30,000 leaked documents later, we’re left with nothing new.

With the WikiLeaks release of over 30,000 documents there isn’t much that matches the bombshell of such a large amount of documents coming into the public eye. Between the several sources’ coverage of these documents, it’s pretty underwhelming as the majority of things reported have been things we have known or assumed from common sense.

For instance:

The Taliban have used portable heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft, a fact that has not been publicly disclosed by the military. This type of weapon helped the Afghan mujahedeen defeat the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

With the frequent reports of deaths in helicopter crashes in Afghanistan, this could have been easily assumed. Also, the many, many analyses of the Afghani conflict that compare and contrast it with the Vietnam War you see mention of this and the relative ineffectiveness of aircraft like choppers. And honestly, anyone who thought that the NATO helicopters were going down so often due to AK47 fire, they were fooling themselves or are completely ignorant as to Afghani history.

Secret commando units like Task Force 373 — a classified group of Army and Navy special operatives — work from a “capture/kill list” of about 70 top insurgent commanders. These missions, which have been stepped up under the Obama administration, claim notable successes, but have sometimes gone wrong, killing civilians and stoking Afghan resentment.

In both the Afghani and Iraqi wars, much press was given to the now famous deck of cards circulating within the military with names and photos of alleged Al Qaeda operatives. Capture/Kill lists really aren’t that shocking. Neither is collateral damage in this situation as it was also assumed. The level of detail may be shocking when given specific detail in the documents but as a whole, most assumed that this kind of stuff was going on.

The military employs more and more drone aircraft to survey the battlefield and strike targets in Afghanistan, although their performance is less impressive than officially portrayed. Some crash or collide, forcing American troops to undertake risky retrieval missions before the Taliban can claim the drone’s weaponry.

Again, something we often knew/assumed. With an increase in stories on drone activity - especially after the new administration came into office - you can simply guess that this was the case.

If anything this massive leak gives us some trees to identify in the forest of things. Kudos to WikiLeaks on pulling off the massive info-leak. There may be more things come down the pipe as these documents are dug further into, but so far it’s pretty underwhelming.