Yesterday The Guardian revealed it had recieved, via Wikileaks a massive collection of US military logfiles which showed the War on Afghanistan going even worse than we already knew about:
A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.
The war logs also detail:
[…]
• How a secret “black” unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial.
• How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.
• How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.
• How the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of their roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.
Interesting material and I’ve seen people on Twitter refer to it as the Pentagon Papers volume II, but does it change anything significantly about our view of the war? The original Pentagon Papers had an impact because they were the first source to make fully clear the catastrophe the War on Vietnam was and how culpable the US military and government were in covering up the truth. With the current wars on Afghanistan and Iraq this was known or suspected from the start and too much shit has already come out to be too surprised by what’s in those logs.
But it is important as a cache of evidence, for historical purposes if nothing else, to show that once again those who were against the war from the start where right about it, that the reasons we opposed the war have been proven right. Not to brag, but as a warning for the next time our leaders want to sell us a humantarian intervention.
The raw logs are available as a torrent from the Piratebay, or downloadable in spreadsheet (.csv), database (.sql) or Google maps (.kml) format from Cryptogon. It’s only some 15 megabytes big, so easy enough to get.
UPDATE: a better torrent.