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Pentagon Demands Return of Leaked Afghanistan Documents
Multiple news agencies are reporting that the Pentagon has demanded the return of WikiLeaks' collection of secret documents relating to the war in Afghanistan. Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell said, "The only acceptable course is for WikiLeaks to take steps immediately to return all versions of all of these documents to the US government and permanently delete them from its website, computers and records." According to the BBC, Morrell also "acknowledged the already-leaked documents' viral spread across the internet made it unlikely they could ever be quashed," but hopes to prevent the dissemination of a further 15,000 documents WikiLeaks is reportedly in the process of redacting. "We're looking to have a conversation about how to get these perilous documents off the website as soon as possible, return them to their rightful owners and expunge them from their records." WikiLeaks, predictably, shows no sign of cooperating.
It doesn't matter if Wikileaks complies, Pentagon has made it very clear they will make them comply:
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said that not embarrassing the US military was "doing the right thing" and he hoped Wikileaks would "honour our demands".
However, asked what the Pentagon would do next, Morrell told the AP that it was up to the FBI and Justice Department to decide how to proceed.
"If doing the right thing is not good enough for them [Wikileaks], then we will figure out what other alternatives we have to compel them to do the right thing," he added.
Of course the right thing to the US government is always whatever the US military says is the right thing, and as the Wikileaks documents that have recently been released show in brutal detail, the US military has an unusual interpretation of what is 'right'.
to decrypt the insurance file!
".. we've got to be careful, Amy. Mullen actually was quite crafty in his words. He said "might already have" blood on my hands .. it's really quite fantastic that Gates and Mullen, Gates being the former head of the CIA during Iran-Contra and the overseer of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Mullen being the military commander for Iraq and Afghanistan -- I'm not sure what his further background is -- who have ordered assassinations every day, are trying to bring people on board to look at a speculative understanding of whether we might have blood on our hand"
link
If these documents are so damaging and endanger so many people, why the fuck has the media talked about it at least a couple of times every single day since the documents were released? Wouldn't ignoring it decrease the chances of people hearing about them and going to read them? Literally millions more people are aware of these documents being leaked thanks to news sources talking about how bad it is that they were leaked.
Stay classy.
Living With a Nerd
The part of the picture which I think you're missing is this: the copies may be missing information that the originals contain. This is certainly the case if WikiLeaks is editing them (redacting text) before releasing them. If the files have been tampered with, they may not be admissible as evidence in a court, or they may not be as compelling to a jury, even if they are. There are legal standards for admitting digital evidence, and then there are the forensic experts, of course. Telling a court, "here's a file I downloaded from bittorrent, and it looks pretty legit" isn't going to cut it. If the pentagon manages to get the originals back, they might just save Cheney, Powell, Rice, Bush, Wolfowitz, etc. from a public hanging.
----
Not to be confused with Col.
If there is justice in this world, everyone who's touched the US's dirty wars - from Colin Powell to Barack Obama, will be imprisoned for life (or worse - I'm looking at you Herr Cheney!).
Ha, such naivete, yeah, the big scary Hague will prevent some black ops team from snatching Julian, waterboarding him to disclose his sources and then leaving his corpse at the sight of an auto-accident. That is assuming Julian isn't some patsy for a high level spook looking to embarass his coworkers b/c he got passed over for a job like William Felt.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
Considering they've already shared the unedited files with at least three other news agencies.. yeah, this is just the beginning.
Newspapers have sat on much bigger stories just because the government said "please".
Multiple newspapers sat on or killed stories because, then Director of National Intelligence, Negroponte asked them to.
Telecom spying anyone?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I wonder what crackpipe you people are smoking. I see a lot of "Bush/Cheney will be hanged one day!!!!" going on, and I'm laughing at this. Nobody is going to go back, find the former president, put him on trial, say "You did shit during a war while you were president that we should hang you for," and hang them. It won't happen. You're all talking about things you "know," and thus things they'd already be on trial for because it's rather public knowledge; obviously there's been no indictment (if it was even possible, they'd pay lawyers to file charges themselves BEFORE there was any evidence, so they could ride through the trial and get acquitted and avoid further trial on "unearthed evidence" later due to double-jeopardy).
