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Message: <blockquote data-quote="David Webb" data-source="post: 7975730" data-attributes="member: 163309">WASHINGTON -  Shocking in scope if not in content, the leak of 91,000 classified US  records on the Afghanistan war by the whistle-blower website  Wikileaks.org is one of the largest unauthorized disclosures in military  history. The documents cover much of what the public  already knows about the troubled nine-year conflict: US spec-ops forces  have targeted militants without trial, Afghans have been killed by  accident, and US officials have been infuriated by alleged Pakistani  intelligence cooperation with the very insurgent groups bent on killing  Americans.WikiLeaks posted the documents Sunday. The  New York Times, London's Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der  Spiegel were given early access to the records. The release was instantly condemned by US and Pakistani officials as both potentially harmful and irrelevant. White House national security adviser Gen.  Jim Jones said the release "put the lives of Americans and our partners  at risk." In a statement, he then took pains to point out that the  documents describe a period from January 2004 to December 2009, mostly  during the administration of President George W. Bush. And, Jones added,  before President Obama announced a new strategy. Pakistan's Ambassador Husain Haqqani agreed,  saying the documents "do not reflect the current on-ground realities,"  in which his country and Washington are "jointly endeavoring to defeat  al-Qaida and its Taliban allies." The US and Pakistan assigned teams of analysts to read the records online to assess whether sources or locations were at risk. The New York Times said the documents reveal  that only a short time ago, there was far less harmony in US and  Pakistani exchanges. The Times says the "raw intelligence  assessments" by lower level military officers suggest that Pakistan  "allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the  Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant  groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even  hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders." The Guardian, however, interpreted the  documents differently, saying they "fail to provide a convincing smoking  gun" for complicity between the Pakistan intelligence services and the  Taliban. The leaked records include detailed  descriptions of raids carried out by a secretive US special operations  unit called Task Force 373 against what US officials considered  high-value insurgent and terrorist targets. Some of the raids resulted  in unintended killings of Afghan civilians, according to the  documentation. During the targeting and killing of Libyan  fighter Abu Laith al-Libi, described in the documents as a senior  al-Qaida military commander, the death tally was reported as six enemy  fighters and seven noncombatants - all children. Task Force 373 selected its targets from  2,000 senior Taliban and al-Qaida figures posted on a "kill or capture"  list, known as JPEL, the Joint Prioritized Effects List, the Guardian  said. WikiLeaks said the release Sunday "did not  generally include top-secret organizations," and that it had "delayed  the release of some 15,000 reports" as part of what it called "a harm  minimization process demanded by our source," but said it would release  the documents later, possibly with material redacted. US government agencies have been bracing for  a deluge of thousands more classified documents since the leak of  helicopter cockpit video of a 2007 firefight in Baghdad. That was blamed  on a US Army intelligence analyst, Spc. Bradley Manning, 22, of  Potomac, Md. He was charged with releasing classified information  earlier this month. Manning had bragged on line that he downloaded  260,000 classified US cables and transmitted them to Wikileaks.org.<a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2010-07/26/content_11051128.htm" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/15421.files/chinadailylogo_e_20100301.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a></blockquote>

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