Psyche, Science, and Society

Army arrests whistleblower as it goes after US Army murderers

Soldiers in Afghanistan murdered several civilians for sport, the Army alleges.This gruesome account puts the lie to those who believe that “good wars” can be fought in situations of occupation of an alien and potentially hostile people. Given that, in counterinsurgency, there is no clear distinction between the civilian population and enemy fighters, it is inevitable that many civilians uninvolved in fighting will die. Also, given that killing civilians and covering it up, as in many air attacks, is a routine part of counterinsurgency, it is inevitable that some occupation troops will commit atrocities beyond those planned as part of the military campaign.

Military and civilian leaders contribute to creating atrocity-creating situations like the one described here when they use language designed to remove critical thinking. Thus, military and civilian officials from the Secretary of Defense on down routinely refer to  the “bad guys,” or the even sillier “anti-Afghan fores” when referring to those Afghans who resist the US military occupation of their homeland. This is a language of dehumanization designed to undercut any questioning of what these “bad guys” are fighting for. After all, why are foreign occupiers the “good guys?”And the press routinely reports such childish language without comment, as if it’s perfectly natural for grown adults to talk like five-year-olds.

The father of one of those arrested, warned about the murders by his son, for murder tried repeatedly to warn the Army, but was blown off by at least four separate offices, then they charged his son. Are they trying to shut up other potential whistleblowers in order to avoid disclosure of other atrocities? Or are they just covering up rank incompetence?

The Washington Post reports:

Members of U.S. platoon in Afghanistan accused of killing civilians for sport

By Craig Whitlock

AT JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, WASH. The U.S. soldiers hatched a plan as simple as it was savage: to randomly target and kill an Afghan civilian, and to get away with it.

For weeks, according to Army charging documents, rogue members of a platoon from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, floated the idea. Then, one day last winter, a solitary Afghan man approached them in the village of La Mohammed Kalay. The “kill team” activated the plan.

One soldier created a ruse that they were under attack, tossing a fragmentary grenade on the ground. Then others opened fire.

According to charging documents, the unprovoked, fatal attack on Jan. 15 was the start of a months-long shooting spree against Afghan civilians that resulted in some of the grisliest allegations against American soldiers since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Members of the platoon have been charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones.

The subsequent investigation has raised accusations about whether the military ignored warnings that the out-of-control soldiers were committing atrocities. The father of one soldier said he repeatedly tried to alert the Army after his son told him about the first killing, only to be rebuffed.

Two more slayings would follow. Military documents allege that five members of the unit staged a total of three murders in Kandahar province between January and May. Seven other soldiers have been charged with crimes related to the case, including hashish use, attempts to impede the investigation and a retaliatory gang assault on a private who blew the whistle.

Army officials have not disclosed a motive for the killings and macabre behavior. Nor have they explained how the attacks could have persisted without attracting scrutiny. They declined to comment on the case beyond the charges that have been filed, citing the ongoing investigation.

But a review of military court documents and interviews with people familiar with the investigation suggest the killings were committed essentially for sport by soldiers who had a fondness for hashish and alcohol.

The accused soldiers, through attorneys and family members, deny wrongdoing. But the case has already been marked by a cycle of accusations and counter-accusations among the defendants as they seek to pin the blame on each other, according to documents and interviews.

The Army has scheduled pre-trial hearings in the case this fall at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, home of the Stryker brigade. (The unit was renamed the 2nd Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, when it returned fromAfghanistan in July.) Military officials say privately that they worry the hearings will draw further attention to the case, with photos and other evidence prompting anger among the Afghan civilians whose support is critical to the fight against the Taliban.

The ‘kill team’
According to statements given to investigators, members of the unit – 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment – began talking about forming a “kill team” in December, shortly after the arrival of a new member, Staff Sgt. Calvin R. Gibbs, 25, of Billings, Mont.

Gibbs, whom some defendants have described as the ringleader, confided to his new mates that it had been easy for him to get away with “stuff” when he served in Iraq in 2004, according to the statements. It was his second tour in Afghanistan, having served there from January 2006 until May 2007.

The first opportunity presented itself Jan. 15 in the Maiwand district of Kandahar province. Members of the 3rd Platoon were providing perimeter security for a meeting between Army officers and tribal elders in the village of La Mohammed Kalay.

According to charging documents, an Afghan named Gul Mudin began walking toward the soldiers. As he approached, Cpl. Jeremy N. Morlock, 22, of Wasilla, Alaska, threw the grenade on the ground, records show, to create the illusion that the soldiers were under attack.

Pfc. Andrew H. Holmes, a 19-year-old from Boise, Idaho, saw the grenade and fired his weapon at Mudin, according to charging documents. The grenade exploded, prompting other soldiers to open fire on the villager as well, killing him.

In statements to investigators, the soldiers involved have given conflicting details. In one statement that his attorney has subsequently tried to suppress, Morlock said that Gibbs had given him the grenade and that others were also aware of the ruse beforehand. But Holmes and his attorney said he was in the dark and opened fire only because Morlock ordered him to do so.

“He was unwittingly used as the cover story,” said Daniel Conway, a civilian defense attorney for Holmes. “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Morlock, Holmes and Gibbs have each been charged with murder in the shooting. Attorneys for Morlock and Gibbs did not return phone calls seeking comment.

A father’s warning
On Feb. 14, Christopher Winfield, a former Marine from Cape Coral, Fla., logged onto his Facebook account to chat with his son, Adam, a 3rd Platoon soldier who was up late in Afghanistan. Spec. Adam C. Winfield confided that he’d had a run-in with Gibbs, his squad leader. He also typed a mysterious note saying that some people get away with murder.

When his father pressed him to explain, Adam replied, “did you not understand what i just told you.” He then referred to the slaying of the Afghan villager the month before, adding that other platoon members had threatened him because he did not approve. In addition, he said, they were bragging about how they wanted to find another victim.

“I was just shocked,” Christopher Winfield said in a phone interview. “He was scared for his life at that point.”

