Photo Gallery 91,731 Documents, Five Serious Problems
In an unprecedented development, close to 92,000 classified documents pertaining to the war in Afghanistan have been obtained. SPIEGEL, the New York Times and the Guardian have analyzed the raft of mostly classified documents. They expose the true scale of the Western military deployment -- and the problems beleaguering Germany's Bundeswehr in the Hindu Kush. They contain compelling new details about five aspects of the deployment, including that of German soliders like the one seen here near Kunduz.
Task Force 373: The Secret Hunters
The members of Task Force 373, a troop of US elite soldiers that includes Navy Seals and members of the Delta Force, among others, receive their orders directly from the Pentagon and are independent of the chain of command of the international ISAF Afghanistan security forces. Their mission is to deactivate top Taliban and terrorists by either killing or capturing them. With the leaking of the war logs on Sunday, however, their work is an open secret. Read more here ...
Germany Naivety: Growing Trouble in the North
The newly emerged documents do not contain any information suggesting that German troops were involved in any excesses of violence against the civilian population or in any illegal clandestine operations. Nevertheless, they convey an image of Germany's armed forces, the Bundeswehr, that is still devastating because they depict a German military that stumbled into the conflict with great naivity. Under current German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (pictured here), they are now learning how close to civil war Afghanistan really is and how little Germany's armed forces, the Bundeswehr have achieved there.
Read more here ...
The Flaws of the Silent Killer:
When Drones Fail
Indeed, the secret memos reveal the drawbacks of a weapon that has been lauded by the US military as a panacea, a view shared by the president. The unmanned assassin can fly for more than 20 hours and kill at lightning speed, but they are not always reliable. Read more here ...
The Secret Enemy in Pakistan: Problems with an Alleged Partner
The documents appear to provide new evidence that Pakistan is both an ally to both the United States and its enemy -- the Taliban. Former Pakistani secret service chief Hamid Gul plays a prominent role in the documents. Read more here ...
Intelligence Agents Flooding in Data:
The Shortcomings of US Intelligence Services
America's intelligence agencies are drowning in a sea of data. Fearful of repeating the intelligence mistakes that occurred prior to 9/11, analysts seem to be blindly reporting every single thing. Read more here ...
