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Wikileaks To Publish Remaining Afghan Documents
Albanach writes "WikiLeaks spokesman Julian Assange has been quoted by the Associated Press as stating 'the organization is preparing to release the remaining secret Afghan war documents.' According to Assange, they are halfway through processing the remaining 15,000 files as they 'comb through' the files to ensure lives are not placed at risk."
Afghanistan produces around 85% of the world's poppies. There was NOT ONE MENTION of poppies, heroin, or opium in the released documents. What are the odds of that?
Anon Y. Mous
Illegal detention.
"He said he had 'no comment' about his current whereabouts."
Free Martian Whores!
Open letter from RWB secretary general to Wikileaks founder
At least it seems Julian Assange heard previous criticism.
My favorite feature of this round of Wikileaks is how it divides us. We now have the privilege of mostly being sorted into two rather neat piles:
A) This stuff should never have been secret, and anyone who would hide it is un-American
or
B) These secrets are property of the government, and anyone who would divulge them is un-American
The framing is succinct, and I doubt there will be another issue of this type within my lifetime. No matter which camp you're in, from a certain point of view, you're right. Personally, I hold that nothing need remain secret for very long, and that our government should be in the business of printing this material itself. Others are calling for Pvt Manning's execution.
Amazing times to live in...
people announce their intention to do something incredibly stupid.
I wonder how many relatives/friends of MIA soliders will comb through these archives looking for clues as to their fate.
(Just to clarify that I'm not being macabre for the sake of trolling - I support both wars and occupations, even though they ignored sane advice as to the troop strength required to hold and secure the regions.)
Emotions! In your brain!
They are already risking the lives of our soldiers by simply posting their tactics and secrets.
By your twisted logic nobody would have a right to know anything about any war until it was over.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Frankly, if nothing else it will help America have some idea as to what is happening, and that there is a war going on.
No, really they don't have a right to know about the operational details of the war until it is over.
That's not a new stance, it's pretty much how operational security in a theatre of war has happened for a couple thousand years.
Julian Assange is acting a spy really, getting stolen documents about operations and publishing them.
Since when did being wrong make anyone LESS American? ;)
If journalists got their hands on classified documents, you can safely assume enemy intelligence got them too. Exposing the information gives them nothing new.
more than just 2 camps, though.
how's this for a take: yes, afgans will (perhaps) be at risk. they will learn not to trust us (ever again).
this could be a good thing! it means we have ZERO chance of 'fixing that country'.
yay! we can go home. there's zero point in spending time, money, lives over there if its impossible to 'win' the war.
now, I think its impossible. 100.0% impossible. they won't trust us ever again.
time to go home. seriously.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Assange is only publishing what was already in the wild for several months, released there not by Wikileaks but by an unrelated wistleblower. You have a problem with that? Do you not understand that, for all we know, the Taliban already has the full text?
And since wars are never really over, nobody should have the right to know anything ever.
There are many roads to an Orwellian future, no need to take the highway.
My favorite feature of this round of Wikileaks is how it divides us. We now have the privilege of mostly being sorted into two rather neat piles
There is always a tension between the need for secrecy on various matters of governance, law enforcement, and military capabilities/plans/activities. The problem is that the people who make the decision on what is kept under wraps aren't neutral parties, so it easily becomes a method of hiding incompetence and corruption.
I don't know a solution. Maybe our system should include an elected review board with the authority to release whatever they think was improperly hidden. But how long until that became as corrupt as the rest of our political system?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
True.
And the US is acting an aggressor and illegal occupant at various places all over the world.
Expect resistance.
Well, count me as a rare option C: Some of this information (names and locations of informants, details of military strategies, etc) should be kept secret while other parts (involvement of the Pakistani military, civilian deaths, etc) never should have been secret.
He isn't a US citizen and therefore can not commit treason against us.
No, really they don't have a right to know about the operational details of the war until it is over. That's not a new stance, it's pretty much how operational security in a theatre of war has happened for a couple thousand years.
Does that make it right?
I a state where the people supposedly run the country via elected representatives, there is a whole lot of "need to know" if the system is even going to half-ass work.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They are focusing on the US and the Global War on Terror, there are no thousand page releases from the Sudan, Congo, Burma, Russia, Iran, North Korea, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Turkey or even Israel.
It's mostly focused on the US and to a lesser extent on some corporations.
I'd love to see what happened if they leaked 15,000 documents on Israeli operations in the West Bank or posted data on Israeli positions in the Golan.
i hear plenty of talk about how evil wikileaks are, for releasing the info, but not much talk in the corporate media or from our governments about the war crimes committed & subsequently covered up by the USA & UK.
so them inflated numbers of insurgents include how many woman, children and innocent men murdered exactly?
The Truth Is Out There:
The existing WikiLeaks documents contain 10-digit grid-squares, allowing people to know the location of various military resources down to the square meter. This is absolutely not required for any sort of public purpose -- the public would be just as informed if you would omit the grid-squares and replace them with a vague location/district.
This can be done without wasting any manpower, something like this regex pattern will redact all collections of more than 5 numerical digits:
sed -r s/'[0-9]{5,}'/'REDACTED'/g
If the grid-squares are broken into chunks with a delimiter, say '-', you can try:
sed -r s/'[0-9\\-]{5,}'/'REDACTED'/g
As usual with regex, grep out the first 1000 or so matches for casual perusal before you let them loose.
There is really no excuse, including lack of manpower, for removing these sorts of details that add nothing to public's knowledge but reveal very useful operational details.
this has been covered elsewhere, and it's basically crap.
a: the information was already out there and b: the gov't was supposed to release it via FOIA but has never done so. We're talking a 3+ year old FOIA request. Oh and c: that particular article has been covered before.
This is just straight up bullshit criticism because guess what? Assange is doing a better job than other news reporters because he's, you know, actually reporting news!
I still contend that operating with the knowledge that nothing is secret for very long is workable.
He's right. I'm pro-leak, but it's true. Go read some Sun Tzu or something.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Posting names of informants risks the lives of both the informants and the soldiers who interface with them. It's entirely possible that a squad of US soldiers could show up at their informant's home a month from now to find a nasty little surprise waiting for them. If there is only a single type of information divulged with these leaks that should have been kept secret, the names of people helping the US military has to be it.
The elected representatives are elected to be our representatives so they can know for us.
It's not a direct democracy.
Where is the US illegally occupying?
Yeah, I really wish he'd asked the White House or Pentagon for help in redacting these documents.
After all, they're the ones who are best placed to check that sort of thing, right?
Surely they would have wanted to minimize damage to the troops, right?
Surely they wouldn't want to just cover their asses, right?
Oh wait he did and they said no.
Hmm.
Is Julian Assange also the lead singer for Gorillaz?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
C) He did a piss poor job of redacting it, and it is very likely people are going to die because of it.
Any truth to the claim that Wikileaks asked the Whitehouse was asked for this very thing?
They are already risking the lives of our soldiers by simply posting their tactics and secrets.
You know what else risks the lives of our soldiers?
Unnecessary War!
That's still B, I'm afraid.
+1 Amen. The idea that WikiLeaks would be capable of determining what would endanger the armed forces, and what wouldn't, is absurd. You should also keep in mind that this miscreant wants to be paid $700,000 for this "harm minimization review". I say, each of the affected nations should take turns hanging his ass, and the last country in line gets to finish the job.
