As you probably have by now heard, someone leaked a massive collection of documents pertaining to the war in Afghanistan between 2004-2009 to WikiLeaks, which has become the mother of all whistleblower sites. (The site is loading somewhat slowly at the moment, presumably because everybody and their intelligence service is stopping by for a look.)
WikiLeaks in turn gave the documents to three institutional press organizations: the New York Times, the Guardian UK, and Der Spiegel. Of the three, the Guardian seems to have put together the most expansive and interactive stories on the leaked papers. All three papers say they withheld some documents to avoid jeopardizing serving personnel.
The Obama administration is disappointed infuriated by the leak and by the fact that WikiLeaks proprietor Julian Assange wouldn’t sit down with them ahead of time to talk about which documents he should and shouldn’t publish, and maybe give a hint where he got them.
The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security. Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents – the United States government learned from news organizations that these documents would be posted. These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people.
Other people with more patience and outrage than I will go through the documents and pick out the most revelatory among them. My guess is that the leaks may undercut the participation of several NATO countries in the war, but that they won’t have any material impact here because most Americans don’t give a shit about the war in general, and particularly not in this economy. If someone with a national platform could make a direct and enduring connection between war spending and the lack of domestic spending, maybe then. But they’re all pretty much in the shoot-em-camp.
We’ll see the usual hyperventilation from Republicans about leaks, along with some defensiveness because all this stuff went down during their turn in the barrel, not that it’s any better now. We’ll see the administration running a PR campaign to say that yes, in fact things have improved, although given their lack of attention span and apparent lack of non-campaign propaganda skills, that probably won’t be all that helpful.
Sturm und Drang, and then it goes away, in this country at least. If the leaks do actually prompt some retreat in the UK and Germany—quite good choices on the part of Assange—then there may be some enduring fall out here. But probably not.
Good on the press for running with this, and good on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for putting them in a position where they not only had to do so, but had to do as comprehensively as possible.
None of the usual suspects among left of center bloggers have had time to really dig into the documents and stories yet, but as they do I’ll update the story to reflect that.
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