Slashdot Mirror
US Military 'Banned' From Viewing Wikileaks
Following up on its risible demand that Wikileaks return the Afghanistan documents, the Pentagon has banned military members from viewing the documents. The Washington Times obtained copies of Navy and Marine Corps messages to their troops saying that accessing the documents even from a personal computer is "willingly committing a security violation." Wired notes that terrorists everywhere are under no such restriction. Reader carp3_noct3m writes "I am personally left almost speechless at this disconnect from reality demonstrated by the military. I am a USMC Iraq war vet, and find these policies completely ridiculous. They show the inability of our supposedly technologically knowledgeable military to fuse this knowledge with policy, mostly due to the political pressure that has erupted to 'take care of' the Wikileaks problem."
Words fail me. About the only thing I can imagine is that there is something in there that will utterly cripple morale when someone recognizes it for what it is and spreads the word. Of course, all this does it raise a giant banner up in the air saying, "PLEASE DO NOT LOOK AT THIS, THERE IS SOMETHING THAT WOULD EMBARRASS US!"
Well, either that, or this whole thing is designed to intensely focus analysis on something known to be benign.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Yes it is. Anyone who works with classified material knows this. Just because someone else "leaks" the documents does not change their classification, and viewing them is still a security violation if the viewer does not have the appropriate clearance and a need to know. The reminder to servicemen is appropriate. As usual, the slashdot crowd is clueless yet feels free to mock and ridicule.
Forbidding ordinary soldiers, sailors, airmen and such from reading the documents actually makes a lot of sense. Terrorists already know how utterly witless the US military brass are, so it doesn't matter if they visit Wikileaks and engage in an orgy of downloading. The brass, however, are scared to death that the lower ranks in their own commands might figure out how stupid, cruel and ineffective they are.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Forgive my question, but are you retarded?
And comparing almost all of Europe to America is pointless. Europe isn't carrying the burden of half the world's defense spending. The US is. Europeans throw barbs at the US, but the US is the only thing keeping people like Ahmadinejad from taking over Europe. You know what Europeans I like. The Russians. Because they're nice. They play well with others.
There's reality. And then there's "throw crap at the US" European reality.
You know, I want national health care. I just don't think the German system would work. You know in Germany they treat black people like shit. Because they have like 12 of them. In the US we have like 30 million of them. And they got screwed at the start and still suffer from it. But national health care won't work well here because of minority issues in inner cities. The Dutch don't have the problem. Not because they didn't want to, they drove the fucking ships. They just didn't end up with it.
Seriously, I'm so sick of Euro babies throwing darts at the US. If the US wasn't in Iraq, Iraq would eventually be in France.
I wish the US would be isolationists. I know, so do all the Europeans. Until they start killing each other, then the loser wants our help. I'd rather you just all die to be honest.