The father told his son that he would contact the Army to intervene and investigate. It was a Sunday, but he didn’t wait. He called the Army inspector general’s 24-hour hotline and left a voice mail. He called the office of Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), and left another message. He called a sergeant at Lewis-McChord who told him to call the Army’s criminal investigations division. He left another message there.

Finally, he said, he called the Fort Lewis command center and spoke for 12 minutes to a sergeant on duty. He said the sergeant agreed that it sounded as if Adam was in potential danger but that, unless he was willing to report it to his superiors in Afghanistan, there was little the Army could do.

“He just kind of blew it off,” Christopher Winfield said. “I was sitting there with my jaw on the ground.”

Winfield said he doesn’t recall the name of the sergeant he spoke with. Billing records that he kept confirm that he called Army officials; he also kept copies of transcripts of Facebook chats with this son. He said he specifically told the sergeant of his son’s warning that more murders were in the works.

Army investigators have since taken a sworn statement from Christopher Winfield, as well as copies of his phone and Internet records.

Other killings
Eight days after Winfield tried to warn the Army, according to charging documents, members of the 3rd Platoon murdered someone else.

On Feb. 22, Marach Agha, an Afghan civilian, was killed by rifle fire near Forward Operating Base Ramrod in Kandahar province, where the 3rd Platoon was stationed. The Army has released few details about the slaying but has charged Gibbs, Morlock and Spec. Michael S. Wagnon II of Las Vegas with murder.

Wagnon has also been charged with possessing “a skull taken from an Afghan person’s corpse.” He allegedly took the head sometime during January or February 2010, but court documents do not specify whether it belonged to the Afghan he is charged with killing.

An attorney for Wagnon, who was on his second tour in Afghanistan and also served in Iraq, did not return a call seeking comment.

More mayhem followed in March, when Gibbs, Wagnon and three other soldiers – Staff Sgt. Robert G. Stevens, Sgt. Darren N. Jones and Pfc. Ashton A. Moore – opened fire on three Afghan men, according to charging documents. The documents do not provide basic details, such as the precise date of the shooting, the identities of the victims or whether they were wounded.

Members of the 3rd Platoon found their next victim on May 2, documents show. Gibbs, Morlock and Adam Winfield – the son of the former Marine who said he tried to alert the Army three months earlier – are accused of tossing a grenade and fatally shooting an Afghan cleric, Mullah Adahdad, near Forward Operating Base Ramrod.

Winfield’s attorney, Eric S. Montalvo, said his client was ordered to shoot but fired high and missed. He and Winfield’s parents say they can’t understand why the Army has charged their son, given that his father tried to warn officials about the platoon.

Military police caught wind of the final killing a few days later, but only by happenstance. Records show they were coincidentally investigating reports of hashish use by members of the 3rd Platoon.

After word leaked that one soldier had spoken to military police, several platoon members retaliated, records show. They confronted the informant and beat him severely – punching, kicking and choking the soldier, then dragging him across the ground. As a last warning, the documents state, Gibbs menacingly waved finger bones he had collected from Afghan corpses.

However, the informant talked to the MPs again and told them what he had heard about the slayings, according to court documents.

Some members of his unit, he said in a statement, “when they are out at a village, wander off and kill someone and every time they say the same thing, about a guy throwing a grenade, but there is never proof.”

This time, the Army acted quickly and made arrests.

Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

September 19th, 2010

Surprise! Afghan elects marked bt massive fraud

As billions of dollars are siphoned from Afghanistan warlords and officials into Swiss banks and Dubai challets, the election of the next round of officials is being chosen by elections characterized by massive voter fraud. Given the billions at stake and the fact that the Presidential ections were marked by massive fraud and little has changed, this should not be surprising.

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

Ballot-stuffing witnessed amid troubled Afghanistan vote

As Afghans voted Saturday, a reporter in Wardak Province spoke to an election worker about how his team had set out to stuff ballot boxes. The widescale fraud in Wardak may speak to troubles in the broader Afghanistan vote.

By Anand Gopal

Saydabad, AfghanistanWhen campaign aide Qais showed up at a polling center in the troubled province of Wardak Saturday morning, he found that guards would not allow him to enter. When he tried to peer through the windows, he found that workers had erected huge cardboard sheets to block the view.

Inside, election workers were busy stuffing ballots on behalf of a candidate named Hajji Wahedullah Kalimzai. Although only about 20 men had come to vote thus far, hundreds of ballots were being marked in favor of Mr. Kalimzai.

It was a scene repeated throughout the province. The elections in Wardak were marred by widescale fraud, violence, and an extremely low turnout, casting doubt on the legitimacy of the new class of lawmakers that will represent the province.

“There were almost no elections in Wardak,” said Ghulam Hassan, a local elder. “The votes were stolen right in front of our eyes.”

The turn of events in Wardak likely represents a larger trend in a number of restive areas throughout Afghanistan, where Taliban threats limit the ability of election monitoring teams to visit many polling centers.

Pro-government militia force way into polling center

Instead, candidates rely on campaign aides, like Qais, to watch for irregularities. As election workers were stuffing ballots in a polling center in the Desht-e-Top area of Wardak, where Qais was barred from entering, pro-government militiamen who are part of a community policing initiative – or community guards, as the government prefers they be called – arrived at the scene.

With The Christian Science Monitor present, they forced their way into the polling center and detained the entire staff of eight on suspicion of ballot stuffing.

“Who are you working for?” the head militiaman screamed, pointing his weapon at them. The men, whose hands were tied behind their backs with scarves, hung their heads and professed their innocence.

But the militiamen discovered hundreds of sheets with the identification information for thousands of registered voters, which is normally only available to election workers in administrative centers.

“You might as well tell the truth now, because if you don’t, we have ways of making you talk,” the head militiaman said angrily. Finally, the cowed men divulged all – they were working for Kalimzai, a local powerbroker and candidate.

The militiamen took the detained workers away, but decided to leave one behind at the polling center in case anyone showed up to vote. No one did.

