Afghanistan and Wikilieaks

Discussion in 'Off Topic Area' started by Slindsay, Jul 26, 2010.

  1. Slindsay

    Slindsay All violence is necessary

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/afghanistan-the-war-logs

    Having read a few American newspaper pieces I have to ask, do you guys even know what's been leaked yet because all I'm stumbling upon is calls to execute wikileaks for treason (which is difficult, websites are notoriously hard to execute what with their not being alive and all :))

    Also, looks like when you drop four 500lb bombs on a village then strafe the people attempting to drag the injured from the ruins afterwards you might hit the odd civilian, who knew?
     
  2. Ranzan

    Ranzan Valued Member

    It is war what do you expect, and most of the stuff on that site is bs by the way. Yes there are some truths on it but also a lot of bs. Same old same old anti American war crap what do you want us to say? Here I will give it a try.


    We are war mongering barbarians and will kill anyone who ****es us off, we also like to invade countries for the hell of it.
    With much love.
    America
     
  3. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    Hey, they're your freaking documents! They're as true as it gets. Like the head of Wikileaks says: "We publish CIA reports all the time. They are legitimate reports, but they don't mean the CIA is telling the truth".
     
  4. Llamageddon

    Llamageddon MAP's weird cousin Supporter

    The thing which got me is that all the anger around the leaks have nothing to do with the actions, but with the fact that they got caught.

    What worries me is that there are people out there who think collateral damage is rare. If you didn't know this was going on, you need to wake up and smell the phosphorous.

    And I'm not having a go at the US by the way. The UK, Poland and somewhere else were implicated too.
     
  5. Slindsay

    Slindsay All violence is necessary

    Well I was actually wondering if this changed anyone opinions about the war being winnable really under this strategy. I mean we're clearly blowing up a lot of civilians out there and that's a good way to **** people off and we have Pakistan next door helping out the insurgents and Taliban. We also have an ever increasing number of soldiers injured or killed coming back as well so really though there's not a huge amount of brand new information in the leak, there's plenty of worries that are confirmed by it.
     
  6. slipthejab

    slipthejab Hark, a vagrant! Supporter

    Guess it all depends on who you ask. Are you asking the Fox news viewers? Those reading the Washington Post? Or who exactly. America is pretty diverse. So really it's not like there is one blanket viewpoint. What news pieces did you read? That will answer a lot of your question.

    Since when is this anything new? People may say they want their wars neat and tidy. But we all know that's not possible. I don't think America is somehow more guilty of anyone else than this. We just happen to be the worlds most outspoken superpower at the moment. There was a time when it was the Brits and there would have been incidents just as bad... it's the nature of being a ruling superpower and involved with war.

    I don't get why all the sensation over this from any side.

    The media outlets will be shocked. It helps get viewers.

    The government will be upset. Especially if it puts them in a bad light.

    Some of the people will be shocked and appalled because they are clueless.

    Some of the people will not be shocked and appalled because they have a clue... and understand enough to be cynical.

    Pretty much a non issue all the way around.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2010
  7. Ranzan

    Ranzan Valued Member

    Fake documents do exist, look at all the ufo nutters they are always claiming to have government documents.


    Slip said it perfectly.
     
  8. Slindsay

    Slindsay All violence is necessary

    Well I actually noticed it on CNN then on Fox (I get my news from google so I tend to get a decent variety of left and right stuff) but it struck me with fox particularly that none of their nine articles on it covered the actual content of the leak and they were all variants on "kill the traitorous website".

    Totally a side issue here but a few of my mates who've been in the military or OTC have said the same thing about this. Americans have a very different basic dogma in this, they keep their distance then blow things up with an Airstrike. Other nations still try to engage the enemy as a first response then call in air support if necessary. Their words, not mine.

    I guess it's because it's a fairly massive leak in scale, it confirms that there's been more than one cover-up of civilian deaths, it shows their may well have been at least one war crime committed in the invasion, it shows that IED's are an enormous problem and Pakistan seem to be consistently offering aid to the Taliban.

    There's a difference between suspecting something and having evidence like this laid down in front of you in my mind.
     
  9. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    You don't condemn the release of fake documents. If the US DoD believe they are real (which their reaction strongly seems to suggest they do), then there is no reason to believe otherwise.
     
  10. Ranzan

    Ranzan Valued Member

    Your mates don't know much than, airstrikes are last resort or are used on an area where it may too dangerous for foot soldiers.

    Or hostile hot spots such as this
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7zKPfmSKj0"]YouTube- Marine Hornets Drop a 2,000 Pound JDAM On Muj Hotel[/ame]

    A lot better to level the enemy in one shot rather than risk the troops on an assault.
     
  11. slipthejab

    slipthejab Hark, a vagrant! Supporter

    None of which is surprising given the bent of Fox news.


