The real story isn’t the content of the leaded documents (or lack of content in this case) it is the apparent ease of penetrating the U. S. armed forces cyber security.

Please read above as: 'leaked documents'

The lesson of the Pentagon Papers was not the academic history it revealed. The lesson was that basic history had to be classified, was incompatible with the mission, and with the narrative that drove the war. That drove an illegal coverup, break-ins, enemy lists.

I didn't need wikileaks to tell me that sorting enemy attrition from collatoral killing was a primary number in military command arithmetic- part of the 'order of battle' intelligence that should drive a troops to task assessment. But it would have been helpful if the war press had presented expert opinion to make the point how transparently ridiculous the 'no body count' lie was, every time it was asserted.

Thru wikileaks, we now can see a foundation of war log documents. If pursued, the iceberg beneath could illuminate whether Congress' army was engaged in an illegal campaign to mislead our elected officers. Shame on anyone who tells me that hard evidence of that is insignificant, that 'we know there are icebergs, ho-hum'.

Officers who ordered and directed strategic misinformation ops against the homeland violated their oath to defend the Constitution. They should be investigated and brought up on charges.

I agree. I hate enabling that (content blocked for profanity) Assage by reading the press reports, but I was not exactly shocked by any of it.

If there is a plus side, it is that it shows that intelligence reporting is complicated, contradictory, and often not much better than the stuff reported by the press. I'm sure General Flynn, Mr Bachelor, and the CNAS crew would agree with this. This is not an indictment of the intelligence effort. Some great (and not so great) Intel reports get leaked (or released through the proper channels) to great journalists named Bob or Tom. Journalism and intelligence are more alike than either would like to admit and there is a lot of plagarism going on both ways.

It also shows that nothing stays secret forever and having access to classified reporting gives decision makers a narrow and often perishable advantage over the general public in their knowledge. This is something policy makers should keep in mind when smugly speaking to mere mortals without clearances.

"Tell me one thing we didn't know last week that we know now about the Iraq war. "

I think that for the general public there is quite a bit of information in these documents that sheds light on the conduct of the war.

A question for you, Tom: did you know that American soldiers were under orders - and they don't take orders from Iraqis - not to intervene or further investigate torture and mass murder by Iraqi security forces?

If you did know that, did you report it?

"Journalism and intelligence are more alike than either would like to admit and there is a lot of plagarism going on both ways. "

I have heard more than one intel analyst complain that IO was screwing with their assessments. A high percentage of intelligence gathering is from open source material - newspapers - but when the pool is muddied by propaganda fed to lazy, credulous journalist, it becomes of very little value.

Just as you don’t see anything new in the documents, I don’t see anything new in the way the newspapers are interacting with sources.

In some ways, it’s actually more transparent than usual. Compare it to Deep Throat. With Wikileaks, readers know the exact way that the papers obtained the documents. Readers can weight the source and possible motivations accordingly.

With Deep Throat, none of this was known, while FBI No. 2 Mark Felt clearly had his own motivations that readers didn’t know until 2005.

I think the problem is that people react to Assange as if he’s an American citizen. He’s not. He’s a private Australian citizen who has no obligation whatsoever to advance American interests. The effect of publishing classified documents on our national security is simply not his concern.

No one cries foul when an activist tweaks China’s nose. Assange is pursuing his own political cause in much the same way — except this one happens to clash with our own national aims.

Yeah, yeah. Australia is an ally. But alliances are made between states not individuals.

The point is all the more salient because Wikileaks didn’t — to my knowledge, at least — do anything illegal. Yes, an American soldier allegedly broke the law by leaking the documents, and he should absolutely be prosecuted. But since when is it a crime for a non-U.S. citizen outside the jurisdiction of the United States to take possession of classified materials?

Foreign nationals have no obligation to follow our laws if they’re not under our jurisdiction just as we have no obligation to follow foreign laws if we’re not under their jurisdiction. We even do this with our allies. Just a couple months ago, Obama signed into law a measure that aims to protect Americans from British libel law.

Wikileaks and its ilk are a reality we must face in a globalized world. It is counterproductive for the United States to condemn aggressive tactics in one arena and wink at them in another. A much better course would be to tighten security at the source, step up public diplomacy and get ahead of negative narratives by acknowledging realities on the ground.

....something a swiftboater or a Rove or yes, a chicken shit purveyor, such as Murdoch, can manipulate for personal profit from hereafter to hell.

So maybe the occasional reminder of what the flag waving generals and admirals really accomplished with their long reach toys - the masses in destruction to prevent 'tyranny and WMD' - with "no body count" of nobodies who counted one misery at a time.

