Is the WikiLeaks case the new Pentagon Papers?
The leaking of 91,000 classified documents on the Afghanistan war is being compared, imprecisely, with the Pentagon Papers leak of 39 years ago that unmasked official U.S. deceptions about the Vietnam War. The latest document dump merely provides more raw material with which to make similar accusations. The Pentagon Papers were a careful compilation of reports and analysis by military officialdom that often clashed with the rose-colored Nixon administration contentions of seeing light at the end of a tunnel when there was little of it. They were intentionally leaked by Pentagon official Daniel Ellsberg in the hope of putting brakes on a failing policy. The latest release — from an international organization called WikiLeaks through three news outlets — has, according to quick review by experts on the Afghan War, uncovered little new, but rather fleshes out old stories with eyewitness accounts of various military failures and excesses.