Later on, this election worker, who was in charge of the polling center, described in detail how his team had set out to stuff the ballots. “We were given $200 each by Kalimzai’s people to fill out the ballots for him,” he explained, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

In the early morning, about 20 people braved the Taliban threats to come to cast a ballot. After nearly two hours, when it was clear that no one else would dare to show, the team dismantled the cardboard voting booths, used the large cardboard pieces to cover the windows, and then went about their work, filling out ballots and matching the corresponding data with their voter lists.

The man supposedly behind the attempted heist, Kalimzai, is the head of a major construction company. Like many of his rival candidates, associates and officials say he has become wealthy from contracts with the foreign forces.

But locals, election workers, and some government officials say that the fraud in Wardak doesn’t end there. The militiamen who detained the election workers here are connected to a rival candidate, Hajji Akhtar Muhammad Taheri, known by locals simply as Hajji Akhtaro.

Mr. Akhtaro has himself been widely accused of a massive vote-stealing scheme in recent days, a charge he denies. “People who tell you that I am doing fraud are intentionally trying to make problems,” he says.

Akhtaro is also well-connected to the foreign forces, having risen to prominence by running a logistics company that brings supplies to troops from Bagram Air Base to smaller outposts. The militia he is tied to is known as the Afghan Public Protection Force, an American-backed initiative meant to create a community police force as a bulwark against the Taliban.

But the force has come under the sway of local powerbrokers, residents say, and in these elections have been closely connected to certain candidates like Akhtaro.

A number of government officials in Chak and Saydabad districts insist that Akhtaro’s men, with the help of this militia, stuffed thousands of ballots the night before the elections. A campaign aide for Roshanak Wardak, currently a member of Parliament and running for reelection, claims to have witnessed the incident and as a consequence was detained by the militia.

When the Monitor visited Sheikhabad, a town in Wardak’s Saydabad district, the polling center was closed six hours ahead of schedule. Local residents and poll workers said that the center had closed because Akhtaro’s supporters and those of a rival candidate, Hajji Musa Hotak, had been trying to stuff ballots for their respective candidates at the same time, leading to a brawl.

Polling centers open but empty

A number of other polling centers in the area were open but empty, save for a few policemen milling around. Police officers reported that only a few dozen had come to vote in each site, but the ballot boxes were filled to the brim. By 11 a.m., four hours into the polling day, almost all of the polling centers in the southern half of Wardak were closed, according to local reports.

In the capital, Maydan Shahr, almost all of the voters were ethnic Hazaras that were brought in groups from Kabul – almost no Pashtuns voted, despite Wardak being majority Pashtun. (Some local reports say that voting did take place in the Hazara parts of Wardak, however.)

Some government officials, however, said that turnout had been high. “Many people have voted, and almost all of the polling centers are open,” said Haleem Fedayee, Wardak governor in the morning. “It looks as if about 90 percent of the people will vote today.”

The Electoral Complaints Commission, an Afghan body, will in the coming months be tasked with assessing the level of fraud. The commission has the right to disqualify ballots it finds are fraudulent – which in last year’s presidential elections amounted to nearly a quarter of all votes. The process of determining fraud took months.

This year’s process will likely be even more complicated, given the number of candidates and the fact in some places, many of them are suspected of fraud. In Wardak, each of the four major candidates, three of whom have been described in this story – Kalimzai, Akhtaro, and Hotak – are thought to be involved in vote stealing, according to a number of Afghan authorities, locals, and a Western official who focuses on Wardak Province.

While the polls have gone well in some provinces, in Wardak they have bred resentment. “These elections are a shame. They are an embarrassment,” says Roshanak Wardak, who is one of the few prominent candidates who has not been accused of impropriety. She was forced to stay in her home Saturday in Saydabad, after receiving threats that she believes came from other candidates.

“Those who have money can do whatever they want,” she says. “They have destroyed these elections.”

September 18th, 2010

US soldiers form “kill team” in Afghanistan for fun

The Guardian brings an especially disturbing article describing murders of Afghans by 12 US troops for fun. the ringleader had apparently previously engaged in similar activities in Iraq.

To its credit, the Army appears to have taken decisive action when these abuses were reported. One wonders, however, if these types of activities are occurring among other US units and what efforts are being made by military authorities to find out.

The “kill team” was revealed only because of the bravery of one new recruit who refused to go along and reported them. One has to hope that he will be treated as a hero and not a pariah by other troops. In general, soldiers, like police, do not respond well to those who report abuses by fellow soldiers:

US soldiers ‘killed Afghan civilians for sport and collected fingers as trophies’

Soldiers face charges over secret ‘kill team’ which allegedly murdered at random and collected fingers as trophies of war

By Chris McGreal

Twelve American soldiers face charges over a secret “kill team” that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies.

Five of the soldiers are charged with murdering three Afghan men who were allegedly killed for sport in separate attacks this year. Seven others are accused of covering up the killings and assaulting a recruit who exposed the murders when he reported other abuses, including members of the unit smoking hashish stolen from civilians.

In one of the most serious accusations of war crimes to emerge from the Afghan conflict, the killings are alleged to have been carried out by members of a Stryker infantry brigade based in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.

According to investigators and legal documents, discussion of killing Afghan civilians began after the arrival of Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs at forward operating base Ramrod last November. Other soldiers told the army’s criminal investigation command that Gibbs boasted of the things he got away with while serving in Iraq and said how easy it would be to “toss a grenade at someone and kill them”.

One soldier said he believed Gibbs was “feeling out the platoon”.

Investigators said Gibbs, 25, hatched a plan with another soldier, Jeremy Morlock, 22, and other members of the unit to form a “kill team”. While on patrol over the following months they allegedly killed at least three Afghan civilians. According to the charge sheet, the first target was Gul Mudin, who was killed “by means of throwing a fragmentary grenade at him and shooting him with a rifle”, when the patrol entered the village of La Mohammed Kalay in January.

Morlock and another soldier, Andrew Holmes, were on guard at the edge of a poppy field when Mudin emerged and stopped on the other side of a wall from the soldiers. Gibbs allegedly handed Morlock a grenade who armed it and dropped it over the wall next to the Afghan and dived for cover. Holmes, 19, then allegedly fired over the wall.

