Wikileaks leak 75000+ reports from Afghanistan front lines

[Captain Utopia]

http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/

There's a map and they've done an impressive job decoding the report headers into something meaningful.

Plus they've held some back, which probably isn't a bad idea:

We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from total 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.

[Golden Applesauce]

Just saw this on^* the NYT.  (linky)

Apparently, the Taliban have had portable heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles for quite some time, and CIA extramilitary (quasi-military? para-military?) successes have been attributed to the Afghan army, presumably for PR purposes.


Cain - does this just confirm things that that everyone in the security / terrorism / geopolitical relations communities already knew, or is any of this surprising new information?



*we say a newspaper article is "in" the newspaper, and a web article is "on" the webpage.  When the webpage is a newspaper, which preposition are you supposed to use?

[Cain]

Neither seem too surprising.  The Taliban were the official government of Afghanistan for a while, with the full backing of the Pakistani ISI, Saudi Arabia, UAE (organized crime capital of the world) and the tacit recognition of the USA.  At the very least they would've gotten relatively decent surface to air missiles via Pakistan and old stockpiles from the Soviet occupation, both of American and Soviet make.

The CIA paramilitary thing I haven't heard about before, but given the general uselessness and unwillingness of the various warlords in Afghanistan, it's not difficult to see them doing it.  Same happened in Iraq, after all....only instead of CIA paramilitaries doing the dirty work, it was the Badr Organization, an Iranian trained paramilitary of Iraqi exiles.

[Jenne]

The timing of this is awesome indeed, with the changing of the guard in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Captain Utopia]

They say haven't released anything from 2010, but I don't know enough about the operations side to know whether that's sufficient to negate the safety issue.

[Jenne]

Well, it makes the outgoing generalissimo from Iraq to Afdamnistan look like a major fuckin' loopdeedoo, and the guy coming in is kinda a freak anyway, and he's starting OFF with an apology to begin with:

"Well, you see, I uh, when I said I liked killing them thar Taleebawn, what I really  meant was...er..."

[LMNO]

Maybe I'm missing something, but don't we already know what these reports are saying?

I mean, confirmation is nice, but anyone who's been paying attention should already know that there is an enormous clusterfuck going on over there.

[Cramulus]

we've had a general idea about how big of a clusterfuck it's been, but this is the hard evidence.


For example, a guy shoots a missile at an unconfirmed target. He misses and kills 7 children.

This has become so commonplace they don't even report on it. But 7, 12, 20 civilian deaths per day, they seriously add up! This report shows us exactly how frequent civ. casualties have been.


I also was not aware that we had a hit on prez. karzai... I can't imagine this was public info. How is he responding to this leak?


Julian Assange (founder of wikileaks) has a political agenda - so even though these reports are unedited, they're not strictly "objective" -  they tell a story which Julian wants us to hear.

[Jenne]

I think they're trying to do an Al-Jazeera-type expose on these wars.  I appreciate the effort, but I can totally see why the information leaking out would make the military nervous.  As well as US allies, lol.

[Pæs]

Wasn't sure if this had been posted anywhere else.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gKu1DQoewmBy2do5ctRqUX5efGBAD9HDK86G0

LONDON — Online whistle-blower WikiLeaks has posted a huge encrypted file named "Insurance" to its website, sparking speculation that those behind the organization may be prepared to release more classified information if authorities interfere with them.

At 1.4 gigabytes, the file is 20 times larger than the batch of 77,000 secret U.S. military documents about Afghanistan that WikiLeaks dumped onto the Web last month, and cryptographers say that the file is virtually impossible to crack — unless WikiLeaks releases the key used to encode the material.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/06/wikileaks-pressure-pentagon-military-files

The Pentagon has demanded that WikiLeaks immediately erase the huge cache of secret US military files about the Afghan war it has posted online and hand over another 15,000 classified records in its possession.

Condemning the whistleblowers' website for inciting the leaking of military secrets, the Department of Defence warned it would examine ways to compel WikiLeaks to "do the right thing" if it did not do so voluntarily.

[Triple Zero]

Wasn't sure if this had been posted anywhere else.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gKu1DQoewmBy2do5ctRqUX5efGBAD9HDK86G0

LONDON — Online whistle-blower WikiLeaks has posted a huge encrypted file named "Insurance" to its website, sparking speculation that those behind the organization may be prepared to release more classified information if authorities interfere with them.

At 1.4 gigabytes, the file is 20 times larger than the batch of 77,000 secret U.S. military documents about Afghanistan that WikiLeaks dumped onto the Web last month, and cryptographers say that the file is virtually impossible to crack — unless WikiLeaks releases the key used to encode the material.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/06/wikileaks-pressure-pentagon-military-files

The Pentagon has demanded that WikiLeaks immediately erase the huge cache of secret US military files about the Afghan war it has posted online and hand over another 15,000 classified records in its possession.

Condemning the whistleblowers' website for inciting the leaking of military secrets, the Department of Defence warned it would examine ways to compel WikiLeaks to "do the right thing" if it did not do so voluntarily.

Ah yes I read that too, here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/02/wikileaks_insurance/

I bet they have a bunch of close friends and/or family members with an envelope "open in the case of death/disappearance" (or similar) that contains the passphrase, or even partial passphrase.

And I wondered if Schneier wrote on the subject (haven't checked his blog in a few weeks) and indeed he does:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/08/wikileaks_insur.html

(am now reading it, dunno what he said yet)

[LMNO]

I'm really, really hoping it's actually 1.4 GB of scatgranny porn.

[Triple Zero]

I'm really, really hoping it's actually 1.4 GB of scatgranny porn.

I'm with you dude, here's to hoping ...

[Cain]

I hope it's nuclear passwords encoded in scatgranny porn.