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WikiLeaks’ material on Afghan war: anybody could download it - Neil Sheehan

Published: 02 August, 2010, 10:40
Edited: 14 August, 2010, 21:56

Afghanistan, Lashkar Gan: An Afghan National Army loads his machine gun before leaving a camp in Lashkar Gah in Helmand province on the third day of a joint operation Mushtarak "Together in Dari" on February 15, 2010. (AFP Photo / Massoud Hossaini)

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TAGS: Military, Scandal, Politics, Mass media, Afghanistan


The material leaked by WikiLeaks is underground military stuff, but it is not high-level decision-making, believes Neil Sheehan, former NY Times reporter who published secret Pentagon papers on Vietnam War 40 years ago.

“[The] military are incredibly careless to have put this stuff almost virtually online within their own system. Apparently all of this could have come from one soldier who obtained that. When I was in Vietnam the names of informers were very carefully guarded,” remembers journalist.

The head of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is about to be under the heat because these leaks contain sensitive materials that is a major embarrassment to the military institutions, Sheehan states.

“The [WikiLeaks] material shows just how difficult the war is, how difficult the environment to work is,” former reporter stressed. “The American public has very little contact with the reality of the war. We do not have a draft anymore. The sons of the middle class are not being drafted and being sent off to war as occurred in Vietnam. Soldiers in Afghanistan are young men and women who joined [army] because they either want to be a soldier or marine, or because they think they are going to get a college education, and also they will not catch a bullet or an explosive – it will not happen to them.”

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Afghanistan: Afghan elders line up aiming their weapons 03 August during a display of their determination to fight the Taliban in case they decide to come back to this village some 50 kilometres North of the Kabul frontline.  (AFP Photo / Emmanuel Dunand) 01.08.2010, 12:22 5 comments

White House pretends Afghan WikiLeak is “old news”

WikiLeaks-published documents on Afghan war might be old for US army, but Americans are learning about it for the first time, Brian Becker, the Director of the American anti-war A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, pointed out.

02.08.2010, 12:41

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boz August 14, 2010, 20:35
+1

The 'American Public' have very little contact with 'Reality', full stop.