War in Afghanistan.

[Jester]

They have not, because they have no idea what might jeopardize what. Context matters... again...

Hm. Disturbing.

First, I've not heard of anything illegal being leaked. Sad, yes. Second, are you nuts? You cannot operate asymmetric warfare in the open. Read Sun Tzu. The art of war is deception, and misdirection. This is not two lines of guys with muskets, and even then deception and feinting were a big part of winning.

Deceiving who? The Taliban is surely under no illusions as to what the US is doing - they're fighting the war! They know full well what's happening and where, except perhaps at the level of specifics, which I don't think civilians have any need to know in any case. But it must come as no surprise to them that they have rockets, or that they brought down a chopper we were never told about, or that the US has units hunting their leaders.

No, this is about deceiving *us*, sugar-coating and burying information that might make the war look unpopular. Once a democratic state is in the business of lying to itself, raison d'etat takes over.

These are the blow by blow allegations written in field reports.

Yes. My point is, their release would be entirely unnecessary if they did not also contain information that we should already know, but don't, because the government denies it, or simply fails to mention it. If this was merely a flood of documents released just for the sake of releasing them, I'd be much less sympathetic.

Some of the officers in the field may have been wrong in their conclusions, or the information given by informants may have been false. These are not summaries, and they are not verified. They are also spanning a huge country over almost a decade. It's an information avalanche, where you really cannot see the pearls from the manure. Often, the documents usefulness was at the time it was written, for the person who it was written for, in the area where it occurred.

Agreed on all points. These documents need to be read as having a context and a level of uncertainty we may not be aware of.

After that, it may only need to be secret to protect sources and methods, and publication of it will harm people, and the ability to employ those methods in the future. Perhaps Mr. Assange, would be willing to put up all the money he earns from his web sites and donate it for setting up refugee camps in Australia for dispossessed Afghan's who need to flee or die.

Well, for now, I think it would behoove the coalition forces to devote more effort to keeping their civilian informants safe from reprisals. If I understand Petraeus' Iraq strategy at all, then he will no doubt pursue this course anyway.

Mr. Assange has more to answer for than I initially thought - his job of redacting the documents is shoddy in parts, and it doesn't take many mistakes to yield targets.

The horror of war (and the loose lips of commanders), is why the practice of embedding journalists with the troops was stopped after Vietnam.

What about these guys? Regardless, the idea that civilians should be "protected" from the "horrors" (read: truth) of war is disgusting. War is ugly, and if the people don't want to fight it, what on earth is their purportedly democratic government doing trying to deceive them into it? The government is the servant of the people, not the other way around.

And... The raw feeds of military unit reports have always been both secret, and sensitive. How do you think WWII reports may have looked from Tarawa (35K troops with 9.4% casualties in one day), if the raw data had been in the newspaper the next day or week. Anyone who's ever looked at the aftermath of a battle would ever think it was worth it.

If it's worth it, then it's worth it. If it's not, then it's not. But that's for the people to judge, and not the military, or the government. The people can't do that without the relevant information. That doesn't mean this kind of information overload minute-by-minute reporting we get from these documents - they are a second-best substitute for transparency. But it does mean all the major facts (like, say, the effectiveness of the Taliban) are on the table for all to see.

-Jester