Sinfest

kame · Joined: 11 Jul 2006 Posts: 2565 Location: Alba Nuadh

90'000 records of the Afgan War Leaked

A few of the good bits:

- Taliban has heat-seeking missiles, American helicopters just as susceptible as the Russian ones were.

- Pakistas and Iran are suspected of aiding the insurgency.

- Afgan Intelligence services and police inept, corrupt, prone to desertion, as well as abuse of power.

And I love the boilerplate reply from some random general:

nathan · Joined: 10 Jul 2006 Posts: 6277

Thy Brilliance · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 3419 Location: Relative

Until I see some form of a metric as to how the hell wikileaks decides what info to publish and what not to publish, I can't fully trust them.

Sam the Eagle · Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 2275 Location: 192.168.0.1

That madea good read, nothing really new, or earth-shattering, here though.
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Him · Joined: 10 Jul 2006 Posts: 4165 Location: On edge

tinkeringIdiot · Joined: 13 Oct 2008 Posts: 1057

mouse · Joined: 10 Jul 2006 Posts: 16508 Location: under the bed

it will be interesting to see how this plays out. there's really nothing here that we didn't know already - even the fact that the taliban has heat-seeking missiles is not that much of a surprise, since they were using them against the russians. and as npr pointed out - this is pretty low-level stuff, raw reports, so some of it is unverified.

but i wonder if seeing it all together in one steaming heap is going to mean some changes - like, say, a big push to just get us out. i really hate the idea of leaving the place to the taliban, especially since a lot of the reasons for our failure go back to the criminal incompetence of the bush admin - all that time, all that money, all those lives, and bin laden ends up winning, and everything is back as it was. but you see all that stuff about the incompetence/corruption/sheer lack of interest by the afghan police and military....we can't win if we want it more than the afghans do. we should have learned that, at least, from viet nam.
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Willem · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 6306 Location: wasteland style

Bin Laden has already won ages ago.

The Taliban =/= Al Qaeda btw.
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nathan · Joined: 10 Jul 2006 Posts: 6277

Most insightful piece I've read yet.
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kame · Joined: 11 Jul 2006 Posts: 2565 Location: Alba Nuadh

mouse · Joined: 10 Jul 2006 Posts: 16508 Location: under the bed

well, as i said - the average consumer of non-fox news knew all this, we just didn't have actual incident reports or see the whole thing as one whole sum.

i must say, though - "names may have to be redacted in the interest of protecting the safety of said people. " suggests more a concern on protecting the safety of the whistle-blower, rather than the troops in the field. not the it's not good to protect the whistle-blowers, but it's sort of a different notion of "safety".
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ShadowCell · Joined: 03 Aug 2008 Posts: 5844 Location: California

Willem · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 6306 Location: wasteland style

Mizike · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 5123 Location: Iowa City

If you watch/read/listen to the news (other than Fox) and you didn't know this stuff, then you're blind deaf and dumb - not mute, just dumb.

It's still damned depressing.
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Scire aliquid laus est, pudor est non discere velle
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Willem · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 6306 Location: wasteland style