By Stephanie Miceli -
July 26, 2010
In
one of the largest unauthorized disclosures in military history, online
whistle-blower WikiLeaks posted a six-year "incident-by-incident" archive of
leaked Afghan war documents late Sunday.
The
92,000 reports span two administrations and six years, from January 2004
through December 2009. According to the New York Times, which received the
documents several weeks ago, the reports suggest Pakistani intelligence
officials were strategizing with the Taliban in Afghanistan, despite the
outpouring of U.S. aid into both countries. The documents also include
unreported Afghan civilian deaths in the NATO military operations, and the
Taliban's supposed acquisition of surface-to-air missiles.
The White House is condemning the
disclosure, saying it threatens national security.
WikiLeaks has not said how it
obtained the documents. Julian Assange, who launched the site in 2007, said the organization receives
material from whistle-blowers in a variety of ways -- including postal mail - and
then prepares it for public release. If the identity of the source of a leak is
revealed, Assange says that information is destroyed as soon as possible.
Regardless
of how they came to light, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John
Kerry, D-Massachusetts, said in a statement Sunday the documents, "raise
serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and
Afghanistan."
Among these
grim realities might be that after the United States has spent almost $300
billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are reportedly at their
strongest since 2001.
Mentioned
numerous times in the documents is Gen. Hamid Gul, the former head of
Pakistan's intelligence service, who calls the reports "utterly false."
Gul said
Monday, "I think they [United States] are failing and they're looking for
scapegoats."
Still, the
New York Times called the archive incomplete, as it lacks information from
2010, when President Obama sent 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan,
prompting a new counterinsurgency strategy.
In an
interview with CNN. Assange said the significance lies in "all of these
people being killed in the small events that we haven't heard about that
numerically eclipse the big casualty events. It's the boy killed by a shell
that missed a target."
