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Human Rights Groups Join Criticism of WikiLeaks
e065c8515d206cb0e190 writes "Several human rights organizations contacted WikiLeaks and pressed them to do a better job at hiding information that endangers civilians within their leaked documents. From the article: 'The letter from five human-rights groups sparked a tense exchange in which WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange issued a tart challenge for the organizations to help with the massive task of removing names from thousands of documents, according to several of the organizations that signed the letter. The exchange shows how WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange risk being isolated from some of their most natural allies in the wake of the documents' publication. ... An [Amnesty International] official replied to say that while the group has limited resources, it wouldn't rule out the idea of helping, according to people familiar with the reply. The official suggested that Mr. Assange and the human-rights groups hold a conference call to discuss the matter.'"
An Amnesty official replied to say that while the group has limited resources, it wouldn't rule out the idea of helping, according to people familiar with the reply. The official suggested that Mr. Assange and the human-rights groups hold a conference call to discuss the matter.
Mr. Assange then replied: "I'm very busy and have no time to deal with people who prefer to do nothing but cover their asses. If Amnesty does nothing I shall issue a press release highlighting its refusal," according to people familiar with the exchange.
Kind of comes off as a narcissistic jerk here.
I hate the need for wikileaks, if not wikileaks directly.
Freedom of the press was supposed to be a balance between this and the traditional media. However, with the major news outlets falling over themselves to appease different market segments, real news gets lost in the translations. Real information is not reported when it should be, letting situations like Iraq happen.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
It appears Mr. Assange does not know the basics of information security. Wikileaks does not have a system through which to vet it's insiders. These insiders who are supposed to help Mr. Assange in editing out or redacting the names could very well be foreign intelligence agents sifting through the data specifically to get the list of names to sell to Al Qaeda, Taliban or whomever has the money to pay for it. I expected more from Mr. Assange, if he does not take his information security a lot more seriously how do we trust this man to keep these secrets safe? The leakage of these secrets can cost lives, so this is very serious.
Who vetted Julian Assange? How do we know he's not foreign intelligence himself?
Maybe those human rights groups should spend their time more vigorously fighting the wars, corruption and shenanigans that make wikileaks such a required global asset.
I'm still torn in regards to Wikileaks. On the one hand, transparency can be a phenomenal thing. On the other, it can't help but bleed interpretation, which in and of itself can lead to misgivings and the perversion of a "truth". Granted, there are concurrently 4 million different truths all bubbling away. Ew, interpretation just reared its ugly head. Does the right hand always want to know what the left is doing? In a perfect world, yes. In this one? I just don't know. Yep, still torn. I contributed absolutely nothing. Flog me.
Obviously my last post resulted in an immediate troll rating but I'm going to say it again.
The US government and governments around the world go through ridiculous means to keep this information secret. It's not stored on a laptop somewhere. It's stored in such a way so that only people with top secret security clearance can access it. This classification system is called access control. Anybody who knows about information security knows that in order to secure or keep information secret you need absolute control over who accesses it. You have to control it on the "eyes only" level in some cases and in other cases you have to minimize it to only people who have been fully vetted and checked so as to find out if they are a member of a foreign intelligence agency, or if they are a compromised individual who can be turned into an informant for a foreign intelligence agency.
Wikileaks does not appear to have any internal classifications or compartmentalization. If Julian Assange thinks he can just let entire organizations with hundreds or thousands of eyes access top secret information then hes naive. If he thinks he can come up with his own classification system without government support hes also probably naive but at least this would be a step in the right direction. If he gives the documents out to one wrong person it will get to the Taliban. If he does not take information security seriously it will get to the Taliban. The only solution is for Julian Assange to work with the US government on this.
The real question is who vetted Julian Assange? If he has these documents how do we know he isn't passing it along to some foreign government himself? It's a matter of who to trust and how would Julian Assange know who to trust in this situation assuming he really is an honorable individual? And if he is a corrupt individual how do we know we can trust him? With no government or state protecting him or doing the process of handling the web of trust, it's like not having a certificate authority, or not having a web of trust for PGP. You don't know if there is a man in the middle or if the person you communicate with is friend or foe, or just a neutral who sells information to friend and foe.
More importantly, wasn't Obama supposed to have the most transparent administration?
To be fair, all the information comes from 2006 or earlier; way before Obama came into power.
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
Er, for the rest of us, it will actually be Sept 8th, 2010 (8/9/10). I don't know why Americans insist in writing the date the wrong way around...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's time that people understand that information wants to be free. And we the people should want information to be free.
One of the secrets released was that the Taliban are quite a bit more violent and willing to kill innocents than has been reported. It has sums of civilian casualties created by the NATO (US) forces and the Taliban. Yeah, these guys are scum bags.
More importantly, wasn't Obama supposed to have the most transparent administration?
But most importantly, government secrets in the open are inherently good for the People. Why is there not an understanding of this? 9/11 did not teach us how bad the terrorists were. We already knew that. Instead, we should have learned that government cannot, under any circumstances, be trusted.
Information wants to be free is a ridiculous quote coming from a person who does not understand the concept of the GPL. Information is power, in some cases the power over life and death. In some cases information released about you, can help your enemies plan to kill you. Personal information like names and identities have to be protected. The fact that these documents stored the names of informants is ridiculous in itself because all names in these sorts of documents should be replaced by code names, code words, etc. Redacting the names is not good enough. Also locations have to be changed so as to confuse the enemy. Anything which can allow the enemy to determine anything has to be changed.
Only a government or spy agency has the tools and skills necessary to deal with this. One man, Julian Assange, cannot possibly be qualified to do this type of work. If he is qualified then qualified through what experience? The point is that the global community is losing trust in Julian Assange. Unless Julian Assange can be trusted Wikileaks cannot be trusted. If Julian Assange cannot handle the task of declassifying the documents through a strict secure process, then he needs to find someone or some entity with the expertise to do just this.
Wikileaks and Julian Assange own this now. The good, and the ill, from publishing that information are on them. And it looks pretty ill to me.
According to Newsweek, a man named Khalifa Abdullah was killed after the release of these documents. So that's one man dead already. The Taliban has vowed to hunt down and kill anyone who is a "spy", and they are using the Wikileaks information to do it, so there will be more. Some of the people listed in Wikileaks have disappeared, hopefully into hiding rather than dead.
Julian Assange's stance on this is callous. He "insisted that any risk to informants' lives was outweighed by the overall importance of publishing the information." Okay, at least one man is dead now. What is that "overall importance"? I sure don't see it.
I'm also not buying his idea that this is really the US military's fault, together with Amnesty International, for not helping him redact the critical info. Much of the info is years old. What was the big rush? If Wikileaks didn't have enough volunteers to vet the info carefully, why rush ahead and publish it anyway?
If I were Julian Assange, I wouldn't be sleeping well at night.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
If I ran into Assange right now, I'd kill him with my own bare hands. He's a traitor.
And you'd be a simple murderer.
BTW, he's not from the US (and easy to assume you are since that is one of the few western country where they pull the traitor card so freely) so he can't really be a traitor against you/your country.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Assange isn't a traitor because he isn't a US Citizen. Manning was a traitor. That said Assange should put more thought into the released information. There is a need for a safe way for people to blow the whistle on corruption. However, nothing to date in the Manning releases seem to show anything but normal operations. And the raw volume of data does expose people and put them in danger. The real WTF here is how a relatively junior ranking officer got such wide access. The Video of the reporter being killed actually had some value; it graphically displayed the rules of engagement on the ground, that is it was open season on anyone moving. The subsequent documents have not created nearly as much effect while potentially harming innocents.
