Unless you’ve been living under a rock today you’ve probably heard that Wikileaks published 77,000 reports on the war in Afghanistan dated from 2004 through the end of 2009. Founder Julian Assange, who says that his group has another 14,000 documents that they’ve yet to release due to security concerns, gave an interview with Spiegel that somewhat explains his decision to release the collection. Spiegel is one of three media outlets that were given embargoed copies of the complete database more than a month ago. The other two media outlets were The Guardian, which has taken the time to create an interactive map using data from the reports, and The New York Times. CBC did a great job summarizing the efforts of all three publications.

Many of the documents are classified as “secret”. Many of the documents are damaging to the United States’ political standing in the Middle East. The White House came out in strong opposition to the leak, calling it a threat to the security of military personnel overseas.

Some of the documents are infuriating and confusing – such as a report that Osama Bin Laden actually died in a hospital in Pakistan back in 2007.