Later in the day, Morlock is alleged to have told Holmes that the killing was for fun and threatened him if he told anyone.

The second victim, Marach Agha, was shot and killed the following month. Gibbs is alleged to have shot him and placed a Kalashnikov next to the body to justify the killing. In May Mullah Adadhdad was killed after being shot and attacked with a grenade.

The Army Times reported that a least one of the soldiers collected the fingers of the victims as souvenirs and that some of them posed for photographs with the bodies.

Five soldiers – Gibbs, Morlock, Holmes, Michael Wagnon and Adam Winfield – are accused of murder and aggravated assault among other charges. All of the soldiers have denied the charges. They face the death penalty or life in prison if convicted.

The killings came to light in May after the army began investigating a brutal assault on a soldier who told superiors that members of his unit were smoking hashish. The Army Times reported that members of the unit regularly smoked the drug on duty and sometimes stole it from civilians.

The soldier, who was straight out of basic training and has not been named, said he witnessed the smoking of hashish and drinking of smuggled alcohol but initially did not report it out of loyalty to his comrades. But when he returned from an assignment at an army headquarters and discovered soldiers using the shipping container in which he was billeted to smoke hashish he reported it.

Two days later members of his platoon, including Gibbs and Morlock, accused him of “snitching”, gave him a beating and told him to keep his mouth shut. The soldier reported the beating and threats to his officers and then told investigators what he knew of the “kill team”.

Following the arrest of the original five accused in June, seven other soldiers were charged last month with attempting to cover up the killings and violent assault on the soldier who reported the smoking of hashish. The charges will be considered by a military grand jury later this month which will decide if there is enough evidence for a court martial. Army investigators say Morlock has admitted his involvement in the killings and given details about the role of others including Gibbs. But his lawyer, Michael Waddington, is seeking to have that confession suppressed because he says his client was interviewed while under the influence of prescription drugs taken for battlefield injuries and that he was also suffering from traumatic brain injury.

“Our position is that his statements were incoherent, and taken while he was under a cocktail of drugs that shouldn’t have been mixed,” Waddington told the Seattle Times.

1 comment September 9th, 2010

Pentagon lies and dissembles about Wikileaks contacts

Glenn Greenwald details Pentagon lying about Wikileaks’ attempts to secure Pentagon cooperation in removing from documents it released information that might identify Afghan sources. Just as it is doing currently, the Pentagon refused cooperation:

When the controversy first arose over the lack of redactions in the war documents released by WikiLeaks, the website insisted that, using theNew York Times as an intermediary, it had asked the Obama administration for help in removing names of Afghans before releasing the documents, a claim the Pentagon vehemently denied.  The New York Times, needless to say, sided with the Government — that’s what the NYTdoes — but they did so by simultaneously confirming the truth of WikiLeaks’ version of events.  From the Associated Press article, July 31, on that controversy:

Also on Saturday, a New York Times reporter who has been the newspaper’s liaison with Assange, dismissed Assange’s claim that WikiLeaks had offered to let U.S. government officials go through leaked documents to ensure that no innocent people were identified. Assange told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in an interview that aired Thursday that the New York Times had acted as an intermediary and that the White House hadn’t responded to the offer.

Times reporter Eric Schmitt told the AP that on the night of July 23, at White House spokesman’s Robert Gibbs’ request, he relayed to Assange a White House request that WikiLeaks not publish information that could lead to people being physically harmed.

The next evening, Schmitt said, Assange replied in an e-mail that WikiLeaks was withholding 15,000 documents for review. Schmitt said Assange wrote that WikiLeaks would consider recommendations made by the International Security Assistance Force “on the identification of innocents for this material if it is willing to provide reviewers.”

Schmitt said he forwarded the e-mail to White House officials and Times editors.

“I certainly didn’t consider this a serious and realistic offer to the White House to vet any of the documents before they were to be posted, and I think it’s ridiculous that Assange is portraying it that way now,” Schmitt wrote to the AP.

On Friday, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said it was “absolutely, unequivocally not true” that WikiLeaks had offered to let U.S. government officials go through the documents to make sure no innocent people were identified.

Do you see what happened there?  Schmitt, wanting to side with his Pentagon friends, publicly suggested that Assange was lying when he claimed that he offered to allow the Government to suggest redcations, even as Schmitt himself acknowledged that “Assange wrote that WikiLeaks would consider recommendations made by the International Security Assistance Force ‘on the identification of innocents for this material if it is willing to provide reviewers’,” an offer Schmitt says he conveyed to the White House.  In other words, Schmitt defended the Pentagon’s denials that Assange made this offer even as he himself described the very events which proved Assange was telling the truth.  At the very least, WikiLeaks clearly indicated its willingness to have government officials review the documents and make recommendations about redactions — something those officials refused to do.

Greenwald then discusses the current Pentagon dissimulation regarding Wikileaks efforts to sanitize the remaining 15,000 documents. He then speculates on motivation:

Why would the DoD refuse to offer this assistance?  WikiLeaks — in response to Pentagon threats — has already stated emphatically that these documents are going to be released no matter what.  No rational person would doubt that they mean this.  Wouldn’t it be vastly preferable — from the Government’s perspective — to have those documents released with the names of Afghan sources redacted, rather than force WikiLeaks to guess at what needs to be withheld?  The Pentagon routinely conveys to media outlets preparing to release classified documents its views about what specifically ought to be withheld, notwithstanding its objections to the release of all information.  Why would they not do the same here?

After the last release, the Pentagon very flamboyantly accused WikiLeaks of endangering the lives of innocent Afghans, even accusing them of having ”blood on their hands” (despite the absence of a single claim that anyone was actually harmed from the release of those documents).  If Pentagon officials are truly concerned about the well-being of Afghan sources identified in these documents — rather than exaggerating and exploiting that concern in order to harm WikiLeaks’ credibility — wouldn’t they be eager to help WikiLeaks redact these documents?  That would be the behavior one would expect if these concerns were at all genuine.

