Can WikiLeaks End the War?

[bemildred]

WikiLeaks and the three publications it chose to publish the Afghanistan reports—the New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel—are taking the position that they’ve revealed the smoking gun that must necessarily transform the course of the war.

The White House and the news outlets not privy to the documents, still not quite sure what’s hit them, are scoffing—or fumfering.

The Washington Post—its hurt status showing—went into contortions to minimize the effect of the report. Even its headline—“WikiLeaks documents cause little concern over public perception of war”—was willfully pretzel-like. So…the documents don’t make people concerned over people being concerned about the war?

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This isn’t hard to untangle: The documents do say what everyone has been saying, but they say it more vividly, granularly, and with greater authority than ever before. Everybody’s known it: The emperor’s naked. It's just that nobody knows what happens when it’s said this clearly, this unavoidably, and with such detail and particularity.

http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/post/512/can-wikileaks-end-the-war.html

[Crabby Appleton]

1. No nt

[bemildred]

2. Yeah, I don't think so either.

But it might speed things up a little.

[Demeter]

3. But It Will Surely Help n/t

[frebrd]

4. Not a chance!

[Jefferson23]

5. I hope so, and we'll see what the next installments bring. n/t

[OmahaBlueDog]

6. I don't think this is "The Pentagon Papers"

In part, I don't think it's "The Pentagon Papers" because those papers made us more cynical as a society. The other part is that, after Abu Graib, the Pat Tillman cover-up, and complete exaggeration of every reason given to us to go to war in Iraq, nothing about any of this shocks us anymore.