It doesn't really matter - the Taliban will find all sorts of excuses to kill:
e.g. Dancing girls and musicians
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/4217690/Taliban-underlines-its-growing-power-with-killing-of-dancing-girl-in-Pakistan.html
http://www.rferl.org/content/British_Ethnomusicologist_Discusses_Talibans_Campaign_Against_Musicians/1753865.html
Medics who the Taliban in one breath claim are missionaries and in another US spies:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10900338
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10903737
So if you're in the war-torn zones in Afghanistan, your odds of being killed are higher anyway - doesn't matter whether you're civilian or soldier, local or foreigner. I doubt Wikileaks is going to increase your risk that much.
Fact is if you are a US citizen living in the USA you have more to fear from your government than the Taliban. Heck, if you are living in some other country (other than Afghanistan) the US Gov is more likely to negatively impact your life than the Taliban.
So even if the Taliban claims that Wikileaks helped them kill more people in Afghanistan, I don't see it as a big deal. They can claim all they like.
If Wikileaks helps reduce the excesses of the most powerful Government in the world, it's doing good overall even if that Assange guy is just on an ego-trip.
p.s. Maybe the US Gov should start swapping in names of Taliban "middle managers" in their documents, leak them and let the Taliban go kill those :).
The elected representatives are elected to be our representatives so they can know for us. It's not a direct democracy.
Yes, but when our elected representatives tell us they are waging a just war on our behalf, waging it well, and not killing very many innocent bystanders, we need some knowledge of how truthful they are being so we'll know when to vote them out.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The fact that this guy is still alive kind of blows a hole in all those Jason Borne-esque conspiracy theories. I think that if the US really did have secret assassins and super-spies all over the world, that they could activate at any time for any reason, people like Julian Assange would be all kinds of dead.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Also: You must have missed the part where I said I was pro-leak.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I'd say variation of one of three camps.
a.) "I vote according to party lines and Assange's head should be a pike."
b.) "I vote for the speaker who appeals to my needs without stepping on too many heads, I probably question some of Assange's ethics, though I can see the overall necessity. I probably think he is also a bit of a dick."
c.) "I'm completely disillusioned by the idea of government. Let 'em burn, let 'em all burn and we can re-built something more just out of the ashes."
By wikileaks saying that they are 'combing through' to help save lives is idiotic. Exposing any secrets results in some form of damage - direct or indirect. The fact that they say that is amateur, to make people think it's ok what they are doing and for the greater good. That's what my post is trying to say. Could care less what they post. The end result is not always for the best - that depends on who it affects - either our soldiers on the ground or the commanders. Putting up more documents creates a big risk, that's all.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Look, I don't like watching TV either, but you gotta keep up with the rest of the world here, mate. :-)
Send your spendthrift head of state this
But we need to know WHAT they are doing in order to elect intelligently.
Otherwise we are just electing people with good smiles.
By exposing how one has acted and reacted in the past, it makes it easier for one to predict how one will act and react in the future. Also, it may be transparent to one who is not in the middle of the conflict as to how certain information can expose tactics, capabilities, and sensitive information. You ask for a specific example. I'd love to give you a specific example, but I think it's enough to state that the kind of information that wikileaks is getting a hold of is the kind of documentation spys were trying to obtain in the past. It might help, it might not help, but any information is information. Also, who's to say could be leaked further than wikileaks that is sensitive. Julian Assange talks about his "organization," but we don't necessarily know who he is dealing with.
I'm all for the world knowing what's actually happening and I think there should be a witch trial to root out the people who are classifying information based on political leanings and to open up our library of information. That being said, I think the proper precautions need to be taken for the correct people to go about declassifying the documentation. I think the best thing we can hope for from wikileaks is a grassroots movement to speed up the declassification of documents and to loosen the restrictions of information dissemination, but it's going to take a hell of a grassroots movement to get the ball rolling on this one.
This is definitely an interesting situation and brings up a lot of good discussion that we, as a society, need to be having about access to information. Hopefully this leads to open floor debate amongst our leaders. Hopefully this becomes an issue during our next presidential election.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Well he's willing to accept help, with the last lot he was willing to let the pentagon help with redaction (of course you can assume with the implication that if they played silly buggers and returned 90K black sheets of paper or redacted things which were merely embarrassing it would be ignored) rather than counting their blessings at getting a second chance to remove sensitive info from a leak after it has happened(how often do you think organisations get a chance at that) they sat back, firmly lodging their thumbs in their rectums and ignored the chance.
Reporters w/o Borders is a blatant propaganda front for the US Government. Proof & References: "Reporters Without Borders Unmasked"
"Reporters Without Borders seems to have a geopolitical agenda"
"Source Watch: Reporters Without Borders"
Reporters w/o Borders are also trying to trap potential leakers and activist bloggers in their thin veil: https://encrypted.google.com/search?num=100&q=Reporters+Without+Borders+shelter
Let's hope he learned from it.
I have no particular gripe with this information being leaked to the public. I do have a gripe with Wikileaks rushing to publish it and putting people at risk by including names and everything else.
The military, especially in times of war, doesn't work that way. There are risks and benefits to every action, getting in touch with an informant who may be compromised could easily provide enough of a benefit to be worth the risk, and that's even assuming the people with feet on the ground are aware that their source is compromised. If nothing else, Wikileaks denied the US military the intelligence that those informants could have provided, a consequence which, in an of itself, puts American soldiers are greater risk.
Why do I get the idea that you don't think they are trying to win the war and fix the country? Is it those little 's you put around those words?
If thats the case, why would this be reason to go home? If the objectives they've stated are false, than defying those objectives does nothing to their true scheme.
Military secrets are the most fleeting of all. (Spock, The Enterprise Incident)
Here's the thing - nothing really can remain secret for long. At least, not from the guys you're actively engaged in fighting against. Beyond immediate operations, the only people you can hope to hoodwink for long are your own citizens by way of information control and propaganda.
Are there ethical (and practical) issues involved in releasing this info? Are there similar issues involved in not releasing this info? Certainly. But in all likelihood, the harm involved in releasing it will be very limited. Anyone who could make use of it in a military sense probably already knows most of this stuff. Not all...but probably most. So what remains? It seems like it would be reasonable to conclude that the main effect is to inform the American public and international community - people the American government very much wants to keep in the dark, but people who they have no right to keep in the dark.
Anyway, the cat's out of the bag now. Everything you're seeing is spin control - it's not like making a big fuss over this is going to make it be un-leaked. On the other hand, if the government puts a big enough spin on it, the odds are that they can strongly diminish any informing effect it would have for the public. They can't go back and hide it from the people they're fighting, but they have a pretty good shot of hiding it from their taxpaying voters and from the international community. Does it make any sense to hand them a win on that front? Any damage the info could do in a military sensehas already been done.
So the democratically elected government of Afghanistan has told us to get out and we're now there illegally against their wishes? That's news to me.
There's a big difference between "I think this is wrong" and "This is illegal"
This has become my litmus test for whether or not someone is both an idiot and an American.
He asked the US military to help him figure out what was dangerous to the US armed forces, and they refused and started trying to hunt him down and discredit him. He knows he's not an expert, but he's trying to at least make the best attempt he's capable of as a layman. Would you rather he didn't even try?
Now, if your position actually is that only the military has any right to determine what's classified and what's not, I think you're missing the point: The military can and does use classification as a way of hiding things that are embarrassing rather than actually dangerous.
