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The debacle continues: At a cost of $27 billion, Afghan security forces are getting high on patrol, deserting, taking bribes, pissing off the locals and otherwise invaluably helping the war effort, Al Jazeera reports. Video in More.

The extraordinary Wikileaks exposure of the grim reality of the Afghanistan War, it should be noted, has been met with little surprise among Afghans who have been living it. It's only we too-guileless Americans who continue to be shocked by what our military and government are capable of. Hopefully, as with the Pentagon Papers, the Afghan Logs will open eyes, and precipitate change. Daniel Ellsberg's painful realization rings true: "We weren't on the wrong side, we were the wrong side."

"These are the raw accounts, soaked in the blood and sweat of combat, before they have been prettied up by the triage teams in the Washington and allied PR clinics."

Despite its claim to foster empathy and trust, Facebook has blocked an attempt by Palestinian Refugee ResearchNet to create a Facebook page, apparently because the word "Palestinian" is "abusive" and thus violates page guidelines. A move to create a Nazi and al-Qaeda page met a similar fate. Does this mean Facebook sees them as comparable? Intentional or not, 12 million people object.

Bravo to Julian Assange and Wikileaks, whose massive release of U.S. military files on Afghanistan show "the true nature of this war." Assange insists on the ancient and honorable duty of journalism to "take on powerful abuses" - including untold numbers of civilian deaths - and to tell an ugly truth that fewer and fewer media sources are willing to dig for. We salute him. Much powerful material here.

In an epic battle staged in San Diego, the hate-filled denizens of Westboro Baptist Church faced down the godless nerds and geeks of Comic-Con. Thank Tron, the funnies won.

A modicum of justice as a Dutch court fined the Swiss-based Trafigura oil trader $1.3 million for dumping hazardous waste in Ivory Coast that sickened up to 100,000 people and killed 17. The ship Probo Koala had first tried to dump its toxic load in Amsterdam; how much higher would the tab have been if they'd injured white people? This is the first time Trafigura was convicted of criminal charges in the obscene practice of dumping toxic waste. More from the Guardian on the new online world that helped them break the story.

"This is the beginning of justice." – Marietta Harjono of Greenpeace.

FOX News Exclusive! Those 17 Afghan troops who've gone AWOL from a language school at an Air Force base in Texas?! It turns out they deserted with the help of a "loose network" of "BMWs" - Big Mexican Women - who teach them how to live here on the run, just like they do! Sometimes the "groupies," after meeting them in jello-filled nightclubs, even help them go to Canada! And now there's 46 of them! No doubt heading your way! FOX has yet to discover how the women got overweight; their investigation is ongoing.

"These guys, they want a better life, but they're scared. These BMWs say, 'It's OK.' Then poof, they're gone."

A longtime investigation has found that several dozen Pentagon workers and contractors with high-level security clearance were buying and downloading child pornography, the Boston Globe reports. Sadly, why are we not surprised there are at the very least as many creeps in the Department of Defense as anywhere else?