I wonder how many informants, plus their friends and family, are going to wind up dead because of this.

Sometimes I think freedom of the press has gone too far.

This could also be a giant disinformation campaign designed to sow distrust and suspicion among and between AQ the Taliban and the Pak intelligence service. Think about it, 92k documents largely about what is already publicly known but with a few names and events ad"ded.

Now maybe some of these were redacted by Spiegels and the NYT's "Intelligence Analysts" but we all know that the complete versions of the notes will become public soon enough.

There is nothing wrong with freedom of the press as long as there is a concomitant responsibility of the press.

I am afraid that the press, now being in the entertainment business, has forgone any "responsibility of the press".

Everyone cries for freedom, but fewer recognize that for every freedom there is an associated responsibility.

Freedom without responsibility is anarchy.

So the claims of how hurtful some infos leaked are - could also be "spill control" in an effort to discredit wikileaks? So we have contradicting efforts of spill control - some claiming that the data released is dangerous enoiugh to put poperations and lives at risk, others claiming that it is not dangerous enough to change operations or protecting lives. I assume this confusion raised also is part of the smoke screen.

What is clear now, at least, are two things: what is flying around in attacks and critcism now, should not all taken literally. And that the real thing people now bang their heads over, is not so much the documents themselves, but the question they have brutally pushed into the focus of public attention again: should the war fought on, or should one end it. And obviosuly regarding the latter question two camps collide that could not be more apart.

I can only quote one distant friend of mine, who served two terms in Afghanistan as officer in the staff of the Bundeswehr there, and who said in resignation already in late 2007 to me: "Was wir in Afghanistan gefunden haben, ist ein Haufen Scheiße. Und unser Ministerium (defence ministry, he meant) exportiert noch mehr Scheiße nach Afghanistan." With the latter he meant the German naivety and illusions and the lacking plltiical support grounded on a sense of realism. Many german officers and the official political opinion in germany, are lightyears apart. Last time I telephoned with him, was Spring this year. He only said "Es stinkt."

The impact wasn't as great over here as you're imagining it was.

Nor would it make an inch of difference to soldiers that were killed because the American people were blindfolded.

So anything less than 100% perfection = "piss poor job" while screwing up most of them (are they even trying to solve the questions?) by the other side = "OK"?

There is a case to be made, to be fair, for the relative severity of screwing up, but when the error rate difference is looking to be orders of magnitude, to the point the picture being painted actually warps, things are different.

Besides, if you must think that way, the US military and government must take some of the blame. It is actually their job to intelligently decide the minimum set of data that must be held secret, and then release the rest.

In failing to do so and taking the lazy (or butt-covering?) path of classifying as many things as they think they can get away with, they have not only failed one of their duties, but they ensure that if it ever leaks, something like this is going to happen.

But here and in Britain, it seems. The headlines in the national mpapers give me the impression that every nation seems to focus on a different slice of the pie, if that wordgame is allowed. In the US the pakistani connection seems to be the major theme, in Germany it is the US commandos in the German sector, and the German reports about inadequate mission handling, lacking equipment and political naivety.

Right now it is not certain anymore that the government will get through another extension of the mission for one year. and the left opposition is especially pissed by US commandos not capturing but assassinating key personell of the enemy in the German sector. Don't forget that Germans still fight over the question whether or not this is a war at all. We both probably can agree that this complaint is naive and pathetic, but it has the potential to fundamentally change the political support for the mission in Germany, even more since doubts also have caught conservatives, and the Dutch are in full pull-out currently - which serves as a precedent example for some.

But Mr. Obama said Afghanistan was a just war, the correct war. It was Iraq which was the unjust and evil imperialism.

Should I believe the US CinC or Julian Assange ?

Relative severity is debatable but totally irrelevant to the point that myself and some others here are trying to make. Regardless of your favorit side in the issue it is obvious that all Assange has done is double the number of screw up sources.

Taliban Says It Will Target Names Exposed by WikiLeaks
Militants were alerted to the leaked documents, which reveal details of informants, by news reports.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/30/t...html?GT1=43002

And there you go, from the mouth of the enemy themselves. This is why I say that relative blame games are unproductive. Assange, the NYT, Speigel and The Guardian have put a death sentence on people just to improve their ratings.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- NATO announced Friday that six more U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan, bringing the death toll for July to at least 66 and surpassing the previous month's record as the deadliest for American forces in the nearly 9-year-old war.

Under international law can the founder of WikiLeaks , Julian Assange, be tried for war crimes?

Or does international law recognize unresricted freedom of speach? Does the clear and present danger clause exist in international law?