I am officially gone from
The point is that if Assange managed to get that information, it's likely that real spies got it too, and before him. If you want to base your strategy on certain things being secret, you should do a better job at keeping them secret. If any lives are lost as a result of exposing this, the blame is with those who failed to contain that information, not Assange.
A spy? Cut the bullshit.
He's no more a spy than the editors of the guardian or the new york times.
Wikileaks received a large number of documents, what did they do? they released most of them to the public with some redaction.
The guardian received a large number of documents, what did they do? they released most of them to the public with some redaction and wrote a load of stories about it.
If some chinese person emailed you classified chinese tank plans and you published them on your website for the public to see would that make you a spy?
unless you're in china, no, it would not.
Intelligence analyst? In the US military?
Let met tell you something: if there were any intelligence analysts who had any pull in DC, we certainly wouldn't have given the region to Iran on a silver platter by taking out Saddam Hussein, or held Afghanistan responsible for a Saudi Arabian terror group's actions.
The pieces of shit who architected the war thought
1) We'd be greeted as liberators.
2) Troops levels of several hundred thousand were "way off the mark"
3) The war cost would be less than 100 billion dollars and paid for by Iraqi oil revenues.
My favorite is Rumsfeld's quote: "The Gulf War in the 1990s lasted five days on the ground. I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks, or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.”
Scapegoating Assange is the equivalent of yelling at the vet doing the necropsy on the horse.
Others are calling for Pvt Manning's execution.
I wouldn't call for execution, but he's certainly due some discipline for disobeying orders. However, Julian Assange has done nothing wrong and the US shouldn't be hounding him. Instead, they should be investigating the abuses Manning and Assange have brought to light.
Free Martian Whores!
If you don't think of them as an "asset" and instead think of them as a human, then you'll find that you do indeed show up at their home after they've been outed. This kind of behavior is called "not being a complete fucking douche" and is quite intelligent. And if you just can't find it in you to be respectful and to care about the people who you come in contact with, then perhaps there are other reasons for doing the right thing that you might find compelling. How about this: if you just wash your hands of the travails of the people who help you out, you'll find out that fewer and fewer people are helping you out. So, even if you are a complete fucking douche, it still makes sense to take care of your "assets."
You sound as if you don't trust the judgment of Julian Assange, whom I'm sure has a solid background of years of military strategy and website administration.
Seriously though, our own congressional leaders admit to not reading the healthcare reform bill, yet we're to trust the folks at WikiLeaks to go through and assess the impact of 15,000 files?
There is nothing--nothing--that Assange can do that will take the blood off his and his organization's hands for the way they handled the first round of documents. This is war, and as an anti-war activist, Assange knows damn well that the price of a mistake or negligence in war is someone getting hurt. This isn't nerds versus jocks in high school, this is an armed conflict in one of the most violent places on Earth and he put the spotlight on a number of civilians in a way that makes them targets of opportunity in a war zone.
What does that have to do with anything?
You're clearly a 'camp B resident', but the way you're blurring things here is uncannily bizarre.
There are considerations to made in every war
When does hiding the truth from the people paying the bills enter into this equation?
putting peoples lives at risk
Could it not be argued that perpetuating the secret, and thereby the false pretenses about the war, puts even MORE lives at risk?
for self glorification
Are you a spook? This is simply intended to smear Assange, as if that matters in the slightest. When Wikileaks published all that Scientology 'tech' was that ALSO just to promote the growth of a certain ego? I don't recall seeing that claim then.
You're seeking to shoot the messenger, and that's not only irrelevant but also sad.
Just because it's not a new stance doesn't make it wrong. The Vietnam War showed that operational details can, radically, change public opinion of a conflict. Never forget that we, the voters of the US, are the boss here. We don't get to micro-manage our leaders, but every few years we get to express our right by deciding whether the current leaders stay in place or get replaced. We have a right to be able to make a fully informed decision when we get into the voting booth. Anything less (assuming that we have chosen to stay up-to-date) ceases to be democracy. Of course, specific details (such as the names of sources) should be kept secret, but if the Pentagon had been doing their job in the first place it wouldn't have fallen to an understaffed/inexperienced group like Wikileaks to stumble through it.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
there's zero chance we are there to 'fix the country'.
first, that can't happen. countries can't be fixed from outside; change HAS to come from within. they don't want it now and never did. they want foreign intervention as much as WE do on our own soil.
second, this is an 'orwellian war'. one that is meant to keep going on and on. no clear objectives, no exit strategy and no metrics for determining when the 'end' is.
perfectly in line with the 'we have always been at war' notion from 1984.
nope, I don't at all believe the lie that we're there to HELP anything. we are there due to bush's ego (firstly) and secondly, because the current president LIKES the extra powers he gets from keeping the country in a perma-state of fear and war.
this was never ever about helping the middle east. its all about keeping up the distraction and giving reasons for extra repression in our OWN country.
pretty obvious, I think.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
What is his name, please? There's just so much FUD around Wikileaks.
I realize those quotes are about Iraq. I'm just saying our entire foreign policy over there has been operating without regard for the safety of our troops since day 1.
We fucked up and didn't get Bin Laden, this war is all but over now anyways. At least Obama has given some hint that we won't have armies waging war indefinitely in the Middle-East.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Do you even understand what you're yelling about?
The person replying said that operational security (i.e., denying your enemy information about your troop locations, troop movements, supplies, and other capabilities) has been a fundamental tenet of good strategy during wartime since humans climbed down out of the trees and began fighting one another with pointy sticks. The less you know, the harder it is for you to anticipate the actions of your opponent, to guess what their capabilities and motivations are, and to guess where they're going to attack you next, or how they'll respond to your next attack.
Stating that this does not "make sense" or that it somehow is inapplicable just shows your tremendous naivete about anything related to military operations. Furthermore, your assertion that a web page where documents may be leaked heralds some profound change in our times also shows that naivete. Leaks during wartime have been around for almost as long as the "keep your information secret" rule. Wikileaks might make it easier to disseminate the information, but they are not doing anything new.
And for the record, I'm pro-responsible-leaking. I don't like that wikileaks rushed to publish this information and did a shitty job of redacting information that puts people at risk, but I don't fundamentally begrudge their right to report the information, so long as its done in a responsible & ethical fashion.
What war? I thought it was a police action or something.
1) Invade and occupy another country
2) Dethrone the current government
3) Get your own government/puppets in charge, especially easy if you can hold a "democratic" election where not everyone's represented
4) Get new government to ask for your help
SEE WE'RE NOT ILLEGALLY OCCUPYING [anylonger]
Sorry, but how stupid do you think the rest of the world really is?
Thank you, Sir, for stating my feelings better than I could have.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Sometimes, strategies that might otherwise be the optimal path to success are discarded because they violate your core principles. I'm sure that there are times and places where complete eradication of an opposing ethnic group/national population might be the way to gain dominance in a situation, but that doesn't mean that we should let ourselves devolve into that kind of animal.
Our country is founded on the concept of being a Representative Democracy. In order for that system to work, it requires the population to be fully informed of what is going on. Hiding operational details such as the actual count of civilian casualties works to keep American voters in the dark in a manner that ensures that they can't make a truly informed decision. "Just trust us" is only, ever, supposed to work until the end of a single term in office.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Problem is, it seems no real professionals were offering, so you're "only after" clause turns your proposal into "Let's never publish them".
In reality, there were only two choices. Never publish, or publish after a best-effort clean up by unpaid amateurs. Wikileaks went for the latter.
