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WikiLeaks "Afghan War Diaries" - by Stephen Lendman
Calling itself "the intelligence agency of the people," WikiLeaks is "a multi-juristidictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive material to communicate to the public" that has a right and need to know - to then use responsibly for better government in a free and open society, absent in today's America run by warlords, criminal politicians, and corporate bosses, spurning the rule of law for their own gain.
On July 26, WikiLeaks published "The Afghan War Diaries," its modern day Pentagon Papers, top-secret documents eroding support for the Vietnam War, The New York Times saying they "demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance" - what Julian Assange has done on Afghanistan, revealing Bush and Obama administration lies and duplicity about their illegal war of aggression, America's longest. More on that below.
Releasing over 75,000 of nearly 92,000 reports, they represent a small fraction of millions of US files uploaded to WikiLeaks databases, more to be regularly released, "high quality material," according to Assange.
They're chronologically listed in over 100 categories, covering the period January 2004 - December 2009, describing lethal US military actions, including numbers internally killed, wounded, or detained by geographical location, units involved, and major weapons used.
Since the Pentagon Papers, they comprise the "most significant (comprehensive) archive about the reality of war," with no resolution or opposition in Congress, providing "a comprehensive understanding of the war (and) modern warfare in general."
Accounts come mainly from soldiers and intelligence officers, but also from US embassies and other sources revealing corruption and criminality across Afghanistan, including coverups, collusion, distortion, and duplicity - a sordid story needing telling to shock a comatose public to action, and revive a badly needed anti-war movement.
As expected, the White House reacted sharply and deceptively, National Security Advisor James Jones saying:
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