From: "Maureen O'Connell" <mloc@earthlink.net>
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 1:21 PM
Subject: Re: Dreyfuss: Women, the Taliban and That 'Time' Cover
Ed,
Robert Dreyfuss has it right. Thanks for sending this. I'm appalled by the
hell-on-earth that is the life of women in Afghanistan, but if the Taliban
magically disappeared, tribal customs and deep-rooted, ancient honor systems
in the provinces would mean that women's lives would still be unvalued. We
can't solve this by killing Afghans, Al Queda members (if there are any left
in Afghanistan), and Talibs. Only the Afghans themselves can drag themselves
into the 21st century. In the '70s, they elected a communist President.
Young women wore miniskirts at Kabul University. Cafes and coffeehouses
thrived, and all manner of political discussion filled the air. The
reactionaries didn't like it (nor did our CIA), took to the streets, the
Russians invaded, we armed the mujahadeen and here we are. Fucked. We need
to end this war. We need to face reality, and stop the propaganda.
***
From: "Joseph Maizlish" <goodwork@igc.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 7:49 PM
Subject: Re: Dreyfuss: Women, the Taliban and That 'Time' Cover
The punditry may guess all they want about the future. We know that in
the present the U.S. is pouring on the violence and mightily supporting
the corruption of Afghan (and by the way, U.S.) politics. This is not a
favor to women or men. Killing the present while spending one's mental
energy making guesses about how best to manipulate the future is worse
than fiddling while humanity self-destructs.
Joe M.
WikiLeaks preparing to release more Afghan files
By Writers Raphael G. Satter And Anne Flaherty
Associated Press: Fri Aug 13, 2010
LONDON - WikiLeaks spokesman Julian Assange said Thursday his organization
is preparing to release the rest of the secret Afghan war documents it has
on file. The Pentagon warned that would be more damaging to security and
risk more lives than the organization's initial release of some 76,000 war
documents.
That extraordinary disclosure, which laid bare classified military documents
covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010, has angered U.S.
officials, energized critics of the NATO-led campaign, and drawn the
attention of the Taliban, which has promised to use the material to track
down people it considers traitors.
The Pentagon says it believes it has identified the additional 15,000
classified documents, and said Thursday that their exposure would be even
more damaging to the military than what has already been published.
Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell described the prospective publication
as the "height of irresponsibility."
"It would compound a mistake that has already put far too many lives at
risk," he said.
Speaking via videolink to London's Frontline Club, Assange brushed aside the
Pentagon's demands that he stop publishing their intelligence. He gave no
specific timeframe for the release of the 15,000 remaining files, but said
his organization had gone through about half of them.
"We're about 7,000 reports in," he said, describing the process of combing
through the files to ensure that no Afghans would be hurt by their
disclosure as "very expensive and very painstaking."
Still, he told the audience that he would "absolutely" publish them. He gave
no indication whether he would give the documents to media outlets The New
York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel - as he has before - or simply
dump them on the Wikileaks website.
The leaks exposed unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings by NATO
forces and covert operations against Taliban figures. Assange has said that
hundreds of those reports should be investigated by the media for evidence
of war crimes.
WikiLeaks' supporters say the blow-by-blow account of the conflict reveal
the horror of the campaign's daily grind. Detractors say the site has
recklessly endangered the war effort and Afghan informants working to stop
the Taliban.
The Pentagon has a task force of about 100 people reading the leaked
documents to assess the damage done and working, for instance, to alert
Afghans who might be identified by name and now could be in danger.
Taliban spokesmen have said they would use the material to try to hunt down
people who've been cooperating with what the Taliban considers a foreign
invader. That has aroused the concern of several human rights group
operating in Afghanistan - as well as Paris-based media watchdog Reporters
Without Borders, which on Thursday accused Wikileaks of recklessness.
Jean-Francois Julliard, the group's secretary-general, said that WikiLeaks
showed "incredible irresponsibility" when posting the documents online.
"WikiLeaks has in the past played a useful role by making information
available ... that exposed serious violations of human rights and civil
liberties which the Bush administration committed in the name of its war
against terror," Julliard said in an open letter to Assange posted to his
group's website.
"But revealing the identity of hundreds of people who collaborated with the
coalition in Afghanistan is highly dangerous."
WikiLeaks, through its account on micro-blogging website Twitter, dismissed
the letter as "some idiot statement, based on a bunch of quotes we never
made."
While he acknowledged that some of the critiques leveled at his group were
legitimate, he said the Pentagon - as well as human rights groups - had so
far refused to help WikiLeaks purge the name of Afghan informants from the
files.
At the State Department, spokesman Mark Toner said he was not aware of any
effort by department officials to contact WikiLeaks.
Defense Department spokesman Col. David Lapan dismissed WikiLeaks' claims
that they were reviewing the documents and removing information that could
harm civilians.
"They don't have the expertise to determine what might be too sensitive to
publish," he said. As for when the Pentagon expected WikiLeaks to release
the documents, Lapan said: "WikiLeaks is about as predictable as North
Korea."
A team of more than a hundred analysts from across the U.S. military, lead
by the Defense Intelligence Agency, is poring over the WikiLeaks documents,
according to defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to
discuss matters of intelligence. Called the Information Review Task Force,
the team is working out of the Crystal-City, Virginia-based
Counterintelligence Collaboration Center.
The analysts are combing the documents, trying to determine the implications
of the WikiLeaks release - everything from whether military or
intelligence-gathering tactics and procedures have been revealed and
compromised, to whether specific intelligence sources have been endangered.
They're also looking for incidents of civilian casualties that might not
have previously been reported, anything concerning allies or coalition
partners, and even "derogatory comments regarding Afghan culture or Islam."
The officials said the ultimate goal is to ensure the safety of U.S. and
coalition members. The team is operating independently of an ongoing Army
criminal investigation, and that of other law enforcement agencies, the
officials said.
In the meanwhile, the U.S. has also reportedly urged its allies to look into
Assange and his international network of activists, although it's not clear
how aggressive Washington has been in prodding its foreign friends.
Earlier Thursday the Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told The
Associated Press that Washington had not approached the his government about
pursuing possible criminal charges against Assange, an Australian citizen,
or about putting restrictions on his travel.
"Quite clearly we're working closely with the United States on these
matters," Smith said, citing Australia's Defense Department and the Pentagon
as the agencies working together. "These are very serious matters for
concern."
Australia, which has some 1,550 troops in Afghanistan, has already launched
its own investigation into whether posting classified military documents had
compromised the national interest or endangered soldiers.
___
Associated Press Writers Rod McGuirk in Canberra and Pauline Jelinek,
Kimberly Dozier and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.
Flaherty reported from Washington.
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