You say one person died due to Wikileaks. How many are dying in the war overall? What if the exposure of what's really happening leads to fighting ending sooner and thousands of lives being saved? I presume you'll call for those thousands of people to "come after" Wikileaks with gifts to thank them, right? :-)
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
http://delicious.com/clintjcl/warinafghanistan - The collection of links about the war, all of which are also integrated into my blog [but easier to read them on delicious].
You shouldn't make accusations against people (me) when those people can easily prove your accusations wrong. It just makes you look like a silly ideologue. Not everything is black and white.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I don't think of them as assets, folks that work in intelligence/counter-intelligence do.
What you say makes complete sense, but still, if whoever calls the shots in this world thought of them as 'human' they wouldn't invade the country and occupy it for 9 years, wreaking havoc and killing people now, would they?
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Hi. I'm pro-war. OK, I'm not. But I'm not upset we went to Afghanistan. Iraq less so, but I'm not upset Saddam was toppled. It just would have been a lot nicer if more of the "free-world" went in from the start so as to help remove a ruthless dictator from power.
And yes, I'd like for us to go into other places as well. It's amazing how some people, with freedom, bitch and moan about taking over brutal dictators. It makes it much harder when the world is torn on the issue. People like Saddam should never be allowed to stay in power. Not in this modern age. Those protesting the war are basically turning their back on basic human rights.
It's not like the US went to war with Canada. It went into Afghanistan and Iraq. Two of the many places we need to go into.
So you haven't heard the recent sabre-rattling at Iran, then?
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
You really do have an axe to grind with Wikileaks, huh? Since you have such a unique user name, I Googled it to see what it was a reference to. Didn't find any answer to that question, however I did find that someone with this username has posted the same message (not this one) over a hundred times to different websites. Which branch did you say you worked for again?
Then releasing the documents change nothing, right?
Whoa, it's not like he outed Valerie Plame or something.
You didn't hear? Iraq has a government and a military. The Iraqi military wants the US to stay to at least 2020.
Afghanistan has a government and a military too.
Everything you're seeing is spin control - it's not like making a big fuss over this is going to make it be un-leaked.
While I actually agree, it is amazing to watch the government behave as if this weren't true...
If you are the victim of a burglary, the fault lies with you for not securing your home properly. After all, you're the one who wanted windows, doors, and other apertures to "use" the house, instead of a giant, solid block of steel and cement with no entrance or exit.
"The idea that WikiLeaks would be capable of determining what would endanger the armed forces, and what wouldn't, is absurd."
Well, the Pentagon refused to help, so they were on their own.
Last I heard there are 3 confirmed informant names, 1 dead beforehand, one was a double agent for the taliban and the status of the last one is unknown.
No, times do not change with respect to military strategies
Apparently, they do. The barbarians are at the gate; Wikileaks is to government secrets as Napster was to music. Napster wasn't killed by better DRM or lawsuits, it was killed by corporations embracing the fact that music is in a new era, by easy-access a la carte downloads from places like iTunes.
Even if they kill Wikileaks or the folks who run it, it's clear now that no secret is entirely safe.
Maybe what this will mean is that governments, knowing that surprise is not an option any longer, will simply launch fewer military campaigns. Remember: Afghanistan is arguable, but we didn't need to go into Iraq. Skip a war, and that's thousands of secrets you never have to bury.
The CB App. What's your 20?
The archive is a 75MB 7-zip file, which uncompresses to 3.5GB of HTML.
$ grep -irl khalifa *
event/2007/05/AFG20070503n733.html
Just one hit for the word Khalifa, and it doesn't refer to Khalifa Abdullah. Whether or not he was an informant, he's not named in the original leak.
I'm confused how you talk about the callousness of a general that would risk the life of soldiers to check in on an informant while in the same breath saying it's perfectly OK to let an informant who has risked his life to help your forces in the past hang in the wind.
But beyond that, yes, the soldiers lives do belong far more to the General to risk than some civilian from another country. Maybe you're confused about how an Army works, but there's these guys called officers and they make tactical decisions that risk the lives of soldiers. The soldiers don't generally get to volunteer for each mission individually and they enlist expecting to be commanded by officers into dangerous situations.
RSF/RWB opposes Cuba's (and China's, Iran's, ...) attitudes towards reporters (i.e. jailing, torturing, murdering). If that's a political agenda, if that's a bad thing, if that makes you a stooge of the US gov, then I'm afraid I'm a stooge too. By the way, RWB/RSF is a French NGO to begin with.
Now I agree that RSF's secretary general is not the most well-behaved and smartest person. But he is right most of the time.
If they'd redacted the operational intelligence from the documents, the who and where, especially in regards to informants and collaborators, I'd be 95% in favor of the leaks.
Uh, yeah, transparency was an issue in our last election. And we all know how well those promises were kept.
I have a better solution: if your military's activities can't stand up to the scrutiny of the people who pay the bills and elect the leaders, maybe you shouldn't be involved in those activities.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
I agree with your tone and what you have to say, more or less, but you are trying to lump civilian casualties in with operational details such as troop movement strategies. 1 is not 2, even for large values of 1 :)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Assange also went over their and single handedly fought off an insurgent attack to save a puppy orphanage.
See? I can say things without links or proof too!
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
That is rational and reasonable.
It will never happen.
It saddens me to see what my country is turning into.
I am not saying that keeping operational information secure is NOT important to a wartime effort. Obviously it is.
I am saying that war should no longer be considered a viable option.
Yep, it's a mad world, kid. But we'll let you youngins fix it. By the way you can look forward to paying my social security if it can hold out for another 10 years.
I'd say variation of one of three camps.
a.) "I vote according to party lines and Assange's head should be a pike."
b.) "I vote for the speaker who appeals to my needs without stepping on too many heads, I probably question some of Assange's ethics, though I can see the overall necessity. I probably think he is also a bit of a dick."
c.) "I'm completely disillusioned by the idea of government. Nuke 'em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure."
FTFY
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
Don't read my comment - read this guy's grandchild-comment to mine: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1752470&cid=33232074 - He says it better than I ever could.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
False analogy, next please.
This business of "illegality" is just a semantic term slung around by people who don't know what they're talking about. By whose legal authority is the Afghanistan war "illegal"? The only legality governing the actions of the military of a sovereign nation is that own nation's laws. By that measure, there is nothing illegal about the occupation of Afghanistan. Those fucking stone-age barbarians in the Taliban decided to support and give aid to a terrorist organization that conducted a blatant attack on the United States. The United States is well within its own legal authority as defined by its Constitution to declare and wage war on such a nation in that situation.
Yes, the media showed how misrepresenting operational details can change public opinion.
Ask any North Vietnamese Army officer if he thought the North was defeated after Tet '68 and he will say yes.
If the media in the US hadn't spun that as a defeat, Johnson could have pushed the North to the peace talks in 1968 and we could have hammered out a peace then. Saving hundreds of thousands of lives and kept Cambodia from being destabilized by the war.
But people spun the operational details and leaked documents, it paralyzed the United States at that national political level and ultimately lead to the defeat of the South, the deaths of thousands and a terrible refuge problems.
so the timeline is
So the Taliban kills lots of random people they suspect might be working with the US, they don't really care how accurate they are, they just want to send a message that it isn't safe to work with the US. If they kill lots of random people who are just unpopular in their communities.
The US fails to keep the identities of it's sources secure, documents are stolen and sent to a foreign newslike activist organisation.
the Taliban continues to kill lots of random people they suspect might be working with the US.
