Wikileaks burst upon the news scene earlier this year when it posted the classified video of an American Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad in which two Reuters reporters were killed. The leaker of that video, Army Specialist Bradley Manning, says he believed it was important to show the true face of war. He is currently under arrest and being held in a U.S. military prison in Kuwait. His support network's website is at www.BradleyManning.org
The Tierney report says the reason the system of protection payments to insurgents in Afghanistan exists is that there is, in essence, no other way to insure the resupply of the network of 200 military bases in Afghanistan. A former Defense Department contracting officer said in the report:
"the heart of the matter is that insurgents are getting paid for safe passage because there are few other ways to bring goods to the combat outposts and forward operating bases where soldiers need them. By definition, many outposts are situated in hostile terrain, in the southern parts of Afghanistan. The [Afghan security companies run by warlords] don't really protect convoys of American military goods here, because they simply can't; they need the Taliban's cooperation."
The roll call of the House vote yesterday to approve the administration's request for $34 billion more in war funding is HERE (a "yea" is in favor of more funds for the war.) Campaign contributions to congressmen from defense corporations are HERE.
After the vote, anti-war activists who opposed further war funding, partly on the grounds that, according to the Tierney report, U.S. taxpayer money was helping to kill American troops, strategized the next steps in ending the wars, noting that a record 114 congressmen voted to cut-off funding for the war compared to the 35 who voted this way in the last round. Activists said bluntly, "The Pentagon is funding both sides of the war," and placed emphasis on "specific forms of [Afghan-led development] which empowers the Afghan people, not national elites or U.S. corporations" as a remedy for Afghan hopelessness and instability.
David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org wrote:
We need a new approach that not only seeks to keep anti-war representatives in power, and to replace Republicans with anti-war Democrats, and to replace pro-war Democrats in primaries with anti-war Democrats, and to replace pro-war Republicans in primaries with anti-war Republicans, but also to defeat pro-war incumbents even if their opponent is pro-war too...
Swanson said the peace movement must make clear to incumbents that if they continued to support war funding in 2010 they should not expect to keep their job in January of 2011, even if voters put up with two years of another congressman they don't like, as a broom to sweep out the incumbent.
After the posting earlier this year of the 2007 Apache Helicopter attack video by Wikileaks, the Pentagon expressed that it was interested in the whereabouts of Wikileaks editor and founder Julian Assange. Soon after that, Assange abruptly canceled a speech before the National Press Club in New York. Daniel Ellsberg, who had been in contact with Assange, told MSBC's Dylan Ratigan that he feared for Assange's safety in light of the Obama administrations newly announced policy this year of keeping an assassination list of people it considers threats to the national security, including American citizens. Ellsberg said "I think Assange would do well to keep his whereabouts unknown." Assange has since resurfaced, but the identity and whereabouts of the "Afghan Pentagon Papers" leaker remains unknown.
Â
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
