Wikileaks: Biggest Leak in Intelligence History Chronicles Failure in Afghanistan

[michaelwise]

From Daily Paul:

Over 90,000 classified reports have been released by wikileaks to the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel. The reports which range from 2004 to the present chronicle civilian casualties, increased I.E.D. activity, and numerous friendly fire incidents. Read more below:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/afghanistan-the-war-logs

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html

Of course the US media focuses on Pakistan's involvement in the insurgency (no better way to take attention off a failed war than to start another one):

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html

[jmdrake]

One story from the Guardian collection about an assassination squad that sounds like a bull in a China shop.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/task-force-373-secret-afghanistan-taliban

Afghanistan war logs: Task Force 373 – special forces hunting top Taliban

Previously hidden details of US-led unit sent to kill top insurgent targets are revealed for the first time

* Reddit
* Buzz up
* Share on facebook (46)
* Tweet this (48)

* Nick Davies
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 July 2010 22.13 BST
* Article history

US soldiers pursue militants in Helmand province US soldiers pursue militants in Helmand province. The shadowy Task Force 373 meanwhile focuses its efforts on more than 2,000 senior Taliban figures on a target list. Photograph: Adrees Latif/Reuters

The Nato coalition in Afghanistan has been using an undisclosed "black" unit of special forces, Task Force 373, to hunt down targets for death or detention without trial. Details of more than 2,000 senior figures from the Taliban and al-Qaida are held on a "kill or capture" list, known as Jpel, the joint prioritised effects list.

In many cases, the unit has set out to seize a target for internment, but in others it has simply killed them without attempting to capture. The logs reveal that TF 373 has also killed civilian men, women and children and even Afghan police officers who have strayed into its path.

The United Nations' special rapporteur for human rights, Professor Philip Alston, went to Afghanistan in May 2008 to investigate rumours of extrajudicial killings. He warned that international forces were neither transparent nor accountable and that Afghans who attempted to find out who had killed their loved ones "often come away empty-handed, frustrated and bitter".

Now, for the first time, the leaked war logs reveal details of deadly missions by TF 373 and other units hunting down Jpel targets that were previously hidden behind a screen of misinformation. They raise fundamental questions about the legality of the killings and of the long-term imprisonment without trial, and also pragmatically about the impact of a tactic which is inherently likely to kill, injure and alienate the innocent bystanders whose support the coalition craves.

On the night of Monday 11 June 2007, the leaked logs reveal, the taskforce set out with Afghan special forces to capture or kill a Taliban commander named Qarl Ur-Rahman in a valley near Jalalabad. As they approached the target in the darkness, somebody shone a torch on them. A firefight developed, and the taskforce called in an AC-130 gunship, which strafed the area with cannon fire: "The original mission was aborted and TF 373 broke contact and returned to base. Follow-up Report: 7 x ANP KIA, 4 x WIA." In plain language: they discovered that the people they had been shooting in the dark were Afghan police officers, seven of whom were now dead and four wounded.

The coalition put out a press release which referred to the firefight and the air support and then failed entirely to record that they had just killed or wounded 11 police officers. But, evidently fearing that the truth might leak, it added: "There was nothing during the firefight to indicate the opposing force was friendly. The individuals who fired on coalition forces were not in uniform." The involvement of TF 373 was not mentioned, and the story didn't get out.

However, the incident immediately rebounded into the fragile links which other elements of the coalition had been trying to build with local communities. An internal report shows that the next day Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Phillips, commander of the Provincial Reconstruction Team, took senior officers to meet the provincial governor, Gul Agha Sherzai, who accepted that this was "an unfortunate incident that occurred among friends". They agreed to pay compensation to the bereaved families, and Phillips "reiterated our support to prevent these types of events from occurring again".

Yet, later that week, on Sunday 17 June, as Sherzai hosted a "shura" council at which he attempted to reassure tribal leaders about the safety of coalition operations, TF 373 launched another mission, hundreds of miles south in Paktika province. The target was a notorious Libyan fighter, Abu Laith al-Libi. The unit was armed with a new weapon, known as Himars – High Mobility Artillery Rocket System – a pod of six missiles on the back of a small truck.

