WikiLeaks’ material on Afghan war: anybody could download it - Neil Sheehan

The material leaked by WikiLeaks is underground military stuff, but it is not high-level decision-making, believes Neil Sheehan, former NY Times reporter who published secret Pentagon papers on Vietnam War 40 years ago.

“[The] military are incredibly careless to have put this stuff almost virtually online within their own system. Apparently all of this could have come from one soldier who obtained that. When I was in Vietnam the names of informers were very carefully guarded,” remembers journalist.

The head of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is about to be under the heat because these leaks contain sensitive materials that is a major embarrassment to the military institutions, Sheehan states.

“The [WikiLeaks] material shows just how difficult the war is, how difficult the environment to work is,” former reporter stressed. “The American public has very little contact with the reality of the war. We do not have a draft anymore. The sons of the middle class are not being drafted and being sent off to war as occurred in Vietnam. Soldiers in Afghanistan are young men and women who joined [army] because they either want to be a soldier or marine, or because they think they are going to get a college education, and also they will not catch a bullet or an explosive – it will not happen to them.”