"We strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations, which puts the lives of the US and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security." National Security Adviser Jim Jones
A massive leak of internal documents revealing the truth behind White House and Pentagon propaganda has been released exposing a truly horrific view of the long ongoing war in Afghanistan. The Pentagon papers leaked by Daniel Ellsberg gave the public the information necessary to determine the true worth of the war in Vietnam and led to the ultimate conclusion of that conflict, now WikiLeaks is the best hope the anti-war movement has to put the final nail in the Bush administrations war on terror. But is it the Bush administrations war anymore? The anti-war movement is largely responsible for putting Obama in office even though he painted Afghanistan as somehow worth billions of tax payer dollars and the lives of American and Nato soldiers.
So here comes the token rhetoric from the war mongers in the White House and the Pentagon, it doesn't have to be written because it's simply in the play book. The classic counter leak strategy is to tell us that WikiLeaks and it's founder Julian Assange are putting the lives of soldiers and other personnel at great risk. The fact is exactly the opposite, the Afghan war is putting the lives of soldiers and other personnel at great risk and for no reason whatsoever. If we could go back as a nation and make decisions about Vietnam with all of the information we have now, we never would have allowed Kennedy to send "military advisors" in the first place. The mission was flawed because the logic was flawed and the catastrophic results are incalculable. Without the Pentagon papers throwing a monkey wrench in the war machine Vietnam could have gone on to destroy millions more lives.
Now the man hunt is on for the responsible parties in leaking this information and we are to believe that whistle blowers are the offenders of justice. As if the ones who tell you lies are the good guys and the ones who tell you the truth are evil, is our sense of right and wrong so easy to manipulate that this sounds reasonable to us now? When a witness of a violent crime takes the stand to point out the offender do we then put the witness in jail? Do we discuss just how the witness telling the truth for the record has put the criminals mission in jeopardy? Should we then feel sorry for the criminal and attack the witness for bravely telling the truth? This is the reason there is a witness protection program, and it's the same reason there used to be protections for whistle blowers.
When I voted in the last election I was not voting for a new and improved war on terror, I was voting for reason, rationality, and truth. Obama has been nothing but a disappointment to those who hired him and what's worse his behavior as president somehow validates everything Bush and Cheney did in office. He has abused the powers of the presidency in the wake of the Bush administrations chaotic restructuring of that office. Republicans may prefer an imperial presidency with all the powers of a king (at least when that king is their boy) but Obama is supposed to be an expert on constitutional law. The way his term in office has been going it's apparent that he did not disagree with Bush's abuses of power in theory, but only how they went about them. He seems to think that we wanted a new mask on the same old empire that could continue to devour the worlds resources with a kind hello and a bright smile.
Afghanistan is now truly hell on earth but with multiple devils creating woe in every corner of the land and into the territory of Pakistan. Pakistan has always been aligned with the Taliban and this is nothing new to US military intelligence, they have helped to set it up that way over the last few decades. Warlords and drug lords rule the land and now they have US death squads combing every village for targets of their terror campaign American style. Surging US and allied troops into Afghanistan has accomplished absolutely nothing but to put those troops in harms way with no real achievable goals. Civilians have suffered the greatest losses and are not even given the resolve of culpability by the US commanders who carelessly signed their death warrants. And what's it all for again? Osama? Womans rights?
How many lies? How many lives? The answers should not have to be "leaked".