Instead, the Pentagon is doing the opposite:  first lying by denying that WikiLeaks ever sought this help, then refusing to provide it in response.  In the conflict between the U.S. Government and WikiLeaks, it is true that one of the parties seems steadfastly indifferent to the lives of Afghan civilians.  Despite the very valid criticisms that more care should have been exercised before that first set of documents was released, the party most guilty of that indifference is not WikiLeaks.

In an Update, Greenwald points out that Sean Paul Kelley, who had been very critical of Wikileaks, has made a mea culpa:

I’ve found in life that when I am wrong the best thing to do is just come right out and admit it.

Here goes: I was wrong. Wikileaks, based on the evidence that the DoD has presented, did its level best to work with the DoD to redact any names that might harm innocent Afghans. The Pentagon not only lied about it, but has even refused to cooperate going forward.

The blood, if there is to be any, is on the Pentagon’s hands. It’s that simple. [Emphasis added.]

Meanwhile, this morning brings the rather suspicious news that Julian Assange of Wikileaks has been charged with rape and molestation in Sweden.  While no details are available, Assange has denied the charges:

The charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing.

It would not be surprising if this was an attempt to shut down, or at least discredit, Wikileaks.

UPDATE: More information on the Swedish accusation (apparently not actually “charges”) from the AP is here.

August 21st, 2010

Human rights groups call on Wikileaks to better scrub documents

I have been very supportive of Wikileaks and their efforts to reduce the amount of secret information withheld from citizens around the world. I recently posted, and signed, this petition to defend Wikileaks. I consider them to be heroes of our age.

I am, however, also concerned that they apparently insufficiently vetted the Afghan war documents released a couple of weeks ago. They apparently left in names and identifying information for certain Afghan informants that might endanger their lives. The error was apparently from oversight, given the mass of material they were faced with and the extremely limited resources available to Wikileaks.

It is also essential to keep such an error in perspective. It is disgusting to see those responsible for hundreds or thousands of deaths blithely dismissed as “collateral damage” wax indignant about Wikileaks having “blood on their hands.”

Nevertheless, such errors on Wikileaks’ part are troubling and I hope better efforts are being made to vet materials before future release. I also hope that some major outside organization, such as Amnesty, will provide assistance to Wikileaks in this vetting process.

The Wall Street Journal reports that several human rights groups have written to Wikileaks making a similar request:

Rights Groups Join Criticism of WikiLeaks

By Jeanne Whalen

A group of human-rights organizations is pressing WikiLeaks to do a better job of redacting names from thousands of war documents it is publishing, joining the list of critics that claim the Web site’s actions could jeopardize the safety of Afghans who aided the U.S. military.

The letter from five human-rights groups sparked a tense exchange in which WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange issued a tart challenge for the organizations to help with the massive task of removing names from thousands of documents, according to several of the organizations that signed the letter. The exchange shows how WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange risk being isolated from some of their most natural allies in the wake of the documents’ publication.

The human-rights groups involved are Amnesty International; Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, or CIVIC; Open Society Institute, or OSI, the charitable organization funded by George Soros; Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission; and the Kabul office of International Crisis Group, or ICG.

The groups emailed WikiLeaks to say they were concerned for the safety of Afghans identified as helping the U.S. military in documents obtained by WikiLeaks, according to several of the groups. WikiLeaks has already published 76,000 of the documents and plans to publish up to 15,000 more.

Some of the already published documents included names that critics including the Pentagon claim could lead to harm for Afghans seen as helping the U.S. war effort. The Pentagon last week demanded that WikiLeaks hand over all the classified Afghan war documents it has.

“We have seen the negative, sometimes deadly ramifications for those Afghans identified as working for or sympathizing with international forces,” the human-rights groups wrote in their letter, according to a person familiar with it. “We strongly urge your volunteers and staff to analyze all documents to ensure that those containing identifying information are taken down or redacted.”

In his response to the letter signed by the human-rights organizations, Mr. Assange asked what the groups were doing to analyze the documents already published, and asked whether Amnesty in particular would provide staff to help redact the names of Afghan civilians, according to people familiar with the letter.

An Amnesty official replied to say that while the group has limited resources, it wouldn’t rule out the idea of helping, according to people familiar with the reply. The official suggested that Mr. Assange and the human-rights groups hold a conference call to discuss the matter.

Mr. Assange then replied: “I’m very busy and have no time to deal with people who prefer to do nothing but cover their asses. If Amnesty does nothing I shall issue a press release highlighting its refusal,” according to people familiar with the exchange.

Later, WikiLeaks posted on its Twitter account: “Pentagon wants to bankrupt us by refusing to assist review. Media won’t take responsibility. Amnesty won’t. What to do?”

In an email Monday, WikiLeaks declined to comment on the exchange with the human rights groups.

Taliban representatives have said publicly that they are searching the documents and plan to punish people who have helped U.S. forces.

Human-rights groups say they are increasingly worried about the execution of Afghan civilians by the Taliban and other insurgent groups. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, or AIHRC, published figures this week showing that such executions have soared in the first seven months of this year, to 197, from a total of 225 in all of 2009.

In a phone interview, Nader Nadery, senior commissioner of the AIHRC, said the civilians executed are often people who support the Afghan government, or their family members. Some of these people “may have come into contact with the U.S. or other international forces,” he said.

He said the AIHRC signed the letter to WikiLeaks. He said he and his colleagues “appreciate the efforts by WikiLeaks” to highlight some previously unreported aspects of the war, but worry that “having the names of the individuals with the location of their village and specific info about them…will enable the Taliban to develop another hit list.”

CIVIC, OSI and ICG also confirmed that they signed the letter. Erica Gaston, program officer for OSI’s Afghanistan-Pakistan regional policy initiative, said: “Our concern was that the Taliban had announced it was going through the data looking for names and that it would begin targeting that. It’s a very real threat that they’re making. They have demonstrated over and over that if they have the name of someone that has in any way been affiliated with the international community, they will find them, they will kill them in most cases.”

