Con Coughlin: Wikileaks Afghanistan ... What do the leaks really tell us?
[Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's executive foreign editor].
When, at the height of the Vietnam War in the 1970s, a disaffected Pentagon analyst published explosive details about how the White House was running the campaign, US military commanders soon found themselves being forced into ordering a humiliating retreat from the war zone.
The Pentagon Papers, which were leaked to the New York Times in 1971 by Daniel Ellsberg, a Democrat-supporting defence expert, lifted the lid on how successive presidents going back to Harry Truman had deliberately misled the American public on the conduct of the war.
The papers revealed how the White House had intentionally expanded military action by authorising the carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos, while insisting it had no desire to seek "a wider war". Even though most of the deception played on the American public had been undertaken by Democrat presidents, particularly Lyndon B Johnson, it was left to the Republican Richard Nixon to implement the withdrawal strategy.
Now anti-war campaigners opposed to the Nato-led mission in Afghanistan are desperately hoping that history is about to repeat itself following publication of tens of thousands of secret Pentagon documents relating to the Afghan war...
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
When, at the height of the Vietnam War in the 1970s, a disaffected Pentagon analyst published explosive details about how the White House was running the campaign, US military commanders soon found themselves being forced into ordering a humiliating retreat from the war zone.
The Pentagon Papers, which were leaked to the New York Times in 1971 by Daniel Ellsberg, a Democrat-supporting defence expert, lifted the lid on how successive presidents going back to Harry Truman had deliberately misled the American public on the conduct of the war.
The papers revealed how the White House had intentionally expanded military action by authorising the carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos, while insisting it had no desire to seek "a wider war". Even though most of the deception played on the American public had been undertaken by Democrat presidents, particularly Lyndon B Johnson, it was left to the Republican Richard Nixon to implement the withdrawal strategy.
Now anti-war campaigners opposed to the Nato-led mission in Afghanistan are desperately hoping that history is about to repeat itself following publication of tens of thousands of secret Pentagon documents relating to the Afghan war...