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Obama Wants Allies To Go After WikiLeaks
krou writes "Coming on the back of human rights groups criticizing WikiLeaks, American officials are saying that the Obama administration is pressuring allies such as Australia, Britain, and Germany to open criminal investigations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and to try limit his ability to travel. 'It's not just our troops that are put in jeopardy by this leaking. It's UK troops, it's German troops, it's Australian troops — all of the NATO troops and foreign forces working together in Afghanistan,' said one American diplomatic official, who added that other governments should 'review whether the actions of WikiLeaks could constitute crimes under their own national-security laws.'"
How does a little egg on the Governments face = endangering troops? Seems to me sending them to Afghanistan and Iraq puts them in more danger than anything wikileaks could ever publish.
for bringing our own war criminals to justice.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
And later, this:
Wow, who is being alienated? Who are these damn people making these claims, and why isn't The Daily Beast bothering to identify them? Cowards, the lot of 'em.
Dog is my co-pilot.
You know you've made the big time when the Big O goes after ya through diplomatic channels. :p
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
What about investigations into the crimes that US troops (among others) and people higher up in the chain of command have conducted?
Why do they never get put on trial and punished?
Naive to think that they ever will be perhaps, but still...
"These documents that this website released endanger the lives of men and women around the globe. THESE DOCUMENTS. THESE DOCUMENTS RIGHT HERE."
If you don't want people to know about what's in the documents, stop fucking talking about them.
Living With a Nerd
It's not limited to just troops. I'm sure that the Taliban greatly appreciated suddenly having a comprehensive list of the names of hundreds of Afghan civilian informants.
The US is just doing what it does best: being a bully.
They would get a lot more support for this sort of action if the leaked documents were legitimately classified due to national secrets rather than just because they are embarassing. Revealing that the US government has been lying to its citizens and the world about what is happening in Afganistan and Iraq is certainly something they wouldn't want but keeping the electorate in the dark prevents them from providing direction to the country by electing officials to serve its aims
Anyone read the Jump 225 Trilogy by David Louis Edelman? This garbage sounds like a page right out of those books... The govt needs to keep their mouths shut and their hands off before they end up looking even stupider than they already do. Information wants to be free. If wikileaks dies, it's not like something else won't come up to replace it.
You know, you could replace Assange's name in this quote with Obama's and it would read equally true. Trying to drag us Europeans in as allies to support what looks like a war on exposed government cover-ups will not do wonders for how the US government is perceived over here.
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
The guy runs a web site. The USA have become control freaks. The troops were not put in danger by wikileaks they were put in danger by the Pentagon's lax security.
Gosh, it's as if our government doesn't appreciate it when people leak videos of our soldiers murdering civilians! You'd think they'd be grateful, since it gives them a more accurate understanding of why the civilians there are turning to extremism.
I'll do the Glenn Greenwald thing and point out the pathetic "stenographic reporting". When you anonymously quote a political body supporting itself as news, you are a tool of that political body. Here are the sources cited in the article:
American officials say
Officials tell The Daily Beast
American officials confirmed last month
Now, the officials say,
an American diplomatic official
a Defense Department official marveled.
American officials say.
An American military official tells The Daily Beast
and if the government can't keep its secrets, don't blame the folks who find them on the street. 95% of that stuff has already been in the papers, after all, within a year of its happening. the issue is level-1 security, the folks who have access. in the US, prior cases have established that if the press gets facts, they can print.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Im starting to think , there is professional trolling behind those posts.
Slashdot has always had many different oppinions and POV's...Yet as soon as the US goverment "officially" spoke against Wikileaks there has been an increasing number of obtuse and retarded "think of the troops" posts claiming assange is a jerk...
I know several boards who are regularly troled for commercial interests but... wtf this is slashdot.
I know I will hear a lot of counter-arguments to this but I'm going to say it anyway.
The documents were leaked by people who are in a position of disagreement with their orders and the behavior of the military and political officials. Simply saying "I don't like it" isn't enough of a statement for anyone's needs or purposes. If they are in the know and have evidence that "bad things" are happening, presenting proof of these bad things is the only true means of expression.
The U.S. and its involvements (interference) in the affairs of other sovereign nations is simply not appreciated by the majority of the world and this is especially true more recently. If there is anything that threatens the U.S. national security more than anything else, it is the increased disapproval of the U.S. in the world. People who are intent on sharing facts and truth wouldn't be as much of a problem if the U.S. was on the straight and narrow.
