The Guardian UK has the grim revelations:
A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.
The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers’ website Wikileaks in one of the biggest leaks in US military history. The files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel, give a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over the last six years, which has so far cost the lives of more than 320 British and more than 1,000 US troops.
Among the findings:
• How a secret “black” unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial.
• How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.
• How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.
• How the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of their roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.
In 1971, the nation was rocked by the leaked publication of the Pentagon Papers, a secret US Defense Dept. history of the Vietnam War. What was particularly startling about this leak was the realization that the Johnson and Nixon administrations had been lying to the American people about the course of the war in Vietnam and the extent of its expansion into Cambodia and Laos.
While certainly not a perfect comparison, the Wikileaks paint a dark portrait of a war effort in disarray, numerous civilian deaths, a resurgent Taliban (perhaps with the assistance of Pakistan Intelligence Service forces), and a losing effort to win the hearts of minds of the Afghan people.
This is the developing story with major implications. Please read up and stay posted…be sure we will be dealing with this in class.