August 11th, 2010

Petition to defend Wikileaks

A group of activists has created a petition to defend Wikileaks. Here is the text:

Our government and its allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan have stretched the labels “national security” and “secrecy” beyond all reasonable definitions, because they wish to keep the realities of these wars hidden from the American people. “National security” is becoming the last refuge of scoundrels. Only consider –

- Our government prohibited the media from photographing the returning remains of our dead soldiers, until public pressure forced a change in policy;

- The Abu Ghraib torture scandal only came to public attention when photographs were leaked by an MP;

- The war in Pakistan is shrouded in secrecy because it violates that country’s sovereignty, results in the killing of innocent civilians, and is deeply unpopular;

- According to the new information from WikiLeaks, our Special Operations Task Force 373 operates outside the ISAF mandate to kidnap and kill targeted insurgents in a repeat of the discredited Phoenix program of the Vietnam era.

- Gen. Stanley McChrystal was forced to resign after a Rolling Stone reporter uncovered attitudes hostile to civilian authority;

- The same Rolling Stone article quoted a top official saying if the truth about these wars was known by the American people, they would be even more unpopular.

Given this context of cover-ups, whistleblowers have been a last resort in keeping democracy alive.

We understand the embarrassment of high officials when exposed, but it is Orwellian for the Pentagon to accuse the WikiLeaks of having “blood on their hands.” We are in the tenth year of a war which has claimed over 1,100 American lives, and where Afghan and Pakistan casualties are obscured deliberately. Many of America’s killed and wounded are listed as non-combat, minimizing the actual toll. WikiLeaks has been careful to delete information which might expose individuals to lethal risk. Those who really have blood on their hands are the authors of this war. We stand with those who expose them.

TOM HAYDEN
REV. GEORGE HUNSINGER, Princeton Theology Seminary
ED BACON, All Saints Episcopal
MEDEA BENJAMIN, Cofounder, CODEPINK
TIM CARPENTER, Progressive Democrats of America
REV. JIM CONN
ARIEL DORFMAN, Author
DANIEL ELLSBERG
PETER DALE SCOTT, Author
DONALD SHRIVER, President of Union Theological Seminary in NYC [ret.]
PEGGY SHRIVER, Assistant General Secretary, National Council of Churches [ret.]
JEAN STEIN, Editor/Author

You can sign here.

2 comments August 6th, 2010

Ellsberg’s leak wish list

The Washington Post asked Daniel Ellsberg what documents he most hoped will be leaked to Wikileaks. His wish list:

1. The official U.S. “order of battle” estimates of the Taliban in Afghanistan, detailing its size, organization and geographic breakdown — in short, the total of our opponents in this war. If possible, a comparison of the estimate in December 2009 (when President Obama decided on a troop increase and new strategy) and the estimate in June or July 2010 (after six or seven months of the new strategy). We would probably see that our increased presence and activities have strengthened the Taliban, as has happened over the past three years.

2. Memos from the administration’s decision-making process between July and December 2009 on the new strategy for Afghanistan, presenting internal critiques of the McChrystal-Petraeus strategy and troop requests — similar to the November 2009 cables from Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry that were leaked in January. In particular, memos by Vice President Biden, national security adviser Jim Jones and others; responses to the critiques; and responses to the responses. This paperwork would probably show that, like Eikenberry, other high-level internal critics of escalation made a stronger and more realistic case than its advocates, warranting congressional reexamination of the president’s policy.

3. The draft revision, known as a “memo to holders,” of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran from November 2007. This has been held up for the past several months, apparently because it is consistent with the judgment of that NIE that Iran has not made a decision to produce nuclear weapons. In particular, the contribution to that memo by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), since the INR has had the best track record on such matters. Plus, estimates by the INR and others of the likelihood of an Israeli attack on Iran later this summer. Such disclosures could arrest momentum toward a foreseeably disastrous U.S.-supported attack, as the same finding did in 2007.

4. The 28 or more pages on the foreknowledge or involvement of foreign governments (particularly Saudi Arabia) that were redacted from the congressional investigation of 9/11, over the protest of then-Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.).

On each of these matters, congressional investigation is called for. The chance of this would be greatly strengthened by leaks from insiders. Subsequent hearings could elicit testimony from the insiders who provided the information (whose identities could be made known to congressional investigators) and others who, while not willing to take on the personal risks of leaking, would be ready to testify honestly under oath if requested or subpoenaed by Congress. Leaks are essential to this process.

August 1st, 2010

Jon Stewart on Wikileaks Afghan intelligence release

As Stewart shows, much of the media’s reaction was traditionally silly. This exempts the three sources which spent weeks going through the materials, of course.

July 28th, 2010

Wikleaks releases Afghan war truth; will people listen?

Yesterday Wikileaks released about 75,000 raw intelligence reports from the US mission in Afghanistan.Wikileaks had provided early access to the documents to the New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel.

With this release Wikileaks has again demonstrated their vital importance in combating government and other organization’s lies and corruption. As the US government condemns them, we should support their fight for freedom of the the information vital for a functioning democracy. They, along with whoever leaked these documents, are among the heroes of our time.

Here is the announcement from the web site Wikileaks specially designed for this release:

Sunday, July 26 5pm EST.

WikiLeaks today released over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.The Afghan War Diary an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. They include the number of persons internally stated to be killed, wounded, or detained during each action, together with the precise geographical location of each event, and the military units involved and major weapon systems used.

The Afghan War Diary is the most significant archive about the reality of war to have ever been released during the course of a war. The deaths of tens of thousands is normally only a statistic but the archive reveals the locations and the key events behind each most of these deaths. We hope its release will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and provide the raw ingredients necessary to change its course.

Most entries have been written by soldiers and intelligence officers listening to reports radioed in from front line deployments. However the reports also contain related information from Marines intelligence, US Embassies, and reports about corruption and development activity across Afghanistan.

Each report consists of the time and precise geographic location of an event that the US Army considers significant. It includes several additional standardized fields: The broad type of the event (combat, non-combat, propaganda, etc.); the category of the event as classified by US Forces, how many were detained, wounded, and killed from civilian, allied, host nation, and enemy forces; the name of the reporting unit and a number of other fields, the most significant of which is the summary – an English language description of the events that are covered in the report.