The notion of "if you haven't been doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear" has been used by governments against its citizens for a very long time. But when directed against governments, we see a pretty different set of standards.
Maybe a week or so ago. He simultaneously stated that there was nothing new or dangerous in the leaked documents, yet called it irresponsible for WikiLeaks for release this information. Normally, I'd take into consideration the "this will harm our intelligence assets" argument, but this has been going on for 9 years and every time we get a peek behind the curtain, we see that the public face on the war is a complete lie.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
So, if there's nothing new in this information, then why the concern? It's about the scope, not the empirical information.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Wikileaks is journalism, and this is a test of the American principle of "Freedom of the Press".
Sometimes the press publishes embarrassing, inconvenient, or dangerous information.
Those are the times when society is asked, "Is the freedom to publish a core value enshrined in a special place in our society or not?"
As an American, I hope the answer continues to remain "Yes".
For the sake of argument, let's assume that releasing these documents was morally and/or pragmatically wrong/harmful. I'm not entirely convinced of that, but I'll cede the point for this discussion.
What actual *crime* was committed in releasing these documents, that would justify a criminal investigation, limited travel, and general harassment by the government? Certainly the person with original access to the documents committed a crime in releasing them to unauthorized persons, but once that happened, what further crimes have occurred that would justify governmental interference?
From TFA: "The initial document dump by WikiLeaks last month is reported to have disclosed the names of hundreds of Afghan civilians who have cooperated with NATO forces". Has anyone checked if this is true? Are the names of Afghan civilians in the disclosed documents?
So when did reporting secrets become illegal Reporters do it all the time, it's their job. Half the time it's the politicians who leak the information in the first place. I really didn't see much in the stuff that everyone didn't already know or suspect anyway. Anyone remember the Pentagon Papers?
The leaked files were in possession of Wikileaks for months. During that time they contacted the Pentagon for assistance in minimizing the damage to informants that would likely be a consequence of the leaks.
The Pentagon and US military railed against the idea of helping to mitigate the damage and condemned the notion of making this data public, and so after a few months of fruitless negotiation the entire 91,000+ files were leaked unaltered. The perception that this all happened in the space of a few days is false and not worth entertaining.
Do note that Assange has subsequently been cavalier over the notion that people could die should the Taliban employ the documents to locate them; his comments have been of the blunt 'ends justify the means' flavour. Whether a person's life is worth the US losing this amount of face over controversial events in Afghanistan is down to individual perception but my point is that this situation isn't quite as clear cut as much of the mass media depict - and this goes for those in favour Wikileaks actions as well as those against.
The issue is less "information should be free" and more "this just signed some people's death warrants" with some of the posted information. Civilians whom, probably under the assurance of anonymity and safety, gave the US information. Now, someone leaked their names, Wikileaks posted it, and those same civilians are now in the cross hairs. Of course, we'll arm chair philosophize about the ethics, reasoning, logic, etc, about this whole thing, because men won't come in the night to kill us and our families as a result of some jackass claiming we told someone something.
about the freedom fighters in their backyards getting direct and indirect US aid?
Strange how this 'leak' was shown to to the US gov and given an ok.
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/07/26/times_wikileaks_white_house_meeting
Now its crimes under other allies "national-security laws"?
Using foreign courts to shut down material published in the US is an interesting new tactic.
Why not just use foreign operatives to shut down leakers in foreign lands?
The Soviets and East Germans had some great missions to study.
Warm up the 'presidential finding' printer.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The key part of the article, of course on the second page, is the following:
"Pentagon wants to bankrupt us by refusing to assist review," he tweeted on Monday, referring to the effort by WikiLeaks to convince the Defense Department to join in reviewing the additional 15,000 documents to remove the names of Afghan civilians and others who might be placed in danger by its release. "Media won’t take responsibility. Amnesty won’t. What to do?"
Wikileaks went to the Pentagon and/or White House and asked them to assist in the redaction of sensitive things... like the names of civilians. They refused to do so thinking it would prevent the release of the documents. Instead, Wikileaks simply did a cost-benefit analysis and found that the potential danger of the Taliban acquiring the documents, sifting through them, picking out suspect names, and then targeting them was not as valuable as releasing all these documents to the public.