Wikileaks can only work as a concept in the same way that the UN works as a concept. You get all the governments of the world to agree to support Wikileaks with technological support, experience, advisory support, financial support, and so on. This would allow Wikileaks to work. The problem is that no government on planet earth is going to support Wikileaks releasing the names of informants. Once Wikileaks passed that phase it became a foreign intelligence instrument itself because now it's actually assisting the Taliban and is no longer neutral in the information warfare theater.
Wikileaks should have NEVER under any circumstances for any reasons released information which could lead to the death of sources. The sources in my opinion are more important than the Wikileaks project itself. Wikileaks exists to protect the sources, and to protect civilians from abusive regimes. Wikileaks did not however develop the appropriate legal, technological, and physical structures necessary to actually protect certain kinds of information. First of all Wikileaks has complete faith in AES256, and while the US government uses it and it's difficult to crack it may be crackable through mechanisms or math we don't know about. Wikileaks also does not seem to have a system to determine who can view what, who can access what, and if they do have such a system there is no indication as to how it would work.
They need an American with Top Secret Clearance to work with Julian Assange on certain documents. This requires working closely with the US government. They'd need to do this with every government around the world for the exact same reason, so they'd need people from all governments who they can contact and work with. This would present major information security problems which I don't see how they'd be able to resolve. Foreign intelligence agencies around the world know Julian Assanges face, and even if he hides his identity they have trained hackers to target him. This puts him and his information in constant danger and under constant attack. This constant attack means there will be nobody for Julian Assange to trust, so how can Wikileaks have the web of trust necessary to get anything done?
I would say it would be very very difficult to do without government support of some kind. So once again if a government is supporting Julian Assange then can the global community trust him? There are so many issues here that Julian Assange is very probably going to have to resign his position over this. Wikileaks can survive this, I just don't know if it will survive with Julian Assange as it's editor.
t's time that people understand that information wants to be free. And we the people should want information to be free. O
Great - go ahead and start by posting your SSN, home address, and full medical history. Then we'll talk about how much information "wants to be free"
huh? today is 10/8/9..
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
So we go to war, supposedly to "protect our freedoms," having soldiers willing to lay down their lives. We then censor all those said fatally defended freedoms. A journalist then decides to express their lost freedom by ousting the underhanded and barbaric activities of our own government. Another group whose sole premise is to advocate the rights of humans, ignores the whole barbarism bit and advocates censorship.
Yes, bad shit happens in war. Being willing to help cover it up makes them accessory to all those bad things. How many more years before can start taking all the Vietnam comparisons and switch them to Afghanistan comparisons?
Yeah, see, and here's the thing... information, just like any other inanimate object, doesn't want anything. it simply *is*, and personifying it is akin to using the passive voice to try and sound authoritative when you're really just pushing your own opinion.
There is no real reason that everyone should be able to know everything all the time. First off, that's on its face impossible, and when less hyperbolic is merely impractical. Plus, the facts of the matter are:
- Most people aren't interested in actually knowing what's going on
- Most people aren't clued in to understand even if they suddenly develop an interest
- Facts without context aren't particularly helpful
- Some things shouldn't be known by some people (particularly the proverbial "them"; the outsider. the "not us")
Would it be nice if citizens had more information about the workings of their government? yes. and on domestic policy that's totally fine. However, documents dealing with the prosecution of a war are different, and putting them on the internet is completely irresponsible. This should be perfectly evident by the fact that the Taliban have stated their intention, and probably have already started, killing Afghan civilians who are mentioned as helping NATO forces.
So, now we have a situation where people who were helping us are going to get killed for helping us. That makes our job over there harder as we won't have those sources, and people are going to be a lot less willing to cooperate in the future because what if another pissed off nerd who never should have joined the army decides he's going to go all Deep Throat and leaks those names onto the internet, thinking he's doing something noble?
Well, you know, I think I'm OK with *NOT* having that information if it means there is less chance that those people are going to be killed and that the job that my friends over there are doing is going to become harder than it already was.
Information wants to be free my ass. This isn't a math formula and isn't a basic, universal truth about the universe. Some stuff needs to be secret. Loose lips sink ships and all that jazz.
The logistics of how do you allow the US government to do it difficult. First problem is finding a trusted rep of the US government. I suppose Julian Assange could have sent a copy to Adrian Lamo via PGP who could have sent it to the people who could properly take out the information which needed to be removed and then send it back to Adrian who sends it to Julian all via PGP.
Let's not pretend like this system is easy to implement or that the web of trust cannot be compromised. It would not be easy, but I accept that it would have been possible and that Julian Assange should not have released these documents without doing the right thing.
These groups have correctly identified a life-or-death issue affecting real human beings. Nevertheless, they're failing to see the forest for the trees. The reason these people need to hide their identities for fear of being murdered is that there's a war going on around them. The real issue is this: should there be a war in Afghanistan, or should there not be a war in Afghanistan? There was more justification for invading Afghanistan than there was for invading Iraq, but that ain't saying much, considering that the best public justification for the war in Iraq happened when Dick Cheney convinced Bush to get Colin Powell to lie to the UN. According to our own country's intelligence, Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan number in the hundreds. For that reason, we're subjecting millions of people to a brutal war. We're supporting an Afghan regime that is in power because it committed massive fraud in the last election.
I'm a community college teacher. You know what army guys tend to do when they get their limbs blown off in Iraq and Afghanistan? They tend to show up at community colleges, hoping to go on and do something better with their lives. Brave guys. They've been ill-served by people like Bush and Cheney, but they move on. What about the U.S. soldiers who just plain died in Afghanistan? They're easy to forget. I don't see them sitting at the desks in my classroom. What about the innocent civilians getting killed by U.S. drone aircraft in Afghanistan? What about an entire Afghan society that can't make any progress because we invaded their country in order to go after a few terrorists? To me, that's the big picture. Solve that problem, and the problem of names not being redacted by Wikileaks will become a non-issue. That would be the right set of priorities, in my opinion. By the way, one guy who I think really had the right set of priorities is Bradley Manning. He committed a crime by blowing the whistle on war crimes. He's currently in solitary confinement, under suicide watch, in Quantico, Virginia. If you want to send him a letter and lift his spirits, the address is Inmate: Bradley Manning, 3247 Elrod Avenue, Quantico, VA 22134. If you want to donate to his legal defense fund, the information is here. (You can verify the donation link via the locked link from the WP article
Find free books.
Remember that the ongoing theory (possibly confirmed) is that Manning (are whoever leaked the documents and blamed it on it was) was the provider of not only these documents, but rumor has it that some of it went towards the latest WAPO article about the intel community, and I likely predict that by summer's end Assange will have at least one or two more of these style releases from documents provided by Manning. Also, often some of the HUMINT level stuff tends to get "leaked" into SIPR during operations in country and other hectic times (the surge for example).
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
Lots of armchair quarterbacks give you ideas. You say to one of them, "Great idea! Why don't you go ahead and do it." Then their excuses begin.
The correct answer, and ideal situation, would be for the Pentagon to be redacting the personal information and releasing these documents themselves in the first place. Instead, they choose to classify documents in order to manipulate public opinion. Manipulating public opinion blinds voters to the reality of the situation. If voters don't have the complete picture, they can't make an informed vote and we have a de-facto totalitarian state. Military personnel intentionally trying to manipulate public opinion by hiding information (as they've admitted that they do) should be considered an act of treason. Wikileaks is doing what they can because the Pentagon refuses to do their job.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
It's time that people understand that information wants to be free. And we the people should want information to be free.
