After having poured billions of dollars in aid, US deserves to be treated with such contempt by Pakistani establishment (Pakistani Army, ISI and Government) since US has intentionally ignored Pakistani complicity in Afghan insurgency until now.

Files leaked by Wikileaks more or less confirms ‘The sun in the sky’ report published by Harvard Professor Matt Waldman from London School of Economics on 6/13/2010.

That report states that “support for the Afghan Taliban is ‘official Pakistani ISI policy’ and is backed at the highest levels of Pakistan’s civilian administration. Pakistan appears to be playing a double game of astonishing magnitude. There is thus a strong case that the ISI orchestrates, sustains and shapes the overall insurgent campaign in Afghanistan.”

According to Afghan Taliban commanders’ interviews with Matt Waldman, the Pakistani ISI orchestrates, sustains and strongly influences the Taliban insurgency movement. The Afghan Taliban commanders also say that ISI gives sanctuary to both Taliban and Haqqani groups, and provides huge support in terms of training, funding, munitions, and supplies. In the words of these Afghan Taliban commanders, this is ‘as clear as the sun in the sky’.

The ISI is said to compensate families of suicide bombers to the tune of 200,000 Pakistani rupees, claims the report. Thus US AID TO BANKRUPT PAKISTAN FINANCES THE DEATH OF US/NATO SOLDIERS in Afghanistan. So in a way, US is financing the death of its OWN troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistani government issued its usual denials just as it had denied umpteen times the existence of Mullah Mohammed Omar’s ‘Quetta Shura Taliban (QST)’ in the provincial capital Quetta of Baluchistan. But General Stanley McChrystal called QST as the biggest threat to US Afghan mission in his report to President Obama in August, 2009.

The most breath-taking part of this sordid saga is that US is NOT holding Pakistan responsible for sheltering, protecting and supporting Haqqani’s HQN network and Mullah Omar’s QST network all these years while those networks have been causing daily deaths of US/NATO soldiers ever since 2002 even though Pakistan was SUPPOSED to have joined US fight against same Taliban back in 2001!

Can American CIA not know what Matt Waldman knows? How come Obama administration is continuing Bush’s mollycoddling of Pakistan with such incriminating evidence against Pakistan’s double game? How can US mission in Afghanistan succeed if Obama administration continues to ignore such Pakistani duplicity like Bush had done it before Obama?

The real story here is how weak the U.S. classification system has become, and how members of that system can quickly turn over 90,000 documents to the press without a blink of an eye.

Lets remember that turning over information that is deemed classified is a crime, which is why the army's Bradley Manning is charged by the government as we speak. The information that was released yesterday may have been valuable and a confirmation of what many in the United States already believed about the war (ISI support for insurgents, killing of Afghan civilians, special forces raids, etc) doesn't make it right.

Which begs another question. Should the U.S. Military/intelligence/security establishment revamp what documents are considered classified? For instance, if the information is of no use to current military operations, then why keep in classified? You have to figure that this information is going to get out, someway, somehow, so why control it while you can?

Reviewing the whole system would not only improve the image of U.S. intelligence, but would also prevent something like this from happening again.

http://www.depetris.wordpress.com

Columbus did not discover America first , the Vikings, the Basques, many others and well the Native Americans beat him to it . Hell he hardly reached the mainland, but he is generally credited for Americas discovery, because he made it known he did.

I am not say Foreign Policy and its readership are Basque fishers trying keep their fishing grounds secret, but the current Wikileaks is touching a lot of people. And its not unknown in politic and science to see truths among circles of academia and politics being rediscovered be the broad public because some smuck have presented a compelling theory or convincing evidence.

At last for historians and other achieve-rats 90.000 easy available documents about any war the last 30 years is hotter than Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruiz kissing

No.

"they merely serve as news pegs through which intractable policy issues can be debated anew"

That pretty much sums it up. It's about Americans not paying one iota of attention to what's going on around them until some leak/scandal comes out and restates the obvious.

McCrystal: The Army doesn't like a plan they didn't come up with.
Wapo: The intelligence apparatus is redundant and overly reliant on contractors.
Wikileaks: People die in war (helicopter vid) and Pakistan is playing both sides.

Nothing new anywhere.

My first post. Always enjoy your commentary Dan. As per the wikilieaks leaks - Similar comments to yours have been made by other pundits and representatives of the govt (not accusing you of being a member of either of these sordid groups). My question is why if this information is "nothing we don't already know" is it classified? Govt can do us all a favor by declassifying these and making them available (of course with any reference to informants or agents removed). A little truth can go a long way, but govt prefers the Colonel Jessup approach to "We The People" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j2F4VcBmeo).

I meant without any reference to informants or agents.