not private action (do they leak corporate documents too?) > > > > Governments are their main focus, but yes, they do. The news isn’t that they published some secret stuff, it’s in what they published. > > I think the point being made is that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander: Wikileaks seems to be opposed in principle to government and corporate secrecy, but the organization itself is deeply shrouded in secrecy. So if someone on the inside decides to release documents showing explicitly how WikiLeaks operates…will they then take a leak on themselves? That’s the question. I say no (well, only for security reasons, of course. It could have detrimental consequences to their mission of keeping the leak stream flowing). ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/36 "2010-07-26T19:28:33Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > > [@Marley23](#): > > > > > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > > > > > Meh. Wikileaks’ _raison d’etre_ is exposing government action, not private action (do they leak corporate documents too?) > > > > Governments are their main focus, but yes, they do. The news isn’t that they published some secret stuff, it’s in what they published. > > I think the point being made is that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander: Wikileaks seems to be opposed in principle to government and corporate secrecy, but the organization itself is deeply shrouded in secrecy. I realize there’s a lack of accountability there, but they’re doing things that can get them thrown in jail. The people they go after generally aren’t taking that risk. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/37 "2010-07-26T19:30:45Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > > [@Marley23](#): > > > > > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > > > > > Meh. Wikileaks’ _raison d’etre_ is exposing government action, not private action (do they leak corporate documents too?) > > > > Governments are their main focus, but yes, they do. The news isn’t that they published some secret stuff, it’s in what they published. > > I think the point being made is that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander: Wikileaks seems to be opposed in principle to government and corporate secrecy, but the organization itself is deeply shrouded in secrecy. Right. Which is to say, that is the point I was responding to, not the one I was making. The problem with being a super-secret organization, of course, is that documents you supply lack foundation, and there’s nobody around to ask, “hey, is this shit for real?” ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/38 "2010-07-26T19:32:13Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > The problem with being a super-secret organization, of course, is that documents you supply lack foundation, and there’s nobody around to ask, “hey, is this shit for real?” Which is one of the benefits of letting these three papers see the documents before they were released. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/39 "2010-07-26T19:32:46Z")
Just out of curiousity, how would you feel if the equivalent of WikiLeaks was around in WWII, and leaked that the Americans were lying about their bombing capacity towards Japan, that Patton’s army in Calais was a ruse, and that the allied forces were actually planning to land at Normandy? How about leaking that Americans had broken the Enigma codes, or cracked Japanese communications in the lead up to Midway? Disinformation and secrets are part of warfare. You lie to the enemy every chance you get. For example, the U.S. lied about the effectiveness of Israeli Patriot missiles in downing SCUD attacks during the first Gulf war. Is that wrong? What if the lie caused Saddam to give up the attacks and it saved lives? In the dump above, it seems to me that publishing the location of all the mines in minefields renders them immediately useless and makes life more dangerous for American, British, and Canadian soldiers. Saying that an aircraft was shot down by lucky small arms fire and not a missile could prevent a morale boost for the enemy. Giving credit to Afghan soldiers for something Americans did could boost the Afghan army’s self-esteem and credibility with the population. These kinds of tactics have been a constant feature of war and diplomacy since about the time Og hit Thad on the head with a rock. The other side certainly uses it as much as possible. I’m not saying all leaks are bad. But we also shouldn’t assume that all leaks are good. And a shotgun blast of 92,000 pages of information sure sounds like someone leaked a lot of information without knowing how much damage it might do to the war effort or how many coalition forces it might get killed. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2010, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033/40 "2010-07-26T19:41:40Z")
And what if they’d exposed that there was no attack in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 4, 1964? Wouldn’t those have prevented a war that killed millions? (I won’t bother saying anything about WMDs in Iraq- nobody should’ve fallen for that one.) We could throw analogies at each other all day but I don’t see the point. Keeping secrets from an opponent on the battlefield is one thing. If the public doesn’t know what’s going on, democracy is useless. The truth is that governments are always going to keep as many secrets as they can. At this stage, and perhaps at every stage, it’s way more than they need. I realize there are consequences that could affect people’s lives here, although in point of fact I don’t know if any names or potentially identifying information is being disclosed here. Someone does need to push the boundaries there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wikileaks-and-guardian-leak-92-000-secret-documents-on-afghan-war/548033.md?page=3)