The plan was to launch five rockets at targets in the village of Nangar Khel where TF 373 believed Libi was hiding and then to send in ground troops. The result was that they failed to find Libi but killed six Taliban fighters and then, when they approached the rubble of a madrasa, they found "initial assessment of 7 x NC KIA" which translates as seven non-combatants killed in action. All of them were children. One of them was still alive in the rubble: "The Med TM immediately cleared debris from the mouth and performed CPR." After 20 minutes, the child died.

Children

The coalition made a press statement which owned up to the death of the children and claimed that troops "had surveillance on the compound all day and saw no indications there were children inside the building". That claim is consistent with the leaked log. A press release also claimed that Taliban fighters, who undoubtedly were in the compound, had used the children as a shield.

The log refers to an unnamed "elder" who is said to have "stated that the children were held against their will" but, against that, there is no suggestion that there were any Taliban in the madrasa where the children died.

The rest of the press release was certainly misleading. It suggested that coalition forces had attacked the compound because of "nefarious activity" there, when the reality was that they had gone there to kill or capture Libi.

It made no mention at all of Libi, nor of the failure of the mission (although that was revealed later by NBC News in the United States). Crucially, it failed to record that TF 373 had fired five rockets, destroying the madrasa and other buildings and killing seven children, before anybody had fired on them – that this looked like a mission to kill and not to capture. Indeed, this was clearly deliberately suppressed.

The internal report was marked not only "secret" but also "Noforn", ie not to be shared with the foreign elements of the coalition. And the source of this anxiety is explicit: "The knowledge that TF 373 conducted a HIMARS strike must be protected." And it was. This crucial fact remained secret, as did TF 373's involvement.

Again, the lethal attack caused political problems. The provincial governor arranged compensation and held a shura with local leaders when, according to an internal US report, "he pressed the Talking Points given to him and added a few of his own that followed in line with our current story". Libi remained targeted for death and was killed in Pakistan seven months later by a missile from an unmanned CIA Predator.

In spite of this tension between political and military operations, TF 373 continued to engage in highly destructive attacks. Four months later, on 4 October, they confronted Taliban fighters in a village called Laswanday, only 6 miles from the village where they had killed the seven children. The Taliban appear to have retreated by the time TF 373 called in air support to drop 500lb bombs on the house from which the fighters had been firing.

The final outcome, listed tersely at the end of the leaked log: 12 US wounded, two teenage girls and a 10-year-old boy wounded, one girl killed, one woman killed, four civilian men killed, one donkey killed, one dog killed, several chickens killed, no enemy killed, no enemy wounded, no enemy detained.

The coalition put out a statement claiming falsely to have killed several militants and making no mention of any dead civilians; and later added that "several non-combatants were found dead and several others wounded" without giving any numbers or details.

This time, the political teams tried a far less conciliatory approach with local people. In spite of discovering that the dead civilians came from one family, one of whom had been found with his hands tied behind his back, suggesting that the Taliban were unwelcome intruders in their home, senior officials travelled to the stricken village where they "stressed that the fault of the deaths of the innocent lies on the villagers who did not resist the insurgents and their anti-government activities … [and] chastised a villager who condemned the compound shooting". Nevertheless, an internal report concluded that there was "little or no protest" over the incident.

Concealment

The concealment of TF 373's role is a constant theme. There was global publicity in October 2009 when US helicopters were involved in two separate crashes in one day, but even then it was concealed that the four soldiers who died in one of the incidents were from TF 373.

The pursuit of these "high value targets" is evidently embedded deep in coalition tactics. The Jpel list assigns an individual serial number to each of those targeted for kill or capture and by October 2009 this had reached 2,058.

The process of choosing targets reaches high into the military command. According to their published US Field Manual on Counter Insurgency, No FM3-24, it is policy to choose targets "to engage as potential counter-insurgency supporters, targets to isolate from the population and targets to eliminate".