If you think Julian Assange wants information to be free, can somebody please explain to me why I received this take-down request from him ten years ago?
This was to remove a transcript of his court case, and yes, I did remove it. (Note, I don't own mindrape.org any more.)
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No, once someone is famous murdering them is called assassination. The difference is we'd likely learn the GP's middle name, too.
As a funny-man once said; Reality has a strong liberal bias.
- These characters were randomly selected.
I believe that it's, actually, a quote often taken out of context. My understanding is that the quote goes something like "Information wants to be free but, at the same time, information wants to be private". I don't think the original writer intended it to be a total endorsement of all information being free.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Just curious, but how can a non-US citizen be a traitor to the US? Beyond that, is WikiLeaks doing us a service or not? I'd argue it is. More good things come out when people know the truth versus just pretending everything is going to be ok without checking up. Of course, it does depend on the information, but then again, WikiLeaks doesn't dig it up, it's handed to them. One could argue that if person x wants to release data, they are going to do so, WikiLeaks or not. The difference here is that WikiLeaks has media exposure and can take data that would have been lost to noise and broadcast it loudly. Then again, I've always been the type of person who walks towards that noise in the dark. I could be scared of it and merely hope it goes away or I can confront it for what it is and deal with it. Sticking your head in the sand isn't going to make whatever is happening stop and yes, sometimes finding something out can be damaging on its own, but being informed about what's going on is always a good thing.
Assange needs to take some responsibility for his own actions and quit playing the martyr. His irresponsible behavior, by not redacting the documents, will quite likely get people killed. That is not the US government's or Amnesty's responsibility. It is his and he needs to man up to it and quit being such an ass.
Who vets the reporters for the new york times or any other news agency?
There's a long tradition of documents getting leaked to news agencies over the years.
As a general rule the moment state secrets reach a reporter/news agency based in another country who are citizens of another country they cease to be secrets and the system supposed to keep them safe has failed utterly in every way.
When classified documents get released to the New York Times the FBI and CIA get involved. The FBI has files on every American, especially journalists who work for the New York Times. The CIA probably has files on them too. They know who is loyal to the USA and who might be attached to foreign intelligence. The fact that we have domestic counter intelligence agencies that exist specifically to determine who the foreign spies are is why you don't see classified documents with the identities of sources included in them.
The last time classified documents of these sort were released, it was the covert action quarterly. For all who don't know what CAQ was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CovertAction_Quarterly , it was controlled by Philip Agee. Phillip Agee was a CIA agent who may have become a double agent for the KGB. He went on to release the identities of CIA officers through the CAQ publication.
The fact is the US Government considered him to be a traitor. In Julian Assanges case he was from Australia so it's not exactly the same, but if his publication released the identities of sources or released information which assisted the Taliban in determining the sources, if Julian Assange does not want to be looked at in history as being another Philip Agee he has to do everything within his power to protect the sources. There are lives at stake, and if lives have been lost he's just the same as Phillip Agee, Robert Hansen, or any of those others.
Their compassion for all human life -- as long as it's civilian life -- is touching.
</sarcasm>
sigfault (core dumped)
There are Australian troops in Afghanistan and Assange is most certainly an Aussie last time I checked. He has put their lives in danger as surely as he has put the US troops in danger there. The Taliban won't differentiate. He is indeed a traitor by any measure of the word.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Agee
Because he basically received stolen property from a guy who should be tried for treason. He then put it up for all the world to see in the form he received it in. The fact that names weren't redacted prior to him receiving the documents is immaterial because he never should have had them in the first place.
This isn't evidence of illegal dumping or insider trading. People are going to die because of this.
I highly suggest you read up on the spying business before you make a comment. You assume people in these situations have much choice in the matter as of who to associate with, as if there are human rights and as if there isn't torture going on, or bombs dropping on them, or the fact that they are starving. In some cases the only group capable of helping them is the USA. There literally is nobody else. The Taliban is not going to give these people a better life. The Taliban wont give them freedom. The Taliban won't give them food, water, medicine, education, limited human rights, and honestly having limited human rights beats not having any. The warlord or the US government, which do you think would give you a better life if you had to choose?
We complain enough about government bloat. Would you like have to hire 1,000 auditors to review all this information, and another 100 vetters to vet them, and another 10 vetters to vet those vetters? Most of the documents released by wikileaks were the sort that are compiled quickly at a debriefing, and just thrown into a 'classified' bin, often never looked at again. To have the government review everything by default, is kinda psychotic. The FOIA gives the public a means to review classified documents of interest and see if they they should still be kept secret. It might be understaffed with years of backlog, but it's a lot of information.
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations..." -Winston Churchill
You may complain about government bloat, but I would rather see them hire the number of people needed to get the job done right. An informed public is the bedrock of a qualified electorate. If that's what it takes to make sure that people can make an informed vote and not be manipulated by the people in power, then do what needs to be done and stop scrimping.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Do you really believe that any law would stand in the way of military objectives? Look at US law. Look at the fact that a US citizen is currently on the governments hitlist. The US government has the capability to capture or kill anybody anywhere in the world if they become an armed combatant.
I don't think that will happen to Julian Assange, but lets not pretend like the US government wouldn't do it.
It isn't really the wrong way around. That is how you wrote it first. Today is August 9th, 2010 ... 8/9/10.
?
Your search - queen_vs_julian_assange.txt - did not match any documents.
Damn. Care to share? Exactly which queen are we talking about here?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Sorry, which people have been named/harmed from the leaks? Can anyone point them out or are we just supposed to believe whatever the Dead Tree Media repeats? I don't believe for a second that any of the hacks which pass for journalists these days have actually gone through the thousands of documents that have been released.
Furthermore, people here are questioning the value of the leaked material on...just what exactly? The word of the government spokesperson? The vacuous opinion pieces in the media? Releasing the material may well have prevented or altered some course of action which only the leaker and/or the actors involved know about.
As for the uninformed moralising on the cost in lives, let me just point out that more blood is spent deliberately every single day in our names for significantly more questionable purposes and less tangible benefits. I find it particularly galling that those calling for Assange and co to be charged with treason are the very same people who sent troops to die in Afghanistan knowing that their blood would be spilled by the hands of our supposed Pakistani allies and their Afghan mercenaries. Treason indeed.
Nobody is asking you to trust the US government. Nobody is asking you to trust the entire entity. There are some people in the US government who are trusted because they have Top Secret clearance and have been vetted. We have to trust those individuals, not the US government itself. Bradley Manning is a failure for having betrayed the trust of his country.
But the most spelled-out format would be "the ninth day of August in the Year of our Lord two thousand and ten." So 9 Aug 2010 (NATO standard) is logical.
Already posted so I can't mod you up but I agree totally. Manning could have uploaded his stuff to wikipedia, megaupload, whatever. It could have gone up on torrent sites and been linked to on /b/. There are lots of ways to do it and wikileaks is possibly the safest place for people mentioned in the released content in the sense that some filtering was done.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Just curious, but how can a non-US citizen be a traitor to the US?
It's funny that OP never mentioned the US in his post. If Wikileaks' actions led to the deaths of Australians (and there are over a thousand Australians in Afghanistan), then he could be considered a traitor.
Yeah. But all those soldiers that are dying over there in the war are expected, right? We can just ignore all of those deaths, and just focus on the informants.
The information was leaked because it is critical that the voters know what they're supporting over there. Otherwise, we could be told that "everything is rosy!" and given the government control over media, we'd be none the wiser.
