Brad/Chelsea Manning: Charged w/AFG file leak, Cdn angles, disposition (merged)

[George Wallace]

Thanks Bulletmagnet.

I know you have told the story here before, and I will try to link it.

40below

You are just being an ass.  Thanks for coming out.

 

[HItorMiss]

40Below

No they were not together.... Rick was in the seat of a Gwagon, Shane was in the the sentry hatch of his LAV both were not close to eachother but the they were killed almost at the same time at the initiation of the ambush.... Frank and Will were at the CCP Will was there when I asked his section to 2IC to use his section to provide security, Frank was there asking if I was going to get Ricks body from the back of a damaged LAV.

Feel free to specualte all you want but I have the facts and so does GW he has had extensive conversations with me about this and of course there are several articles about the incidents that day the best one being from Legion Magazine where the repoter took months to interview all persons involved with the battle that day.

 

[HavokFour]

Military rejects WikiLeaks friendly fire report​

The Canadian military is rejecting a report released by WikiLeaks that suggests four Canadian soldiers who died in September 2006 in Afghanistan were killed by friendly fire from U.S. forces.

The military maintains the four soldiers died in combat with the Taliban.

"The loss of four Canadian soldiers on September 3rd, 2006, was the result of insurgent activity in the Panjwaii district of Afghanistan," the defence minister's spokesman Jay Paxton said in an email Monday evening.

"The only friendly fire incident from the time period in question occurred on September 4th, 2006, when Private Mark Anthony Graham was killed in the same district."

Read more...

BulletMagnet, I suggest you get in contact with the CBC ASAP and give them what you know.

 

[HItorMiss]

Havok

This is already in the works many members of Charles that are in Canada are already trying to get in touch with the media, Many of us though are still serving and thus must go thru offical channels and get permission to speak on something like this.

 

[George Wallace]

Here are links to the original releases here on army.ca, as told by people who were there. 

WO Richard Nolan RCR, WO Frank Mellish RCR, Sgt Shane Stachnik 2 CER, Pte Jonathan Cushley RCR- 03 Sep 06

Battle of Panjwai , Legion Article

 

[The Bread Guy]

Attached is a copy of the initial report on Wikileaks mentioned in media accounts.

Thanks bulletmagnet et. al. for sharing the reality - looking forward to seeing more of this side of the story as follow-up coverage.  It can be painful reliving such events, so an extra helping of thanks for going over it one more time for this.

 

[tomahawk6]

The problem is WikiLeaks has already doctored the attack video and who is to say they havent doctored these files to support their agenda. Most of these files are similar to police files or raw intel which could be considered to be unsubstantiated. The ISI is widely considered to be behind the taliban but there isnt a smoking gun at least to my knowledge.

 

[The Bread Guy]

.... Most of these files are similar to police files or raw intel which could be considered to be unsubstantiated ....

I'm happy to hear from others who may have some direct knowledge they can share, but from what I read of those who should know, these individual reports are also the "first draft" of the events they describe.  We all know how different the first version of a story can be compared to the version we see after cooler heads have prevailed and sorted out all the information.

 

[Hawk]

I just went to the cbc site to see what their loyal followers have to say. They seem to think, at least a lot of them, that the leaked documents have to be gospel. I wish - oh never mind - I'll keep my opinions of cbc followers, including, I'm embarrassed to say, members of my own family. to myself. I don't know why I ever go to their site. It just makes me mad. I'd suggest you ones who were there would go in and tell them, but they wouldn't believe you, anyway.

Hawk

 

[George Wallace]

Hawk

That is about it.  Many on those sites making comments are paranoid conspiracy nuts.  They wouldn’t believe the truth if it hit them in the face.

As for Wikileaks, the owner is a 5th Columnist in my eyes, leaking sensitive documents in time of war in a one-side exposé.  Are there any Taliban documents to give a truly balanced perspective?  Not anywhere to be seen.  We all know what kind of atrocities they have carried out in recent history.  What we are seeing is the MSM playing into the enemy’s hands, undermining all that we have achieved.  As we have several people on this site who where actually there, we know that at least some of these leaked documents are false.

 

[Newt]

I just went to the cbc site to see what their loyal followers have to say. They seem to think, at least a lot of them, that the leaked documents have to be gospel. I wish - oh never mind - I'll keep my opinions of cbc followers, including, I'm embarrassed to say, members of my own family. to myself. I don't know why I ever go to their site. It just makes me mad. I'd suggest you ones who were there would go in and tell them, but they wouldn't believe you, anyway.