    Rubbish. Your mates words or not. No military manages to get by blowing things up from a distance. If it was that easy every country in the world be a state of the US by now. Seriously. This old chesnut gets trotted out again and again and again. If it was the case there wouldn't be soliders coming home in body bags or getting taken out left right and center in by IED's. This type of thinking usually is somewhere in the mix of 'Navy SEAL's VS SAS VS whatever other bad ass Spec Ops team' and all that other crap logic that people toss around from the armchair.

    Are we supposed to be impressed with the whole concept of engaging an enemy first and then calling in air support. Anyone who's living by this Victorian standard of war obviously hasn't been following any of the recent trends in war and weapons.

    I'm not even remotely surprised. Anyone who's spent time reading about the Vietnam war has to know the government will always try to minimize stateside civilian backlash due to reportage of civilian deaths.

    Civilian deaths (and their cover ups by administrations) have and always will be a very big part of war. At least if history is anything to go by.


    Again - I'm not even remotely surprised. A bit of crumb that fell off my biscuit as I was typing this and possibly went into my keyboard elicited more a response than did any of the above topics. One mans cynic... is another mans realist.

    Yes perhaps. But anyone that thinks it's not going on is a bleeding fool. Good so now we have all this damning evidence... which a monkey with a magic 8-ball could have just as easily divined as accurately in my opinion.

    I do find it interesting the leaking of it to Wiki-leaks. That fascinates me. But the actual stuff that is out there... not even remotely surprising. Not to anyone who's been in the service, in a war... or to a country that's war torn.

    Don't get me wrong. I'm sure it will become a fascinating thread full of conjecture and opposing viewpoints. I just can't get all that excited about a leak that pretty much confirms what I've thought all along. Ages ago I gave up having to validate my beliefs and instincts about war and the way governments operate in their own interests (or actually contrary to... all the while in the full-steam-ahead march of folly) by reading the details via documents leaked to the media.

    FWIW - what I do find interesting is when you start to see the data in the form of a graphic. The Guardian has an interesting interactive one:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/datablog/interactive/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-events
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2010
  12. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    Depends, I suppose. From the point of view of a soldier, yeah, better to waste a bomb than a trooper. From the point of view of a civilian - how many innocents are gonna get killed in an air strike compared to a ground assault?

    In one operation US Forces fired rockets into a Madrasa in an attempt to kill a Taliban leader. Instead they killed 7 children. They then tried to cover up the fact that they had used rockets and claimed the assault was due to 'nefarious activities' and not an assasination attempt.

    In another USSF screw up, they dropped bombs on a house after the Taliban had withdrawn. The butchers bill for that operation? "12 US wounded, two teenage girls and a 10-year-old boy wounded, one girl killed, one woman killed, four civilian men killed, one donkey killed, one dog killed, several chickens killed, no enemy killed, no enemy wounded, no enemy detained." The emphasis is my own. The US Military then lied in their statement, claiming that militants had been captured in the raid.

    Air assaults have their downsides too.
     
  13. Gripfighter

    Gripfighter Sub Seeker

    I tried to go on the wikileaks website earlier and surprise surprise the websites down, that's what's really p*ssing me off such blatant censorship. as for the reports themselves meh they don't surprise me there's all kinds of stuff we know about Vietnam and Korea now that no one had any idea about at the time it seems to take a period of 20 years to find out what our country's were really doing in an area the internet is just speeding that process up. if your shocked that you live in an illusion of democracy then mores the fool you.
     
  14. slipthejab

    slipthejab Hark, a vagrant! Supporter

    Since when is any of that really a 'downside' to those waging a war?! They become inconvenient facts but little more than that. This is war. As it ever was.
     
  15. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    First, that generalization isn't true. It was the RAF, not the USAAF, that firebombed Dresden. Everyone uses airpower first from time to time. And there have been tons of ground battles involving US forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Second, I don't see why that generalization helps. Grozny was flattened largely by ground troops; doesn't mean it was surgical. And it was ground forces that conducted the My Lai massacre, and the Air Cavalry that stopped it.

    Otherwise, Slip said everything that I would.
     
  16. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    The fact that 12 US were wounded shows it wasn't an "air assault" like you're condemning, but it was actually just air support for an ongoing ground operation, which is what you're saying is the preferred method.
     
  17. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    If we were trying to conquer the Afghan people, I'd agree, but what we're supposed to be doing is protecting the Afghan people from the Taliban until the Afghan military can do it by themselves. Every 500lb bomb dropped on an Afghan child's head does more to hurt our efforts than 50 flag draped coffins.
     
  18. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    But how many civilians would be killed in the gun battles that lead to those 50 flag-draped coffins? Soldiers who are dying use suppressing fire. Suppressing fire in areas with civilians kill scores of people. During the battle of Mogadishu, 19 US servicemen died and an estimated 5,000 Somalis died. How many of them were noncombatants? I'm guessing at least a thousand.
     
  19. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    Ok, I've checked the info. This air strike was called after the operation was over, the US troops were moving their wounded to be choppered out and they called in an air strike. The Taliban pulled out before the air strike.
     
  20. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    I'm sorry, can you rephrase your point, I'm not getting it.
     

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