Um, I Think It's Time for a Thread on WikiLeaks

assuming that the representatives were using their vote in accord with the democratic ideal in the interests of their constituents, too, i'd add

I don't think you can legitimately call the most recent strain of discourse on this thread "people talking to each other"; it was mostly a bunch of people who all believe the same essential thing stating it in different ways, then insulting and belittling each other for not using the same words.

― measuring of the waist (HI DERE), Tuesday, July 27, 2010 5:30 PM (42 minutes ago)

no stop this please, if it's not clear that there were very distinct and disagreeing points of view being debated then i don't know what to tell you. i'm honestly sick of being told that we're all on the same side here, why can't we just get along etc; i'd hope (probably pointlessly) that anyone here on the fence about who the real enemy to progressive change is - the sarah palins or the people who are actually in charge of what's supposed to be the only viable outlet for progressive change we have (the democratic party) - saw that issue in a new light

"who the real enemy to progressive change is - the sarah palins or the people who are actually in charge"
they're both part of a climate of constant campaigning trumping sound governance, so in a broad sense I feel democracy itself is the largest obstacle, and I think where leaks would come into play is which side can more deftly capitalize on them.

I'm kind of surprised that there isn't yet anything in the leaks to spur a high-profiled firing like say, a seemingly innocuous Rolling Stone piece has. Maybe there's more in there to churn through?

if the leaker is bradley manning, and presumably he is, then he's already in jail

unless you mean, like, firing the US army

what is there to fire for? what we'll tolerate is clear - killing thousands of women and children is ultimately ok as long as it's not obvious that we directly meant to do so. talk shit about obama or biden? yourefired.jpg

xp

there's no smack talk in however many pages of leaked documents?

killing thousands of women and children is ultimately ok as long as it's not obvious that we directly meant to do so.

or as long as it met an approved military objective.

re: manning, didn't he say there was stuff specifically embarrassing to Hillary Clinton and some yet unheard of diplomatic fiascoes? is wikileaks just sitting on this?

if he was transmitting not only defense department cables going to/from the pentagon but also diplomatic cables to/from the state dept, yeah sure it could contain all kinds of shit about Madam Secretary. who knows? wikileaks may be sitting on a lot yeah...

I am long past "why can't we all get along" and well into "shut the fuck up all of you useless blowhards"

^ is this really the finger we want on the red button?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/opinion/27exum.html?_r=1&ref=global

this one's got it all really - starts off with the popular "SIMPSONS DID IT, ASSHOLE", flows nicely into putting-the-troops-in-danger fear mongering, mocks assange for not being pragmatic or subservient enough, lolsy i-actually-served-in-the-military-you-don't-understand-the-nuances-of-war butthurtedness, some tasteful minimizing of civilian casualties, then ends with assailing the 'contemptible' person who leaked the cables

By muddying the waters between journalism and activism, and by throwing his organization into the debate on Afghanistan with little apparent regard for the hard moral choices and dearth of good policy options facing decision-makers, he is being as reckless and destructive as the contemptible soldier or soldiers who leaked the documents in the first place.

lol yeah unlike the Pentagon Papers which in no way conflated journalism & activism

Does the timing of all this sound suspicious to anyone? Just a few weeks ago there was that huge story w Manning and supposedly 150,000 cables. And now Obama has suddenly announced a planned surge of 30,000, using this very recent new leak for support.

hasn't obama justified his previous surge of 30000 troops with this leak, rather than lobbied for another surge? i haven't really read through what he said, but his statement seemed to be contextualising his response so far.

I bowed out when I lost track of what you guys were arguing about, but the start of today's Times front page is basically everything I was trying to say in my posts upthread:

Hundreds of Afghan lives have been put at risk by the leaking of 90,000 intelligence documents because the files identify informants working with NATO forces.

In just two hours of searching the WikiLeaks archive, The Times found the names of dozens of Afghans credited with providing detailed intelligence to US forces. Their villages are given for identification and also, in many cases, their father's name.

...

A senior official at the Afghan Foreign Ministry, who declined to be named(!), said "The leaks certainly have put in real risk and danger the lives and integrity of many Afghans. The US is both morally and legally responsible for any harm that the leaks might cause to the individuals, particularly those who have been named. It will further limit the US/international access to the uncensored views of Afghans."