Now, the government is going to try to demonize Wikileaks in every possible way... not because they're endangering lives or missions, but because they are willing to unveil damaging secrets. It's the Pentagon Papers all over again. The government will lose this battle in the long run.
Then again, as the immediate effects of the leaking of the Pentagon Papers showed, the public doesn't care. Ideally, people would be marching on DC, enraged at military mismanagement and lack of direction, but, just like before, they get excited by the sensationalism and then they forget.
Lose-Lose
Let's not beat around the bush. What they REALLY mean is that wikileaks is threatening their justification for spending. Spending is what makes the business of government incredibly lucrative for the elite few, not lying. Lying is merely a means to more spending.
The defense industry is worth billions of dollars per year, and the vast majority of that cash comes from government. The more money passing through the hands of the elite at the top, the better their position to exploit that flow of cash for personal gain.
Am I saying that money is the primary motivator of war, and the underlying objective of defense spending? You're damn right I am.
Why don't we outsource our War on Terror to India or China, we could pay them 1/4 for what we currently pay and they would be happy for the money. Save money and if we outsource to the Chinese we won't have to worry about the enemy not understanding we are serious.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Credibility?
He doest fucking need credibility.He's(and wikileaks) the messenger not the author.
Got leaked information.
Asked the original source( not the leaker) for help in redacting out sensible information.
Got told to fuck off.
Published the information with whatever redeacting they could do themselves.
Can you blame wikileaks for displaying(quite often) embarrasing information about powerfull entities? Hell Yes.
Can you blame wikileaks for whatever you learn through that information, spoecially since they refused to hel redacting it? Fucking Not.
Stop shooting the messenger.
I don't think that he 'sensationalized' the "Collateral Murder" video as it did a pretty good job of that on its own.
Are the innocent civilians that got gunned down by laughing Americans from a helicopter gunship somehow deserving of death? It is tragic that there could be risks to informants that helped the US but to claim that they are innocent is a stretch. They choose to provide information to an invading army knowing that there were risks of being discovered by nationalist fighters. To me at least that is profoundly less innocent that the victims of Predator bombings whose only 'crime' was to go to a family members wedding.
This is my thought too. I think it's a good thing to have a venue where evidence of wrongdoing can be leaked. For example, I didn't have an issue when they leaked the video of the Baghdad strike that killed the Reuters journalist and other unarmed civilians. The military was trying to cover it up, and the video showed evidence of possible wrongdoing. But they shouldn't leak something just because they can. There are perfectly legitimate reasons for the military to keep much of their information classified.
So, this doesn't come as a surprise either. Similar foreign policy, not as blatantly arrogant as Bush, but not better as Clinton's. The right answer to the leaked documents would have been: "Of course the documents talk about human right abuses. That's why we have these documents. It just shows that we are investigating every claim and are really committed to justice..." Next step: work with international support (Amnesty International) to have names redacted ("in the interest of Afghan civilians" maybe). Not the dumb old "really bad if our dark secrets become public"-statement. That might work with some super-patriotic Americans but will damage any trust other countries had in the new administration.
The European reaction to American pressure tactics? Quite predictable. European politicians will complain but play along, but the public will grin even more about the American claim that they are the champion of free speech.
Not that the government wouldn't have a justified interest in keeping at least some war related documents secret for at least a period of time, but the way they are going after the leak is more damaging than the leak itself. It reminds people of past cover ups. Obama is about to loose all the good-will bonus he got after the election. His hope-slogan carried the hope that things could be done differently and not the same-old. Now it's the same old "pressure the Allies"? Well, that's how Reagan created the Green party in Germany. Maybe Obama can help the pirate party.
Also make sure to say what war crime they committed as per 18USC2441. Then please provide evidence of said crime to at least the standard of a reasonable cause to believe (what is normally required for a grand jury indictment).
If you are talking about the helicopter video then no, sorry. While there were civilian casualties, that is not illegal. War is not pleasant and the rules of war are very different from normal civilian law.
So if you really believe there are people who need to be indicted, then let's here specifics. If you are just grandstanding and/or talking without understanding what a war crime really is, then please stuff it.
In some cases, it is not. Consider police informants.
A quote from an "American diplomatic official" becomes the Obama administration's position in an article and then becomes what Obama himself wants in the /. story that links to it.
The next step will probably be someone linking to the /. article and suggesting that God wants the world's nations to rise up against Wikileaks.
