Leaked Documents Show Afghan War Is Bloody Uphill Battle.
By “The biggest intelligence leak in history” was released simultaneously earlier this evening by NYTimes, the Guardian and Der Spiegel. Courtesy of Wikileaks, of course.
My initial reaction just from browsing the headlines: it’s news that between our accidents and the Taliban’s intentional terror campaigns, many civilians have died? That Bagram has become the new Guantanamo? That it is US policy to kill or capture Taliban leaders? That the Afghan government is corrupt? Or that the US is using drones to kill insurgents and sometimes these operations go awry? That elements within Pakistan have been funding and training the Taliban?
Either there’s not a lot of “there” in these 90,000+ documents, or the mainstream media is down-playing what’s actually ground-breaking in the reports.
Of course the real story is Wikileaks’ role in exposing these and other documents. SOS has had one of the better collections of links on that angle recently, and I expect some excellent commentary from Bruce early in the week.