The War Logs
It’s been interesting to see the Afghanistan war logs story play out across The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel (and to think all three organizations essentially co-published a series of reports based on the Wikileaks embargo).
The NYT report does the best job showcasing the actual documents, explaining their methodology for redactions, providing hover definitions of military acronyms and organizing key findings as annotations within the document viewer. A really impressive presentation — much preferred to the Guardian’s take on an interactive map (although they offer all the data behind it for download) and Der Spiegel’s photo gallery.
The Times is rounding up reaction on its At War blog, including this response from the White House:
The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security. Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents – the United States government learned from news organizations that these documents would be posted. These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people.
What a story.
