In a Department of Defense (“DoD”) News Briefing at the Pentagon, Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen discussed the latest release of classified documents on Wikileaks.

Secretary of Defense Gates’ answer to a Wiki-dump related question was in fact an artful dodge.  There were in fact significant differences on what the US public was informed of and what the stark reality of events in Iraq were and the same type of misinformation is bleeding out of Afghanistan.  Does it rise to the level of the Pentagon Papers?  Probably not, but misinformation and damage control nevertheless.

You can decide for yourself.

“First of all, I would say unlike the Pentagon Papers, one of the things that is important, I think, in all of these releases, whether it’s Afghanistan, Iraq or the releases this week, is the lack of any significant difference between what the U.S. government says publicly and what these things show privately, whereas the Pentagon Papers showed that many in the government were not only lying to the American people, they were lying to themselves.”