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The moment Julian Assange of WikiLeaks released the 92,000 plus reports that are a daily diary of the war in Afghanistan, it was inevitable that they would be compared with the Pentagon Papers. The Washington Post does a good job of sorting out the similarities and the differences noting on the one hand that, unlike the Pentagon Papers, there are no high-level documents here that raise basic questions about the credibility of Presidents Obama and George W. Bush and their top advisors. However just like the Pentagon Papers, the Wikileaks Afghanistan War Logs will (likely) fuel political opposition in the U.S. to American troops continuing combat operations in Afghanistan.

The Guardian describes the revelations as being, ...a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.

•This leak will harm national security. (As if those words still had some kind of magical power, after all the abuse they have been party to.)

•There’s nothing new here. (Then how could the release harm national security?)

•Wikileaks is irresponsible; they didn’t even try to contact us! (Hold on: you’re hunting the guy down and you’re outraged that he didn’t contact you?)

•Wikileaks is against the war in Afghanistan; they’re not an objective news source. (So does that mean the documents they published are fake?)

•“The period of time covered in these documents… is before the President announced his new strategy. Some of the disconcerting things reported are exactly why the President ordered a three month policy review and a change in strategy.” (Okay, so now we too know the basis for the President’s decision: and that’s a bad thing?)

The New York Times publishes some of the reports so as to give the reader a sense of what's in the more than 90,000 reports and describe the leaks as, ...a daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year.

Glenn Greenwald wonders if the same Democrats who have said of the Daniel Ellsberg leak of the Pentagon Papers back in 1971 was heroic and necessary will follow the White House lead. He paints an ironic picture as the original Pentagon Papers exposed the amoral duplicity of a Democratic administration -- occurred when there was a Republican in the White House. This latest leak, by contrast, indicts a war which a Democratic President has embraced as his own, and documents similar manipulation of public opinion and suppression of the truth well into 2009.

Julian Assange's motives for doing this seem pretty clear from the following statement he made to Der Spiegel before publishing the Afghan logs, "They will change our perspective on not only the war in Afghanistan, but on all modern wars. This material shines light on the everyday brutality and squalor of war. The archive will change public opinion and it will change the opinion of people in positions of political and diplomatic influence."

These documents illustrate why the US military campaign in Afghanistan has achieved so little success. The release also focuses on Pakistan’s intelligence service, which has provides strategic support to the Taliban, helping it coordinate attacks against US troops and assassinate Afghani leaders. All the while claiming to be an ally of the US. Go listen to the NPR Q&A on what WikiLeaks is all about.

The toll on Afghan civilians is well documented and stands as one of the major failures of the Afghan war effort. It's hard to read all of this and not wonder exactly what is the point of all this war, bloodshed and destroyed lives? Stateless terrorists will always find a place to train and plot their terror. Even if the NATO allies could magically transform Afghanistan into a western style democracy there would be little if any decrease in terrorist activities - in fact the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created more terrorists than existed after the World Trade Center bombings of  Sept11, 2001.

Monday's are as good to me as any other day. For my radio show it usually means I have way more stories than I'm able to get to in 2 hours which is strangely kind of of fun. 

So of course the controversy over the census is still ongoing and the Conservatives continue to keep digging which is okay with me. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says ask Canadians to fill out a long census form for the good of the country and they'll rush to grab their blue or black ballpoint pens - he failed to mention all the fairies and elves that assist in this magical effort but you can assume they're part of the equation.  

 Mr. Flaherty, who has been on vacation, said he has yet to hear from business leaders on the issue - but we can assume that he hasn't been anywhere near a computer or teh Google search engine. The list of those who oppose the Conservatives' census plan is long, easy to find on-line and includes provincial and municipal governments, social scientists, religious groups, medical researchers, economists, minority-rights advocates and some business groups. The list includes the country's former chief statistician, Munir Sheikh, who quit last week over the government's decision to make the long form census optional.

 In a story I didn't get to on my radio show today, Omar Khadr has once again been failed by the Canadian courts and our PM. From The Calgary Herald: Any chance the Canadian government would come to Omar Khadr’s rescue before he stands trial for murder next month in Guantanamo Bay seems to have been washed away with a court ruling. The Federal Court of Appeals has stayed an order requiring the Harper government to quickly come up with ways to help the young Canadian terror suspect.

Lawyer Nathan Whitling said, “It’s going to be an unfair trial. It’s going to be based in large part on statements derived from coercion and torture. It’s a system that would clearly be illegal if Omar happened to be a U.S. citizen.” Good going Stephen! Remember he'd do as much for any of you out there.

 In a bit of good environmental news, the rules for Arctic shipping regulations have been strengthened and you can tell it's likely a good idea as the new rules promptly drew fire from BIMCO, the Denmark-based Baltic and International Maritime Council, as a "drastic" response to increased Arctic ship traffic and a potential threat to the long-standing "right to innocent passage" on the world's oceans.

This is a longer version of the Carl Sagan video I posted some weeks ago. It's thoughtful and insightful and a good example of what his series, Cosmos, was like. The person who put this together threw in a few modern day reminders of where we find ourselves now - strange times indeed. His was a sane and rational voice that cut through the superstitions and nonsense to present the layman with easy to understand science about the universe and our place in it. As a kid I loved watching and reading Mr. Sagan and that hasn't changed. All these years later if he were alive he'd be aghast at the backwards steps we've taken as a species but not surprised. He speculates on that very topic at the close of the video with the words in the heading, "If we capitulate to superstition or greed or stupidity..." There are very few days I feel that we haven't.

The title is misleading of course. There is one continuous narrative in the MSM: Everything that happens is good for the Republicans and bad for the Democrats. You can take that MSM wisdom further and say everything that does happen is the responsibility of the Democrats and not the Republicans. Sadly a lot of Democrats or progressives are happy to play along. I'd say they do that to show off their independence creds, but that would be cynical on my part too. There are some genuine reasons for criticism and I'll talk about that, but it'd be nice if after a long week if some of the good could get as much attention.

There was the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act which is designed to begin to put an end to unnecessary no-bid contracts. There's some savings involved for taxpayers ($48 billion) and modernization of how government does things.

While the president is having a hard time getting what he wants, what many feel is absolutely necessary, for a Climate and Energy bill, he did manage to expand greenhouse gas reduction targets for federal operations. The Federal Government will reduce greenhouse gas pollution from indirect sources, such as employee travel and commuting, by 13% by 2020. Every little bit helps.

As for that failed climate bill, every progressive I've read blames Obama for running a poor campaign to get it passed. That's an argument with merit. It's hard to tell from reading about the issue whether or not it is him directly or if it is the political calculations of his staff. Either way it is a major disappointment but it doesn't mean that it can't be rectified in the near future, in fact it has to be. The one caveat here is that not a single Republican is on board for what may prove to be the defining issue of our times and that is not Obama's fault, but it not the fault of those who have lobbied hard and long to change their minds. There's blame enough to go around to be sure.

One more thing, my favourite blogger is the guy over at Eschaton, an economist named Duncan Black who has proved to be remarkably prescient. His beef with Obama, and he does have one, is about Obama's willingness to constantly give in to pressure from what he calls the wise old men of Washington. The people who, in effect, led the US to this place with 9.5% unemployment and a struggling economy. He makes a persuasive argument.

Interesting times are, without a doubt, a curse.