Grog resource

[John Kettler]

I mentioned this on the GDF after my initial discovery, but before I'd had a chance to do any reading of the materials, but I think, having had a chance to poke around a bit, it bears separate mention here. This site, Wikileaks, is a goldmine if you want to know about many things pertaining to Iraq, how operations were conducted, lessons learned, etc. There is, for example, an entire study devoted to not just combat ops in Fallujah, but the context in which they took place, affecting them in many ways. There's material on IEDs, route clearance, minimum standoff distances for various terrorist weapons, hostage recovery, airstrike direction and more.

http://www.wikileaks.org/

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

Bumping this. Can't believe not one of you found something groggy and useful at the link.

Regards,

John Kettler

[flamingknives]

It's massively groggy.

I feel somewhat dodgy using it though, as some of those documents shouldn't be publicised at the risk of endangering soldier's lives.

[John Kettler]

flamingknives,

I understand your point, but the reality is that the media are full of leaks every day. These just happen to be specific, rather than "an informed source," "a high administration source," "did not wish to be identified, because was not allowed to speak to the media." The same sorts of information are being leaked, but now, you get to see the information in context. The information is out, for all the world to see.

Further, I think you'll find that much of it shouldn't have been classified in the first place, since such classification is more about covering butts and hiding crime and ineptitude than anything else. It's been said that doctors bury their mistakes, while governments classify theirs. The more it makes some person or group look bad, the longer it stays buried. Both the U.S. and Britain are sitting on vast mounds of stuff from during and before WW II. Recently, I was reading about the severe hazard posed in the Baltic by all the German Tabun nerve gas containers the U.S dumped in there during the war. It has absolutely refused to release the dumping site locations to international authorities, even though the Tabun could devastate the waters and destroy the ecosystem.

People who work with classified data are constantly admonished that just because you saw it in an unclassified source, doesn't mean it's not classified, only to be confronted with the kind of thing I describe immediately below.

I'll give a direct personal example. During my Hughes days, I was conducting a classified weapon effectiveness study for one of the firm's antitank weapons. To do so, I needed the weapon's kill probability. After a lot of hair-pulling, I got it, only to be confounded, the very next day, by the appearance of that very number in a two page AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY magazine ad, complete with spectacular terminal effectiveness test range close ups.

The A-11 was Top Secret Codeword, but Johnson revealed it. The imagery that the U.S. presented to the world showing the missiles in Cuba was, at the very least, Secret NOFORN/WNINTEL. When we hit Libya, the high level strike imagery showing everything we smashed was shot by an SR-71, thus was automatically Top Secret Codeword. When we talk about intercepted comms, we're in the realm of the Intel Community's crown jewels, with clearances to match. And on it goes.

The trend has been to ever greater classification, for longer periods, without automatic downgrade and declassification. The unwritten rule is, when in doubt, classify. Legitimate information is also denied the people by control markings, such as for Official Use Only. Here's the reality. You can't have an informed populace when most of the information is kept from the people, the people are constantly lied to and manipulated, and the media are, at times, literally in bed with the very people they're supposed to be watching on our behalf.

I had a wise colleague at Hughes who was of the opinion that the only thing which should be classified consisted of war plans. Don't know that I'd go that far, but as defense contractors, we used to have to stand on our heads to account for every scrap of classified paper. Meanwhile, the military types, according to some retired career officers I talked to, used to repro anything less than Top Secret without even an audit trail.

In closing, I can tell you that it's infinitely easier for me to get data on enemy systems than friendly ones, that despite this, the threat data given the troops on the pointy end of the spear, at least in the army was nil, ditto the dangers from their own weapons, and that it has taken just such leaks to get many weapon defects noticed and corrected.

The priority of any organization is survival, and classification is a proven method for aiding this aim, be it carrier vulnerability, tank survivability, personal armor defects, gundecked maintenance logs and readiness reports, improper personnel practices, or even systematic, repeated criminality. Sad, but true.

This isn't a blanket indictment, but I know people who had their tickets pulled for arguing against the official threat, I've been told of threat derating to support specific weapon programs, and I myself have been pointedly disinvited, by my employer and the military customer alike, from continuing an investigation which revealed major vulnerabilites in a key weapon system.

I would therefore urge you to not uncritically accept that "soldiers lives" argument without considering the laundry list of things done to those same soldiers as a result of their deliberately being kept in the dark by their own governments. Sending troops into battle with shoddy gear bought via rotating door officer retirees making fat paychecks needs exposing, does it not?

Regards,

John Kettler