The Diary is available on the web and can be viewed in chronological order and by by over 100 categories assigned by the US Forces such as: “escalation of force”, “friendly-fire”, “development meeting”, etc. The reports can also be viewed by our “severity” measure-the total number of people killed, injured or detained. All incidents have been placed onto a map of Afghanistan and can be viewed on Google Earth limited to a particular window of time or place. In this way the unfolding of the last six years of war may be seen.

The material shows that cover-ups start on the ground. When reporting their own activities US Units are inclined to classify civilian kills as insurgent kills, downplay the number of people killed or otherwise make excuses for themselves. The reports, when made about other US Military units are more likely to be truthful, but still down play criticism. Conversely, when reporting on the actions of non-US ISAF forces the reports tend to be frank or critical and when reporting on the Taliban or other rebel groups, bad behavior is described in comprehensive detail. The behavior of the Afghan Army and Afghan authorities are also frequently described.

The reports come from US Army with the exception most Special Forces activities. The reports do not generally cover top-secret operations or European and other ISAF Forces operations. However when a combined operation involving regular Army units occurs, details of Army partners are often revealed. For example a number of bloody operations carried out by Task Force 373, a secret US Special Forces assassination unit, are exposed in the Diary — including a raid that lead to the death of seven children.

This archive shows the vast range of small tragedies that are almost never reported by the press but which account for the overwhelming majority of deaths and injuries.

We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.

Additional information from our media partners:

• Der Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html
• The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/afghanistan-the-war-logs
• The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html

Afghan War Diary – Reading guide
The Afghan War Diary (AWD for short) consists of messages from several important US military communications systems. The messaging systems have changed over time; as such reporting standards and message format have changed as well. This reading guide tries to provide some helpful hints on interpretation and understanding of the messages contained in the AWD.

Most of the messages follow a pre-set structure that is designed to make automated processing of the contents easier. It is best to think of the messages in the terms of an overall collective logbook of the Afghan war. The AWD contains the relevant events, occurrences and intelligence experiences of the military, shared among many recipients. The basic idea is that all the messages taken together should provide a full picture of a days important events, intelligence, warnings, and other statistics. Each unit, outpost, convoy, or other military action generates report about relevant daily events. The range of topics is rather wide: Improvised Explosives Devices encountered, offensive operations, taking enemy fire, engagement with possible hostile forces, talking with village elders, numbers of wounded, dead, and detained, kidnappings, broader intelligence information and explicit threat warnings from intercepted radio communications, local informers or the afghan police. It also includes day to day complaints about lack of equipment and supplies.

The description of events in the messages is often rather short and terse. To grasp the reporting style, it is helpful to understand the conditions under which the messages are composed and sent. Often they come from field units who have been under fire or under other stressful conditions all day and see the report-writing as nasty paperwork, that needs to be completed with little apparent benefit to expect. So the reporting is kept to the necessary minimum, with as little type-work as possible. The field units also need to expect questions from higher up or disciplinary measures for events recorded in the messages, so they will tend to gloss over violations of rules of engagement and other problematic behavior; the reports are often detailed when discussing actions or interactions by enemy forces. Once it is in the AWD messages, it is officially part of the record – it is subject to analysis and scrutiny. The truthfulness and completeness especially of descriptions of events must always be carefully considered. Circumstances that completely change the meaning of an reported event may have been omitted.

The reports need to answer the critical questions: Who, When, Where, What, With whom, by what Means and Why. The AWD messages are not addressed to individuals but to groups of recipients that are fulfilling certain functions, such as duty officers in a certain region. The systems where the messages originate perform distribution based on criteria like region, classification level and other information. The goal of distribution is to provide those with access and the need to know, all of the information that relevant to their duties. In practice, this seems to be working imperfectly. The messages contain geo-location information in the forms of latitude-longitude, military grid coordinates and region.

The messages contain a large number of abbreviations that are essential to understanding its contents. When browsing through the messages, underlined abbreviations pop up an little explanation, when the mouse is hovering over it. The meanings and use of some shorthands have changed over time, others are sometimes ambiguous or have several meanings that are used depending on context, region or reporting unit. If you discover the meaning of a so far unresolved acronym or abbreviations, or if you have corrections, please submit them to wl-office@sunshinepress.org.

An especially helpful reference to names of military units and task-forces and their respective responsibilities can be found at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/enduring-freedom.htm

The site also contains a list of bases, airfields http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/afghanistan.htm Location names are also often shortened to three-character acronyms.

Messages may contain date and time information. Dates are mostly presented in either US numeric form (Year-Month-Day, e.g. 2009-09-04) or various Euro-style shorthands (Day-Month-Year, e.g. 2 Jan 04 or 02-Jan-04 or 2jan04 etc.).

Times are frequently noted with a time-zone identifier behind the time, e.g. “09:32Z”. Most common are Z (Zulu Time, aka. UTC time zone), D (Delta Time, aka. UTC + 4 hours) and B (Bravo Time, aka UTC + 2 hours). A full list off time zones can be found here: http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/military/

Other times are noted without any time zone identifier at all. The Afghanistan time zone is AFT (UTC + 4:30), which may complicate things further if you are looking up messages based on local time.

Finding messages relating to known events may be complicated by date and time zone shifting; if the event is in the night or early morning, it may cause a report to appear to be be misfiled. It is advisable to always look through messages before and on the proceeding day for any event.