Is what the public good in releasing them was. Much as I support a person's right to have information they keep private, I support the government's need to keep various things classified. Now, that right is abused sometimes (the Pentagon Papers are a good example) and in that case the data should be leaked. However as I said, I have to see a compelling reason the public needs to know, and in particular one that is more compelling than the government's need to keep it classified. It is not a black and white situation of one side is right, the other is wrong. As with so much in human interactions, there are shades of gray. You have to weigh the public's need to know vs the harm caused and so on.
Thus far I've not been shown why the public needs to know this. Nobody has shown me something in them and said "It is critical that this information be made public." All I've heard about is civilian casualties. Well duh. War is nasty business, which is why it shouldn't be done unless absolutely necessary. People die, and that includes civilians. Anyone who pretends not to know that is fooling only themselves.
So to support Wikileaks in this (especially given the attitude they cop) I need to see what it is that the public needed to know so much that it outweighed the harm.
Given the that officials sources have be shown to be full of shit, how can they expect us to believe them now?
Karma: Bad. (As in Good?)
Perhaps leaking everything you can get your hands on it's always the best thing to do. Just a thought.
Why don't you start it? You can publish your income, what route you take to work. Anything embarrassing in your past? Oh' post that too. While we are at it how about your address, SSN if you have one, and bank account with routing information. What if I went through your trash and published whatever I find. Next I pay people you trust for dirt and publish that too. Anything I can get my hands on to use your phrase. Those are all illegal acts but I shouldn't be prosecuted. Hey! I'm just doing what I think is right, so I can ignore any laws. Not all information should be public. It may sound like a good idea to the feeble minded and anarchists, but not all secrets need be published.
While not necessarily directly harmful to the Allied forces, the leaks include the names of informants and those sympathetic to Allied forces.
To Shillnonymous and friends. Reality: Out of the thousands of records only three records contain a name of an "informant". One of which died and another was a pro-Taliban double agent. Not to mention that the White House also had the opportunity to redact names via the New Your Times contact, but declined to do so - they could not have cared less
All those news channels (and there are many - mostly US based) all all standing on very shaky moral ground, considering the news channels and their parrots talking about "thousands of Informants exposed" just happen to NOT talk about the murdered 20K+ civilians. What is more important - actual deaths or your self delusion/lies over thousands of imaginary Informants "and their families" dying.
That is utterly ridiculous.
Sensationalizing the "collateral murder" footage? Sensationalizing? It's inherently fucking sensationalized in its nature. Water is already wet, to begin with.
Can some folks from the rest of the world comment on this USA situation? Europeans? Canadians? Asians?
What is the global outlook and emotional stance towards Wikipedia vs. USA Govt? How does everybody else feel? Who does your locality empathize with the most?
Here it is much infighting, dicking around, pissing, and moaning. I am just curious as to how the USA looks from an outside perspective, either through your own eyes or through the commentary of the international media? Are folks talking about this stuff in the streets of Paris? Are kids discussing this in classrooms in England?
Russia, don't worry, I already know there that in Soviet Russia, documents leak you. Just kidding. Don't go KGB on my ass.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Re professional trolling "hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering"
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/03/report-recruit/
Julian Assange did talk about the issue of informants.
""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..."" from SBS (Australian TV)
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/transcript/id/600647/n/Inside-WikiLeaks
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Or, possibly, Wikileaks and it's leadership aren't beyond criticism.
So bring the informants to United States already. They did their jobs. I'm sure there will be new informants to come forward.
Do you let a spy stay in foreign country if (s)he's been exposed?
Is it just me or has Obama done a full 180 turn around on what you expected his policies to be since he came into office. So far I have yet to see a strong indication that he does things differently. So much for "change".
Asked the original source( not the leaker) for help in redacting out sensible information.
Got told to fuck off.
This! Thank you for pointing this out. The White House had the opportunity to participate for the purpose of mitigating harm, and chose not to do so.
How about their credit scores? How about their social security numbers? Why isn't the theft of their identities treated as a netional security concern? Why isn't the buying and selling of their medical records, shopping history, the web pages they surf all a matter of national security?
Why is Wikileaks being targeted, but not TransUnion, Experian and Equifax? The government can't have it both ways (well yes, they can and often do), as it seems they are setting a double standard. It's OK to publish information about the troops if you're selling it to advertisers, but not OK to publish on Wikileaks?