Do you really want to be in that position?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
It could be because there is no one single proper way to write the date.
I personally prefer the yyyy-mm-dd format myself. That makes the most sense to me.
This space unintentionally left blank.
there are over a thousand Australians in Afghanistan
Wow, over a thousand! What a major contribution!
I tell ya, if there was ever a question of why the US is in Afghanistan, there's even more of a question why we are.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Fix, source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free
Assange had the power to say "no, we will not release these". He also had the power to wait to release until the documents had been carefully scrutinized to remove names and identifying details of anyone who might be endangered. At the very least, he is accessory to any crimes that might have been committed by the sources of leaks.
Makes for easier sorting too without having to parse the string.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
I prefer 2010.09.08 (yyyy.mm.dd) because a simple descending/ascending textual sort
preserves the chronological order of the dates this way (esp. in similar filenames containing the dates).
P.S. I'm an "American".
I don't think that will happen to Julian Assange, but lets not pretend like the US government wouldn't do it.
You think that they aren't going to do it, but let's not pretend like they aren't going to do it?
With their encrypted servers, Julian Assange & Co have a very powerful tool at their disposal. But they're really not doing their credibility any favours by taking a naive "publish everything" stance. Wikileaks have to be held responsible for the results of their publishing.
This is not a perfect world and I do believe there is a place for wikileaks as "sunlight is the best disinfectant".
Wikileaks simply need to accept responsibility for the written bombs they are dropping, just the same as the US Army and the Taliban have to accept responsibility for theirs.
(apologies for the Spiderman quote - see http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2005_10_06.html
I'll see your hokum and raise you a boondoggle.
SETI@home can get over 3 million volunteers to scan the sky, but Julian Assange, in an Internet positively filled with people who would love to be a part of something like this, can't find a thousand people to help review documents and redact names that aren't needed and somehow this is Amnesty International's fault? Climb off the cross, Julian, the Taliban needs the wood to build fires and burn alive those you named.
I'm Canadian; I sympathize with you on the having-a-small-force-in-Afghanistan front. The question of "why" is a good one for historians and political scientists, but the question we need to ask now that we're there is "how do we deal with this so that our own nation, the other nations involved, and the Afghans suffer the least?"
Just curious, but how can a non-US citizen be a traitor to the US?
Given his citizenship and actions, Assange is an enemy of the US.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
Or just join Facebook and keep the "default" privacy settings.
It's okay for people to be killed, atrocities to be committed and covered up if it's part of the US military's agenda, but it's not okay for people to be killed as a result of exposing these atrocities?
Is there a list somewhere of what counts as acceptable collateral damage and what doesn't?
How many lives would be saved in the governments of the world knew that any and all deaths at their hands would be exposed for all the world to see?
Which thousands of people do you trust to do this without exposing the data themselves?
Wikileaks represents an externaliy of sorts. Sure, some nation-states provide essential freedoms with which it operates, but none of them are both willing and able to support it financially to correct for this externality, for the same reason that other nation-states are not able to use legal frameworks to control its spreading of information without severe repercussions for others unrelated to this matter. Therefore, Wikileaks have two strategies from which to choose to fund themselves:
1. Monetize the leaks, and
2. Solicit donations.
The first is probably too distasteful to them. I'm not sure I would support that either, though it would depend on how they implemented it. However, donations at their pre-Collateral Murder levels apparently could not support the site, as evidenced by the January shutdown of its archive of documents. They had no choice but to up the bet and make Really Big Deals out of something that no one could possibly ignore, and I think that they've found that right now, the big media players act according to rules not unlike the various versions of the Rules of the Internet: "All of your carefully picked arguments can be easily ignored. Anything you say can and will be used against you. Anything you say can be turned into something else [...]." Furthermore, any mistake made will be amplified far out of proportion to its real significance.
As the saying goes, don't bring a knife to a gun fight. But that's exactly what they're doing. The arguments being made against them for which there can be a factual disproof (not being able to individually check each document may have just endangered informants and their families) requires resources Wikileaks does not have. The US government may not have to resort to black ops (as so many blood-lusting authoritarians seem to seek) to impair Wikileaks significantly, if not permanently: they could simply wait for it to starve.
Help for them will not come from any nation-state. It will not come from moneyed corporations or their wealthy officers and investors. Help will not come from existing large media outlets, unless they are somehow compelled to do so (see option #1 above). Help may not come from those who supported the organization before the press offensive but were offended by it. Help will only come from those of us who continue to support Wikileaks.
I should disclose that I myself have not (yet) donated to them. They've jumped to the head of the list, as I have either already donated to the other organizations, or the other organizations are not of the same significance as this. As with "public" radio in the US, every time I listen, I note to myself that I ought to donate to my local station, and yet I do not. I apparently choose to freeload. It's reinforced by the fact that others manage to give enough to cover the bills. Hopefully, I won't do the same thing with Wikileaks.
As for Amnesty International, an organization whose mission is also well worth supporting, I guess I can only say that the suffering of people living in Afghanistan is pretty much assured at this point, and it had nothing to do with Wikileaks up until this point, and it may yet have nothing to do with it, now or in the future, since AFAIK, no one's come forward with the evidence. If armed forces stay, more innocent bystanders will probably die, and this will cause more insurgency, and so on in that deadly cycle; if the armed forces leave, the Taliban may return with a vengeance, and they might just harbor terrorists again, but who knows?
(So, did I sound astroturf-y enough? I sure think I do. I also lost steam at the end.)
Of course, the more people with access to secret documents, the more likely they are to get leaked. Easier to just keep everything secret.
totally right. order by significant digits.
You don't get it. Truth is important, but this isn't a political game in our safe Western political environment. The release of these documents (and especially the piles of needless and real details) has caused incalculable damage to the Free World's ability to get cooperation out of locals. At least one informant has already died because someone thought it would be cool to dump classified military operations on the net.
If you were living under Islamic rule, and you were part of the local underground aiding the enemy capitalist, what would your opinion be when you learned that one of the capitalists' own men had given YOUR name and location to the oppressors? That's betrayal, pure and simple. You and your family will die, and others in the underground are far less likely to risk anything in the future.
Protecting sources should be a number one priority, and has been for many years and through many wars and agencies. It is a blot on our entire nation when you betray someone who has voluntarily aided us. There's a reason militaries have classification schemes! Information has more power than bullets. Yes, it is often abused. But the decision to release these documents was grossly irresponsible and stupid.
The government can't save you.
lightspeedius is +5 insightful, mod it up
Yet, if such information affected things in such a way as to end the war even a day earlier, more life would be won than lost. I mean, people justify the Hiroshima bombing by saying it saved lives compared to the firebombing that would have happened had the war continued. (I'm really just playing it neutral in this discussion to see if people say anything interesting and informative.)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
My first reaction is similar to yours and the other similar posts, in that there is at least an implied responsibility to being a journalist. But let me play devil's advocate here.
Wikileaks is all about publishing documents. Many "news" organizations use many different rationales (some more valid than others) for holding back information or not publishing a story. In many cases this causes a spin or bias on the news that has gotten out of hand in recent times. The current journalistic environment has created and somewhat encouraged an endeavor such as Wikileaks by losing the public trust. If we could rely on the major news organizations to reliably perform the public service of responsible investigative journalism, wikileaks would likely lose it's appeal and relevancy. Finally, if they released redacted documents. they would lose the credibility they have gained by releasing ALL the facts, no matter the consequences. Then people could (rightfully) question what they redacted and why.
