Leaked documents fail to upset Obama's drive for victory in America's longest war


The shock of the disclosure of tens of thousands of secret documents about the war in Afghanistan has inspired a debate on the war, but had few other apparent aftereffects.

President Barack Obama said they did not raise any new concerns, and Congress went on to send him $33 billion to pay for the troop surge there. There was no indication that already strong anti-war sentiment is about to boil over.

It is certainly not a popular war. There have been more than 1,100 U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, by Associated Press count, since fighting began in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
But mostly the gloomy picture in the battlefield reports, which cover the period 2004 to 2009, has reinforced a sense of war weariness.Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a critical Congressional supporter of the war, advised Americans on Tuesday to not "overhype or get excessively excited" about the disclosures.