A joint targeting working group meets each week to consider Target Nomination Packets and has direct input from the Combined Forces Command and its divisional HQ, as well as from lawyers, operational command and intelligence units including the CIA.

Among those who are listed as being located and killed by TF 373 are Shah Agha, described as an intelligence officer for an IED cell, who was killed with four other men on 1 June 2009; Amir Jan Mutaki, described as a Taliban sub-commander who had organised ambushes on coalition forces, who was shot dead from the air in a TF 373 mission on 24 June 2009; and a target codenamed Ballentine, who was killed on 16 November 2009 during an attack in the village of Lewani, in which a local woman also died.

The logs include references to the tracing and killing of other targets on the Jpel list, which do not identify TF 373 as the unit responsible. It is possible that some of the other taskforce names and numbers which show up in this context are cover names for 373, or for British special forces, 500 of whom are based in southern Afghanistan and are reported to have been involved in kill/capture missions, including the shooting in July 2008 of Mullah Bismullah.

Some of these "non 373" operations involve the use of unmanned drones to fire missiles to kill the target: one codenamed Beethoven, on 20 October 2008; one named Janan on 6 November 2008; and an unnamed Jpel target who was hit with a hellfire missile near Khan Neshin on 21 August 2009 while travelling in a car with other passengers (the log records "no squirters [bodies moving about] recorded").

Other Jpel targets were traced and then bombed from the air. One, codenamed Newcastle, was located with four other men on 26 November 2007. The house they were in was then hit with 500lb bombs. "No identifiable features recovered," the log records.

Two other Jpel targets, identified only by serial numbers, were killed on 16 February 2009 when two F-15 bombers dropped four 500lb bombs on a Jpel target: "There are various and conflicting reports from multiple sources alleging civilian casualties … A large number of local nationals were on site during the investigation displaying a hostile attitude so the investigation team did not continue sorting through the site."

One of the leaked logs contains a summary of a conference call on 8 March 2008 when the then head of the Afghan National Directorate of Security, Amrullah Saleh, tells senior American officers that three named Taliban commanders in Kapisa province are "not reconcilable and must be taken out". The senior coalition officer "noted that there would be a meeting with the Kapisa NDS to determine how to approach this issue."

It is not clear whether "taken out" meant "killed" and the logs do not record any of their deaths. But one of them, Qari Baryal, who was ranked seventh in the Jpel list, had already been targeted for killing two months earlier.

On 12 January 2008, after tracking his movements for 24 hours, the coalition established that he was holding a large meeting with other men in a compound in Pashkari and sent planes which dropped six 500lb bombs and followed up with five strafing runs to shoot those fleeing the scene.

The report records that some 70 people ran to the compound and started digging into the rubble, on which there were "pools of blood", but subsequent reports suggest that Baryal survived and continued to plan rocket attacks and suicide bombings.

Numerous logs show Jpel targets being captured and transferred to a special prison, known as Btif, the Bagram Theatre Internment Facility. There is no indication of prisoners being charged or tried, and previous press reports have suggested that men have been detained there for years without any legal process in communal cages inside vast old air hangars. As each target is captured, he is assigned a serial number. By December 2009, this showed that a total of 4,288 prisoners, some aged as young as 16, had been held at Btif, with 757 still in custody.
Who are TF373?

The leaked war logs show that Task Force 373 uses at least three bases in Afghanistan, in Kabul, Kandahar and Khost. Although it works alongside special forces from Afghanistan and other coalition nations, it appears to be drawing its own troops from the 7th Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and to travel on missions in Chinook and Cobra helicopters flown by 160th special operations aviation regiment, based at Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia.

[jmdrake]

delete

[t0rnado]

Pentagon Papers, 2nd Edition.

This is sickening.

[libertybrewcity]

I can't wait to see what kinds of goodies come out of this new leak. There are bound to be new finds for months.