Mr. Assange probably should have made this point himself.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
That's kind of what I thought. This guy just caused me to cast some doubt on it.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
It's funny that you think *I* said that. And yes, since Australians are in the war, he could very well be a traitor by releasing information about their operations. I have no clue how different countries define traitor. However, it's interesting to me that you think that me using the word automatically means "traitor to America", when that wasn't what was typed. You have an interesting sense of reading comprehension. I do, however, agree with you.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
So because Wikileaks asked the Pentagon for help in disclosing classified documents, and the Pentagon declined, this *absolves* Wikileaks of any responsibility for the outcome of the publication of these documents? No, that's not realistic. That's stupid.
Wikileaks is high on their idology, huffing and puffing about moral high ground, well the fact is the addition of many names to the Taliban's Hit List are Wikileaks responsibility. They can't pass it off, they and they alone are responsible for these deaths that will certainly happen.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Greetings and Salutations.
I have read a number of the opinions posted here, and, my first reaction is "Have any of these people actually even LOOKED at the documents posted on Wikileaks?"
I have read quite a number of the documents available on line, and there are a few things that have popped out at me.
1) the only names that I have run across in the documents have been known taliban, insurgents and supporters of the insurgency.
2) A huge percentage of the reports are recording general suspicious activity picked up by routine patrols both on the ground and in the air.
3) There have been some interesting notes about aerial vehicles being shot at with missiles positively identified as stingers ( a little fact that has been, shall we say, downplayed, by the official military sources).
4) On the other hand, there are quite a number of reports of Afghan nationals (so far, all un-named) with war-related injuries being flown out for medical attention. Pretty much all the ones I have read have apparently been civilians caught up by accident.
Now, there may be some military usage in the times and dates and such listed with each event, but, I suspect that any decent intelligence service will already
HAVE the time and location details listed in the reports.
I was also interested to see the number of times when fairly suspicious behavior, or serious weapons of war were observed, yet, no action was taken to kill the enemy, or, destroy the weapons (tanks, howitzers, etc).
Overall, it seems to me that the biggest issue with Wikileaks is that they have dumped out a bunch of information, concealed by our government, that shows that some of the positive spin put on the situation in Afghanistan is a bit thinner than they would have us believe.
Pleasant Dreams
dave mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
I prefer 2010.09.08 (yyyy.mm.dd)...P.S. I'm an "American".
I'm guessing you were also educated in the public school system?
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
According to Newsweek, a man named Khalifa Abdullah was killed [newsweek.com] after the release of these documents.
The linked article only says he was killed after the documents were leaked. It doesn't say anywhere that he was killed because of the documents. It doesn't even give any evidence beyond the fact that he was killed after the documents were leaked, not even a statement by the Taliban. The only thing this article tells me is that so far they have no evidence of the Taliban successfully using the documents to find spies.
Of coarse so many documents were leaked that sooner or later the military will find someone who was killed and also mentioned somewhere in the documents. Amnesty international is making this statement so that when the inevitable happens they can avoid loosing donations.
...with the names of your critically placed Agents? How hard would it be for an intelligence organization to infilterate Wikiileaks or Amnesty? How are they erasing the names? Where and how are the original documents kept?
I like the idea of WikiiLeaks but they need to clarify their policy for releasing potentially dangerous information.
What you don't seem to get is that WikiLeaks has no allegiance to the US government and, therefore, hold no more responsability to US informants than they do to those of the Taliban, their only responsability is to their own informants and, as far as I know, they've yet to leak the names of any of them.
And please stop it with the "Free World" crap, you sound like Bush. The actual Free World is staying *out* of this goddamned mess you imperialists created.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
According to the ISO standard, it should be written "2010-09-08".
(ISO 8601)
There is ISO 8601
Newsweek can allude to one death "being caused by" the information release, but that's only because it comes in chronological order.
Of coarse[sic] so many documents were leaked that sooner or later the military will find someone who was killed and also mentioned somewhere in the documents.
Coincidental and inevitable.
Let's look at this in a different direction: here we have an (informant?) to the US military, presumably native to the area, who must have chosen sides, and his side was against the Taliban. He knew what the consequences of his actions could be, and instead of sticking his head in the sand and saying nothing to nobody, he stuck up for what he believed in. It's unfortunate that he died, but I wonder how many American Revolutionary War vets would have done the exact same thing. It's truly the personification of the Patrick Henry quote, "Give me Liberty, or give me death!"
The information release doesn't change the fact that he made his choice knowing the possible consequences. It only puts a face on the faceless Afghans who are fighting against the Taliban.
And yet, they could have redacted ALL of the names and geographical information, and released that. A dragnet-style "Names have been changed ...." disclaimer would likely have prevented all of this crap.
If I ran into Assange right now, I'd kill him with my own bare hands. He's a traitor.
Ehmm, no, he's not, and no, you wouldn't. You're just an internet tough guy.
This is what was told to me. There's some truth to this too.
Ahhh, so you didn't even bother to think it through for yourself, you just blindly accepted the opinion of someone else who doesn't know the definition of traitor? And you're willing to state you'd commit murder based on that?
I don't think it's evil as a whole, but if people are dying due to the individual parts, then perhaps the issue is not so simple as "good || bad".
I don't know.
Now *that* is a good starting point. You don't know all the facts. Neither do I. How about we do some hard thinking *before* contemplating murder?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Actually today is 10/8/10.
Silly little Americans, stuck in yesterday.
Signed +8 GMT
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
But the most spelled-out format would be "the ninth day of August in the Year of our Lord two thousand and ten." So 9 Aug 2010 (NATO standard) is logical.
No, the military standard is NATO DTG, which is DDHHMMz MMM YY -- which is even harder to parse than the usual US convention. I, personally, prefer the ISO 8601 DTG, strictly in decreasing order of precedence.
Not your call sunshine, Julian Assange is Australian and if I (an Australian) ran into him right now, I'd shake his hand and tell him he's got more guts then all the Nato generals combined.
Starting a war in Afghanistan got a lot of Afghani's killed. Including the ones mentioned by Wikileaks, failing to secure Afghanistan and going to Iraq made things worse. The failure here was not Assang's
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
First, you misunderstand that quote. It's about the struggle between information being valuable and information wanting to get out (as in those who have secrets want to keep them secret and everyone else wanting to find out, typically the latter force becomes more powerful hence the first part of it is often cut off).
Secondly, If he is having unprotected sex with multiple partners while infected with AIDS, would you lambaste the nurse who publishes his full medical history demanding that they should have kept this secret. This is basically what Wikileaks does. Wikileaks does not and should not publish every bit of secret information, only the bits that are contrary to our purpose as free nations (I.E. Mai Lai massacre is published, plans for Operation Rolling Thunder are not).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Hello Godwin! How are you today? :)
And yet they did, and what did they do when they had them?
They could have just released everything, unredacted to the world yet they did not.
They did the responsible thing(as a news agency) once they had the sensitive info.
They voluntarily redacted information themselves and even tried to do so in the most effective manner possible.
How many times when a newspaper is leaked sensitive info do they then contact the organisation the documents are from and give them a carte blanche to remove anything they want provided it wasn't obviously scandalous?
I mean this is into above and beyond territory, the pentagon were handed the chance on a platter.
Yet they they reacted like petulant children.
