Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Leon]

[Captain Corea]

Ok, thanks for posting. Good to know where you're coming from.

[bacasper]

Now here's some significant analysis:

Task Force 373: US Death Squad

Why is the NY Times Underplaying Account of Task Force 373�s Extrajudicial Killings?

By Jeffrey Kaye
The Public Record
Jul 28th, 2010

Unfortunately, I don�t have time to examine the question posed in the title of this piece as carefully as I�d like, but even the quickly posted Wikipedia entry on Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) Task Force 373 notes that there is a large discrepancy between the amount of targets on TF373�s �kill/capture� list as reported by the major media.

The figures are drawn from the extraordinary release of previously classified Afghan war reports by Wikileaks, and now searchable at the latter�s website.

Task Force 373 is alternately described by the New York Times as �a secret commando unit�; as �an undisclosed �black� unit of special forces� by the UK Guardian; and �an elite American unit�. which operates in Afghanistan outside of the ISAF mandate� by Spiegel Online. These three news sources were partners with Wikileaks in the release of the documents, and had special access to the material prior to their public posting.

By all accounts, Task Force 373 seems to be a kidnapping and death squad, run by the Americans, but housed at a German base in Afghanistan. The very secret unit, unknown even to other ISAF forces, works off a �kill or capture� list known as JPEL, which stands for �Joint Prioritized Effects List.� From this bland name springs an operations force that, according to the UK Guardian, has �more than 2,000 senior figures from the Taliban and al-Qaida� on its seize or kill list. Most of the world press has reported this same or similar figure, though Spiegel only says the figure is �large�:

The list of targeted individuals is arranged according to process number and priority level. Depending on the case, the commandos are sometimes given the option to arrest or kill their prey. Nowhere in the available documents is that list printed in full, but a total of 84 reports about JPEL operations can be filtered out of the thousands of documents. It is not possible to work out from the documents exactly how many JPEL targets there are in Afghanistan, but the four-digit process numbers are enough to suggest that the total number of targets is large.

It was the four-digit process numbers that the Guardian used to determine their figure. Simply put, they counted.

The pursuit of these �high value targets� is evidently embedded deep in coalition tactics. The Jpel list assigns an individual serial number to each of those targeted for kill or capture and by October 2009 this had reached 2,058.

But however they did it, the New York Times came up with a much different and drastically lower number.

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referenced NY TImes article

[Konglishman]

[bacasper]

WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious �Insurance� File

* By Kim Zetter Email Author
* July 30, 2010


In the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning WikiLeaks� recent publishing of 77,000 Afghan War documents, the secret-spilling site has posted a mysterious encrypted file labeled �insurance.�

The huge file, posted on the Afghan War page at the WikiLeaks site, is 1.4 GB and is encrypted with AES256. The file�s size dwarfs the size of all the other files on the page combined. The file has also been posted on a torrent download site.

WikiLeaks, on Sunday, posted several files containing the 77,000 Afghan war documents in a single �dump� file and in several other files containing versions of the documents in various searchable formats.

Cryptome, a separate secret-spilling site, has speculated that the new file added days later may have been posted as insurance in case something happens to the WikiLeaks website or to the organization�s founder, Julian Assange. In either scenario, WikiLeaks volunteers, under a prearranged agreement with Assange, could send out a password or passphrase to allow anyone who has downloaded the file to open it.

It�s not known what the file contains but it could include the balance of data that U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning claimed to have leaked to Assange before he was arrested in May.

In chats with former hacker Adrian Lamo, Manning disclosed that he had provided Assange with a different war log cache than the one that WikiLeaks already published. This one was said to contain 500,000 events from the Iraq War between 2004 and 2009. WikiLeaks has never commented on whether it received that cache.

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[bacasper]

The American left and the WikiLeaks documents

By David Walsh
31 July 2010

The release by WikiLeaks of 92,000 secret documents has helped expose the brutal, neo-colonial character of the US-led war in Afghanistan.

The documents detail US military atrocities against the Afghan population, reveal the scope of the opposition to the foreign occupation, and expose the stooge regime in Kabul for what it is, a coalition of big business interests, drug lords and sadistic killers.

The American public has been lied to for nine years about the war, both its motives and its reality. The US media has worked hand in glove with the White House and Pentagon to conceal the horrific character of the conflict.

Despite that, the population defeated the Republicans in two elections, 2006 and 2008, in part because of opposition to and suspicion about what the US military was up to in Iraq and Afghanistan. Brought to power promising �change,� the Obama administration has continued and escalated the military intervention.

In the wake of the WikiLeaks release, the New York Times and the establishment media have downplayed the significance of the documents, insisting there is �nothing new� in them. Moreover, they are attempting to use the leaked material to justify an escalation of the war, claiming it shows the US military has been �hamstrung� in Afghanistan and the Pakistani regime has been playing a double game.

American liberalism and the �left� respond as an element of the establishment, suggesting alterations in policy, but rejecting an independent struggle against war based on a break with the Democratic Party.

In its July 29 editorial, �Getting Out of Afghanistan,� the Nation magazine argues that �we have seen enough�enough to know that [Obama�s current] strategy cannot work, and enough to understand that the costs of continuing the war far outstrip any conceivable benefits.� Which conceivable benefits?

The editors continue: �After nearly nine years of war, it is clear that Afghanistan�with its complex regional and ethnic divisions, its long history of fierce resistance to occupying forces, its decentralized governance and tribal system, and its susceptibility to the interference of neighbors�does not lend itself to successful counterinsurgency.�

�Successful counterinsurgency�? The editors are complaining that the massive, ruthless effort to suppress popular resistance to the US-led forces in Afghanistan has failed. Does the Nation now stand for �successful counterinsurgency�? What examples do they have in mind?

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