Must say I'd be surprised if WL has been *that* inept - I assumed it would take a bit of detective work to unmask sources, which WL is obviously unqualified to assess, but according to this maybe not. Nevertheless, I got shouted down because WL causing harm is apparently only an issue with troop movements or once-in-seventy-years secrets like D-Day planning. But then all these guys are only Afghans I guess.

you weren't shouted down, people just disagreed that secrecy was "usually" to protect a source. the military is routinely secret and far more of these logs involve protection of military mistakes than protection of sources (ie, nyt finds "dozens" of informants, but there are hundreds of civilian casualty reports). wikileaks shouldn't be censured for hypothetical potential harm but where people can show they've put people at risk, sure, it's fair to criticise them.

But then all these guys are only Afghans I guess.

oh, please.

http://griffinarmament.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/loose-lips-sink-ships-1.jpg

I find it interesting that the Afghan official says that the US is 'morally and legally responsible' for resultant harm done, not WikiLeaks.

well, THEIR intel was compromised

If you keep shit secret, you should kind of be responsible for the fallout if it gets leaked.

Afghan official otm - it's the US ship that leaked, tighter ship means Wikileaks never gets hold of the info

Good points all.

Tim Rutten complains.

hey since these cables are from a few years ago, those afghan intel contacts might already be dead. there's always a bright side!

LMK who's responsible for the dead civilians killed in our precision attacks (then Bam can do another press dinner joke about it)

get ready for everybody to pile on your Morbz, you know that the actual war is a-ok, it's reporting on it that's unconscionable

From that NYT op-ed:

Third, the site asserts that the Pentagon employs a secret task force of highly trained commandos charged with capturing or killing insurgent leaders. I suspect that in the eyes of most Americans, using special operations teams to kill terrorists is one of the least controversial ways in which the government spends their tax dollars.

That, folks, is a flawlessly-executed triple axel, getting from "insurgent leaders" to "terrorists" in two sentences. Hey, dickhead, someone fighting to expel the US Army from his or her own country is a lot of things, but none of them is "a terrorist."

fighting to expel the US Army from his or her own country is a lot of things, but none of them is "a terrorist."

depends on their methods imo

there's no great term for 'em: pretty sure they also want to 'expel' the afghan govt as well as the US army, which *would* make them terrorists (cf deliberate attacks on civilians), but then of course it's an illegitimate govt. (kind of a qed.)

guys anybody who's against us anywhere ever is a terrorist, do keep up

It's odd how the word is diverging from 'terror' - the Japanese described the Aussie Greenpeacers who boarded one of their whaling vessels as 'terrorists', and it just sounded ludicrous

If this has been posted already, my apologies. the NYT notes its methods

the horrorists are gonna sneak in & really cause trouble while everybody's attention is diverted by the terrorists

Frankly, I'm more scared of the startleists.

hasn't obama justified his previous surge of 30000 troops with this leak, rather than lobbied for another surge?

So he has. I really should've RTFA.

mentalists are worse imo

xxxp Amis is in agreement aerosmith

i wonder what wikileaks man's pubes look like

Amis's horrorism doesn't not have enough of the Mummy lighting shit on fire with his heat vision tho

wonder what amis' pubes look like

http://rightwingnews.com/2010/07/the-cia-should-kill-julian-assange

Holy shit – I thought I'd seen it all. That site is a cloaca.

agree we should kill him, but not for any sense of "he deserves it." He has proven himself our enemy who has done damage to us, ergo, we should kill him. That's all the justification I need.

that url looks like an onion creation. er maybe collegehumor.com creation

lol that site is awesome

was there anything politically damaging yet to come out of this recent 'facebook leak'?

From Admiral Mike Mullen's Twitter:

@thejointstaff Meant what I said: Mr. Assange & his source might already have on their hands the blood of our troops or that of our Afghan partners.

ok what the fuck is going on here, with aerosmith's post?

there's an obvious case for leaking, but i think this

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/wikileaks+damage+already+done+says+human+rights+group/3727677

and what ismael posted sort of doesn't really merit a lol censorship post?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/30/wikileaks-data-suspected-army-source

So we've gone from "This is isn't anything new/This won't change anything" to "Wikileaks could have blood on its hands" in less than a week. Wonder if Wikileaks is on their way to being named an enemy combatant.

Doesn't even have to be under the targeted assassination regime iirc