Mr Assange is a westerner. He lives with the privilages that being a westerner provide. He has some wealth, some prosperity, and the freedoms and privilages that living in the 'west'. Unfortunately, Mr Assange like many people in the west today does not understand or comprehend his position. He does not understand that with freedom comes responsibility. When in WW2 Churchill and Roosevelt made the atlantic agreement: -
The Atlantic Charter established a vision for a post-World War II world, despite the fact that the United States had yet to enter the war. The participants hoped that the Soviet Union would adhere as well, after having been attacked by Nazi Germany in June 1941 in defiance of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
In brief, the eight points were:
1. No territorial gains were to be sought by the United States or the United Kingdom.
2. Territorial adjustments must be in accord with the wishes of the peoples concerned.
3. All peoples had a right to self-determination.
4. Trade barriers were to be lowered.
5. There was to be global economic cooperation and advancement of social welfare.
6. Freedom from want and fear.
7. Freedom of the seas.
8. Disarmament of aggressor nations, postwar common disarmament.
This has been a base operative of the free world. Its fair to say that not enough has been completed. However, the US and the UK are still policing the world because frankly there is no one else to do it. And plenty who shirk. Decades later, these post WW2 decisions and building blocks are nominally carried forward and have been built on decade over dacade, and have provided the openness and freedoms where 'the freedom' of the press exists. And where 'HUman rights exists to an extent that human rights NGO's and organisation span the globe. But these have been built off the back of American and British and Allied lives. They were not free. They did not prosper. Many have paid the ultimate price so that people like Mr Assange can have a good life.
Mr Assange has now gone so far, that he claims he has some moral responsibility to out the mixed forces of good in this world, because as he claims, it is for the force of good.
Well Mr Assange, I don't take kindly to you or your antics. I don't take kindly to people of the left who do all their work off the back sof the forces they hate. I hope the Guardian newspaper is ever so proud to be associated today with wikileaks. They deserve each other. I don't take kindly to western citizens who have all the freedoms that it brings, betraying the men and women on the ground who daily fight for every inch to provide the freedom that lets scum like Assange have his nice cosy life. If anyone in our society has an issue with political decisions, one of the things the same men and women on the ground fight for, and die for, is the right for you, and anyone like you who disagrees, to partake in your country's free democratic life. You can become a politician, you can take part in politics and you can change the world. That is the right they go to the worst places in the world and stand in the mud and shit to present and protect. If you do not agree with your politicians, then mr Assange, spend your time hunting down material to base your case and to make it. But you will not and do not make the case by betraying troops on the ground, and placing many people in very dangerous places in pure, unlimited danger by your obscene and stupid obstinate belief that you need to leak this information.
Frankly, you are now getting people murdered. Not just the military personnel - but you are now placing civilians, aid workers, doctors, and many others in danger. People in the west like you Assange have an arrogance that your freedoms and privilages simply exist, and you think that your actions support your freedoms. You claim a serious motivation for you Mr Assange i
We`re all equal
Cut it up into small enough pieces.
Yep, easier - right up until it goes fubar. Then you're six under and no shovel.
Funny thing is; it wasn't ever really meant to be funny, which is why it really is funny.
- These characters were randomly selected.
You can't predict how many civilians may die in such a fluid situation tomorrow if US forces have to act quickly. What you can predict is the extremely high probability that every single solitary last informant/source in those documents will take a dirt nap after the Taliban locates them.
People have already been dying for years, because those whose job it was to do it right the first time repeatedly and deliberately failed to do so.
Should wikileaks have redacted the names? Yes. Should the military have admitted the civilian and friendly-fire deaths, etc, in the first place? Yes. Should the politicians have admitted they lied about the WMDs, and resigned, or better yet never lied in the first place? Yes.
Anyone who calls for wikileaks or its sources to be tried for treason should be calling in the same breath for similar charges against those who have withheld information that the public needed to know.
What else call the decision to deliberately deceive your fellow citizens into voting for an unworthy candidate or cause, for your own personal gain, if it not treason?
There is a difference between dying with a gun in your hand, facing down an enemy and fighting back and dying unarmed. Although, word on the street is there's no such thing as an unarmed man in Afghanistan and there never was.
Amnesty International is an incredibly infiltrated organization.
As are the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières.
Their members are almost the only people not suspect in a war-zone, making them ideal.
All of these organizations have been used as cover by British, French, American, German and Russian secret services, going back to the second world war, and those are just the known cases. I would trust them with my life if I lay bleeding on the ground in some hell-hole.
Their opinions and motivations not so much.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
It's funny how you say I need to contemplate more, all the while acting as if I was the one who said these things that were said to me. Maybe you should practice your reading comprehension. I started a discussion that you joined in but didn't really contribute to.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
+1 Never mod points when I need them ....
Absolutely. Hire 2000 auditors. If the people knew what was going on then (hopefully) we would not be involved in these wars anymore and the addition of those 2000 people to payroll would allow the removal of many times that number of military personnel.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Amnesty International condemning the release of information and Verizon pushing for open networks.
Did I miss the memo that April Fools was going to run a few months late??
And he didn't release any of this information... I think that is the OP's point.
What else call the decision to deliberately deceive your fellow citizens into voting for an unworthy candidate or cause, for your own personal gain, if it not treason?
That's called politics. Also, please note that I'm not necessarily for the war, I'm just against Wikileaks. The difference is subtle yet profound.
Truth is important, but this isn't a political game in our safe Western political environment. The release of these documents (and especially the piles of needless and real details) has caused incalculable damage to the Free World's ability to get cooperation out of locals
And as a member of the safe Western political environment, how do you know what danger this is causing on the ground? Who told you how things are going as a result of these leaks, and how trustworthy are those sources? This is an honest question - what are the sources for this cry that the Wikileaks release is causing danger to people?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
First, you misunderstand that quote. It's about the struggle between information being valuable and information wanting to get out (as in those who have secrets want to keep them secret and everyone else wanting to find out, typically the latter force becomes more powerful hence the first part of it is often cut off).
There are unfortunately about half a dozen different meanings attributed to that quote -- so it's probably best to retire it from our lexicon and avoid further confusion.
Secondly, If he is having unprotected sex with multiple partners while infected with AIDS, would you lambaste the nurse who publishes his full medical history demanding that they should have kept this secret.
Of course not - because the release of this information is protecting far more people than it could harm.
This is basically what Wikileaks does.
I can't agree with this - more in a moment.
Wikileaks does not and should not publish every bit of secret information,
Agreed - and that's where the problem is. Wikileaks seems to revel in publishing whatever grabs it headlines and donations that enable it to keep running. It's essentially become a tabloid - though worse, because the only cost extracted by tabloids is damage to someone's reputation.
only the bits that are contrary to our purpose as free nations (I.E. Mai Lai massacre is published, plans for Operation Rolling Thunder are not).
Also agreed. But how does the data published in this event fit that criteria? If he had removed the names and locations of people he was putting at risk -- then yes, a case could be made for it. In absence of his ability to do that properly, the correct response was not "Aw screw it, I'll do it anyway."
So you have trouble with "quarter to three a.m." being written 0315, too?
Things change when you go from "spoken" or "prose" to number format. The rest of the world uses the day month year, and there is an ISO as others have pointed out which is year-month-day. But only one country insists on month day year...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Actually no, I'm speaking English. My browser is in Spanish. And I don't wish I was an American since I am Canadian and actually consider being American as a downgrade...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So true. This one time when I tried to rob a bank, I asked the cops for help so that I could do it safely without hurting anyone. But the fucking pigs just wanted to stop me. Clearly it wasn't my fault that people died.
"This one time when I wanted to reveal that the cops had shot up a bunch of hostages I asked the cop to tell me who were the robbers and who were the hostages so I could blur out the innocent faces in the video, but the cops refused to help and when I revealed their deadly mishap they said more hostages would be shot because of me."
