assange says the following about the editing process:
Quote:
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Assange said today that they had tried to comply with a private White House request to redact the names of informants before publication. But the US authorities had refused to assist them.
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[[[edit: if this is true, what appears to have happened is that wikileaks told dod that the leak was going to happen and asked for help in vetting them. my speculation is that people inside dod figured: why help these people? this is illegal. or something like that. so they didn't help the vetting. which complicates the story, yes?
i have no outside information about the veracity of the story though....just putting together a scenario from available infotainment.]]]
and continues to talk about one of the motivations behind the leak...
most of the politically damaging information in these documents concerns "collateral damage" and the refusal of the american military in particular (the uk to a lesser extent) to investigate the instances or even, the story goes, to take them seriously.
so it hardly seems a good road to head down in response to the leak to say "o now a bunch of people are going to die" does it?
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He said in a statement: "Secretary Gates speaks about hypothetical blood, but the grounds of Iraq and Afghanistan are covered with real blood."
Thousands of children and adults had been killed and the US could have announced a broad inquiry into these killings, "but he decided to treat these issues with contempt''.
He said: "This behaviour is unacceptable. We will continue to expose abuses by this administration and others."
Meanwhile, both US and UK authorities remained silent about the disclosures in the 92,000 war log files that hundreds of civilians have been killed or wounded by coalition forces in unreported or previously under-reported incidents. The Ministry of Defence withdrew promises to make an official statement about US allegations that two units of British troops had caused exceptional loss of civilian life.
MoD sources said that at least 15 of the 21 alleged cases had now been confirmed, but they were unable to say what investigations had subsequently taken place, or when they would now make a statement.
A detachment of the Coldstream Guards was newly arrived in Kabul when innocent civilians were shot on four separate occasions in October-November 2007.
Several different companies of Royal Marine commands are alleged to have shot civilians who came "too close" to convoys or patrols on eight occasions in Helmand province during the six-month period ending in March 2008.
Sources said that the then Labour foreign secretary, David Miliband, was so concerned about civilian deaths that he helped push forward a UN resolution in 2008, setting up an UN system to monitor such casualties.
But it does not function effectively, according to the independent Human Rights Watch. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reported 828 civilian deaths in 2008, thanks to "pro-government forces", saying force protection incidents, "are of continuing concern", where innocent drivers, car passengers or motorcyclists, are shot by passing troops.
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WikiLeaks 'has blood on its hands' over Afghan war logs, claim US officials | World news | The Guardian
the guardian concentrates on the uk incidents...
again, i don't have a particular axe to grind in this, apart from what i've already talked about.
but nothing seems to be as straightforward as one might prefer to imagine either in the documents that were leaked or in the infotainment jockeying that's ongoing, which amounts to a fight over who gets to frame the information.