Hawk

Nothing raises my blood pressure more than reading the comments on CBC articles.

In the civilian world I work in records and information management, and this wikileaks business is a perfect example of people making decisions based on the content of a document without fully examining the context of the document. I work hard educating my staff to avoid such pitfalls, and it frustrates me to see other people fall into it.

 

[Wookilar]

George, I'm not sure I would call this report false....wrong yes, but not "false" in a dishonest way (how it is being perceived by the tinfoil hat brigade is much different). Now, I'm no Int god, but the report in question seems to be making a giant leap in assuming the GBU was the cause of death. 
Seems like lazy intelligence gathering to me.

Wouldn't the coronor's report have more weight for cause of death than an Int Sum written by someone that wasn't even there?

Wook

 

[The Bread Guy]

George, I'm not sure I would call this report false....wrong yes, but not "false" in a dishonest way (how it is being perceived by the tinfoil hat brigade is much different). Now, I'm no Int god, but the report in question seems to be making a giant leap in assuming the GBU was the cause of death ....

Exactly - correlation =/= causality:

 

[George Wallace]

Wookilar

In a way you are right.  It in all likelihood is a report with third or fourth hand information, done up in a very hasty and brief fashion.  Something to the extent accounting for the facts that a NATO aircraft dropped a bomb (no mention that it was a dud) and that four Canadians were killed and several wounded.  In a sense those facts are correct, but in reality their breviety give a completely false picture of what happened.

 

[The Bread Guy]

In a sense those facts are correct, but in reality their breviety give a completely false picture of what happened.

Not to mention someone classifying the document as a "friendly fire/blue-blue" report.

 

[Old Sweat]

In my opinion the news story is based on a reading of the entry by someone who is not familiar with sitrepspeak. I have had considerable experience, albeit quite a long time ago, working in a formation headquarters in Germany as a watchkeeper on the brigade command net and an outstation on the division command net.

What we have is an entry that has combined and condensed quite a bit of information into a short synopsis. It is normal to end such entries with a report on casualties, without implying that they are the result of any one incident. (I have read literally hundreds of war diary entries, sitreps etc from both World Wars and the Boer War, and they all more or less follow the same format.)

 

[George Wallace]

Not to mention someone classifying the document as a "friendly fire/blue-blue" report.

That is the real kicker, and an assumption that someone made without 'all' the facts, no doubt due to the brevity of the report they were looking at. 

 

[medicineman]

The way the document is written could make someone infer, especially if they had an agenda, that the casualties were the result of the bomb.  We kow, not just from first hand accounts, but in general that contact reps read like this - Troops taking lots of fire from area X, Air support called in, building with bad guys partially demolished, net result of contact was X number CDN KIA and WIA.  I don't see anything that reads "Bomb dropped on building, oops, blowed up good guys".  Like I mentioned in the other thread about this and was hinted to earlier here, this does have a bit of a ring of info/disinfo ops...a hell of a way for the bad guys or their puppet masters to breed insecurity on the home front.  If you can't kill them on the battlefield, kill their public will to go on from the other end.  And if it wasn't from the bad guys, well either way, it's a big coup for them anyway.

MM

 

[Kat Stevens]

Fantastic analysis, George, your usual standard. The thread is richer for your contribution.

"Frank was standing on one side of Sergeant Major Barnes and Will Cushley was standing behind him, behind what -- I don't know what the military calls it but -- what we'd call a front-end motor, and the Taliban insurgent or whatever you want to call them popped up out of a building and fired a 50-cal rifle at it and the schrapnel killed both Frank and Will Cushley.

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/Canadian+deaths+have+been+friendly+fire+WikiLeaks+file/3325426/story.html#ixzz0usrP7XlD

If you are unfamiliar with how 'bombs' work, PM me, I'll try to explain.

Could you CC me that info?  I've never seen an explosion, have no knowledge of explosives or volatile substances, and could really benefit from your clearly superior knowledge in that regard.

 

[Wookilar]

You have to wonder what got inside the head of the young SPC that is suspected of being the source. Some interesting comments over on The Beast about whether he had help or not.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-25/wikileaks-afghan-files-did-accused-leaker-bradley-manning-act-alone/
(not that the beast is the epitome of journalistic integrity or anything, but certainly no worse than the CBC  ;D)

Wook