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Flood of leaked war documents leaves questions in its wake

01 Aug 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

“Teach us to count our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart," prays the psalmist this Sunday. Whether we have counted our days properly in Afghanistan is the question Americans are now facing after tens of thousands of classified U.S. military documents released by a whistleblower website suggest U.S. war efforts in Afghanistan are not going nearly as well as war supporters would like the public to believe. Some 91,000 documents posted online Sunday by Wikileaks.org offer a rare and unflattering close-up view of operations on the ground in the war. Public support for the long war, already flagging, may be further diminished by revelations of unreported civilian casualties and alleged double-dealing by the U.S.’s Pakistani allies. The Wikileaks organization gave the New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, and the German magazine Der Spiegel access to the voluminous records several weeks ago on the condition that they not report on the material before last Sunday. According to those sources, the documents vividly illustrate that after nearly nine years of war at a cost of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, the Taliban is stronger than at any time since 2001. As the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, tries to reverse the lagging war effort, the documents sketch a detailed picture of a war hamstrung by an Afghan government, police force, and army of questionable loyalty and competence and a Pakistani military that appears to be at best uncooperative and at worst an unspoken ally of the insurgent forces the American-led coalition is trying to defeat. Wikileaks said it has delayed the release of some 15,000 additional reports from the archive as part of a “harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.” President Obama and top military officials said Tuesday that the release of the documents should not force a rethinking of America’s commitment to the war. “While I’m concerned about the disclosure of sensitive information from the battlefield that could potentially jeopardize individuals or operations, the fact is these documents don’t reveal any issues that haven’t already informed our public debate on Afghanistan,” said Obama. Despite the revelations, the U.S. House of Representatives agreed on Tuesday to provide $37 billion to continue financing America’s ongoing wars, but the vote showed deepening divisions and anxiety among Democrats over the course of the conflict in Afghanistan. “I think the White House continues to underestimate the depth of antiwar sentiment here,” said Representative Jim McGovern (D.-Mass.). Source: Articles by Wikileaks.org and Elisabeth Bumiller and Carol Hulse for the New York Times

afghanistan pakistan wikileaks
How undiplomatic of you, Wikileaks

05 Dec 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

“All the nations” have reason to proclaim the happiness of the Lord, says the psalmist this Sunday. Yet nations around the world are proclaiming their unhappiness this week after the unauthorized leak of a treasure trove of private U.S. diplomatic correspondence by whistleblower website Wikileaks. Given that the nations of the world lack the harmony and accord St. Paul calls for in this Sunday’s reading from the Letter to the Romans, U.S. diplomats routinely send their frank and unvarnished private opinions of foreign leaders back to the State Department. The gradual publication of some quarter-million such communications has left the Obama administration scrambling to contain the damage. On Tuesday the State Department severed its computer files from the government's classified network, significantly reducing the number of government employees who can read diplomatic posts, as U.S. and world leaders tried to tighten procedures in the wake of the damaging leak. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton embarked on a hastily planned trip to smooth ruffled diplomatic feathers worldwide. Ratcheting up the heat on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the European law enforcement agency Interpol put him on its most-wanted list after Sweden issued an arrest warrant against Assange as part of a drawn-out rape probe. Assange’s lawyer claims Assange is being persecuted on trumped-up charges. One of the more diplomatically embarrassing revelations in the documents is that the U.S. State Department asked its diplomats to collect sensitive personal information on foreign leaders. "What worries me is the mixing of diplomatic tasks with downright espionage," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley sought to reassure the world that U.S. diplomats were not spies, even as he sidestepped questions about why they were asked to provide DNA samples, iris scans, credit card numbers, fingerprints, and other deeply personal information about leaders at the United Nations and in foreign capitals. Source: Articles by Raphael G. Satter and Malin Rising for the Associated Press, TIME, and msnbc.com

ban ki-moon state department wikileaks diplomats hillary rodham clinton julian assange spying p j crowley
Quote of the week

24 Jun 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

“I am convinced he genuinely believes he will be sent to America and will face something terrible there.” --Vaughan Smith, former journalist and friend of Julian Assange, explaining why she thinks the Wikileaks founder, facing extradition to Sweden to face questioning on alleged sex crimes, sought political asylum by entering the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Tuesday Source: Associated Press

julian assange wikileaks
Split decision in trial of Bradley Manning

04 Aug 2013 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Jesus makes it clear in this Sunday's gospel that his mission does not involve resolving everyone's disputes: “Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?” is his pointed response to a request from a person in the crowd to settle a conflict. In disputes involving military personnel, however, military judges do make the call, and on Tuesday the judge overseeing the trial of U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning found him not guilty of “aiding the enemy,” the most serious charge he faced for his release of hundreds of thousands of military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks.At the same time Manning was convicted on multiple counts of violating the Espionage Act, stealing government property, and other charges which could result in a maximum sentence of 136 years. In delivering the mixed verdict, the judge, Col. Denise Lind, pulled back from the government’s effort to create a legal benchmark that press freedom specialists had warned could have broad consequences for the future of investigative journalism about national security in the internet era.WikiLeaks, in a Twitter post, called Espionage Act convictions “a very serious new precedent for supplying information to the press.” Still, Yochai Benkler, a Harvard law professor who testified in Manning’s defense, praised the judge for making an “extremely important decision” to reject the aiding-the-enemy charge and thereby deny “the prosecution’s effort to launch the most dangerous assault on investigative journalism and the free press in the area of national security that we have seen in decades.”Homily hint: The internet is the great equalizer when it comes to privacy. Secrets that in the past were kept from public view are now brought to light, as we see in cases ranging from politicians' pecadillos to state secrets and military policies of the highest order. While governments scramble to tighten security, is anyone considering an alternative course that would render all the secrecy unnecessary? Perhaps individuals and nations simply need to "stop lying to one another," as the reading from the Letter to the Colossians puts it. Source: An article by Charles Savage for the New York Times

internet freedom of the press wikileaks espionage yochai benkler precedents denise lind bradley manning secrecy