John Birmingham’s article on Julian Assange (‘The Man who Fell to Earth’, October 2010), is typical of the sort of hatchet job that Birmingham would be familiar with, and perhaps even experienced himself. Clearly, John Birmingham does not particularly like Assange, in fact, his article implies that not only is Assange indifferent to a free press and journalism he is happy to assist the Taliban to assassinate those who have co-operated (or collaborated) with the US and other NATO forces. We do not actually know what exactly this co-operation entailed. In short, Birmingham is accusing Assange of being nothing more than a media hungry Australian-born traitor.

Firstly, let’s take Birmingham’s rant seriously for a moment. Is there any credible evidence from any source (apart from hearsay and gossip) that anyone has been assassinated by anti-American forces in Afghanistan because of something contained in a document posted by WikiLeaks? If so, perhaps Birmingham should have included this in the article where he seemingly implies this to be the case!

Secondly, does Birmingham have any evidence that any of the names he seems to believe are those of endangered individuals cooperating with American and other NATO forces are actually their real names? That is, does Birmingham know for sure that they really exist? For security any such documents would need to be redacted from the beginning so that a name (or other possible identification) is never provided, i.e. ‘Mr X’.

I would imagine that such information (where any real danger did exist) would have to be handled on a need-to-know basis. It does not make much sense for anyone in the American forces to simply have recorded real names and real locations of Afghans.

Thirdly, does Birmingham know if the Pentagon has taken steps to provide protection (to those allegedly in danger from Taliban assassination)?

Is it just possible that WikiLeaks might have informed the Pentagon about what was in these documents, you know, just in case? Is it possible that Assange is not the heartless psychopath Birmingham claims?

Finally, is any of this information about who is helping whom actually accurate? The fluid nature of alliances formed by bribery, opium, corruption, oil, feuds and warlords (and that is just the Afghan government), seems to suggest that is quite likely that in Afghanistan one can take money from Peter to fight Paul and quickly reverse this position if Paul offers a better deal.

Finally, does Birmingham have any perspective? Widespread torture, civilian deaths and disappearances have walked hand in hand with the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He devotes a whole article to sling mud at Julian Assange, but what do the leaked documents actually show? They show that the war in Afghanistan is not about fighting terrorists, it is terrorism.

Adam Henry

Canberra, ACT