The documents are leaked to the public mostly redacted.
the Taliban continues to kill lots of random people and some who are more likely to have been involved with the US but from this point every death is the fault of the activist organisation.
and somehow the US army who promised these people their identities would remain anonymous somehow hold no responsibility?
Honestly I'd be very surprised if this is the only leak of these documents, I've heard claims that thousands of contractors and servicemen had access to these files and old fashioned bribery or blackmail has historically been better at getting information out of people than the urge to tell the world and the taliban and Al-Qaida aren't exactly amateur organisations.
If it were me, I'd have George Bush against the wall in front of the firing squad for murder.
I guess it makes sense to kill Julian to cover up the murders committed by George Bush and co.
It might have mentioned meetings with unnamed leaders at ${LOCATION}s, which would allow someone to deduce who it was. I don't know.
The whole idea of wikileaks is that you don't have a damned choice about what's released or what isn't. Be grateful he's redacting something instead of complaining he's not doing enough! Assange isn't doing this to please you or get your approval.
Where does Wikileaks draw the line? If transparency is one of their fundamental principles, why are they redacting, and how do they decide what should be redacted and what shouldn't?
Yes, subject lines are quite useful, especially when they serve as a warning.
We also keep brutal dictators in power and overthrow elected governments. I would prefer we stay at home and not fuck with others.
No, an important value that a real spy provides is that you don't know you're being spied on, and you don't know what's been compromised. Publishing your secrets, while damaging, at least allows you to modify your behavior to avoid further damage.
What is sad is that releasing a ton of raw materials is what counts as journalism these days. You'd think it'd be possible for a journalist to go through it, digest what is relevant, hide what isn't relevant or is too dangerous to publish, and write a feature based on these facts. That way, we get the transparency we need to hold our governments accountable, and the people involved as still protected from harm.
Wikileaks is not the burglar in your awful analogy, they're the pawn shop.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you know how your enemy thinks and acts, you can predict his enemy and work against him. Don't be so stupid in your thinking.
I might give you that much, but how do you learn how your enemy thinks and acts? It's certainly not through tens of thousands of classified documents. That much information is mostly just noise, and the fact that often in the spy game information gets generated with the expectation of it being leaked means some of it is just complete hogwash.
"The Japanese planes are 200 miles from Pearl Harbor and closing steadily." -- This is useful information, it gives operational details of an imminent threat.
"We have a memo leaked from a trusted source inside Egypt saying they plan to mobilize forces against Israel and will attack within a week. It is from their defense minister." -- Looks like a smoking gun in hindsight, but not all that useful when you consider that the same thing was reported about 60 different times over the course of two years prior to an actual attack happening.
Or take this cute example from an old play:
Leader of small soviet bloc country gets knowledge of a spy in the US embassy, he decides to play both sides against each other to get a good deal for the information. He goes to the US Embassy.
Leader: I have knowledge of a spy in your embassy! It will cost you to get it.
US Official: We know about the spy, we have been feeding him false information for months.
Leader heads over to the Russian embassy.
Leader: They know about the spy you have in the US embassy.
Russian Official: Yes, we know and have been acting normally so as to not arouse suspicion.
Leader heads back over to the US Embassy.
Leader: They know that you know about the spy.
US Official: What? Were they serious?
The sad truth is, with modern technology and the size of government bureaucracy, this is pretty much the norm for the modern spy game. The actual benefit of the spy game is no longer to gain reliable intelligence, it's to make your enemy doubt the accuracy of theirs.
Woah, you linked more than ONE source on a single topic! I've been waiting for someone to do that for a long time!
Hey, if being an American is wrong, I'd rather be wrong.
(yeah, I think this makes sense, I think)
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Who has he murdered. While you don't need a body for murder, you do typically need a victim. An explicit victim whose death he intended.
I'm sorry, I don't like the fact that we are there either, I wish we had never gotten into either, and I agree on your assessment of Iraq, but...
The US had (and still, to my knowledge, HAS) UN approval and support to occupy Afghanistan. Our prime suspect in a major terrorist act, one Osama Bin Laden, was strongly suspected to be in Afghanistan and the then-current government, the Taliban, was refusing the US entry to go find him and arrest him. The US, supported at the time by most of Europe, Australia, Britain, and a generous mittenful of others (many of whom also pledged troops in support of the mission, and some of whom still have troops there) entered Afghanistan to find Bin Laden. The force then met resistance from the Taliban and (under UN authorization) removed the government.
What went horribly wrong was twofold (and I'm sure my oversimplification is glossing over a lot of detail, too bad):
- Bin Laden then (almost certainly) fled over the border to neighboring Pakistan, possibly even before we invaded, and there was too much resistance to allowing the UN force to cross the border. There still is, and there's a strong suspicion he's still there. The invasion of Afghanistan might never have had a chance of accomplishing its stated goal due partly to the delays in getting UN approval and making it all legal. Making it legitimate probably made it ineffective. There's irony in there somewhere.
- Once the chase was done, there was little reason to stay in Afghanistan except to clean up the mess, and there's little political capital to be gained from cleaning up - successful invasions get votes, holding maneuvers get called "Vietnam III" and "Korea II" and get your ass thrown out of office. Unless, of course, you can have a successful invasion to cover it up.
Oh, yeah. Iraq.
- A false connection was drawn between OBL and Iraq, seemingly because George W Bush wanted to be able to resolve a problem (Saddam Hussein's long-running game of cat and mouse with the UN) that neither his daddy nor Clinton was able to resolve, and almost certainly because Afghanistan needed to stop being mentioned on the headlines. "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED", as they say.
- That invasion dropped visibility of Afghanistan in the eyes of the American public so we could forget we had a Vietnam going on. It also had the unfortunate side effect of reducing available resources to handle Afghanistan, and in many ways the job there was largely ignored and the country was allowed to degenerate further until we needed lots more resources on the ground to fix it all up.
The focus is on Afghanistan at the moment, since Barak Obama obviously wants to focus on the invasion that at least once had legitimate UN support and would rather not have people talking about Iraq.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
George Bush, but not Clinton for bombing Iraq, overthrowing the government of Haiti, war with Serbia? Not Vladimir Putin? Dig up Pol Pot?
You'll have to point out to me the treaty all nations signed giving up the right to ever engage in war with another nation thereby making it "illegal". you do realize the term illegal implies that there is a law that is being broken right? That's the point I'm getting at here, that there's a difference between what you think is wrong, and what is actually illegal.
We gave the Taliban 43,000,000 dollars in May of 2001. This is because of their help with the War on Drugs. Only after 9/11 did we suddenly care about the Taliban's internal policies towards their population.
That's why wherever we go, we will be fought. The local population knows we'll only be there as long as is politically necessary. As soon as they are out of the local news, we'll be back to funding dictators and kings and not caring about who they are torturing to maintain order. Historical examples include Iraq (1980-1990), Iran (1953-1979), Saudi Arabia (present), Egypt (present), and unfortunately, I could go on.
Every war of aggression is illegal according to international law. Unless you think China could have legally invaded if they disagreed with the 2000 Supreme Court decision about the election, your argument does not hold water.