David Leigh, the Guardian’s investigations editor, explains the online tools they have created to help you understand the secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/datablog/video/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-video-tutorial

Understanding the structure of the report

• The message starts with a unique ReportKey; it may be used to find messages and also to reference them.
• The next field is DateOccurred; this provides the date and time of the event or message. See Time and Date formats for details on the used formats.
• Type contains typically a broad classification of the type of event, like Friendly Action, Enemy Action, Non-Combat Event. It can be used to filter for messages of a certain type.
• Category further describes what kind of event the message is about. There are a lot of categories, from propaganda, weapons cache finds to various types of combat activities.
• TrackingNumber Is an internal tracking number.
• Title contains the title of the message.
• Summary is the actual description of the event. Usually it contains the bulk of the message content.
• Region contains the broader region of the event.
• AttackOn contains the information who was attacked during an event.
• ComplexAttack is a flag that signifies that an attack was a larger operation that required more planning, coordination and preparation. This is used as a quick filter criterion to detect events that were out of the ordinary in terms of enemy capabilities.
• ReportingUnit, UnitName, TypeOfUnit contains the information on the military unit that authored the report.
• Wounded and death are listed as numeric values, sorted by affiliation. WIA is the abbreviation for Wounded In Action. KIA is the abbreviation for Killed In Action. The numbers are recorded in the fields FriendlyWIA,FriendlyKIA,HostNationWIA,HostNationKIA,CivilianWIA,CivilianKIA,EnemyWIA,EnemyKIA
• Captured enemies are numbered in the field EnemyDetained.
• The location of events are recorded in the fields MGRS (Military Grid Reference System), Latitude, Longitude.
• The next group of fields contains information on the overall military unit, like ISAF Headquarter, that a message originated from or was updated by. Updates frequently occur when an analysis group, like one that investigated an incident or looked into the makeup of an Improvised Explosive Device added its results to a message.
• OriginatorGroup, UpdatedByGroup
• CCIR Commander’s Critical Information Requirements
• If an activity that is reported is deemed “significant”, this is noted in the field Sigact. Significant activities are analyzed and evaluated by a special group in the command structure.
• Affiliation describes if the event was of friendly or enemy nature.
• DColor controls the display color of the message in the messaging system and map views. Messages relating to enemy activity have the color Red, those relating to friendly activity are colored Blue.
• Classification contains the classification level of the message, e.g. Secret

July 26th, 2010

Democratic McCarthyism is still McCarthyism

In a rather strange comment, Michael Steele, head of the Republican National Committee, criticized the Afghan war and described it as “Obama’s war.” While ignoring the war’s origins in and conduct for over seven years by the Bush administration is disingenuous at best, Steele is right that the war is a disaster and that Obama is now responsible. The Democrats launched a typical counterattack, accusing Steele of undermining the troops. By this McCarthyite tactic the  DNC condemned the majority of members of their own party, and the majority of its members in Congress, who are against the war.

It is time to unequivocally condemn these tactics by the Democrats as we did when they were used by Republicans. Criticism of imperial wars is one of the most American traditions, as is, alas, attacks on that criticism.

E. J. Dionne’s column get’s it right:

Let Michael Steele have his say on the Afghan war

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

It’s easy to understand why Democrats want Michael Steele to stay in the news. The Republican National Committee chairman is a wonderful distraction, a constant source of gaffes, laughs, clarifications and denials.

But Steele recently scored a victory of sorts, even though you wouldn’t know it from the coverage: His comments on Afghanistan got Democrats to recite GOP talking points from the Bush era. Of course, those can be turned against anyone in either party who dares to question the direction of the war.

The most incendiary words came from the indefatigable Brad Woodhouse, the Democratic National Committee spokesman, who accused Steele of “betting against our troops and rooting for failure in Afghanistan.”

Woodhouse added: “It’s simply unconscionable that Michael Steele would undermine the morale of our troops when what they need is our support and encouragement.”

I have some empathy for Woodhouse, who must be weary of dealing with the other side’s demagoguery day after day. He probably couldn’t resist giving Republicans a taste of their own medicine. But this is dangerous stuff in a democracy and particularly perilous from a party that, less than two years ago, rightly insisted it could oppose the Bush administration’s foreign policy on thoroughly patriotic grounds.

And Woodhouse’s statement came shortly after 60 percent of House Democrats — 153 in all — voted for a troop-withdrawal amendment sponsored by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and two of his colleagues. It would have required President Obama to present a plan by April for the “safe, orderly and expeditious redeployment” of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

The amendment, which drew support from nine Republicans, would also have allowed for a vote in Congress to stop additional war funding if withdrawal does not start by next July, when the administration has said it will begin reducing forces in Afghanistan.

It’s thus not surprising that one person who took issue with Democrats who piled on Steele was McGovern. “The reaction to Steele from some Democrats sounded like Dick Cheney,” he told me. “Democrats need to understand that our base is increasingly uncomfortable with this war.”

Now the truth is that Steele’s statement on Afghanistan at a party fundraiser in Connecticut was something of a mess. Even McGovern said that “Steele was wrong” for asserting that “this was a war of Obama’s choosing.” After all, the war in Afghanistan began under President George W. Bush after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with overwhelming support from both parties. And the situation deteriorated badly on Bush’s watch.

Yet Steele’s point — that Obama had criticized the Iraq war “while saying the battle really should [be] in Afghanistan” — was accurate enough. Obama had a choice, and he chose to escalate. And in asserting that “the one thing you don’t do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan” and that “everyone who has tried over a thousand years of history has failed,” Steele was simply making arguments that other critics of the Afghanistan war had offered already.

It’s fair enough to argue with Steele about all this, and it was honorable for Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the premier Republican hawks, to take issue with their party chair, given that Obama’s approach is largely to their liking.

Personally, I’m still hoping Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan will work. But it is maddening that Congress can appropriate $33 billion more for Afghanistan without anyone asking where the funds will come from even as self-styled deficit hawks insist on blocking money for the unemployed unless it is offset by budget cuts.

And McGovern is right that the most disturbing line in the Rolling Stone article that got Gen. Stanley McChrystal in trouble was this observation attributed to one of his senior advisers: “If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular.”

But the issue here is less about Afghanistan than about dissent in time of war. Even if Steele was just popping off, he had a right to offer his opinion without being accused of undermining our troops or “rooting for failure.”

Some of our greatest leaders, from Abraham Lincoln to Robert F. Kennedy, courageously stood up against wars in their day. Steele is no Lincoln and he is no Kennedy, but as an American, he enjoys the same rights they had. “It is not enough to allow dissent,” RFK said. “We must demand it.” If members of Kennedy’s party don’t remember this, who will?

July 8th, 2010