By Joseph Picard: Subscribe to Joseph's RSS feed
July 26, 2010 8:55 PM EDT
While the White House and Pentagon reacted sternly to the reams of classified military documents on Afghanistan and Pakistan that were leaked this weekend on a whistleblower website, and the central Asian nations involved expressed shock and anger, the chaiman of the senate Foreign Relations Committee saw the firestorm as an opportunity.
"However illegally these documents came to light, they raise serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan," said sen. John Kerry, D-MA, in a release. "Those policies are at a critical stage and these documents may very well underscore the stakes."
Kerry added that the leaked documents may light a fire under policymakers to "get th policy right."
Wikileaks.org, a self-described whistleblower organization, posted 76,000 of U.S. military reports to its website Sunday night. The group said it is vetting another 15,000 documents for possible future release.
The documents are described as battlefield reports compiled by various military units over the past six years, including information that Pakistan has secretly aided insurgents and U.S. troops have been responsible for civilian casualties.
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"The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security," said President Obama's National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, in a release
Jones called the leaks "irresponsible" and added that they "will not impact our ongoing commitment" to Afghanistan and Pakistan and to "to defeat our common enemies."
Jones said the documents posted by Wikileaks cover a period of time from January 2004 to December 2009 -- that is, before Obama announced a new strategy for prosecuting the war, which strategy addresses some of the concerns the leaked documents raise.
A spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, however, said the war on terrorism will not succeed until the problem of "the role forces behind the borders of Afghanistan play in destabilizing activity here in Afghanistan," clearly referring to forces with Pakistan.
Pakistan denied that its secret police, as alleged in the leaked documents, is supporting the Taliban.
The Pentagon said, that while they are still reviewing the leaked documents to assess their impact, what their reviewers have read so far is not greatly troubling.
"Much of what the Pentagon has discovered early in the investigation is that the documents are classified at a 'secret' level, and not 'top-secret,' which is reserved for more sensitive material," said Marine Corps Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman.
"There's nothing we've seen so far that is particularly relevant," Lapan said.
But Kerry spokesman Frederick Jones said that many of Sen. Kerry's concerns have been reinforced by what he's read so far in the leaked reports.
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