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WikiLeaks 'a Clear and Present Danger,' Says WaPo
bedmison writes "In an op-ed in the Washington Post titled 'WikiLeaks must be stopped,' Marc A. Thiessen writes that 'WikiLeaks represents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States,' and that the US has the authority to arrest its spokesman, Julian Assange, even if it has to contravene international law to do so. Thiessen also suggests that the new USCYBERCOM be unleashed to destroy WikiLeaks as an internet presence."
Reader praps tips an interview with another WikiLeaks spokesman, Daniel Schmitt, who says they have no regrets about releasing the Afghanistan documents, and says WikiLeaks is "changing the game." Several other readers have pointed out that WikiLeaks posted a mysterious, encrypted "insurance" file on Thursday, which sent the media into a speculative frenzy over what it could possibly contain.
If you don't feel revealing your secrets is dangerous ... may I ask you a simple question :
What's the way to log in to your bank account ? Mail account ? Social security number ? Surely revealing secrets can't hurt you, right ?
This just to establish the obvious - that some secrets are secret for a reason. And obviously, interactions with informants on an enemy that kills without regard to human rights, or even basic decency, are secret. You'd have to be fucking desperate to see the "muslim students" (translation into a language nobody here understands : "taliban") as victims. At the very best these people are a maffia shooting from behind children. At worst, they're genocidal maniaks that need to be eradicated before they start again (murdered half Kabul when they left it, in addition to several religious genocides, and that's just in the last 10 years).
I see what you did there. Your logic break down at a couple of points, though. First, you assume an equivalence between nations and an individual citizen where none exists. Individual citizens have rights. Governments do not. Second, when those individual citizens consent to form a government and police force, that force is not beholden to any one private citizen. There are citizens who are not cops. When nations agree to international law, they are expected to uphold it themselves; they're supposed to be their own cops, in other words. There are no nations designated as "cops."
And according to Assange, everything dangerous was redacted out of the Afghanistan documents
According to him. And of course, it is in-frickin'-conceiveable that he might inadvertently (or purposely) let slip something that he shouldn't. Are we really supposed to trust the methods and motives of the guy who took the Apache attack video and edited it into a piece of propaganda?
I'm in favor of freedom of the press, I'm glad Wikileaks exists, and I'm glad that Iceland took the step recently of declaring themselves a free-press safe haven. But this guys isn't a journalist in my eyes. He's obviously got an axe to grind, and has no compunctions about using/abusing his position to promote his agenda. That makes him untrustworthy.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Thank you, someone gets it here.
I wonder what Julian would think if someone published his GPS coordinates minute-by-minute.
Didn't he go in hiding a while back? Perhaps he should reflect on his reasons for such secrecy and see if those reason might apply out in the larger framework of war?
On further thought, follow the logic through. Mr. WikiLeaks exposed the names and locations of our sources of information about the Taliban, knowing (if he even thought about the fate of these human beings) many of them will be killed for exposing Taliban secrets. Therefore, his moral judgment is that it's okay to enable the killing of people who expose secrets. And he's someone who exposes secrets.
We should, if we are following a moral code like his own, help keep the US government continuously informed of this man's location. It is not, apparently, for us to decide if it's okay for him to be killed, since he has apparently decided that the killing of informants is not worth preventing. In the territory of the Third Reich, we should presume he would have similarly exposed Jews, without concerning himself with their fate. If not, perhaps Jewish lives are more sacred to him than Afghan lives?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Disclosure of classified national security information is not protected by free speech, and as such, soldiers who die as a result of its disclosure die as a direct result of a crime rather than due to the invocation of the first amendment. Also, the use of the word 'humorously' in this context is ghoulish.
Anonymous Republican Coward, you're the only one left in America who doesn't realize the Iraq War was (and is) an epic catastrophe. Why do you hate America?
--
make install -not war
But only CORRECTLY classified works
Ah, and you consider a lefty political activist organization, operating behind closed doors as they decide what is and isn't appropriately shown to the media outlets they selected in advance to be the right people to decide which report about an anti-Taliban community leader in a village in Afghanistan should, or should not include information about who he meets with, or how he operates? Yes, those political activists, they should be the arbitors of appropriate classification.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"a well regarded pundit and speechwriter in Conservative circles"
Read: Right-wing mouthpiece douche.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
No, common sense stops most people from doing the stupid shit he does.