[libertybrewcity]

These big three news organizations better make good use the new material. They seem to already have nice War Log sites set up just for the wikileaks finds. I'm willing to bet Obama will put some pressure them to take it down or make it back page news.

[t0rnado]

All the documents are available on the wikileaks.org site for download in various formats: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Afghan_War_Diary,_2004-2010

There will probably be torrents up soon.

[Depressed Liberator]

Wikileaks is awesome.

[muh_roads]

tagged for later.

[FrankRep]

The whistleblower website Wikileaks.org released more than 90,000 classified U.S. documents related to the war in Afghanistan Sunday, which it called the Afghan War Diaries, prompting severe reaction from the Afghan and U.S. governments. by Thomas R. Eddlem


Wikileaks.org Releases More Than 90,000 Afghan War Secret Documents (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/4128-wikileaksorg-releases-more-than-90000-afghan-war-secret-documents)


Thomas R. Eddlem | The New American (http://www.thenewamerican.com/)
Monday, 26 July 2010

[heavenlyboy34]

note: I heard on my local neo-con friendly radio station a few blabbermouths trying to discredit this leak. Beware of a coordinated media campaign to silence the wikileaks folks. :eek: :mad:

[TheBlackPeterSchiff]

It's amazing all the people out their calling the WikiLeaks guys a traitor, and he should be tried for treason, etc. Wow. This is amazing. Guess this is what people said about Woodward and Bernstein.

[FrankRep]

It's amazing all the people out their calling the WikiLeaks guys a traitor, and he should be tried for treason, etc. Wow. This is amazing. Guess this is what people said about Woodward and Bernstein.

I'm very tired of all the Government secrets and lies especially about all these stupid wars. I like Wikileaks.

[heavenlyboy34]

I'm very tired of all the Government secrets and lies especially about all these stupid wars. I like Wikileaks.

+a zillion! :cool:

[acptulsa]

I still don't know why they get so upset at intelligence leaks. What harm is there if there is a leak in an empty bucket?

[Reason]

YouTube - 'WikiLeaks story soft, coverage a 9/11-like lie' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvywJQ3m4Ps)

[Liberty_Mike]

This should be interesting...

[michaelwise]

It doesn't matter what our Zionist owned media says. They promote war to make money for the arms manufacturers they own. I just thank God the complete and total economic collapse will take out those satin worshipers.

The rest of the world will see our criminal government and establishment for what it is.

[agorist ninja]

Prediction: the leaked bits about NATO claiming Pakistan and Iran are helping the Taliban will serve as a juicy bit of propaganda for an attack against the Iranian people.

I don't trust anyone involved in this leak, Wikileaks included. The NYT simply doesn't give this type of coverage to stories that don't support the establishment/elites/ruling class in some way.

Just another reason to be for a stateless society.

[yokna7]

..so the term "babykiller" will be brought back into use.

[t0rnado]

I have a feeling that Julian Assange is a libertarian. He uploaded Jeff Cherry's(Ron paul's congressional opponent) bankruptcy files. That is very insignificant information on the global standpoint.

[RM918]

I have a feeling that Julian Assange is a libertarian. He uploaded Jeff Cherry's(Ron paul's congressional opponent) bankruptcy files. That is very insignificant information on the global standpoint.

Well, he is one of the few congressmen who don't want his head on a pike and likely encourages his activities. It's in his best interest, though it's not like Jeff Cherry is a threat. Better safe than sorry.

Comments on these articles are disgusting, as unfortunately usual. People accusing him of treason, even! Suddenly calling out the American government, product of revolutionaries who encouraged the actions, is fucking treason! We have become the British Empire.

[michaelwise]

Prediction: the leaked bits about NATO claiming Pakistan and Iran are helping the Taliban will serve as a juicy bit of propaganda for an attack against the Iranian people.

I don't trust anyone involved in this leak, Wikileaks included. The NYT simply doesn't give this type of coverage to stories that don't support the establishment/elites/ruling class in some way.

