One of the ostensible reasons that Wikileaks Julian Assange has put forth for the revelations within his “Afghan War Diaries” is that potential war crimes are detailed therein. This from the team that put together the “Collateral Murder” video whose biases were quickly exposed.
Whether the Afghan War Diaries will reveal war crimes – they have not to date – they have placed Afghans who put their trust in the NATO coalition in grave danger:
Hundreds of Afghan civilians who worked as informants for the U.S. military have been put at risk by WikiLeaks’ publication of more than 90,000 classified intelligence reports which name and in many cases locate the individuals, The Times newspaper reported Wednesday.
The article says, in spite of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s claim that sensitive information had been removed from the leaked documents, that reporters scanning the reports for just a couple hours found hundreds of Afghan names mentioned as aiding the U.S.-led war effort.
There can be little doubt of the fate awaiting revealed collaborators once they fall under the tender mercies of the Afghan Taliban. The third order effect, of course, is that Afghans hopeful for a more peaceful and enlightened future have even less faith in the coalition’s ability to deliver.
Afghanistan has seen an awful lot of warfare over the last several decades. Survivors have learned to calculate the stronger side with precision. Mr. Assange has just made it rather more likely that more will align themselves with the Taliban, or at least stay out of their way. This increases the odds that a brutal tyranny will once again be imposed, but not before the forces of freedom and moderation are further bloodied.
There are war crimes to be found in the Afghan War Diaries. Just not the ones Mr. Assange was referring to.
Mr. Assange has committed a few war crimes himself by placing our friends in jeopardy. I rope, with a short drop and sudden stop would be to easy on him. he and manning should both be placed outside the wire with, as one poster suggested, bearing signs stating “I blasphemed Mohamed.”
not just war crimes, treason.
The (mandatory) death penalty for which has sadly been abolished by many nations (not sure about the US).
It’s still a capital crime in the US.
What might be just rewards is that if the NATO commander found out that some Afghan civilian died cause of the release of this material. Then just happen to leave a package on the surviving families door step with Julian’s phone number and a little note saying, “Call the following number to complain/vent/ or just ask for an apology, XX-XXX-XXX-XXXX. Call any time of day and as often as needed” and let this punk deal with the deaths he has now caused because of the need for “transperancy” and to prevent “war crimes”. I am sure after the first few hundred he would have realized the error, but that is probably cruel and unusual punishment.
Do it enough and it will become usual. He would richly deserve it as well.
Prosecute to the fullest.
Things are usually classified for a reason. People will more than likely die because of these fools.
Of course if the current administration lacks the courage, we should extradite to Afghanistan if any of their people die because of these idiots.
The kind of self-righteous arrogance that would make someone think they have the right to publish state secrets to the world when any thought at all would tell even the dimmest of wits that doing so would endanger lives and people’s freedom just boggles my mind.
Not sad.
Tragic.
The same ones who believe that if we just give up violence (swords to plowshares) and sing “I Love you, You love me.” while hugging our enemies will get rid of the hatred. That it is our fault people hate us, because of some injustice from millenea ago. They fail to understand that some people are taught hatred and some hold hatred constantly; that the only way to stand up to them is by having strong men with arms standing at the gates. That there are times were one needs to respond with violence by righteous and just violence.
War crimes, eh? Echoes of Monica Crowley’s recent post about who these damned leaks are going to benefit are ringing in my head. And, no, it isn’t the tinnitus, Gracie.
Is Assange a US citizen? I didn’t think he was, in which case treason is not the appropriate charge. And even if he was, he is under no legal obligation to protect these documents, however great the moral obligation. Treason simply does not apply to a man who had no loyalty to the USA in the first place.
As for the named Afghan informants, it is absolutely a bad thing that they are identified. Even fewer will talk to us now. But not a few of the named, if not a majority of them, have spun us lies for personal or tribal gain, to get us to do their dirty work for them. It’s certainly true that we cannot now, nor could we ever protect them all. They all knew the risks they were taking going in. A few, but most likely only a few, deserve better. Those who stayed, stayed to profit from their actions. Europe, meanwhile, is flooded with Afghan refugees claiming asylum; the ones who talked and then fled.
Lastly, I find it extremely hard to believe that our CI folks did not produce a thorough assessment of what was in that leak long before it was released. If we wanted, every time a server came up with that information, we could take it down in a very short time. Every time. Without going off into conspiracy land, our government has made the choice that the loss from allowing these documents to become public is less than the loss from trying to suppress them (and I say try, because they would come out, even if only on CDs mailed to newspapers). We can certainly make the publishers and distributors pay a price, but we can’t stop the information coming out, and we knew from the moment that punk was arrested that this information was going to eventually come out. So looking at what we have done (and haven’t done), the question now is Why? Cui bono? Who benefits the most from announcing both that Pakistan and Iran are up to their elbows killing Americans and allies in Afghanistan, and from revealing our source networks?
The answer, I fear, is no one.
I heard the twit interviewed on NPR yesterday. A more self-important, preening, mincing A-hole with pretentions to one of intellectual superiority doing “Gods work” would be hard to imagine…
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/wikileaks-a-whole-lot-of-nothing-going-on/
Someone who doesn’t think this really doesn’t add up to much.
“…The article says, in spite of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s claim that sensitive information had been removed from the leaked documents, that reporters scanning the reports for just a couple hours found hundreds of Afghan names mentioned as aiding the U.S.-led war effort.”
The only ‘sensitive information’ this man removed would have been anything that could have been used against him or his traitorous cohorts.
Mike
I wonder how Mr. Assange would fare were someone to go through his life with a microscope and dump the entire dossier on the internet.
WSJ is reporting that the DoD has “…concrete evidence linking Pfc. Bradley Manning with the leak of classified Afghanistan war reports…”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704532204575397141587756232.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
Apparently lil’ mister Johnny Jihad wasn’t “hacker” enough to delete the audit logs on the computers he used.
Swing this little corksooker in the breeze. And someone needs to have a serious chat with his superiors, too.
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
Jerry Pournelle has weighed in on this.
See: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q3/view633.html
Scroll down to “Thursday”, he doesn’t have a permalink to it yet.
Money quote: “My firm conclusion is that the Wikileaks are an act of treason.” RTWT