The Downside And Dishonesty of WikiLeaks

Assange lied about US military personnel in 2010

During an interview with Sean Hannity that aired Tuesday night, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange asserted: We have the trust of our sources, we have the trust of our readers, having never got it wrong.

This is an important point, Hannity interjected. Not one evidence [sic] where you've been proven wrong.

Not even one sustained allegation, Assange replied. We have a perfect record in relation to authenticating the material that we publish. That's a very valuable reputation to have.

But in 2010, Assange and WikiLeaks released a video that wrongly portayed U.S. soldiers in Iraq as murderers. As Bill Roggio wrote at THE WEEKLY STANDARD at the time: Wikileaks, the website devoted to publishing classified documents on the Internet, made a splash today with a video claiming to show that the U.S. military 'murdered' a Reuters cameraman and other Iraqi 'civilians' in Baghdad on July 12, 2007. But a careful watching of the video shows that the U.S. helicopter gun crews that attacked a group of armed men in the then Mahdi Army stronghold of New Baghdad was anything but 'Collateral Murder,' as Wikileaks describes the incident.

The Need For Army Reform

The Army has long needed reform, and it is shown here.

Bacha Bazi and the Afghan Drawdown

A look at recent incidents where US soldiers stopped Arab child rape in Afghanistan.

"....we were working primarily with the Afghan National Army - an organization dominated by northeners and non-Pashtuns and, by Afghan standards, a more professional outfit than the local police units that became more critical to the success of the US drawdown beginning in 2011. Though the Afghan Army had its problems, including corruption and surely sexual assault as well, lost in the discussion this week is a fine but important distinction: The crisis of systematic child rape primarily involves Pashtuns who have joined the police or government-backed militias in the eastern and southern parts of the country during the period when Americans have been focused on their own departure.

"....the grim news is suppressed by midlevel commanders working to put a positive spin on the progress of the drawdown."

Daniel P. Bolger on COIN Wars

General Daniel P. Bolger authors a strong yet flawed study of the Middle East war from before 2001 onward.

Death of a Soldier

Norman Schwarzkopf