Who's to say that the information TransUnion is selling is any less a threat than what's in those redacted documents? Imagine a soldier with a bad credit history being pressured to do something against national interests by someone claiming they can "fix" the credit history of the soldier...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I know that slashdotters automatically love anything involving making information more free, but...
I liked Wikileaks, too, until they published all the reports from the ground in Afghanistan. Up until then, at least the high-profile stuff revealed actual coverups of things that could be damaging because the fact that it happened was embarrassing or wrong. But the latest stuff? It's pretty much mundane, but it reveals important sources of information to American troops. Revealing that the troops have sources of information would be fine if completely unsurprising. But who benefits (other than the Taliban) from revealing their names?
C'mon, Wikileaks. Step up and act like real journalists. Think before you post. And if you fsck up, don't be surprised when people get pissed off.
However...
So, only "wrong on all counts" if you have a sufficiently-twisted world-view...
Reply if you must, but this is the last comment from me on the subject, as I said, it was only supposed to be humorous, with one serious thing thrown in for each of them.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Those documents were reviewed by Wikileaks removing names. And some docs were withheld.
If these were just dumped on line somewhere this would not be the case.
Wikileaks is not the system that is broken. And Wikileaks saved lives.
There has been a bought and paid readings of a prewritten script as part of a coordinated effort to progressively demonise, discredit and finally destroy Wikileaks. The PR divisions of most organisations, charities included, can simply be viewed as part of the modern media sector. And as part of that sector, their primary purpose is to echo the opinions and worldview of their benefactors.
No-one cared about these civilian risks when the documents were first released; the Pentagon was still reeling from the shock of encountering actual investigative journalism. The scriptwriters were called in, but it took them a week or two to come up with hooks. The civilian risks has so far been the most successful way to paint the leaks in a negative light. The mainstream media, literally incapable of digesting the data load it was faced with, has swallowed this propaganda far more easily, and found it more palatable than doing the job they claim to do--showing truth to power.
The powers said that the war in Afganistan was going well; that the US and the UK were winning. The Wikileaks expose proves that they were lying. The war was going terribly all along. See what that is there? That's journalism; not paid propaganda. Wikileaks did the people of the US and the UK a enormous service, virtually unparalleled in history. And instead of their thanks, Julian Assange is going to be drawn and quartered.
The Western free press is dead; Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. It is not possible to expose hard truths or challenge those in power in any modern Western state(or at least the Anglo-Saxon ones). Those who try will be destroyed, discredited or simply ignored. This is made possible by the modern media, which has become a propaganda complex of terrifying size, power, and influence.
The definitive proof of all this will be the fate of Assange, which is now playing out before our very eyes. He is going to be torn apart by the monstrous media; A feral pack--on leashes. He is finished. No idealistic journalists, no cadre of bloggers, no editorials, no law, no person, no country can save him now.
And if you try anything similar, they'll get you too.
May the Maths Be with you!
Reality: one doesn't have to have the literal name to identify an informant. There are many cases where the home village of the informant is mentioned, and/or the name of the informant's father. Both make it easy to figure out the informant.
Even without that information, identifying the informant is just a logic puzzle: "(possible informant A) didn't know about the bomb plot until after it was reported to NATO. So he's not it. (possible informant B) did, but was out of town so he couldn't have told the NATO officer who was in town. That only leaves (possible informant C). Go shoot him."
people in the "civilized" blue states elected the current president who is doing the same thing the last president did, but worse. see for reference TFA regarding *Obama* chasing after wikileaks for exposing war crimes. The same Obama who committed to transparency and legitimate criticism of policies during the election. Also, read some Greenwald. Here's a representative sample: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/10/gibbs/index.html
How's that self-righteousness working out for you?
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
If it weren't for these fools living in the Red States, war wouldn't be considered acceptable. Most people in the civilized Blue States would not stand for money being wasted like that.
You are an idiot. Off the top of my head:
Wilson - Democrat - WW1
FDR - Democrat - WW2 (FDR went even further than most, he had the US Navy attacking German warships months before war was declared by Germany or authorized by the Congress)
Truman - Democrat - Korea
JFK/LBJ - Democrats - Vietnam
And those are just the major wars. Democrats have engaged in their share of police actions too.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I don't think the leaked Afghanistan war documents are a 'little egg'. It's clear proof that the war is lost and there is no hope for winning. ...
Bullshit. The Wikileaks documents a lot of out-of-context reports, mostly from low-level soldiers and unit commanders. Essentially, it's an internal bug-tracking database for the war.
