The stories in today’s Washington Post tell you everything you need to know about the media establishment’s reaction to the Wikileaks Afghanistan documents:
WikiLeaks Disclosures Unlikely to Change Course of Afghanistan War
By Greg Jaffe and Peter Finn
…The documents’ release could compel President Obama to explain more forcefully the war’s importance, military analysts said….
Senior White House officials said the classified accounts bolstered Obama’s decision in December to pour more troops and money into a war effort that had not received sufficient attention or resources from the Bush administration….
In the near term, the Obama administration seems intent on casting the voluminous leak as old news and ignoring it…..The same dismissive attitude dominated the national security think tanks in Washington where analysts closely follow the war. By Monday afternoon, most of these experts had given up on searching through the huge WikiLeaks database for new information….
WikiLeaks Documents Cause Little Concern Over Public Perception of War
By Glenn Kessler and Karen Tumulty
The Obama administration and its allies in Congress sought Monday to turn the leak of more than 91,000 classified documents about operations in Afghanistan into an affirmation of the president’s decision to shift strategy and boost troop levels in the nearly nine-year-long war….
Editorial: Wikileaks’ Release of Classified Field Reports on Afghan War Reveals Not Much
Though it may represent one of the most voluminous leaks of classified military information in U.S. history, the release by Wikileaks of 92,000 reports on the war in Afghanistan hardly merits the hype offered by the website’s founder….
The British newspaper in turn highlights what it says are 144 reported incidents in which Afghan civilians were killed or wounded by coalition forces. But the 195 deaths it counts in those episodes, though regrettable, do not constitute a shocking total for a four-year period….
Even though columnist Eugene Robinson’s generally anti-war stance is still more or less intact, he feels obligated to argue there’s really nothing here. On civilian casualties, for example: “The documents merely reveal episodes that were previously unpublicized.” Oh, is that all?
We already knew that U.S. and other coalition forces were inflicting civilian casualties that had the effect of enraging local villagers and often driving them into the enemy camp. The documents merely reveal episodes that were previously unpublicized–an October 2008 incident in which French troops opened fire on a bus near Kabul and wounded eight children, for example, and a tragedy two months later when a U.S. squad riddled another bus with gunfire, killing four passengers and wounding 11 others.
Old news, apparently.
All well-informed people in the US on WashPost: *Yawn*.
Right after wikileak pants the main street media they were all a twitter, CNN* declared we will follow this story and keep you all informed ditto for the rest.
Yesterday the main street mavens were as quiet as a church mouse, good mice’s heres your slice of cheese you BLOOD SUCKING RATS!
Thank goodness for bloggers and the few independent news sources who are doing the job of true journalist and following the main credo of due diligence.
*I was very surprised to see Larry Kings show do some good reporting on July 26, I thought for sure he would of had some unknown actor spouting off about their unknown career.
The “not much there” school seems to have prevailed, while Adm. Mullen’s criticism of Wikileaks seemed over the top. Editorial in NYT gasped, however, that the Pakistani ISI was incahoots with the Taliban. GAmbling at Rick’s?
The ISI set up the Taliban. When US ground forces, finally up to some significant numbers in spring 2003, cornered a Taliban force in a mountain stronghold, the final US push was delayed while an embarrassment was avoided–a contingent of ISI fighters and advisers had to be airlifted out of the battle zone.
When Clinton “pounded sand” in Afghanistan, missing OBL by half an hour, few US journalists asked why the missile launch vehicle was a surface ship and not the submarine platform in the plan agreed by Clinton; and few asked who warned OBL to get out. A missile launcher on the surface off the coast of Pakistan is easily spotted.
Continued:
Apart from the no-new-news aspect, there is, however, the question of lists of villages and villagers, collaborators revealed in the documents. That puts lives at risk, and it makes future collaboration more difficult.
And surely the Pentagon’s security must be putrid.
I don’t blame Bush for everything, but from DOJ partisanship, to DOAg racism and the long-fingering of Black farmer payments, to DOI plain sex and drugs partying, to Arlington Cemetery screw-ups, Bush surely proved tht government doesn’t work–when led by a cynic. Who knows what else remains to be ferretted out?
Eugene Robinson is a dick!
Well if nothing else it proves what many know.We are now in full fledged mission creep.Our job was to chase out the terrorists who hit us on 911.We did that brilliantly.Obama has shifted the war(or Bush did- take your pick)toward that poison called nation building.And if a worse place could be found for such an exercise… I do not know it.