From the more candid accounts I've read, everyone who isn't paid to think otherwise thinks this is a horrible, wasteful and pointless war, one that we'll have to leave without anything like a clear victory. So, as John Kerry once said, "How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?" Perhaps Julian Assange is causing more harm than good, but maybe not:
LONDON (AP) -- WikiLeaks spokesman Julian Assange said Thursday his organization is preparing to release the rest of the secret Afghan war documents it has on file. The Pentagon warned that would be more damaging to security and risk more lives than the organization's initial release of some 76,000 war documents.
[...] The Pentagon says it believes it has identified the additional 15,000 classified documents, and said Thursday that their exposure would be even more damaging to the military than what has already been published.
Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell described the prospective publication as the "height of irresponsibility."
"It would compound a mistake that has already put far too many lives at risk," he said.
Speaking via videolink to London's Frontline Club, Assange brushed aside the Pentagon's demands that he stop publishing their intelligence. He gave no specific timeframe for the release of the 15,000 remaining files, but said his organization had gone through about half of them.
"We're about 7,000 reports in," he said, describing the process of combing through the files to ensure that no Afghans would be hurt by their disclosure as "very expensive and very painstaking."
It would put "too many lives at risk." The people who had such poor security protecting the names of informants didn't put "far too many lives at risk." The politicians who voted to keep funding what they already know is a hopeless war didn't put "far too many lives at risk", nor did the military put "far too many lives at risk" by using predator drones that keep killing civilians.
Those lives, well, they don't count. The only thing that counts are American lives, and how patriotic Americans and defense contractors feel. Just so you know!
