The military was under severe scrutiny this summer from an unexpected source. Wikileaks, an online forum that publishes military leaks and other unavailable documents, made a lot of noise over summer break by publishing “The Afghan War Diary” July 25. This series of almost 92,000 postings covered the day-to-day happenings of the Afghan War through reports from the front line from January 2004 to December 2009.The publishing of the War Diaries, which is considered the largest leak in military history, revealed an unvarnished view of the war absent of military glossing or media bias, offering hitherto unknown information about civilian casualties, special ops teams, military accidents and increased activity by both the Taliban and al Queda. The information was classified “secret” by the US Government but was released toThe New York Times, The Guardian Newspaper and German magazine Der Spiegel by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Only 75,000 documents remain open for the public to view in an attempt to preserve anonymity of those involved.
*Wikileaks is in no way associated with Wikipedia.