Just another reason to be for a stateless society.The CIA is working with the ISI to provide the Taliban with some decent weaponry in order to give the American troops a decent training exercise and an excuse to kill more Afganis.

[heavenlyboy34]

Prediction: the leaked bits about NATO claiming Pakistan and Iran are helping the Taliban will serve as a juicy bit of propaganda for an attack against the Iranian people.

I don't trust anyone involved in this leak, Wikileaks included. The NYT simply doesn't give this type of coverage to stories that don't support the establishment/elites/ruling class in some way.

Just another reason to be for a stateless society.

The problem with this argument is that Wikileaks didn't leak to any MSM outlet directly-they leaked to the public. This is why the establishment media on all sides is mad at them. Even the NYT censored some of the data it deemed "sensitive". You can bet that when the establishment is all in agreement on something, they're trying to bury the truth.

[agorist ninja]

The problem with this argument is that Wikileaks didn't leak to any MSM outlet directly-they leaked to the public. This is why the establishment media on all sides is mad at them. Even the NYT censored some of the data it deemed "sensitive". You can bet that when the establishment is all in agreement on something, they're trying to bury the truth.

Not true at all. WikiLeaks gave the 90,000 documents to the three news outlets (NYT, Der Spiegel, and the Guardian) a couple of weeks ago. They've had all this time to sift through and present the story as they see fit. This is why there were special sections of each newspaper's website, devoted specifically to the leak, online as soon as the leak was announced.

It doesn't matter as much if we have full access to the documents now. What matters is which parts of this leak the MSM shapes and presents to the sheeple.

[tangent4ronpaul]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,708407,00.html

The war logs provide new information about the targeted killings done by the secretative US Task Force 373. The fact that the force has a unit stationed on a German base could prove embarrassing for Berlin.



One element of the war logs that is likely to spark considerable debate is the information they provide about the United States' Task Force 373, whose work the Pentagon has sought to keep under tight wraps throughout the war in Afghanistan. The unit of elite soldiers, which includes members of the Navy Seals and the Delta Force, get their orders directly from the Pentagon in Washington and operate outside of the chain of command of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The existence of this special force is by no means a secret, but top military officials have refused to discuss its controversial mission: the deactivation of top Taliban and terrorists by either killing or capturing them. The TF 373 unit works according to classified lists of enemies compiled by the coalition troops that are called "Joint Prioritized Effects Lists" (JPEL) in military jargon. In the close to 92,000 logs leaked, 84 pertain to JPEL-related actions, and together they provide a bounty of information about a force whose work has at times resulted in civilian deaths.

The documents don't just reveal the existence and activities of the Taliban hunters -- they also make clear why this special unit evokes so much anger among Afghans. Washington has tried to keep its failures from coming to light.

One report in the logs, dated June 17, 2007, includes a warning that the operation must be "kept protected," and that details of the mission should not be provided to any other countries, including America's partners in the Afghanistan mission. The aim of the mission was to kill prominent al-Qaida functionary Abu Laith al-Libi. After staking out a Koran school where he was believed to be located for several days, an attack was ordered. Instead of striking the terrorist, however, the five American rockets killed seven children.

Great... :rolleyes:

-t

[michaelwise]

Leaking to the dead stream media first does not diminish Wikileaks credibility. It was a strategic maneuver on their part to enfranchise the MSM, throwing them a bone, and establishing some credibility with them so as to have some fair reporting on the information leaked. A great strategic play on their part. The propagandist brainwashing dead stream media arm still has a little life left in them and their power shouldn't be ignored. They are trying to get the internet shut down after all.

[heavenlyboy34]

Not true at all. WikiLeaks gave the 90,000 documents to the three news outlets (NYT, Der Spiegel, and the Guardian) a couple of weeks ago. They've had all this time to sift through and present the story as they see fit. This is why there were special sections of each newspaper's website, devoted specifically to the leak, online as soon as the leak was announced.

It doesn't matter as much if we have full access to the documents now. What matters is which parts of this leak the MSM shapes and presents to the sheeple.