This is the honest version of your allegory. The way you say it you've conflated Wikileaks and the Taliban, because you're biased against wikileaks and are actively trying to smear them, apparently.
You can't take the sky from me...
There is a difference, but if you're there for the wrong reasons, it doesn't matter. You're still dead and you never should have been there in the first place, gun in your hand or not.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Well, Afghanistan isn't Iraq. The September 11 attacks were planned there by Al Qaeda, which was being harbored by the Taliban. The Taliban were able to take root in Afghanistan by filling a power vacuum that was allowed to form largely as a result of the US failing to continue to support Afghanistan and rebuild it after providing aid against the Soviets, who had toppled a democratic-ish government via proxy parties and finally a military invasion.
We should have stuck around and helped them out in the 80s, but we didn't. Now we sort of have to, because we owe them that much. However, Taliban and Al Qaeda forces are still there and are still causing problems, which means we still have to fight because they make it extremely difficult for the average Afghan to just live in peace.
Just because the politicians keeps screwing up there doesn't mean we're there for the wrong reasons. Iraq was totally a war of choice. That's not so much the case here. We didn't do the right thing when we should have, which means now we have to do what we can with what we have now. Sure, it would be better that it were not necessary, but take that up with Carter and Reagan.
Repeat after me: WikiLeaks is not a "news agency." Wkileaks is an activist group.
The most effective manner possible allowed the Times of London's reporters to find names, GPS coordinates, and family names & village names of numerous informants... within 2 hours? That's a pretty ineffective method for redacting information if someone can find something that shouldn't be there that quickly. As such, I'd say it's quite likely that WikiLeaks favored the "rush to publish" approach far more than they favored the "responsible and thorough redaction of details that are unrelated to our larger activism, but which could put other lives in danger."
*tried*
They *tried* to get the pentagons help to redact the info.
The pentagon went instead with the old fashioned "lets sit with our thumbs up our arses".
So wikileaks went with a best effort.
Wikileaks may not be a news organisation but they've managed to break more significant news stories than any "real" newspaper in the past couple of years.
Yes, *tried*. And failed. Spectacularly. They therefore richly deserve criticism of their methods and policies, because of that spectacular failure.
If they wanted to be a "news" organization, they wouldn't have published a data dump like they did, they would have reviewed the documentation, and published an investigative report, linking isolated operational reports to larger events.
Instead, we have a data dump that puts informants at risk, and we have this vague, hand-waving assertion that "there's probably evidence of war crimes in there."
So far, no substantiation of that assertion has come to light, and in fact I suspect very little will be found in there that constitutes a smoking gun. Instead, it'll fuel the deluded, paranoid fantasies of conspiracy theorists and other nutters, and do nothing to substantially affect the course of this war.
Other than kill a few *more* afghan civilians via the time-honored method of Taliban executions, of course.
In 90K documents how many people have been identifiable? do you even know or are you trusting the hand waving by the newspapers that weren't let in on the scoop that the entire population of afghanistan will now be shot in the back of the head?
The even more time honoured method is, of course as the diaries confirmed, to just open fire on a bus or someone who looks shifty.
So you have no proof to offer?
we didn't need to have these informants named in these documents, champ.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/04/ap_afghanistan_kandahar_041210/
That your bus incident? Already plenty well-publicized, if the ARMY TIMES is distributing the AP coverage of the incident. I don't exactly think that's evidence of some sinister coverup that we needed these leaks to reveal.
But then, of course Americans are to blame for every civilian death there, right? How inconvenient that six people died about a week ago to a roadside bomb (I think it's safe to say that's not an American device that did it). Or another ~30 killed in another incident months back by another roadside bomb? Or 25 dead about 2 weeks ago?
Yes, you're right. American forces are clearly just killing untold numbers of civilians, and getting away with it there. Fuck off.
But the most spelled-out format would be "the ninth day of August in the Year of our Lord two thousand and ten."
I dont think so
Yes there is is!
http://www.iso.org/iso/date_and_time_format
See you were right.
You bolded the Month and Year, But you failed to take into account that he may have actually been referring to September, and not August....
Your Sig may have summed it up...
ICRC
ICRC = International Committee of the Red Cross
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Freedom isn't Free. I costs a buck o' five.....
I can pretty much guaranty that some people are going to die because of this.
Are you one of them????
So you have trouble with "quarter to three a.m." being written 0315, too?
Well, it does seem like an odd way to write 2:45 am, so yeah.
you actually believe that bullshit you wrote. I almost feel sorry for you.
It could be because there is no one single proper way to write the date.
I personally prefer the yyyy-mm-dd format myself. That makes the most sense to me.
There is no single accepted way to write a date, but there is a standard. Congratulations. You seem to be following it.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I was talking about a different bus - one of the cases brought to light was that French troops strafed a bus full of children .
not everything is about the US after all.
In the UK there are also some serious questions being asked about a particular british unit involved in a large number of civilian deaths.
So ya, everything in the universe is about the United States because that's the only country in the world that matters.
How many children died in that bus full of children?
Whoops, zero. Thought we were talking about civilian deaths, tiger?
Or is his sin that he is impolite?
How about accessory to murder? I consider that a sin.
(That said, somebody closely associated with wikileaks messed up -- big time. It might not have been Mr. Assange personally.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
That goes a long way in why France is aligned with Iran and the Arab states.
Yep. You just keep watching that Fox News.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Doh! :)
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
And if you drop the time, you get DD MMM YY, which is what I had (well, I went with YYYY because it improves comprehension and from my experience is common military practice).
And that's kind of the shame of it - very little of this was a surprise; so peoples lives were jeopardized for what was ultimately no good reason.
right, cause kids getting holes shot in them doesn't count unless they die, the occasional arm or leg is no biggie.
That's a nice straw man you've got there, how much does it weigh?
As awful as injuries to children are (did you really just ask us to think of the children, too?), injured children are out of scope in a discussion of civilian DEATHS.
I'm sure you can figure out why on your own, sport. (hint: injuries heal. Know anybody who has recovered from death?)
Obama, might rather say,
Julian, in exchange for a Scooter-Libby grade Pardon for the informant which indeed respects the First Amendment right of the people to know what the F%&& their government is doing - especially when they are lying their way into wars (See Colin - the warmonger - Powell)
Would you might permitting us paying a third party to clean the documents?
I'll bet that would save lives and the truth in a single breath.
Yeah, I kind of disagree.
If we hide our secrets and they hide theirs, we never appear to be the more honest open, and transparent alternative.
Remember winning a war against their weapons is like child's play - the hard part is to convince the "other" that "our way" is better than "their way"
We don't win the peace with secrets, and prying open the lies properly spanks the government for even thinking about trying to deceive their way to victory.
These aren't nuclear know how secrets, this is diplomatic - who is double-crossing who stuff.
The job your friends are doing is justifying the Bush Presidency. fuggetaboutit.
The Arab world will continue to be a hell hole exactly as long as it want to, as long as they force their women to make more babies than 2.2, they won't be able to afford education, and they will need wars to prevent starvation. until that is unwound, you don't have a prayer.
Know anyone who's regrown a limb?
Irrelevant to this discussion of civilian deaths , chief.
You were the only one who decided that getting maimed doesn't count, nobody else.
The entire point of this discussion has been the "civilian deaths" that have been caused by the NATO militaries there.
If you really mean to suggest that a bullet wound that someone survives is somehow the exact same thing as a bullet wound you don't recover from, well, we have precious little common ground for rational discussion, don't we?