There are no secrets...just occasional reminders of distant cries that maybe only God hears.

"General George Casey, the Army chief of staff who earlier headed forces in Iraq for nearly three years, said there was "some suggestion in the press reports that we turned a blind eye on Iraqi prisoner abuse."That's just not the case. Our policy all along was when American soldiers encountered prisoner abuse, it was to stop it and then report it immediately up the American chain of command and up the Iraqi chain of command," he told reporters."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gkW6_t8VIZoYuHIMwSBfvAcSkBpQ?docId=CNG.8eb164acb55bc47a5c3893996df3c39d.2f1

Nothing new? What about alleged war crimes implied in the words "You cannot surrender to an aircraft. Go ahead and kill them"?

¿The number of civilians killed by American forces in checkpoints? Or driving too close to a military convoy?

¿The order not to investigate alleged torture by Iraqi forces?

I suspect that there is way too much truth in this from the Independent's story:

"The truth, of course, is that if this vast treasury of secret reports had proved that the body count was much lower than trumpeted by the press, that US soldiers never tolerated Iraqi police torture, rarely shot civilians at checkpoints and always brought killer mercenaries to account, US generals would be handing these files out to journalists free of charge on the steps of the Pentagon. They are furious not because secrecy has been breached, or because blood may be spilt, but because they have been caught out telling the lies we always knew they told."

Anybody who's been around the war business knows that a lot of things happen that we all wish didn't happen. I'm with Mr. Ricks here in that there are no surprises. But the unfortunate reality is that I'm jaded and am fully aware of what we used to call the "vicissitudes of war." Ricks is clearly even more jaded than me, especially if he finds these latest revelations just "sordid" and not newsworthy. Unfortunately, the Wikileaks are newsworthy to countless Americans and others around the world whose knowledge of war comes from bad movies, i.e., "Americans good, others evil."

Just as U.S. military leaders have a vested interest in downplaying the Wikileaks, so does Mr. Ricks. The military folks had an obligation to do something about some of the abuses; Ricks had an obligation to report them. That it seems neither the military nor the journalist side cared very much about the incidents when they occurred doesn't rob them of their importance now. Yeah, these leaks are newsworthy; more dimming of the shining city on the hill and more grist for those who seem to do a much better job at propaganda (love that IO term, especially since it's practiced so much on us by our own) than the "good guys" do.

Maybe it's just me, but I find a real correlation between this post and the previous one asking if these wars are consonant with American culture. Unfortunately, many millions of Americans are seemingly OK with just about any old war, so long as they don't have to participate. This nation fell in love with the whole war on terror thing and it seems most people are quite content with having a small force engaging in endless wars where lots of "bad" people get killed. U.S. and allied casualties are apparently acceptable so long as Fortress America is secure and able to go about its daily business. Those who want to end these senseless adventures have a tough sell when they're dealing with a people who seem to think that there is a military money tree and that there is essentially no price to be paid for war.

The Wikileaks will generate no real controversy, nor will the American people soon demand an end to pointless war. Instead, they'll just yawn, shrug their collective shoulders and change the channel.

I'm having a bit of a hard time articulating my irritation at your irritation with wikileaks. It's easy for you to "know" this was going on. I think many of us (including you) who are immersed in the Rickis-Exum-WOI-SWJ blogosphere would have staked a fairly large sum that the (to you) mild revelations of the wikileaks documents were well known.

The thing is, the rest of the world isn't us. If you're not a rabid milblogger, you might not "know" these things. Wikileaks is a treasure trove of primary sources that under normal circumstances most of the world would never get access to in its raw form. It gives anyone a chance to see whether Rumsfeld et al., were telling the truth; it provides something closer to truth than any report released by the press.

Anything you or the rest of the press say can be manipulated as innuendo, exaggeration, or lies - and frequently will be. Anything you report about torture, the collapse of governments, or whatever, can be seen as self-serving press hyperbole. The wikileaks documents provide an opportunity to "know" something with far greater confidence than we currently have in the media.

I'm sorry about this. It says something about the media that it has so little apparent value that it can be effectively scooped by a disturbed, biased activist. But it can.

That's the value in wikileaks. The raw data in the released documents have weight where our media has none. Perhaps this is what's so irritating about it?

Dorsai hit the nail right on the head - those are the EXACT thoughts that went through my head after reading this shockingly poor piece by T-Ricks. Not to mention the hubris that drips off of every sentence. My god! Sorry I - and the rest of the world - are not privy to the incredible amount of information you are! Shame on me, shame on me...

