We seek to understand the world, but it's made harder when part of it is hidden from us.
Leaked documents, represent a kind of ground truth, showing how the world really works. Telling us what's for sale, what the real agendas are, how powerful spies are, and how coordinated governments are. They are almost the opposite to conspiracy theories, as they present observations that can prune conspiracy theories.
But there are too many documents to read, so let's compare notes. What surprised you and caused you to update your view of the world?
Feel free to give a low effort reply, it's better than nothing.
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Notes -
Anecdote for further illustration.
A buddy was a contractor in Kabul. Late 00's - early 10's timeframe. Had local Afghan police / mil in the compound all the time, they even had their own bank of desks. One day, by buddy is walking through there and catches one of the Afghan's looking at gay porn. He tells him to cut it out. Bit of a facepalm, whatever. Plenty of American soldiers would trade porno DVDs back and forth. A few days later, it happens again, but not with by buddy as the witness. Instead, a military police type (I'm forgetting exact details here) saw it. He (the MP) decides to strictly follow protocol and report it to the Afghan porn watcher's local chain of command. My buddy hears about this as literally drops his lunch to sprint down to the Afghan commander's office. He assures / pleads with the commander that it's really not that big of a deal and they can set up his computer so that porno sites of any kind won't load.
Why would my buddy do this? Why did he sprint to do it? Because the next day, base security found that original Afghan (he of the gay porn) shot dead in a ditch at the edge of the base. The Afghan commander had considered it embarrassing and dishonorable for the dude to have been watching that in a setting where foreigners could (and did) catch him. When my buddy told this story, he got more emotional than when he told his story about seeing one of his best friends take a direct mortar hit and getting vaporized. To him, it was just the mindless and totally preventable cruelty of it (compared to the random chance of warfare that did in his friend).
"Oh, we have to be tolerant of the cultural differences."
Silvering lining concluding tangent: Afghanistan, way more than Iraq, really did see the development of meaningful and long-lasting partnerships between Afghan and American forces. During the hasty withdrawal in 2021, I knew a bunch of MAGA types (and others, to be sure) with multiple combat tours who took extended time off of work to help find ways to get their interpreters / local ANA / ANP buddies out of the country before Taliban could clip them.
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