War in Afghanistan.

[kandrathe]

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.

I agree that there should be better communication from the President summarizing the "war" news with the home front. I think perhaps there is a fear of demoralization. Here in the evil empire, it is sad that a decade long war can become back-burner and we grind through money and lives until some event or a slow news cycle propels our interest back to the war for a week or two.

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.

Ok, I think I've been saying this for awhile. After WWII, our governments never demobilized, but rather kept looking for applications to apply this world dominating power, ergo, raison d'etat. It's mostly the US, but, also our NATO allies, Japan, South Korea and ANZAC.

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.

The release was reckless, and irresponsible. What I'm saying is that it was unnecessary for all this information to be released.

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.

There is no doubt that the US and Afghan government will be moving quickly to protect the exposed, however, this depends on the person, their position in the community and their geography.

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.

Sorry, I wasn't clear on that statement. Because of Vietnam, the military strictly controlled journalists movement and access to information within war zones. I'm more inclined to think this documentary,War Made Easy, is closer to our problem.

War should not be easy.

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.

We agree in principle here. I don't think Wikileaks helped out at all. The wise play would have been to work between the responsible news organizations and the Pentagon to release the information in a responsible manner to protect people lives. In principle, I'm still against news organizations making a profit from stolen goods, and I don't support the existence of a Wikileaks like structures to encourage traitors an easy venue for dumping classified information. I don't think we are at place where our governments can exist without secrets.