True, but that's not what I meant. The wikileaks info we're discussing was leaked on wikileaks site before it was leaked to the MSM (I read about it many moons ago, and recall it being discussed on sites like mises.org and such).

[tangent4ronpaul]

True, but that's not what I meant. The wikileaks info we're discussing was leaked on wikileaks site before it was leaked to the MSM (I read about it many moons ago, and recall it being discussed on sites like mises.org and such).

I think you are refering to the helicopter gunship murder of those journalists, that apparently came from the same leaker and then the story about the guy being busted but that Wikileaks had the data and the gvmt was worried about it.

This stuff was posted yesterday.

-t

[agorist ninja]

Leaking to the dead stream media first does not diminish Wikileaks credibility. It was a strategic maneuver on their part to enfranchise the MSM, throwing them a bone, and establishing some credibility with them so as to have some fair reporting on the information leaked. A great strategic play on their part. The propagandist brainwashing dead stream media arm still has a little life left in them and their power shouldn't be ignored. They are trying to get the internet shut down after all.

WikiLeaks purpose for pre-releasing to those outlets first has to do with exclusivity. The MSM wouldn't bother reporting to this extent if there was just a random info-dump. Those outlets want the eyes on them, not some blog with a link to a zip file. There's no incentive, in the eyes of the corporate media, to go in depth on a story like this if everyone has access to the information.

I'm not saying WikiLeaks is in on the game, as it were. Rather, I just don't trust anyone. Would it really be that far-fetched if Assange and Co. turned out to have less than pure motives? Keeping my eyes open, that's all.

[jmdrake]

YouTube - 'WikiLeaks story soft, coverage a 9/11-like lie' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvywJQ3m4Ps)

"America itself is playing a double game (with regards to terrorism) and is forcing Pakistan to play a double game along with it."

Very accurate assessment. I'll have to read his books.

[heavenlyboy34]

WikiLeaks purpose for pre-releasing to those outlets first has to do with exclusivity. The MSM wouldn't bother reporting to this extent if there was just a random info-dump. Those outlets want the eyes on them, not some blog with a link to a zip file. There's no incentive, in the eyes of the corporate media, to go in depth on a story like this if everyone has access to the information.

I'm not saying WikiLeaks is in on the game, as it were. Rather, I just don't trust anyone. Would it really be that far-fetched if Assange and Co. turned out to have less than pure motives? Keeping my eyes open, that's all.

that's a reasonable position. :cool:

[agorist ninja]

True, but that's not what I meant. The wikileaks info we're discussing was leaked on wikileaks site before it was leaked to the MSM (I read about it many moons ago, and recall it being discussed on sites like mises.org and such).

No, it wasn't leaked "on WikiLeaks" before it was leaked to the MSM. If that were the case, we would have had access to these files a few weeks ago before those three news outlets did, not 24 hours ago.

Perhaps what you are thinking about is the rumored Afghan video footage of a mass killing of civilians, or the rumored Bradley Manning leak of 250,000 military cables to WikiLeaks. Neither of those have been made available by WikiLeaks, assuming they are in possession of those items. And even if the 90,000 is part of Manning's 250,000 cables leak, my point still stands: those corporate news outlets had access to it weeks before we did.

[Depressed Liberator]

CNN is on this leak.

[heavenlyboy34]

No, it wasn't leaked "on WikiLeaks" before it was leaked to the MSM. If that were the case, we would have had access to these files a few weeks ago before those three news outlets did, not 24 hours ago.

Perhaps what you are thinking about is the rumored Afghan video footage of a mass killing of civilians, or the rumored Bradley Manning leak of 250,000 military cables to WikiLeaks. Neither of those have been made available by WikiLeaks, assuming they are in possession of those items. And even if the 90,000 is part of Manning's 250,000 cables leak, my point still stands: those corporate news outlets had access to it weeks before we did.

If that's your point, I agree with you. This is business as usual with MSM.

