[CaptainCrunch]

I''m a simple man Flash, and I do enjoy debating with you, so no worries on the personal intonations, if I come across that way it is strictly unintentional.

I think this breaks down to multiple different points here.

I agree that civillian casualties are happening way to often, however I don't believe that its an intentional point of the rules of engagement to target civillians. From everything that I've read and studied about this conflict is that the intent is to try to limit civillian harm. I'm sure you would agree though that up until the Vietnam war, the American's and their allies fought a clear enemy that didn't hide among the civillian population, wear civillian garb while engaged and use civillian garb to get close enough to the NATO forces to trigger suicide bombs. So while the ROE are in place to try to preserve or protect civillian life it runs almost counter to the security of the troops in the field, and leaves things open to some real tragic circumstances and poor interpretation or ignoring of standings orders.

I do agree that there are probably leaks of key and cruicial information to the Taliban from government sources both by Afghan and Pakistani officials, and the Allies have to find a different way to enhance security of this information. I get particularly irate about the failure of the allies to seal the borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as I stated at the start of the war that this was a key strategy point in cutting off supplies and re-enforcements.

However I think what Wikileaks did was incredibly callous, by publishing classified documents without caring about the lives that it effects, and I'm not talking about the U.S. military I'm talking about the lives of people that worked counter to the Talliban who are now on a death list is wrong.

Also in terms of filtering through these war diaries, I get a good sense of capabilities, standing orders, patrol patterns, TOE and other information that would be of interest to the Taliban or any other nation state of organization.

The fact is that the young man who released those documents to Wikileaks broke his oath 6 ways to sunset and is no better then a spy representing a nation state.

Publishing those documents at the very least without taking the time to filter out information that could bring harm and death to individuals to me is a terrible act, and the fact that he basically shrugs his shoulders and says "Oh well, not my fault" shows me what type of person he is.