Quote:
Originally Posted by Locke
Sadly, I agree. But at some point, when the excrement has hit the fan for the uncountable time, something has to be done.
This whole goddamn situation has gotten out of hand so long ago, you cant maintain the iron fist of secrecy forever. I'm against the leaking of these documents and whoever did it will be shot for treason, officially or otherwise, but something has to be done about the situation that we all seem to have found ourselves in.
Very shortly, this war will be 10 years old. Think about that.
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Afghanistan has always been a tar baby and a horrible place to fight a war.
In an asymetrical war there are going to be higher then average civilian casualties, its sad but its true, especially based around how the Taliban fights the war.
To me, and it may make me sound cold, but there have been according to that site a little over 300 hundred civillian casualties broken into about 170 killed and 150 wounded, I think. In terms of civillian casualties in a war zone thats very low.
I doubt that the standing policy by any of the nations in there is to attack civillians or fight a war of extermination. To me it looks like the civillian casualties are being caused by decisions made at a unit and sub unit level based on the environment that the troops find themselves in. The question that becomes prevelant is "Is that fixable?" Sure but the fix puts the soldiers in a more dangerous environment based on the tactics of the enemy.
In terms of oversight, its not like Congress or the senate are unaware of the war diaries since they have to be informed of special operations even if they're informed after the fact.
In terms of the leak, he's probably going to regret the release documents, its a serious breach of security that will probably put lives in danger and exposes tactics and assets in use that should stay a secret. I would bet that everyone who has access to this documentation is having a very unpleasant monday.