Sure. How likely would you be to "help" me clean up all the files on your computer and the entire contents of your filing cabinet that someone who hates you just happend to send me copies of? After all, you're familiar with these thousands of files so I'm sure you can put in the man hours to enable me to release them all to the public. Face it, you'd say "No, none of this stuff should be released so consider all characters in all files redacted." Even if you did agree, you'd still remove more than he wanted you too and he'd just release the rest anyway. I'm certain he asked exactly because he _knew_ there's virtually no chance they would agree to such utter nonsene, but that it could be later used as a defense for his stupid actions and the lives and strategic advantages that are and will be lost as a direct result.
Cambodia was destabilized by us being there. Had we worked out a peace we would have a North and South Vietnam like Korea. I argue that in the long term we were better off this way. If you really cared about those lives you would believe we would never have interfered to begin with.
Just because it's they way it's always been in the past doesn't mean that's the way it should be. For example, for most of the past two thousand years we didn't have antibiotics. That doesn't mean we shouldn't use them now.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Sure why not.
I don't give a fuck about Clinton either.
Throw Obama in there if you can tie civilian deaths in there.
Guess what, I am not a fucking hypocrite.
You're talking about two totally different things. An overall truthful reporting of general events in a war theater is fine and necessary. Revealing operational strategies and troop movements, etc., is what espionage is all about. Two completely different sorts of information. One is necessary for everyone to know, the other is absolutely necessary to keep secret so your fucking troops don't get killed every time they head out to engage the enemy. Are you seriously arguing that revealing operational plans and strategies for your enemy to read is necessary? Believe me, I want YOU running the opposing side in our next conflict, you'll make things so easy for everyone on our side by telling us what you're going to do and how you're going to go about it, the war will be over in about 2 hours. Get your head out of your ass and figure out what you're talking about before spewing nonsense like this.
Or inversely, since when did being right make anyone MORE American? (;
How long until this self righteous Bush goes on trial for murder over his wanton disregard over the lives of innocents?
fixed that for you.
I'd prefer we'd stop doing that to be honest, while also getting rid of the bad ones. Not to mention, doing business with them. Something nearly all governments are guilty of.
True. Even the Mitrokhin Archive was gone over and analyzed before it was published.
Fascinating books.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrokhin_Archive
Doesn't treason usually mean that someone's betraying their own country? Why do you assume that Assange should be loyal to the US??
Do you actually know how many names where published in the previous part of the leaks of informants? You don't probably so I'll tell you. 3, only 3 names where present. 1 was already dead, 1 was a double agent for the Taliban. The 3rd I couldn't find info.
Do they oppose the US government shutting out any reporters that dare point out problems? Many administrations have done this.
While I obviously have no first-hand knowledge of how real spying works, I assume that for the greater part it's paying a lot of money to people with access to classified information so that they give it to you. There's no reason Al Qaeda couldn't do it. Even if it doesn't, it's quite possible that a third party - one with a real spy network - gives them some information in order to undermine the U.S. military.
If you build a fortress and are the victim of a successful invasion the fault lies with you for not securing your fortress properly.
This is the military.
They are supposed to expect attempts to steal the information.
That one guy could grab the entire database and release it into the wild shows how pisspoor their systems, both human and electronic, were.
They're supposed to keep their information secure, if they fail that means they fucked up.
For every oddball with an urge to release the information into the wild for everyone to see there's going to be many who are willing to quietly swap a memory stick for a large bundle of cash or to get their child back safe.
Wikileaks may be an amateur run organisation but the Taliban certainly are not.
C. He has a right to say whatever he likes, this is free speech, he has no obligation to hide someone else's secrets.
That's me.
Pvt. Manning should get a dishonorable discharge.
Oh, so YOU would choose US occupation every time.
What about the poor bastards living in those shitholes? Do they get a choice? What if their choice is different to your choice? What then?
Letting informants live and continue to inform risks the lives of freedom fighters trying to shake off the bonds of occupation.
What makes the US military and its sympathizers and collaborators so much more important than other factions in this idiotic and unnecessary war?
Lets not forget, if the tables were turned, and we were Afghani, these people would be "traitors".
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
This kind of behavior is called "not being a complete fucking douche" and is quite intelligent.
Looking at politics and business, I'd say that last part isn't quite true...
No. They are elected to decide for us. Knowledge, and making decisions based upon knowledge, are two very different things.
Implicit trust in your leaders is a recipe for disaster.
As Reagan (far from one of my heroes) once said: "Trust, but verify".
It is the verification that makes representative democracy (a form of delegated power) work.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Do you have a source for this?
Whats your point? So what if he is acting as a spy? Many of the people whose names were released were "acting as spys". Why can the US military have Spys but someone spying to open information up is a bad guy? If he is so bad, then.... what are the named people?
Is it just a matter of "us vs them"? "Its not wrong when my country does it, but when it happens to us...."
In my eyes, Julian Assange is about the only hero these wars have produced. I hope that he sets an example for people all over the world and EVERY military and government all around the world has thorns like him sticking in their side.
War is now, and ALWAYS has been prosecuted to to the benefit of the few and at the expense of the many. Every dirty aspect of this nasty enterprise should be forcibly dragged out into the light of day, because sunlight is a great antiseptic.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
So you are saying that Valerie Plame Wilson's name should have been kept secret? And that the leak of her name and status is a crime?
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Anyone fighting the US probably already has our tactics. It is not like the manuals are hard to get.
If I had a choice of US occupation and the government by the likes of Taliban and whoever is going to take over Iraq after we leave (Shiite extremists owned by Iran?) I would choose US occupation every time.
You mean, the same Taliban or Shiite extremists that definitively didn't' had any control in the country BEFORE the USA invaded it? Those ones right?
Also, in other news, in case you don't see many news, the Taliban ALREADY control a big part of Iraq ... even with the USA presence there.
If I guy broke into my house and put a gun to my head and said "Say I'm hear legally when the cops show up" I'd probably say he was there legally.
Ok! Actual numbers other then Gate's vague 'there were names in there'. Can you site a source?
``A) This stuff should never have been secret, and anyone who would hide it is un-American
or
B) These secrets are property of the government, and anyone who would divulge them is un-American''
Personally, I think that if you think that "un-American" is a bad thing, you've already lost. I don't care if something or someone is American or not. What I care about is whether or not it's good for the world!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Given how much of the American public is behind him.. if we are at the point where someone is a spy for the american public against their own government.. something is very wrong.
Which.. would make sense if nobody else thought it was a viable option either. However, this isn't the case and thus your case is... lacking.
I don't expect morality, equality, consistency, or justice from the law. I expect only legality.
It would surprise me if they didn't.
For all its imperfections, the US gov still upholds free speech more than others.
Okay, and then the response is "Sorry, the majority of this stuff is getting released whether you want it to or not. Do you want a chance to help redact the truly sensitive parts, which you would know far better than me?"
Do you still say no?
Yes, but he would have an idea of what you consider to be truly sensitive information* - and hey, he might just respect that if it makes sense.
I really think a lot of the outrage we're seeing here is an expression of the fact that Wikileaks has the United States Military by the figurative shorthairs, and it makes a certain class of person feel impotent (generally the same people who feel large and potent when they look at our gigantic military budget, I bet). They just can't get over that, and respond with bluster and hot air and unsourced claims of civilian casualties.
*because, after all, he's got the completely unredacted documents; if you try to cover up the really embarrassing stuff, someone will notice
McCarthy.
Human beings are the biological version of Von Neumann machines.
Ahm.. you do realize that one of the reasons the Taliban is gaining power again is that they are doing a better job of delivering basic services to the countryside then the US backed government?
