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From a secret 3 letter agency point of view, it's no secret that the US and German governments share a limited amount of intelligence - google abounds with info on it, so you can bet your backside that anything leaked from either of those governments to wikileaks is going to come under scrutiny at some level. Australia is part of the big 5 (UKUSA), so if I were a betting kind of person I would lay good odds that Australia also has one or two agreements in place with Germany as well, thus the raid.

If the CIA finds any of their secret stuff on wikileaks, what they do about it will depend on the classification and severity of damage that would occur if they did nothing. Has it happened before? I have no idea, but not many people will be talking about it if it did.

The problem with leaking this particular Australian blacklist is that it will reveal to a few key people exactly how certain things got on that list in the first place. A pretty big heads up if you're at the centre of one of these child porn rings (or other criminal activities that can be deduced from the list)

Leaking certain types of secret isn't so bad it would seem, but leaking single source secrets, or slipping up with the source or methodology, that might get you a free visit from ASIS and a gun if you live outside the country, or ASIO if you're living locally.

All of that said, it wasn't me!

You don't understand. LOOKING at the list is illegal and punishable by up to 15 years of jailtime. The list is classified.

Worse. Since January 1st, there is a new law which even makes TRYING to acquire the list by ANY means punishable.

That is a very good idea - have the government keep the real list under locks and only distribute an officially sanctioned hash-list.

However, you make the assumption that the stated reason the list is classified is the actual reason. The government doesn't want you to vet the list, even for a URL you already know. That's the point of censorship; to make information disappear as thoroughly as if it were never there.

Military intervention absolutely is useful, the issue is that it's not being backed up by the improvements to peoples lives through engineering projects and so forth that must go with it.

Part the issue in Afghanistan, particularly in the South is that as soon troops clear an area and move on to clear the next the Taliban are moving back in and destroying any projects created to help the people or preventing any new projects being started.

More combat troops are required to keep ground held so that the other, longer term changes can be made to improve things like providing reliable road networks, power sources, fresh water and so on.

So we do need more combat troops for sure, it's just that that's not all we need - we need to back it up with real changes to make people's lives better. My comments regarding Germany's politicians using the excuse of the past to avoid combat operations is also not based on speculation but fact, as we have had on the news here in the UK German politicians stating this as the very reason they are not interested in combat so it does seem to be a very real feeling that they don't want to get involved because they're afraid of how people might see them rather than because they don't think it'll help.

If Germany didn't feel troops would help then there's little reason for them to be there at all. But also the idea that the Afghan people don't want us there seems false, documentary after documentary from countless impartial sources shows that most Afghans want peace above anything else, but as a secondary objective would love to have peace without the Taliban being the ones imposing it - they would much rather it comes from us. The people do want us there, they just want us to do the job properly and it's that that we're not doing. A lot of current schemes seem to be focussed on actually using the Afghan people who want us there to fight with us - I remember reading a very recent article on the BBC about Afghan militia that were fighting against the Taliban.

It's not like the soviet occupation or the 19th century British occupation where the majority of the people didn't want what we were imposing, your average Afghan is on our side this time round and that's the fundamental difference and why it's wrong to make a direct comparison to past invasions. In the 19th century the British were there to impose colonial rule, in the 80s, the Russians were there to bolster an unpopular communist government, neither had the support of the general population.

It's also worth pointing out that further evidence as to us being wanted there is the fact that Afghanistan is nowhere as messy as Iraq - the only people attacking us and the civilian population are the Taliban as opposed to the various tribes and religious sects fighting each other which would undoubtedly be the case (as it was in Iraq) if the Afghan people weren't aligned in what they want. A lot of people say we're failing in Afghanistan but really, the quality of life across large parts of the country has increased massively and the kind of death tolls we see in Afghanistan are absolutely minimal compared to Iraq. The real problem is that we're stalled and breaking away from that requires more troops, more investment, and more effort to work with the people (rather than accidently killing them all the damn time). The real danger is if we don't break away from that, because then we certainly will see decline.

A suggested increase of the Afghan army to 200,000 troops, another 17,000 troops from the US are going to be a good help, even if it only means we can stem the flow of Taliban from Pakistan by defending Afghanistans borders better.

Well, my uncle is the head of the union of Afghanis in Germany. And according to him, it went like this:

There was an evil dictator king, that ruled Afghanistan.
Then the Taliban removed him, which brought much joy to most Afghanis.
The Taliban then became just as evil. But mostly only to non-believers. Which is not such a big problem in Afghanistan. They are very religious anyway.
The USA then removed the Taliban, and put the king back in place. People hate him, and this is not going to change.

So now, instead of only punishing you for not being religious enough, now you can be punished for anything again.

The problem is, that Afghanistan, and Iraq, are clan hierarchies. They all belong to a clan. People there have a hierarchy of trust.
You can't create a democracy there. Because they will vote for their clan leaders anyway.

So what you get is a parliament of all the clan leaders and the now hated king, bashing their heads over the same shit, that they fought each other over for the last centuries.
It changes nothing. If it does, then it only makes things worse.

If you want to imagine how Afghanistan works, think of the people and organizational structures of the USA, Russia, France, and some other countries, in one single country. Merged all over the place. They often do not like each other. But you can't separate them by splitting the land. They live right next to each other, and they will not move.

The only thing you can do is give them education and to actually have the free time to learn stuff. Because only this this gives them the ability to resolve their differences, which they do not have now! (After generations of war, they only know hate and war.) And it removes extremist religious movement like the Taliban too.
But with the USA, this will not happen. Because the USA -- please do not take offense here -- can't even resolve the religious and educational problems in their own country.

Oh, and my father was a mujaheddin and son of a city leader btw. If you saw Rambo 3, you saw what his life looked like. Including the bullet-proof Russian helicopters and Stinger rocket launchers.