We Didn’t Have Computers, An Internet, 24/7 Cable News or a Wikileaks

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

By now most have heard about the Afghanistan Docs, some 92,000, that were released by Wikileaks and with coordinated release at roughly the same time by three News Media outlets:

The Guardian: Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation

New York Times: An archive of classified military documents offers an unvarnished view of the war in Afghanistan

Der Spiegel: The Afghanistan Protocol; Explosive Leaks Provide Image of War from Those Fighting It

Whoever hasn’t will as it’s become the main News Story today hitting every level and the links above give you the main outlets of the reports on the documents released and more.

I won’t go into much on them, as in breaking anything down, here as I already did a post, as the news was breaking, and placed it on my sites as well as a few others, There started a heavy discussion on one of them many trying to condemn the release of these very studied documents, by the three outlets and probably others, as to what they wanted to post up, These aren’t about the releasing of this hard information but what was taking place during those years they cover, In Our Names, and was attempted to be covered up, with a willing so called free press, and not for any security reason, as much had been hinted at or reported on already, by many pushed out of the mainstream, but with little hard evidence.

In the one posting I did and mention above about the lively discussion one early reply caught my eye, part of it was this:

Considering BushCo. threatened to turn Pakistan into a parking lot if they didn’t co-operate initially

To which my first thought was Huh?, when did he do that, no link was givin, as everyone knew General (ret) Pervez Musharraf, the Military President of Pakistan, already getting billions in U.S. aid started receiving billions more of the War on Terrorism monies that were readily handed out to god knows who for support of the bushco wants and that wasn’t in Afghanistan. Everyone knew that the Pakistani military wasn’t sent in mass to the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan, as a boxing in force, as our invasion of Afghanistan was well past starting and al Qaeda and the Taliban were on the run through the mountain passes and into the tribal area’s of Pakistan. BushCo didn’t even continue the chase. Nothing seemed to even start as to the Pakistani Military going after the Taliban and what was left of al Qaeda till the last few years, both now growing as the bushco raised the hatred level across that region and thus across the World, by taking their eyes off Afghanistan but Invading and Destroying Iraq. And Musharraf continued reaping our billions right up till he was ousted.

That’s the similar spun mindset of many, just throw something out there and move on to another, similar to one 24/7, calling itself news outlet, mostly propaganda outlet that many watch and quote from.

The Wikileaks Tet Offensive

The Bush Administration chose to do nothing about all this; its focus was on Iraq. Worse than nothing: an open spigot of military aid was made available to the Musharraf government, most of which was directed against Pakistan’s perceived threat–the border with India. The story changed a bit when Barack Obama became President. With the focus back on Afghanistan, the Obama Administration began to pressure the Pakistanis about their ties to the Taliban. At the same time, a Pakistani branch of the Taliban began terrorist operations against the post-Musharraf government of Asif Ali Zardari. A Taliban force overran the Swat district, an area 90 miles from the capital of Islamabad that had been a favored site for the vacation villas of the Pakistani elite.

The situation seemed to change over the past 18 months. The Pakistani army reacted to the Pakistani Taliban threat. The extremists were cleared from Swat and South Waziristan. Continued

As the subject title says this is about another time and another quagmire, but first Afghanistan stopped being about anything to do with 9/11 as soon as the drums of war were starting and pointing at Iraq.

The taking the eyes off Afghanistan, as to the years these documents cover, was mentioned on the Democracy Now Show today as well as in a report earlier on NPR’s Morning Edition and some other outlets I’ve seen.

There’s and inquiry going on in another country right now where this came up very early in the public testimony some months back and I posted this:

Drip, drip, drip, “”He recalled noting that: “the dog didn’t bark – it grizzled.” Don’t forget – this ‘grizzling’ for regime change was 6 months BEFORE 9/11.””. drip, drip, drip,  “”But there was a ‘sea change’ in attitude after the atrocities, with former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice targeting Iraq on the very day of the outrage.””, drip, drip, drip, “”George Bush tried to make a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida in a conversation with Tony Blair three days after the 9/11 attacks, according to Blair’s foreign policy adviser of the time.””, drip, drip, drip, “”There was “a touching belief [in Washington] that we shouldn’t worry so much about the aftermath because it was all going to be sweetness and light”.””, drip, drip, drip, “”Boyce mentions the “dysfunctionalism” of Washington. He says that he would find himself briefing his American counterparts on what was happening in different parts of the US adminstration. Rumsfeld was not sharing information””, drip, drip, drip………..!

See what happens when a Democracy doesn’t have Non Top Secret Information, and when those involved are asked about lie that it never happened, nothing close too, needed to make decisions on policy and it comes up years after the devestation wrought, oh and much more came up since!

And that Inquiry is still ongoing with much in public testimony and now documents, and even though taking place in Britain it should be remembered that the conflict in Afghanistan and then in Iraq were being orchestrated from the United States in Washington D.C. so testimony not even mentioning the United States has our finger prints all over it and this Country still fears bringing accountability to it’s detriment for the coming decades in many ways!

Now to the other time. We had this as to getting the word out and testimony of those involved back when in another long failed policy of occupation and destruction.

The Underground GI Press with links in the top bar for further study.

GI Movement: Underground Newspapers where you’ll find just some of the Soldiers Underground Press newspapers that you can read through in pdf links.

The GI movement produced a phenomenal amount of its own literature, often taking the form of underground antiwar newspapers. This page gives an overview of undrground GI papers in the Northwest and links to galleries of digitized issues of three main newspapers published at Fort Lewis. Click the images on the sidebar to visit a specific paper, or click here to browse all newspapers.

In this Video interview Julian Assange on the Afghanistan war logs: ‘They show the true nature of this war’ Assange mentions Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was in the discussion at Democracy Now this morning and has been talked to on NPR. In mentioning he compares these but adds that Ellsberg took a long time, as the war raged, to get the information together and convince a Free Press outlet to take the chance and even publish as the New York Times did than others joined in. It then took him years to put out the book, as Assange says in todays age and technology the world public not only has the information but the book that can be read or downloaded as that’s what the documents are.

Stay Tuned: WikiLeaks: More US documents coming on Afghan war