While the Taliban was bad for the people, the new government is actually worse in some rather fundamental ways. One of the problems with western style democracies is they tend to focus power into urban centers and drain rural areas of resources... so the cities (small percentage of the population) are getting wealthier but the countryside (most of the population) is getting poorer.
They also have serious issues with how centralized the new power is, given that Afghanistan, pre-soviet invasion, had a long history of decentralized democracy. The Taliban dovetailed with local authority better then the new government does.
No, really they don't have a right to know about the operational details of the war until it is over.
Well, by the standard you choose to adhere, I now want to see the Iraq documents, too. Because, you know, "Mission Accomplished".
But, that said, it's hard to condemn the kind of war propaganda perpetrated by our enemies on their citizens when we hold our military to such a low standard.
Hell, without leaks, we'd still have "operational details" like creating naked human pyramids and waterboarding the shit out of people (or do we still do that?).
He is not an American, why should he care about American national security?
If you believe American law applies in this case, then I would suggest you read the first amendment.
He did. They declined.
we are there due to bush's ego (firstly) and secondly, because the current president LIKES the extra powers he gets from keeping the country in a perma-state of fear and war.
'War Profiteering' has to figure in as a distant third.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Even a dead guy's name can be dangerous. Or do you forget that some organizations are quite happy to go beat up a dead guy's family just to make sure said family does not act like the dead guy?
"the Taliban ALREADY control a big part of Iraq"
wow.
they've been ambitious.
Wow, you people are still hung up on Clinton? You people are far more annoying than the Dubya whiners and Obama worshippers combined.
Hard to believe that some people are whining about legality/morality of Wikileaks, while US military forces are illegally occupying few countries and killing citizens there.
Oxymoron.
By that logic, loose lips don't sink ships? Wow...you're brilliant!
I have no idea why people on /. think no nation should have secrets. Until we all live in Utopia, anyone who thinks such a thing are absolute fucking idiots. The literal definition.
I think we have a serious case of egotism and idiocy run amok on slashdot here lately.
It's an old theme.
people will generally side with an oppressive regime that puts food on the table over a more appealing one which fails to do that.
The term "un-American" should only be used ironically or to recall the dark times of Joe McCarthy. There's not really any such thing as "American" in this sense. If there is, then it is antithetical to the notion of freedom. The fact that it sees such wide spread use is disturbing to me. This is not the vocabulary of a free country.
"We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" -- Kurt Vonnegut
Here's the thing - nothing really can remain secret for long. At least, not from the guys you're actively engaged in fighting against. Beyond immediate operations, the only people you can hope to hoodwink for long are your own citizens by way of information control and propaganda.
It's not a given that every military secret will be discovered. Look through history and you'll find examples of secrets that were uncovered and secrets that remained secret for years. It all depends on the nature of those secrets and the actors involved.
Are there ethical (and practical) issues involved in releasing this info? Are there similar issues involved in not releasing this info? Certainly. But in all likelihood, the harm involved in releasing it will be very limited. Anyone who could make use of it in a military sense probably already knows most of this stuff. Not all...but probably most. So what remains? It seems like it would be reasonable to conclude that the main effect is to inform the American public and international community - people the American government very much wants to keep in the dark, but people who they have no right to keep in the dark.
I don't believe it's a given that there is not sufficient military value in this information. Nor do I agree that there is significant information for the public. I find the documents fascinating (and more than a few incidents described tragic) - but there seems to be a distinct lack of smoking guns in the mix.
Anyway, the cat's out of the bag now. Everything you're seeing is spin control - it's not like making a big fuss over this is going to make it be un-leaked. On the other hand, if the government puts a big enough spin on it, the odds are that they can strongly diminish any informing effect it would have for the public. They can't go back and hide it from the people they're fighting, but they have a pretty good shot of hiding it from their taxpaying voters and from the international community. Does it make any sense to hand them a win on that front? Any damage the info could do in a military sensehas already been done.
I doubt anyone in the DoD thinks they can un-leak the documents. But what they can do is make an impression on those in a position of controlling similar secrets. And possibly weaken the support structure around organizations like Wikileaks. This is more than simply muddying up the waters to ensure limit the scope of public education.
Having said that - to be sure, there's a huge PR issue involved. The US Government is certainly going to be involved in that fight as well. But the propaganda is thick from all parties involved. One should be wary of everything that touches this subject.
If I had mod points, they'd go to the parent
Seems that name was left on purpose (the last name was cut off by Wikileaks), I could not find the reason why, but there was probably one and I don't believe, that after taking so much care not to harm the informants, Wikileaks would leave only the 1st name on purpose if there was some threat to the family of the guy.
He effectively released a hit list
I keep seeing people referring to this list, yet I never see any names.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Not releasing the documents might hurt 'our' soldiers too. But I think 'our' soldiers already know how 'your' soldiers work by simply observing them. There is no tactical information that cannot be gained from simply observing them over the past couple of years. Either way, the information has been leaked, the military knows what documentation has been lost by now, they have (or should have) mitigated the risk by now. You know what else hurts 'our' soldiers? 'Your' soldiers going to war against 'our' soldiers for no good reason but to expand the empire. Either way, 'your' soldiers voluntarily signed up to be cannon fodder to expand the empire, everytime I see one of 'your' soldiers walking around in uniform for no good reason while at home, I laugh because you're home, war is not here, uniform is unnecessary, it looks dumb and you look very dumb for even being enlisted.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Actually, what whistle is being blown here? So far as I can tell, this is only the release of day to day operations material, and not something detailing corruption or war crimes. As such, this whole affair appears to be nothing more than to provide intelligence information to the enemies of the US and nothing more, and really, pretending that lives are not at risk from a massive leak of day to day tactical and operational information is disingenuous on your part.
Dishing out some charity (financed by heroin sales and foreign donations) in order to win over population is not the way to build a sustainable economy. The job of the government (same applies to Afghanistan as does to US) is primarily to provide a stable rule of law (not arbitrary executions at the whim of the local mullahs). If the country has poor resources and is unable to produce anything worthwhile then it is probably going to be poor. There is no magical way for the government to change that and to conjure up wealth out of the rocks and sand. Taliban is a fundamentally inhuman organization that would sacrifice a million people in a blink of an eye if they thought that's what Allah wants. Their first concern is with their religious fantasies not with actual human beings. So please don't defend them.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Yeah, I really wish he'd asked the White House or Pentagon for help in redacting these documents.
...
Oh wait he did and they said no.
So what you're saying is that they redacted the entire collection of documents, he didn't agree, and then he went ahead and published. And after having taken this action, he is no longer responsible for that action because the US Government didn't agree with it.
Nice attempt at dodging the question. Are you seriously saying you would help someone who took your personal documents in redacting them so they could leak them on the Internet?
Not that I'm taking a stand either way, but to realistically expect anyone to want to willfully help someone redact information from documents that were stolen from you so they can leak them to the Internet is absurd.
And for the record, I'm pro-responsible-leaking. I don't like that wikileaks rushed to publish this information and did a shitty job of redacting information that puts people at risk
I agree IF that's the case, but do we actually know that wikileaks put people at risk? I keep hearing over and over and over that there are all these Afgani sympathizers that have been outed but...where's the list? Who are these people?
The redacted docs are public for the whole world to see, yet I still haven't seen any list. It's just "US government officials say it's possible that...blah blah blah".