Look at any internal bug-tracking database for any reasonably-sized project and you'll immediately conclude that the project is a horrible steaming pile of crap that everyone hates. That does not necessarily mean that the project actually is worthless. Imagine what the MS Windows (or OS X, or whatever) internal bug database must be like. Millions of known, incompatibilities, crash reports, and unsubstantiated error reports. And yet MS and Apple make shit-tons of money from them, and millions of people use them every ay.
Of course there are major problems with the war. It's a fucking war.
It's called progressive taxation, and it's been a foundational principal of our tax system since the income tax was invented. And that's as it should be. Rich people get proportionally more out of a functioning society than poor people do by definition, and should pay proportionally more. Think about it this way: if society collapsed tomorrow, who would stand to lose more: Bill Gates? Or the bum sleeping under the overpass? Having a livable society requires paying taxes, and rich people should pay proportionally more of them.
Wow really. So do you don't mind if I publish your phone call records, credit card purchases, SSN, credit card numbers, bank account informations, home address, phone number, and voting history?
There is your answer.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
As a non-American citizen, Assange has no particular obligation to attend to the defense of the US. Calling him a traitor is simply a false accusation.
Right, the Taliban does all this stuff, but they themselves are blameless. In fact, all these deaths are really Assange's fault. Please. The Taliban is going to go around murdering people regardless of any information released at Wikileaks.
Assange-bashers need to pick an argument. Either the information he released is old news (in which case it was also old news to the Taliban), or it wasn't. And if there really are new revelations of misconduct by the US Armed forces there, then he was right to release the data. You can't go around insisting both that there was no cause to release it AND that it was horribly threatening to Afghan informers.
"by redacting all of the names"
Which they actually did.
Remember, a vote for a Democrat or a Republican is a vote for the status quo, no matter what BS they vomit during the campaign.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Democrats==Republicans for the most part. They only try to distinguish themselves by adhering to one side or the other of a limited number of hot-button issue.
I think what we need is a constitutional amendment to allow voluntary secession of the states. The system is beyond fixable, and it would be nice to be able to start over locally.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
It would be one thing if we were doing something like WWII here - fighting for our own survival. But we're not. We're spending a bunch of money we don't have, getting a bunch of our own people killed, and only God knows how many Afghans killed, fighting a war that is essentially useless. No one realistically thinks that we're going to transform Afghanistan into a model of peace and democracy no matter what we do. No one thinks that if we just left Afghanistan tomorrow, our national security would be affected in any way whatsoever. Given that, yes, I think this war needs to be shoved in America's face every day, 24/7. This is what we're buying with our tax dollars and the blood of our soldiers. We're killing a bunch of guys who hate us, but live in caves and have no realistic capability to do anything to us. Plus blowing up wedding parties, schools, etc, etc. Yes, most of our operations are going correctly and not killing civillians. But the number of civilians it's OK to kill when there's no threat to you? That would be zero. America needs to see these images, over and over and over.
Assange told in an interview that informants' names were tagged with special code. So they just removed all of them, only 3 names have slipped. Undoubtedly, some more names can be deduced from indirect data.
However, there's nowhere close to hundreds of informants's names leaked that Pentagon wants us to believe.
If nothing else, it shows how little power the president REALLY has. No matter who you put in office, if they want to get anything done, they have to play the exact same games with the exact same players as the previous one.
So you have now your own samizdat ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat ). Just like in good old times...
Everyone should read War is a Racket, written by Marine Major General Smedley Butler in the early 1930s:
--
make install -not war
** note to NSA/CIA/White House/RNC/DNC/Goldman Sachs: If you've overlooked my name, please add me to all your various watchlists. ** The campaign against Wikileaks insults the dignity of the people of the United States and the world. It is long past time for the United States to become a good neighbor in the world instead of continuing to become a nakedly imperial power. p.s. to Mr. Gibbs and Obama: I'm a human being, a former naval office and I vote.
"Nothing we despise in the other person is entirely absent from ourselves." -- Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer
If they're on every page, then it would be easy for you to provide the filename and page number for the very first mention of a civilian informant? I mean, it would be trivial: "Page 1 of the document named 'secret military stuff.txt' identifies an American sympathizer in Afghanistan, and puts his/her life in danger".
Surely you, the honorable Anonymous Coward, wouldn't exaggerate for effect?