Accidental Blogger

Everyone knows that Afghanistan, is, in cricketing parlance, at best, a sticky wicket, if not a downright pigsty. Now, we have the Leaks pouring onto an already damp pitch, 90,000+  documents regarding the day-to-day conduct of the war in Afghanistan, of which 75,000 are now available for your perusal. Or if you don't have the patience, a select few of the more horrible accounts are highlighted in this NY Times piece.

For instance:

"JUNE 17, 2007 | PAKTIKA PROVINCE

INCIDENT REPORT: Botched Night Raid

Shortly after five American rockets
destroyed a compound in Paktika Province, helicopter-borne commandos
from Task Force 373 — a classified Special Operations unit of Army Delta
Force operatives and members of the Navy Seals — arrived to finish the job.

The mission was to capture or kill Abu
Laith al-Libi, a top commander for Al Qaeda, who was believed to be
hiding at the scene of the strike.

But Mr. Libi was not there. Instead, the
Special Operations troops found a group of men suspected of being
militants and their children. Seven of the children had been killed by
the rocket attack.

Some of the men tried to flee the
Americans, and six were quickly killed by encircling helicopters. After
the rest were taken as detainees, the commandos found one child still
alive in the rubble, and performed CPR for 20 minutes.

Word of the attack spread a wave of anger
across the region, forcing the local governor to meet with village
elders to defuse the situation.

American military officials drew up a list
of “talking points” for the governor, pointing out that the target had
been a senior Qaeda commander, that there had been no indications that
women and children would be present and that a nearby mosque had not
been damaged.

After the meeting, the governor reported
that local residents were in shock, but that he had “pressed the Talking
Points.” He even “added a few of his own that followed in line with our
current story.”

The attack was caused by the “presence of
hoodlums,” the governor told the people. It was a tragedy that children
had been killed, he said, but “it could have been prevented had the
people exposed the presence of insurgents in the area.”

He promised that the families would be compensated for their loss.

Mr. Libi was killed the following year by a C.I.A. drone strike."

We knew the war was horrible, but these accounts enable us to put faces on the daily toll, reported or unreported in sterile terms by war-front press dispatches. Will this yield an outcry against the war sufficient to pull the troops out, or will  'other considerations' prevail? Only time will tell.

The Obama administration's response to this disclosure has been surprisingly low-key. They have termed the Wikileaks disclosure 'irresponsible:

"In a statement, President Obama's national security advisor, Marine Gen. James L. Jones,
deplored the "disclosure of classified information" that he said could
put the lives of Americans and U.S. partners at risk and threaten the
nation's security.'

However, no attempts were made to 'persuade' the NYTimes and other media outlets not to publish.

“I did in fact go the White House and lay out for them what we had,”
Baquet said. “We did it to give them the opportunity to comment and
react. They did. They also praised us for the way we handled it, for
giving them a chance to discuss it, and for handling the information
with care. And for being responsible.”

Jones said that WikiLeaks, unlike the Times, did not contact the U.S. government first.

That's not too surprising, given the recent friction
between WikiLeaks and the military. In April, WikiLeaks posted a
classified video of a U.S. attack in Baghdad that killed several civilians and Reuters employees.

This newly released trove of documents could raise
further questions about the U.S. military's two long-running wars. For
instance, the Times reports on new revelation that show how Pakistan’s spy service has aided the Afghan insurgency. The Pakistani military, the Times reports, “has acted as both ally and enemy.”

The leaked documents contain other critical new information, including the Taliban's deployment of surface-to-air missiles.

Does this release of leaked documents place the US government in a more untenable position dealing with the Afghan and Pakistani governments? Will it alter the ground realities in Afghanistan? Or will this turn the sticky wicket into quicksand? 

So many questions, and as many answers as there a political pundits willing to fill the airwaves with the next big story, as the Sherrod mess has lost its hold on the fickle public.

Update:

And the drumbeat begins…on CNN, MSNBC… The meme being currently discussed is 'Did the leaks endanger the heroic armed forces?' and ' Isn't it such a terrible situation our troops are facing there, taking mortar and bullets to save our freedom!" The answer is yes and yes. Yes to the third question not being asked on the 'liberal media'- "Did many more civilians die as a result of these encounters than have been publicized?"