[Brian4Liberty]

No surprises here. Dick Cheney told us what he was going to do on September 16th, 2001.



NBC News' Meet The Press: Dick Cheney

NBC News
September 16, 2001

MR. RUSSERT: Is there any international law or United States law which would prohibit us from killing him if we found him?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Not in my estimation, Tim. But I'd have to check with the lawyers on that, obviously.
...
MR. RUSSERT: When Osama bin Laden took responsibility for blowing up the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, U.S. embassies, several hundred died, the United States launched 60 tomahawk missiles into his training sites in Afghanistan. It only emboldened him. It only inspired him and seemed even to increase his recruitment. Is it safe to say that that kind of response is not something we're considering, in that kind of minute magnitude?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I'm going to be careful here, Tim, because I - clearly it would be inappropriate for me to talk about operational matters, specific options or the kinds of activities we might undertake going forward. We do, indeed, though, have, obviously, the world's finest military. They've got a broad range of capabilities. And they may well be given missions in connection with this overall task and strategy.

We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful. That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.

MR. RUSSERT: There have been restrictions placed on the United States intelligence gathering, reluctance to use unsavory characters, those who violated human rights, to assist in intelligence gathering. Will we lift some of those restrictions?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Oh, I think so. I think the - one of the by-products, if you will, of this tragic set of circumstances is that we'll see a very thorough sort of reassessment of how we operate and the kinds of people we deal with. There's - if you're going to deal only with sort of officially approved, certified good guys, you're not going to find out what the bad guys are doing. You need to be able to penetrate these organizations. You need to have on the payroll some very unsavory characters if, in fact, you're going to be able to learn all that needs to be learned in order to forestall these kinds of activities. It is a mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena. I'm convinced we can do it; we can do it successfully. But we need to make certain that we have not tied the hands, if you will, of our intelligence communities in terms of accomplishing their mission.

MR. RUSSERT: These terrorists play by a whole set of different rules. It's going to force us, in your words, to get mean, dirty and nasty in order to take them on, right? And they should realize there will be more than simply a pinprick bombing.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Yeah, the - I think it's - the thing that I sense - and, of course, that's only been a few days, but I have never seen such determination on the part of - well, my colleagues in government, on the part of the American people, on the part of our friends and allies overseas, and even on the part of some who are not ordinarily deemed friends of the United States, determined in this particular instance to shift and not be tolerant any longer of these kinds of actions or activities.

MR. RUSSERT: Even if we take out Osama bin Laden, that will not stop terrorism.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. No. He's the target at the moment. But I don't want to convey the impression that somehow, you know, if we had his head on a platter today, that that would solve the problem. It won't. You've got this organization, as I say, called al-Qaida. It's - somebody described it the other day as - it's like an Internet chat room, that people who come and participate in it, for one reason or another, engage in terrorism, have sometimes different motives and ideologies, but the tactics they use, the way they operate, their targets, that will continue until we go out, basically, and make the world unsafe for terrorists.

[Reason]

YouTube - 'WikiLeaks story soft, coverage a 9/11-like lie' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvywJQ3m4Ps)

YouTube - Afghan Bombshell: WikiLeaks 'War Diary' exposes US cover-up (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDcnBeY_t3c)

YouTube - Reports reveal Afghan war details (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZxRGgqWQeI)

YouTube - WikiLeaks vs White House: Who's twisting the truth? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXYlk9543Z4)

[Matt Collins]

YouTube - Pentagon: Document Dump 'Deeply Disturbing' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FZY6qRfjaM&feature=player_embedded)

[Live_Free_Or_Die]

When your country arms both sides, expect....

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_abaJ0xbRju4/R95gJdurf2I/AAAAAAAAAJg/t4g3KW7yuOQ/s320/handheld-stinger-missile.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s4kKiT-Jhao/Swy66WZM2VI/AAAAAAAAAZY/Qn_uEMNwoQI/s400/taliban-us-stinger.jpg

BLOWBACK
http://jaysondavidson.com/images/29PalmsStinger.jpg