Mattis: Afghan Document Leak was "Irresponsible"
General Mattis, the general likely to be the next head of CENTCOM, has weighed in on the newest WikiLeaks controversy:
Two days after the unauthorized disclosure of more than 91,000 classified documents about the war in Afghanistan, Gen. James N. Mattis on Tuesday blasted the leaker, downplayed the value of the information that was released and declared the U.S. military is “not leaving” the war-torn nation.
“It was an appallingly irreponsible act to release this information,” Mattis said at his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday. The cache of documents, he said, “doesn’t tell us anything that we weren’t already aware of. I see no big revelation.”
He added, “One of the newspaper headlines said that war is an intense and dangerous thing. If that is news, I don’t know who that is news to on this planet.”
The Senate Armed Services Committee was expected to confirm the four-star general as the next officer in charge of U.S. Central Command, overseeing troops in Iraq. Mattis would then succeed Gen. David Petraeus, who took over as top commander in Afghanistan after Gen. Stanley McChrystal was sacked for making disparaging remarks about the Obama administration to a Rolling Stone reporter.
“Our troops, our regional partners, and our adversaries alike should know that CENTCOM’s leadership has changed, but our strategy, our mission and our activities have not,” Mattis said in prepared remarks.
Mattis, a Marine Corps general who in his current role heads U.S. Joint Forces Command, received praise from both Democrats and Republicans on the committee, including one member who noted his reputation for making blunt, often crass remarks.
