I never understood when the left scoffs at the phrase "puts lives at risk" when it comes to leaks on national security.
There's a reason why documents are CLASSIFIED. There's a reason why there are secrets in government, especially when they concern ongoing military and intelligence operations. For those of you cheering on this illegal disclosure in the name of transparency, I hope you think of the Afghans who have been trying to help us win the war as they are inevitably captured by the Taliban and tortured to death along with their families.
This makes my blood boil.
The leaking of 90,000 U.S. intelligence documents has put hundreds of Afghan lives at risk because the files identify informants working with NATO forces, The Times of London reported on Wednesday. In just two hours of searching the WikiLeaks archive, reporters found the names, villages, and fathers' names of dozens of Afghans credited with providing intelligence to U.S. forces, the paper said.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said that all the released reports were checked for named informants and that 15,000 such documents had been held back to protect people.
How can progressives be in favor of such a heinous act? You can be against the war, as many of you are. You can be against the surge of troops. You can be vocal about bringing our troops home. But this leak, by a self-righteous, self-promoting a**hole, when we have 100k US forces and thousands of NATO troops trying to turn this Bush-made disaster around so we can responsibly leave, puts our strategy and lives at risk.
What Afghan is going to help our forces now? How can they trust us? COIN depends on building interactions and trust with the locals. COIN depends on informants, who are more knowledgeable and familiar with the territory than us, to give us the goods on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban so we can eliminate those suckers.
The paper gave other examples and said that in all cases the dates and precise locations of meetings were included in the reports.
"It's possible that someone could get killed in the next few days,” Robert Riegle, a former senior intelligence officer, reportedly told the paper.
"The leaks certainly have put in real risk and danger the lives and integrity of many Afghans," a senior official at the Afghan Foreign Ministry reportedly told the paper on condition of anonymity.
That is nothing to cheer on. This is not the Pentagon Papers. This is not Iran-Contra. When intelligence and informants are compromised, it makes it that much harder for us to come home quickly and RESPONSIBLY.
Julian Assange needs to be put in jail for this crime.