"Everyone already knows that” is what a friend of mine said recently about leaks from insiders that NYPD precincts have ticket quotas.

However my friend is a specialist, a teacher at John Jay College, CUNY’s degree-factory for cops.

And the conventional wisdom has been shaped by Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD Commish Kelly and their predecessors who have always strenuously denied that there are quotas.

Like Bush and Obama who have always denied that they condone torture.

this is a low point for this blog. what is the "chicken shit" you're referring to? it must be how all those lives were lost and the justice that will never be served. ok -- so what? welcome to this world. whenever you do an interview and mention all the incompetence and the war crimes, are you being sordid or merely speaking the truth? even though you're repeating yourself. why shouldn't the "great newspapers" publish a huge leak of materials that meticulously document the waging of an illegal war?

But that is not the same as knowing for sure. Mainstream journalists have fallen into the trap of constantly negotiating with their sources over what the public can be allowed to know.
BTW Frago 242, that's news.

I hope that now Shane Hannity will shut up about how we stopped all the Iraqi torture rooms. Seems like we just re-purposed them.

there is essentially nothing new in these documents. wikileaks leaked a bunch of info, that a person educated on the war could have made inferences to gain. It is just a case of this assange guy playing the press and trying for his 15 minutes of fame. Those that cant see that this Australian computer hacker is simply grasping for notoriety are blind. Im sure he cares so deeply for the people of Iraq, I mean, he's never been there, never visited during the war, never tried to help in any way. but oh, here he is after the fact, trying to "help" the Iraqis. he is just releasing crap, gaining fame, and creating an environment even more conducive to America Bashing. it will be even harder for us to reach diplomatic solutions to problems now. I hope he knows that these documents do nothing but create more hostility, more conflict, and the greater possibility of civil unrest and death in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean, i kinda i wish he was a terrorist so we could just send a predator after him

Mr. Ricks rails against what he calls a sordid affair regaeding the Iraq leaks. Did any reader other than Ricks' s platoon of warmonger groupies think Mr. Ricks would react any differently?

Like most captured media types, Mr. Ricks came on stage to let the prols know that all of this is chicken shit. Gleen Greenwald has written an excellent article explaining why ruling class scribes like Mr. Ricks are so sick over it all. John Burns of the NYT is really upset. Both are former journalists that were long long ago captured and put to use as today's version of Lord Haw Haw by the ruling class they serve.

"Predictably, just as happened with Ellsberg, there is now a major, coordinated effort underway to smear WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, and to malign his mental health -- all as a means of distracting attention away from these highly disturbing revelations and to impede the ability of WikiLeaks to further expose government secrets and wrongdoing with its leaks. But now, the smear campaign is led not by Executive Branch officials, but by members of the establishment media. As the intelligence community reporter Tim Shorrock wrote today on Twitter: "When Dan Ellsberg leaked [the] Pentagon Papers, Nixon's henchmen tried to destroy his reputation. Today w/Wikileaks & Assange, media does the job.""

"The Iraq War is John Burns' war, and for the crime of making that war look bad, Julian Assange must have his character smeared and his psychiatric health maligned. Burns -- along with his co-writer Ravi Somaiya -- is happy to viciously perform that function:

Julian Assange moves like a hunted man. . . . He demands that his dwindling number of loyalists use expensive encrypted cellphones and swaps his own as other men change shirts. He checks into hotels under false names, dyes his hair, sleeps on sofas and floors, and uses cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed from friends. . . ."

What makes Burns' role here all the more ironic is that he was one of the media ring-leaders who attacked and condemned Michael Hastings for revealing, in Rolling Stone, the truth about the mindset of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was running America's war in Afghanistan. In the wake of the McChrystal article and resignation, Burns went on right-wing talk radio with Hugh Hewitt and blasted Hastings for violating some unspoken code -- that seems to exist only in Burns' head -- that calls for people like Gen. McChrystal to be protected by journalists from truths that may harm them. Said Burns of Hastings' article:

" I think it's very unfortunate that it has impacted, and will impact so adversely, on what had been pretty good military/media relations. I think, you know, well, this will be debated down the years, the whole issue as to how it came about that Rolling Stone had that kind of access. My unease, if I can be completely frank about this, is that from my experience of traveling and talking to generals, McChrystal, Petraeus and many, many others over the past few years, is that the old on-the-record/off-the-record standard doesn't really meet the case, which is to say that by the very nature of the time you spend with the generals, the same could be said to be true of the time that a reporter spends with anybody in the public eye. There are moments which just don't fit that formula. There are long, informal periods traveling on helicopters over hostile territory with the generals chatting over their headset, bunking down for the night side by side on a piece of rough-hewn concrete. You build up a kind of trust. It's not explicit, it's just there. And my feeling is that it's the responsibility of the reporter to judge in those circumstances what is fairly reportable, and what is not, and to go beyond that, what it is necessary to report.

