Wikileaks’ release of “over 75,000 secret military reports covering the war in Afghanistan” is being called one of the “biggest leaks in U.S. military history.”

It is also a prime example of Lawfare.

In my June 10, 2010, post, I wrote:

I’ve mentioned “lawfare” before. It is defined by the Lawfare Project, as:

“the use of the law as a weapon of war, or more specifically, the abuse of the law and legal systems for strategic political or military ends.”

The countries most vulnerable to such a strategy are the ones most attuned to human rights issues, and most active in international conflicts. The U.S. is target number one, and Israel is undoubtedly target number two.

An older brother of lawfare is media spin—the use of the media for a public relations victory. The most recent example of this is the Wikileaks-released Iraq bombing video, leaked by SPC Bradley Manning, who was arrested earlier this week. Though a friend quoted in Wired said that Manning “wanted people held accountable and wanted to see this didn’t happen again,” according to the hacker who turned Manning into the Army, Manning:

“discussed personal issues that got him into trouble with his superiors and left him socially isolated, and said he had been demoted and was headed for an early discharge from the Army.”

The video he released, not surprisingly, doesn’t tell the whole story. It only tells enough to make American forces look bad.

Photos and videos are critical in the game, and go hand-and-hand with lawfare to alter the context of events and create international outrage.

And as we now know, the Wikileaks video in question had been edited.

Watch how Wikileaks “War Diary” is used and spun by others. As reported in the Guardian:

The detractors have attacked the leak from two contradictory positions. So we have the Pentagon/White House line that the material threatens national security and puts soldiers’ lives at risk. And then there’s the view that the material isn’t up to much (example: The Spectator blog posting, Few smoking guns in these leaks).

In his own blog, long-time military journalist Tom Rick’s commented:

“A huge leak of U.S. reports and this is all they get? I know of more stuff leaked at one good dinner on background. I mean, when Mother Jones yawns, that’s an indication that you might not have the Pentagon Papers on your hands. If anything, the thousands of documents remind me of what it is like to be a reporter: Lots of different people telling you different things. It takes awhile to learn how to distinguish the junk from the gold.”

So what’s valuable and what’s fraudulent? Did Wikileaks verify all of the reports it released? Has it all been verified as accurate? No edited/manipulated materials?

And of the reports released, how much is news and how much did we already know?

Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, summed things up by saying:

“This is old bad news at a new bad time.”

As an example, one of the issues quickly identified as a problem in these disclosed documents is one I’ve been watching for years, and which I wrote about in Falcon Seven—the Pakistani Intelligence Service’s support of the Taliban and al Qaeda. They deny it, but there has long been evidence that they helped create and support the Taliban. Pakistan’s support of the Taliban is a big story, but Wikileaks didn’t provide any new information.

From a New Yorker article, published soon after Wikileaks’ release of the video in June:

“Assange told me, “I want to set up a new standard: ‘scientific journalism.’ If you publish a paper on DNA, you are required, by all the good biological journals, to submit the data that has informed your research—the idea being that people will replicate it, check it, verify it. So this is something that needs to be done for journalism as well. There is an immediate power imbalance, in that readers are unable to verify what they are being told, and that leads to abuse.” Because Assange publishes his source material, he believes that WikiLeaks is free to offer its analysis, no matter how speculative.”

Going with Assange’s statement that “readers are unable to verify what they are being told”—how do we verify what Wikileaks is telling us? Again, how do we verify, based on the editing of the previous video, that the files released yesterday haven’t been manipulated by Wikileaks, or the person/s providing them?

With yesterday’s leaks, Wikileaks also announced that there is evidence of war crimes having been committed. This, of course, brings into question Wikileaks’ motivation.

At the end of the day, in the case of lawfare, public opinion often trumps truth. The information—accurate or not—will be spun in numerous ways, based on the country, and the public opinion desired. Right now, a slew of publications, from Der Spiegel to the New York Times, have analyzed the material. And the broadcast media and social media sites are hosting debates about the material. Wikileaks rolled out an impressive media campaign, and has captured the attention of the international community.

Keep an eye on who says what, the arguments made, the reactions of the international community, and—of course—the International Criminal Court.

The scavenger hunt for a convenient truth, spun and manipulated by many, will be epic.

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