While the world is full of stupid people, there are only so many ignorant fucks with the intelligence of a house fly to replace Assange.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
[Wikileaks] If you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide and this information won't hurt anyone, all information should be public information, except my personal information which shouldn't be because its mine and I'm special. You only don't want anyone to know because you're big and EVERYTHING you do is pure evil. You never have any valid reason to keep secrets, theres no reason what so ever, and secrets mean you are doing things that are evil!!!!@$!@$!@%@#^@#$^#$%&#$%&@#%! Its not like I spin it to make it worse than it actually worse, nor do I EVER lie about anything or change my story after getting caught.
[Goverment] No, its bad because not all information we have is about the evil things we never do, some of it is secret to protect people, like you, which is why we don't leak your personal information ourselves (except today, where will make an exception just to fuck you over Mr Assange since you're claiming we're going to do that anyway, lets get it out of the way). And we never do anything bad, so theres no reason you need to see the information anyway. We never lie or cheat or screw the people over either.
Translation: ITS NOT FUCKING BLACK AND WHITE. THERE IS ROOM FOR A PROPER, INTELLIGENT MIDDLE GROUND. BOTH ORGANIZATIONS RAN BY SELFISH MONEY GRABBING ATTENTION WHORING CUNTS WHO HAVE NO INTEREST IN ANYONE BUT YOURSELVES. YOU ARE BOTH CLEARLY BAD LIARS.
My Personal Opinion as if it wasn't obvious: Julian Assange is not anywhere near the right man for the job. Two polar opposites don't equal out to one middle ground. I'm going to side with the government because I DO have SOME control over it, where as I have none over a particular individual and when its this important, I'm going to want some control of some sort over it.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Yes, straw man arguments are lies.
"Let's keep it straight just who has blood on their hands."
That's what he said.
How does sending doctors to Afghanistan put blood on America's hands?
Do you want to keep straight who has blood on their hands?
The Taliban are reported to be killing people whose names are in the documents wikileaks released. That means there is blood on the Taliban's hands and on wikileaks'.
So what I used wasn't a strawman. It was simple logic. His pretense that sending doctors is somehow a bad thing, that's the strawman.
"or else you won't get medical care."
You made that up. #fail
We sent doctors. We said we'd compensate those who helped us, including by getting them medical care. DWB's resources are limited. Giving people more medical care is not a bad thing, it's a good thing.
The only bad thing here is your bogus characterization of this as politicization of doctors by America. The people who politicized doctors are the Taliban. The people who drove DWB out are the Taliban.
Your sense of cause and effect is completely confused.
EFF and ACLU, sure.
But Wikileaks? Hasn't anyone ever explained to you that two wrongs don't make a right?
Committing a crime to expose a crime is still a crime. Getting a lot of people killed because you want to publicize how a few people got killed is still getting a lot of people killed.
Wikileaks aren't good guys. They're irrational, self-serving, criminal idiots.
heya,
Assagne is (or rather, perhaps has become - I have no idea what he was like before) a silly, infantile, attention-seeking media whore.
He didn't even have the decency to try and protect his sources, that helped him pull off this media stunt. Most real journalists have that.
And seriously, trawl through those documents, you won't really find anything that screams OMGGGG COVERUP!!!. Seriously, most of it is fairly dry, tedious stuff, or things that were pretty already known by the public. Instead, as many others have noted, you've just screwed over your sources, any people who cooperated with us against the Taliban, as well as our military over there fighting the Taliban.
Please, your silly hippie rubbish about "military and political establishment". This is Afghanistan, not every news article is an excuse for you silly idiots to post your DOWN WITH THE ESTABLISHMENT rants.
Last time I checked, Hamid Karzai wasn't a "ruthless dictator", by anybody's books. Sure, you might not have voted for him, but guess what...the Afghanistan's did. So yeah...you can take your self-important supercilious pipe and smoke it, because it's their country, and they can vote in whoever they like.
And guess what, they now have that right, because we helped depose the Taliban. That same Taliban which imposed Sharia law, oppressed, tortured and killed it's own people, and helped traffic in illegal drugs to buy arms.
Look, I don't what country you're in, but my suspicion is that you're posting from a fairly free country, where your internet usage isn't censored, and you have the right to vote in whichever genius or idiot you want.
Many people around the world don't have that. So before you cry OPPRESSED, OPPRESSED, I"m OPPRESSED, you might want to take a look and see how good you have it (and the Americans, in many ways as well), because there's a lot of people who would die for the freedoms you have. Ungrateful idiot. Seriously, people died for the freedoms you have.