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Could you point out what documents show a smoking gun of governments lying in the textual documents? Maybe you've read more of them then me but the best example I saw was where a helicopter got shot down by what was likely a heat seeking missile because it had a smoke trail and in the press conference they said it was downed by enemy fire, and was close enough to be small arms theoretically downplaying the presence of heat seeking weapons among insurgents. Not exactly damning stuff though that in my opinion warrants the release of documents that contain indemnifying information about civilians that can be used for reprisals.
Multiple newspapers sat on or killed stories because, then Director of National Intelligence, Negroponte asked them to.
And the government isn't used to anybody telling them "no". That's the biggest reason they're pissed - because they aren't in control of this situation, Wikileaks is. I watched the full press conference yesterday where they issued this ultimatum. He looked like such a fool. "Demanding" that Wikileaks "does the right thing". If you ask me, Wikileaks has already done the right thing by asking for assistance from the U.S. Gov't (albiet indirectly) in redacting the documents. Wikileaks should issuea a public statement/open letter to the DoD making it clear that they want to do the right thing by redacting documents and omitting portions of them which could put people in danger. If (more likely when) the DoD refuses, the blood is on their hands.
The only problem here is, Wikileaks is essentially using these 15,000 documents as insurance. They're in somewhat of a stalemate now, since if they release them, they've lost their leverage. Unless they can use the un-redacted versions as insurance after they release the redacted ones.
To expand on my comment, Wikileaks released the initial documents and with-held this additional 15,000 documents BECAUSE they were concerned about the risk that these particular documents may contain some information that should be redacted for safety (in particular, names/locations, etc). As Wikileaks states, they approached the Pentagon and requested their assistance in identifying certain documents or items within these particular 15,000 documents that should be redacted. The Pentagon REFUSED to assist them in doing it.
So if you're going to try and claim that Assange and Wikileaks don't care about people's safety that might be directly impacted by release of these documents, then you MUST also claim the same of the Government. The government is pouting and saying that they would rather tell Wikileaks to eat it than disagree with them AND at least have a chance to promote the safety of those very people they claim to be concerned about.
Did you even bother to read the complete summary? No. Well, let me qoute the relevant part for you: "According to the BBC, Morrell also 'acknowledged the already-leaked documents' viral spread across the internet made it unlikely they could ever be quashed,' but hopes to prevent the dissemination of a further 15,000 documents WikiLeaks is reportedly in the process of redacting."
Idiot indeed but it isn't the Pentagon
The claim that Wikileaks redacted identifying information is not mentioned in US mainstream media. I checked the recent NPR stories. I emailed them about this. A google search brings up various conflicting bits of information. See for example:
http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2010/08/03/wikileaks-redacted/
I really would appreciate reliable coverage of this aspect.
I think Wikileaks should send the files to the Pentagon before publishing, let them do the redaction. I am sure that they will not "overdo" it, but if they do, Wikileaks can call them out on that...
Since everybody knows that the US respects no laws and will invade anyone at a drop of a hat, Wikileaks took precautions by putting up a large *encrypted* file called "Insurance".
Presumably everybody has downloaded it even though nobody has the password.
And if America tries to have the wikileak people assassinated the password is probably set to spread automatically.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Australian tv did a show on this (1st August 2010)
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/transcript/id/600647/n/Inside-WikiLeaks
"REPORTER: Do you lie awake at night wondering if you have found all those?
JULIAN ASSANGE: They have a particular code within the reports. It wasn't too hard. That said, it is possible, there may be a stray report here or stray report there. The choice, again, we are forced to make hard choices and those hard choices are do we do best effort to minimise harm, which we have done with the understanding that this is an extraordinary body of material capable of producing extraordinary reforms. It belongs in the hands of the Afghan people. Give it to them. If the material is of a diplomatic, political, ethical and historical significance and has not been published..."
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
here.
Have a day.
Yours In Moscow,
K. Trout
Many people keep saying this but nobody, not a single person, has been able to provide any evidence of it.