So when it comes to top Generals running a war, it's the duty of reporters to conceal from the public statements made by the General, even when they're not off-the-record and even when they're clearly relevant, based on the so-called "trust" that a reporter and military officials "build up" together. But when it comes to people like Julian Assange -- who are not prosecuting American wars but exposing the truth about them (which is supposed to be a journalist's job) -- no such discretion is warranted. There, everything is fair game, including posing as an amateur psychiatrist issuing diagnoses of mental illness and passing on the most scurrilous accusations about personality, character and psyche."

"It's not hard to see why The New York Times, CNN and so many other establishment media outlets are eager to do that. Serving the Government's interests, siding with government and military officials, and attacking government critics is what they do. That's their role. That's what makes them the "establishment media." Beyond that, the last thing they want is renewed recognition of what an evil travesty the attack on Iraq was, given the vital role they know they played in helping to bring it about and sustain it for all those years (that's the same reason establishment journalists, almost by consensus, opposed any investigations into the Bush crimes they ignored, when they weren't cheering them on). And by serving as the 2010 version of the White House Plumbers -- acting as attack dogs against the Pentagon's enemies -- they undoubtedly buy themselves large amounts of good will with those in power, always their overarching goal. It is indeed quite significant and revealing that the John Ehrlichmans and Henry Kissingers of today are found at America's largest media outlets. Thanks to them, the White House doesn't even need to employ its own smear artists."

The generals have their little pet journalist in the likes of Burns, Ricks, etc... The general or other corrupt ruling class member befriends the pet and lets him feel important. The pet become Lord Haw Haw without even knowing it. Mr. Ricks talks about "Great Papers". There are no great papers left in the USA. We have government approved papers now. Journalists working for these papers are the biggest cowards in the history of the USA. Mr. Ricks knows this. Mr. Ricks condems the Wiki stuff, because that is what Lord Haw Haw would do.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/24/assange/index.html

"On Friday afternoon I heard the in the background news noise about how WikiLeaks had released a billion or so new documents showing how the war in Iraq was even worse than we had thought and how our military and government had lied to us and other ho-hummery. I switched on the Nightly News to see how the Pentagon’s spin commandos were going to fight their latest fire, and, sure enough, NBC trots out military correspondent Jim Miklaszewski. Jim’s looking, as he always does, about 49 minutes into happy hour with his brows slightly knit from the effort of trying to remember what his Pentagon pals told him to say when he got on camera. Oh, yeah, he remembers now: The Pentagon is very concerned, Brian, very concerned, that this unauthorized leak of secret information will put their sources in danger, dire danger, Brian, they’re very concerned, very dangerous, very concerned, very concerned and dangerous…

I got up early Saturday to see what kind of damage control the New York Times had done for the Pentagon, and sure as death and tax cuts there was the headline on page A1: “Leaked Reports Detail Iran’s Aid for Iraqi Militias.” Then I glanced at the byline, and, lo and behold, the first name on it was Michael R. freaking Gordon.

Michael R. Gordon, chief military correspondent for the New York Times, is the epitome of access-poisoned news reporting, and he has likely done more harm to the world he inhabits than any other living journalist. He and fellow Times reporter Judith Miller helped the neoconservative cabal spearheaded by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to pull off the Nigergate yellowcake hoax in which documents later proven to be forgeries became a major justification for the invasion of Iraq. A Sept. 8, 2002, Gordon-Miller Times piece announced, “Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb.” Gordon and Miller supported this explosive assertion by citing anonymous “officials” an eye-watering 31 times, setting an all-time low, and lamentably the new standard, for phantom sourcing in American journalism.

Gordon has remained a trusted gunman of the Long War mafia. He aggressively marketed the Iraq surge for his war-mongrel cronies, publishing stories like “Grim Outlook Seen in West Iraq Without More Troops and Aid” and “General Warns of Risks in Iraq if GIs Are Cut” and “Get Out Now? Not So Fast, Some Experts Say.”