Sure, it might not be perfect, and that's not to say you shouldn't complain a little (e.g. here in Australia, we're up in arms about the internet filter) but all this silly whining about some crazy political/military establishment which runs the world is just that...crazy.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Right....the "criminal US occupation" - that same occupation that toppled the Taliban, and gave the Afghanistan's the right to vote in Harmad Karzi, one of their own?
*sigh*. Seriously, you left-wing hippies need to get a new line, because the old one is getting old.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
You made several factual errors there.
Firstly, pre-emptive? Last time I checked...hmm...bit foggy here...but....didn't they like, bomb some skyscraper of you guys? Yeah, I'm pretty sure they did.
And last time I checked, didn't they oppress their own people, ban women from learning how to read and right, and trade in illicit drug to buy arnaments, for the sole purpose of killing you guys? Yeah, I'm pretty sure they did that as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban_treatment_of_women
Oh, and they did things like public executions and floggings for disobeying Muslim law.
Look, when push comes to shove, I doubt the Afghanistan people are *happy* with any collateral damage, but on the balance, they're probably a lot happier with their own democratic government in place now, than the Taliban they had before.
War machine, military industry complex...*sigh*. You left-wing hippies never change your tune. Look, while you might consider the Afghan war a waste, because, gee, gosh, they could have used that 1 trillion a year on buying SUVs and McMansions for all your poor, poor Americans, many people are probably a lot happier for it.
The people who now don't face suicide attacks from the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden for one. And the 29 million or so Afghanistans who now have freedoms, and the right to an education, which they didn't before.
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
Err, sorry to point this out, but I think you've just revealed your complete ignorance of the situation.
Firstly, the Taliban was by no means voted in, so your first line is already a complete sham. They seized power. So it's not a case of swapping one corrupt official for another - it's a case of deposing a tyrannical regime, and replacing them with a democracy. Whether the Afghan people are silly, and voted in a corrupt official remains to be seen - but I think that it's their right to determine what happens in their country. We shouldn't pass judgement on who they decide to vote for, once we've given them the vote.
Secondly, it's not so much of a case they're corrupt - I'm sure the Afghan people would have put up with corruption, if that was all it was. But the Taliban was much more than just "corrupt". Lol, it's ironic that in the US, Australia, Europe, we talk about oppression and the "military industrial complex" and all this, when by and large, we have functioning, democratic processes and the rule of law. At worst, we get what, a few greedy sods skimming off money or committing fraud. People in places like Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, or heck, Iran, have far worse lives than that, and actually *fear for their lives*.
In the case of the Taliban, we're talking things like intentionally bombing civilians and committing suicide attacks (as opposed to say, the US's collateral damage which people love to naysay*), funding Osama Bin Laden (World Trade Centre? U.S.S. Cole?), trading in illicit drugs to buy munitions, s*x slavery and human trafficking of women (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1001821,00.html) etc.
And their treatment of women was a whole new ballpark. They argued that women shouldn't be educated past the age of eight. And that they shouldn't work. Right, and that they shouldn't be treated by male doctors, but would instead prefer them to die painfully and slowly.
Hmm, then we hit the wonderful anecdotes.
Like "In October 1996, a woman had the tip of her thumb cut off for wearing nail varnish". Hmm, or this gem:
"When a Taliban raid discovered a woman running an informal school in her apartment, they beat the children and threw the woman down a flight of stairs (breaking her leg), and then imprisoned her. They threatened to stone her family publicly if she refused to sign a declaration of loyalty to the Taliban and their laws"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban_treatment_of_women
Sorry, but you saying that the Taliban were "voted" in, or that they were just "corrupt officials" basically removes any credibility you might have had.
Cheers,
Victor
*: Look, you can argue that perhaps they're trigger happy, or de-sensitised, and don't always exercise enough cross-checks on target. I know people who would buy that. But they don't actually *intentionally* target civilinas, no matter what conspiracy you want to believe. Even that Apache helicopter incident, which people love to parade arround as an example of US tyrrany turned out to be nothing more than some idiots in the wrong place at the wrong time. I mean, who stands around after with some guys who just shot an RPG and small-arms at a US contingent. So either they were part of the militants (a distinct possibility, seeing as the "leaded" photos show them with what appears to be a RPG as well), or they didn't think twice.
Put it this way, if I was in a warzone, I certainly wouldn't be stupid enough to sit around talking and chatting with a bunch of militants who'd just fired an RPG at some US soldiers. And I damn as hell would put down anything in my hand that was either a weapon, or looked like a weapon.