Prime Minister Julia Gillard has ordered the Defence Department to establish an extraordinary election-period taskforce to examine the impact of the WikiLeaks Afghan War Diary on the Australian Defence Force (ADF).
The story, first broken here in Crikey on Monday, that the leaked reports describe activities by Australian troops in the central Afghan province of Uruzgan as part of the Reconstruction Task Force, includes descriptions of fire-fights with insurgents, attacks by suicide bombers, missing weaponry and civilian casualties including children.
Under the heading ‘Leaked documents suggest cover-up of Afghan killing’, Dan Oakes from The Age newspaper is reporting on a discrepancy between the leaked report of an incident in December 2008 and the official statement on the same event from Defence chief Angus Houston. According to the US report, the man the soldiers shot was a local policeman, a fact not mentioned by Houston in his public statement on the event.
As well as troop activity in Afghanistan, the leaked reports provide valuable insights into the operation of Australia’s defence community, with one secret cable in April 2007 informing the Americans five days before the Australian public where informed that the government was doubling troop numbers in the troubled region.
The taskforce will examine the 91,000 leaked US reports and identify what action, “if any”, needs to be taken by the ADF. The taskforce will most likely investigate the reports highlighted in Crikey on Monday, including how Australian marked weapons came to be found in an enemy weapons cache, has troop safety been compromised and whether there have been any cover ups of civilian deaths.
Other Coalition of the Willing countries to (so far) launch investigations into the biggest leak in intelligence history include the UK, the US, Germany and the Netherlands. As nations begin a new round of soul searching, two bright spots for Australia are the relatively minor role our troops have so far played in the saga (no doubt due to their professionalism and quality training) and that the leak, despite the involvement of Australian-born Wikileaks director Julian Assange, did not result from a security breach in Australia. Had the leak originated here, the effects on our defence community would have been disastrous and reminiscent of the 1970s when Australian intelligence forces were so compromised by security leaks that the United States withdrew information sharing privileges.
Under the election-period caretaker conventions of the Australian parliament, the taskforce will report its findings to Gillard and Tony Abbott. However, the public will probably never see the contents of the report. Until the next leak, of course.
Now here’s a conundrum for Senator Conroy and his fellow travellers. Clearly from his previously reported objections to Wikileaks (http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Australian_government_secret_ACMA_internet_censorship_blacklist,_18_Mar_2009), the whistle blowing web site will be high on his list of sites to be blocked should Labor Party policy be implemented post election. The problem is – as we can see from the fallout from the current ‘Afghan Papers’ leak – that as soon as information is made available on one site, it soon propagates through the net at the speed of light.
What to do then? Block every site that quotes Wikileaks?
How can Conroy do that, when Gillard gratifies espionage by announcing an inquiry based on it?
An inquiry which will demoralize troops in order to find out something we should already know: military combat is not the same as police patrolling in peaceful suburbia, cannot be subject to the same constraints on the use of force, and does lead to messy situations including friendly fire casualties. Unless you want soldiers calling out “Stop, or I’ll say ‘stop’ again!” in five different languages before requesting written permission to open fire.
As a patriotic Australian, I submit this link – free of charge like most real intelligence in this world – to the brand new Extraordinary Election-Period Taskforce (EEPT?)
John Young of Crytome.org is the interviewee.
http://snardfarker.ning.com/video/john-young-alex-jones
This story – not the military investigation into the link – has sunk almost without a trace in the major dailies and news networks in this country. It’s outrageous. Julian Asange has provided information which demonstrates that the overarching strategy employed by NATO is a disaster. Why are we blithely carrying on as if there is any hope that the amorphous goals of the surge can be achieved? Powerisnotstrength – how can you reduce Bradley Manning’s actions to ‘espionage’? He didn’t sell the data to a hostile foreign power. He made it available so that we – the citizenry – can learn what is being done in our name. We can’t rely on the government to give us an accurate picture of what’s happening in Afghanistan – thank god for Wikileaks and couageous souls such as Manning and Assange.
>>>>”This story – not the military investigation into the link – has sunk almost without a trace in the major dailies and news networks in this country.”
That surprises me. I don’t buy printed A=ustralian newspapers as I’m only able to access a range of News Corp offerings, but the Wikileaks story is certainly gaining quite unprecedented coverage around the world.
As the link I suggested above indicates, however, there are serious grounds for suspicion in this case that all is not quite what it seems to be.
This latest Wikileaks release shows signs of being orchestrated by western intelligence agencies – as opposed to an authentic ‘whistleblower-driven’ expose as purported.
This batch of released documented are electronic only and cannot be verified, then were given first to the media (instead of direct publication on the Wikileaks website – the usual practise to date) and most importantly, several of the take-home messages dovetail perfectly with neocon talking points, such as the malevolent role allegedly played by Pakistan in the current Afghanistan debacle.