Gordon has also been at the forefront of aiding the Pentarchy’s push for war with Iran, filing front-page Times stories like February 2007?s “Deadliest Bomb in Iraq is Made by Iran, U.S. Says,” and bolstering his assertions with his trademark citations of unidentified “senior administration officials.” "

Jeff Huber

A bit cranky and yes we do know more in that we are closer to having the names and identities of the slaughtered. Humanizing the numbers avoids the Stalin effect.

If the subject matter weren't so important, I'd say this was one heck of a "food-fight." I really enjoyed everyone's comments. Serious, well reasoned points all around. And because of such strong & well held contents, I shall continue a loyal reader. Yes, I take away, always, more than I give.

In closing, may I offer: I am deeply moved by Don Bacon's all-American, "Let freedom ring." These words still offer me Joy, Memories & Confidence.

"Tom, you have it. I'm sure you have heard of the BanHammer. If not look it up and employ it." - Yes, lets just ban every comment that isn't in line with our own views or that may be critical of us right? Because that must be 100% in line with American values right? I could be wrong about this one...but I don't think I am. Let freedom ring!

Lucio

While we didn't have any real revelations in the WikiLeaks dumps, I think what is important is that the American people were able to verify that some people in the media who had previously published some of these facts were abled to be verified with actual documents. In this world of he said she said, with both the left and right twisting truths to support their sides we are able see that there is still some good reporting to be done. Where one side could dismiss the other by saying it was the media bias and people with personal agendas pushing certain stories we can now show primary, verifiable sources to cut through the bs.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/25/Blood_on_Our_Hands

Tom, what do you think about these critiques of the military media:

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=193388

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=193376

"Hagiography" is exactly what the American establishment media does, when it comes to powerful American political and military leaders. Slimy, personality-based hit pieces are reserved for those who are scorned by the powerful in Washington -- such as Julian Assange. So subservient to the Pentagon's agenda was the media coverage of the WikiLeaked documents that even former high-level journalists are emphatically objecting, and naming names. John Parker, former military reporter and fellow of the University of Maryland Knight Center for Specialized Journalism-Military Reporting, wrote an extraordinarily good letter yesterday:

The sad lack of coverage ("Sunday talk shows largely ignore WikiLeaks' Iraq files") of the leak of unfiltered, publicly owned information from the latest WikiLeak is disturbing, but not historically out of the ordinary for major American media.

The career trend of too many Pentagon journalists typically arrives at the same vanishing point: Over time they are co-opted by a combination of awe -- interacting so closely with the most powerfully romanticized force of violence in the history of humanity -- and the admirable and seductive allure of the sharp, amazingly focused demeanor of highly trained military minds. Top military officers have their s*** together and it's personally humbling for reporters who've never served to witness that kind of impeccable competence. These unspoken factors, not to mention the inner pull of reporters' innate patriotism, have lured otherwise smart journalists to abandon – justifiably in their minds – their professional obligation to treat all sources equally and skeptically.

Too many military reporters in the online/broadcast field have simply given up their watchdog role for the illusion of being a part of power. Example No. 1 of late is Tom Gjelten of NPR. . . Interviewed by his colleague on Oct. 22 about the latest WikiLeaks documents, this exchange happened:

__________

Robert Siegel: And reaction to the release today?

Gjelten: Well, the Pentagon is, understandably, very angry, as they were when the documents from Afghanistan were released. They said this decision to release them was made cavalierly. They do point out - and I can't say I disagree (emphasis Parker's) - that the period in Iraq that these documents covered was already very well chronicled. They say it does not bring new understanding to those events.

___________

There it is in black and white. Gjelten is lending his credibility to the Pentagon as "neutral" national journalist. . . . Gjelten, other Pentagon journalists and informed members of the public would benefit from watching "The Selling of the Pentagon," a 1971 documentary. It details how, in the height of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon sophisticatedly used taxpayer money against taxpayers in an effort to sway their opinions toward the Pentagon’s desires for unlimited war. Forty years later, the techniques of shaping public opinion via media has evolved exponentially. It has reached the point where flipping major journalists is a matter of painting in their personal numbers.

Where was Frago 242 reported on before WikiLeaks?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=frago-242&sa=N&tbs=nws:1,ar:1

Not sure if that will work, but Google News goes back 1 month, so it didn't find anything in it's archive. But Tom certainly has access to Lexis-Nexus and can check for himself.

"You can't surrender to a helicopter."

http://harpers.org/archive/2010/10/hbc-90007774

Yhe suvtext i see is . it is so bad we certainly could leavve these poor people in the lurch we really should stay until thing are stabilized like forever... so a plae we should have gone into in the fisrt palce but we just can't leave them like this... an certain rational for taking over any country we want anytime we want...