A senior Democratic senator is largely dismissing the significance of classified U.S. military documents released over the weekend that portrayed a range of problems in the Afghan war.
At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Tuesday, the panel's chairman, Sen. John Kerry, said people should not "overhype or get excessively excited about" the disclosures.
He said the release was unlawful and could potentially endanger U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
But he also said the secret documents should be given little weight because in many cases they reflect raw intelligence, not carefully calibrated assessments of trends on the ground.
Kerry's committee is holding a hearing on the prospects for achieving a reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban insurgency.
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