News alert: Secret Archive Gives Grim View of Afghan War

I just got this New York Times e-mail alert, and it isn’t pretty:

A six-year archive of classified military documents to be made public on Sunday offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal.

The secret documents, to be released by an organization called WikiLeaks, are a daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year.

Americans are increasingly impatient with this war, and more and more of us would like to see the troops withdraw. Nobody seems to be clear about what exactly it is we’re fighting for, why our family members are dying, and what possible solution there can be considering this has been an unwinnable situation for not just the U.S. but other nations, too.

The article itself goes on to say:

Much of the information — raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan— cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.

But many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable.

While current and former American officials interviewed could not corroborate individual reports, they said that the portrait of the spy agency’s collaboration with the Afghan insurgency was broadly consistent with other classified intelligence.

The Pakistani army, the piece says, is acting as an enemy/ally. Unacceptable.

Please go here for more.