Believe none of the two. Believe those who wrote the reports - the seargeants and lieutenants in the field who wrote the majority of the leaked reports and who sit in the middle of the action seeing it with their nown eyes, risking their own olives andnthat of their subordinate crews adn troops. I do not care for a president, he is an opportunist and a liar by definition, else he would not have become president, nor do I believe Assange - but assange maikes no statements on the situation in Afghanistan, does he. All he said in a german interview was that he even holds no opinion on whether the war should be ended now, or not. He said in that interview what he was about is that the many things functioning ill, the many things going terribly wrong, the misperception of realities need to be corrected and adressed.

the Taliban may or may not try to kill informants more than before, fact is they try to do that all the time and try to intimidate villagers anyway. whether or not the leaked material makes it easier for them or not, is no question the western military and politicians or the taliban should be accepted as objective, honest sources for providing a true answers. Because both sides are engaged in a real war as well as a propaganda war and a war of intimidation.

the question is only this - once this war has come to an end with Western withdrawel - will the extension of the war have costed more or less lifes than any possible and maybe real acceleration of earlier withdrawal, or not? In the end, no matter how long we stay anymore, we will not have left behind a stabile, democratic regime or state that is immune to the regional islamists and conspirating regional powers taking it over. Taking it over they will - sooner or later. The Kabul government throughout the history of Afghanistan was always extremely corrupt and extremely weak, it means nothing to the country. The political realities get forged by local tribe leaders and warlords, patriarchalic chieftains and Islamic jihadis. and neither democracy nor freedom wetsern style is high on their agenda. It is about power, weapons, money, drugs, and islamic regime.

Every Western soldier losing his life there - is giving his life for just this, and nothing else. Is it worth it? I say loud and sounding: NO. It never was worth it, it still is not worth itl and it never will be worth it. It's a dirty little hellhole on this planet, but it is not in our power to enforce it to become a better place and bypass several centuries of own-made evolutional history and developement.

So isolate them, shoot off their head and hand when the aim a terror bomb at us beyond their own border, and beside this - leave them alone. It is not in our reach or power to force them to do it differently and in accordance with our ideas of how they should do things.

Do you want to imply there is a causal link between both sentences? that this is the most lethal month for US troops, because the wikileak publication? That would be absurd. The youngest news in that material is more than half a year old since thehn a whol chnage of strategy has taklen place by presidential order, and the leaked reports got released just two days ago, so how could they influence the events of the past weeks and month? The rise in violence there is taking place since several months now, and according to some of the leaked material, the general violence level is much higher than what the public in the West gets told anyway.

And trying Assange for "war crimes"? We are a bit emotional and thus irrational now, aren't we...? On war crimes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crime

Calm down, I would recommend, Assange is not even close to committing "war crimes", and volume is something different than argument.

Name the war crime?

Why woud that be absurd? Why wouldn't Her Assange, an admitted anti-war zealot, not give the info to the Taliban/Al Queda, before releasing it world wide? Is this such an outrageous idea? I think not.

I don't have one to name. I am just asking the question.

Evidence or STFU, as with everything.

As to the rest of this leak thing, it is not right in my book, some people need to be held accountable for what they have done, but not crucified for what the could have done.

Wow. After being excluded for ten days because of my signature on this forum, to be told STFU is a shocker. I can only hope that justice is served equally on this forum.

What he did is not a war crime. A war crime is not the same like just any "crime committed in times of war". It even is questionable that the publication is a crime in itself - the legal status of the act is being hotly debated, and the moral status is hotly debated as well. For the legal status, it next would depend whose nations' lawcode you want to base on. What the american government may base on in laws can be something different than the German law. The british law. The laws of other nations the leaked reports comment on. the americans can only legally claim to prosecute the original source of the material, the whistleblower that is, if he is american and/or violated american institutions or procedures when copying the material. The crime, imo doesnot lie in the publication, but in the copying and steakling of the material. That that theft was illegal, imo is beyond doubt. Morally, I weigh this against the bigger crime of misleading the public, mismanaging the war since many years, deception over the political incompetence and the military probelms that have caused much bhigher deatzh tolls then admitted, and come to a result that compared to the government's big guilt the thief's guilt is absolutely minor only, a fromality that got violated in order to shed light on a much more severe and lethal crime that happens on and that governments conspirate over to betray their own people.

It is not a war crime what Assange did. Not more or less than it was "sexual harassement". The term war crime is a legal term defined in international treaties. Have a look at the Wikipedia link I gave for a first brief summary. Assange may be a narcisstic egocentric guy, he may crave for publicity or not, and may dream of more support for Wikileaks or not, but of all the four perpetrators - governments, military, the thief of the material, and the publisher - Assange is the one with the smallest guilt, if any at all. The overwhelming share of guilt lies with the governments.