The one true datestamp is YYYYMMDD. Why? Because if you stick it on the FRONT if your filenames, and sort, they come up on chronological order. Its also the same way other numbers work - most significant digits first. DDMMYYYY and MMDDYYYY are BOTH broken.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
You're right that the Taliban formed after the Russians gave up on Afghanistan.
However, the US was arming the people who became the Taliban, the mujaheddin. They just weren't called the Taliban yet. WHen the vacuum came the guys we armed stepped up (with the arms the US gave them) and took over as the Taliban.
So yes, the Taliban was armed by the US and we did it (at the time) as a counter to Russia.
Wrong. Only a fraction of the mujaheddin became the Taliban, with the bulk of their troops being children by the time of the Soviet pullout (and many of them actually having been born in Pakistan as refugees.)
Many Mujaheddin were based on Herat, others were up north under Dostum's command, others grouped into ethnic armies (like the Hazaras) or like the predominately Tajik Northern Alliance under Massoud' leadership.
Only a portion of the Pashtun mujaheddin (in combination with Pashtun born in Pakistan as refugees) becoming the Taliban. There, some historical clarifications for ya.
"The entire point of this discussion has been the "civilian deaths" that have been caused by the NATO militaries there."
Since when?
I rather thought the topic of discussion was wikileaks, unreported incidents and general army fuckups.
And if you really mean to suggest that losing an arm, losing a leg, being blinded or rendered deaf or any of the other interesting and horrible permanent injuries are irrelevant or no big deal then well, we have precious little common ground for rational discussion, don't we?
Those pussies can just walk it off... oh snap.
Let me quote my own post which you replied to:
To which you responded:
The discussion was about civilian deaths, you retort with "Oh yeah well some kids got injured!"
So I'd say that up until the point you decided to completely change the focus, the discussion was deaths, not injuries.
Once again with the strawmen? How unfortunate. I'm not going to dignify this by addressing it - you can actually go back and read what I've wrote so far to see that none of that is what I've said or claimed to believe.
Here is a news flash for you fucktard.
I was one of those people in the military that thought it was doing some of the stupidest shit imagined. But you know what? I joined I took an oath I gave my word, and unlike that worthless piece of shit E3 giving my word means something to me.
Guess what, I got fed up and got the hell out.
But guess what you ignorant miserable piece of shit, when the shit hits the fan the next time, if the war comes to your fucking doorstep you are going to be crying for the military to come and save your sorry ass and the rest of your family.
And I am not talking about the shooting war you dipstick, I am talking about the war of resources, I am talking about the ENTIRE middle east run by Muslim Fundamentalists (and no, I am not talking about the vast vast vast majority of Muslims that are a great and wonderful people). I am talking about the ones who are just like the bible thumping idiots in THIS country who want to force you to be like them, deciding that us infidels don't deserve oil to heat our homes, to run our transportation system to make EVERY fucking microchip in the computer you are using to spew your ignorance all over /. with right down to the plastic keys on your keyboard.
Go have a great big glass of shut the fuck up.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Nope, but I care about the fact that some poor Afgahn or Pakistani cares enough about their country to get from under the yoke of Muslim fundamentalists aka the Taliban, you know those wacky guys who don't believe women should be educated, think that if their daughter gets raped it is an insult to their honor and so killing their own daughter to restore their honor is just fine and dandy is going to get himself killed because some E3 decides to dump raw intelligence to WikiLeaks and the french asshole says, Ehhh fuck you American's, I am French, you cannot fuck with me but I am going to fuck with you!
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Which french Asshole? Julian Assange is an Australian
But what about the American military who sit in their helicopters firing missiles into urban streets blowing up residents and journalists? I think more people are dying by the hands of US forces.
Somebody who is not afraid of the US stands up for what he believes and outs the US for crimes that they commit, and the US cries about it...
Ok an Australian Asshole, I don't care what country he is from, an asshole is an asshole.
Newsflash! War is a very messy business and people get killed. When the enemy hides in the civilian populace you have two choices. Go home and let the chips fall where they may (not the best option in a country where a very small and very violent minority wants the population to revert to the 6th century), or you can do the best you can with the best tech and intelligence you have, to kill them without killing anyone innocent.
You want to talk civilian casualties read up on the bombing of Dresden. or the fire bombing of Japan.
Want to talk civilian casualties? Lets talk about the pre-teen and teen girls who get blown up for the temerity to want to have an education! I am not talking masters degree's here, and am talking learning to read and write their own god damn language.
Journalists? give me a break. Those guys KNOW what they are getting themselves in for when they go there. Get in the way of a bullet or a missile headed toward the guys you are hanging with and you are going to get yourself killed, simple as that.
Does the US fuck up? You bet WE do. Do we try and fix it? You bet WE do. Does ANY of that give the right to some E3 ( the 3rd from lowest pay grade in ALL of the armed forces ), who volunteered into the Army. Who took an oath of allegiance, who swore and or affirmed that he would obey the orders and those of superior to his, to leak classified documents? No it does not, but I guess he does not think giving his word means anything.
And another thing. I was in the military, I new the military I joined was doing things that were questionable. Guess what, I kept my word, did my job and then got the fuck out and my first legal opportunity.
So while you sit there comfortably second guessing and praise some asshole who has done something that is pretty much guaranteed to get people killed for standing up for what they believe in, that E3 is going to go to prison but he is going to get 3 meals a day and a place to sleep. Julian Assange gets his 15 minutes and his website gets more hits. You know what that poor bastard who did the target spotting is going to get? If he is LUCKY he will get an AK-47 round in the head, if not he is going to get his head cut off by some fundamentalist with a sharp but not very big knife.
Happy now?
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Let me see if I get this straight:
You Illegally invade their country, blaming them for something they didn't do.
Kill innocent civilians.
Arrest members of their Army as terrorists, not POW's and then Hold them without charge.
And them complain when someone calls shenanigans on you...
IF the shoe was on the other foot (Afghanistan invaded US), you would be fighting back as well.
Now as for killing women for wanting to learn, and what ever crazy other reasons, that not why the US invaded.
The US helped arm and train the Afghans to fight against the Russians during the cold war. They did not help the Afghan people when the Taliban took control and started doing all this shit. They were in power for 5 years before the US invaded.
Why did they invade Afghanistan? Oh that right because the us was attacked. But wait, Afghanistan did not attack the US. The Taliban did not attack the US. They just refused to give up someone who did. And as the individuals responsible were really country independent (actually "are" not "were", as you still haven't caught them), the US needed to attack someone, right?
Basically what I'm trying to say is, stop trying to pretend that the US is there for some humanitarian mission. The US did not go there to save the women. They went there to kill! And they cant leave until they clean up the mess they created (which they never will). It will probably end up being another Vietnam, and will have to withdraw in at some point.
As for someone releasing classified information, that was something he morally thought was right. We all know that the military doesn't have any morals (as a whole, not the individuals), they obey orders.
Please do not think that I am not a supporter for the armed force personnel, I just don't think the decisions by government have been good ones
Please do not think that I am not a supporter for the armed force personnel, I just don't think the decisions by government have been good ones
And I agree with you. Fortunately we are given the opportunity, by law, to overthrow our government every 2,4 and 6 years (not that many people take advantage of that).
But my opinion about WikiLeaks is not going to change. What they did was wrong and so was that E3. You don't do shit like that, you just don't. If you want to expose things then there is a right way to go about it and they did it in the most wrong way possible and they should pay a heavy price for it due to the consequences of their actions.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!