Sunday, July 25, 2010

WikiLeaks may have just changed the course of American history *UPDATED WITH LINKS*

WikiLeaks.com has just published the "Afghan War Diary," which is described as:
...an extraordinary compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010.
The reports, while written by soldiers and intelligence officers mainly describing lethal military actions involving the United States military, also include intelligence information, reports of meetings with political figures, and related detail.
The question is this: if the American public hears the DoD's own accounts of civilian deaths, will the accepted become unacceptable?  How will this affect public opinion on the Afghan war, and on war in general?

*UPDATE* WikiLeaks' Twitter feed is a great source for links to media coverage of the War Diary.  The Guardian has a story up on civilian casualties listed in the War Diary that links the type of stories I was referring to in the body of this post above.  The New York Times has a section of its website dedicated to the War Diary, and its first story focuses on the link between Pakistan and the insurgents. Also, Der Spiegel has a section up as well, and they've subdivided what they've determined to be the most important information from the War Diary.  Topics include the problems with Predator drones, a secret group of warriors known as "Task Force 373", and problems with U.S. intelligence agencies.

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