Can anyone find this info? Seriously, not trolling.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
If I stole all your banking and credit information and wanted to leak it to the Internet would you realistically entertain me asking you for help redacting information before I leaked it?
starts playing world's smallest violin...
The fact of the matter is, if you release this kind of information, then it's on you to go through and filter it to make sure that nothing harmful is released. If you can't do that, then the responsible thing is to not release the information at all (which is not unrelated to the reason the material was classified in the first place).
The fact of the matter is, there is such a thing as an information expert for a given field. If you're not an expert in the field, and you just start puking up information on a Web page because no one can stop you, then you bear responsibility (moral and otherwise) for what happens when people use that information. Assange needs to grow a pair and deal with reality as it is, not as he'd wish it was.
This is not the vocabulary of a free country.
So you'd go so far as to say that it is un-American to use such a word?
I specifically referenced the scenario in this way for a reason. The contrast between the two extremes is crucial to the point I'm trying to make.
Do we,
A) Stand up for the principles we hold as 'American'
or
B) Stand up for the government itself as the embodiment of 'America'
Not an easy choice.
He asked for the money to hire people to go through and remove all the names from the documents, after Amnesty and the others refused his request for help doing so. It's pretty obvious the US government is spreading a lot of FUD and attempting to take wikileaks down. Wikileaks is under serious US Government attack.
When WikiLeaks decided to post the information, they became responsible for the information they posted. Assange can't cry about the fact that no one is helping him release the information responsibly when it's not information he should be posting in the first place. With the ability to post the information comes the responsibility for what happens when you post it, and you can't shirk that responsibility just by whining that no one will help you.
If I had a choice of US occupation and the government by the likes of Taliban and whoever is going to take over Iraq after we leave (Shiite extremists owned by Iran?) I would choose US occupation every time.
A lot of Afghans felt that if they had a choice between Soviet occupation and the forces that the US was imposing in their place, they would prefer the Soviets.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/world/asia/11afghan.html
The US government didn't pay any attention to their desires, democratic or otherwise, or to international law.
And a lot more people were killed as a result of that US interference than Wikileaks will ever bring about. After the Soviets were defeated, the Mujahadeen went on a killing spree with brutal tortures (castration, etc.).
If they went to so much trouble to erase the other names, I think these ones where left by some reason. And, Wikileaks are not stupid, they knew the families safety problems, so perhaps there is a reason for it ... for instance, the dead guy doesn't have any direct family or something.
There are so many words that can be chosen. All i know is if my country and been invaded, I'd consider these people Collaborators, not 'informants'. That's the problem with the whole Afghan/Iraq invasions, we're so caught up in semantics we're not looking at what is being done, and why, and the human impact of it.
I didn't exactly notice a whole lot of secret info regarding troop locations or transportation in the original Collateral Murder video - which is what started the whole Wikileaks vs US Government situation in the first place.
If perhaps they had redacted the documents like Assange had asked, if perhaps they hadn't tried to brush it ALL under the rug, if perhaps they haven't tried to make life difficult for Assange, and had instead acted a little more diplomatic about the issue, he probably wouldn't be releasing these full documents.
So can you REALLY blame the guy for lashing back this way when he is being treated like an enemy?
Julian Assange is acting a spy really, getting stolen documents about operations and publishing them.
I'll say again, this is simply a case of assassinating the messenger to disguise the message. Assange didn't collect these documents nor release them to anyone outside their zone of secrecy. Someone else did that. After the first time these were divulged, confidence no longer existed to be broken.
You're not alone in this opinion. The US government has come out and said basically the same thing, for likely the same reason. If we can make the man into a monster, we'll forget the good being done. Remember all the Scientology 'tech' they posted? Was that spying as well? Were they not exactly as monstrous on that day as on this one?
One of the problems with western style democracies is they tend to focus power into urban centers and drain rural areas of resources... so the cities (small percentage of the population) are getting wealthier but the countryside (most of the population) is getting poorer.
There's nothing specific about "western sytle democracies" with regards to this. It's happened with all forms of government throughout known history, and probably before then as well.
Yeah, I really wish he'd asked the White House or Pentagon for help in redacting these documents.
THEY ASKED Pentagon for help in redacting these documents. Pentagon denied, hoping that Wikileaks wouldn't raise the money for the menwork. http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wikileaks-to-seek-pentagon-help-on-war-logs-20100804-11flb.html
Frankly, and this isn't a troll, a serious [CITATION NEEDED] needs to be fulfilled. You claim there is a list of innocents, provide it or stop posting about its existence.
Basically, put up, or shut up. This is complicated enough as it is. We don't need misinformation being thrown around.
By the way, RWB/RSF is a French NGO to begin with.
Yeah, nice try. RWB is a US neocon propaganda front, and If you had read the references you would have seen this:
After years of trying to hide it, Robert Menard, Paris-based Secretary-General of Reporters Sans Frontieres or RWB, confessed that the RWB budget was primarily funded by “US organizations strictly linked to US foreign policy.” [6] Those US organizations behind RWB include the Open Society Foundation of billionaire speculator George Soros, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Congress’ National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Also included is the Center for Free Cuba, whose trustee, Otto Reich, was forced to resign from the George W. Bush administration after exposure of his role in a CIA-backed coup attempt against Venezuela’s democratically elected president, Hugo Chavez. [7] As one researcher found after months of trying to get a reply from NED about their funding of Reporters Without Borders, which included a flat denial from RSF executive director Lucie Morillon, the NED revealed that Reporters Without Borders received grants over at least three years from the International Republican Institute. The IRI is one of four subsidiaries of NED. [8] The NED, as I detail in my book, Full Spectrum Dominance:Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, was created by the US Congress during the Reagan administration on the initiative of then-CIA Director Bill Casey to replace the CIA's civil society covert action programs, which had been exposed by the Church committee in the mid-1970s. As Allen Weinstein, the man who drafted the legislation creating the NED admitted years later, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” [9]
So, stooge of the US neocon right, to be more specific.
RSF/RWB opposes Cuba's (and China's, Iran's, ...) attitudes towards reporters (i.e. jailing, torturing, murdering). If that's a political agenda, if that's a bad thing, if that makes you a stooge of the US gov, then I'm afraid I'm a stooge too.
So?! every reporter outside any of these regimes condemns them. It is what RWB do to set themselves apart that makes them very special. Take their reporting on Georgia (country) leading up to the elections, largely acknowledged now to be US orchestrated coup, followed up with a neocon war. Oh, and now Georgia is a US puppet state, the Pipelines from Georgia to Afghanistan can't be privatized quick enough - bringing the plan together to profit from this dirty war long after it is over.
Yes, RWB is one of the worst pro war propaganda fronts out there - they are just supposed to be clandestine about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_aggression
Ask any North Vietnamese Army officer if he thought the North was defeated after Tet '68 and he will say yes.
If the media in the US hadn't spun that as a defeat, Johnson could have pushed the North to the peace talks in 1968 and we could have hammered out a peace then.
So not only is the North Vietnamese Army officer highly susceptible to propaganda, but especially to the US media's propaganda?
How many of them even spoke English?
This seems rather absurd. Let alone the fact that these officers would have also had to contend with their own, native, propaganda.
Citations, please.
If I stole all your banking and credit information and wanted to leak it to the Internet would you realistically entertain me asking you for help redacting information before I leaked it?
The correct analogy would be, "look you help us redact your credit card info by removing the numerals that allow other people to use if for un-intended means". So yes, I would take the proposal.
The 'stable rule of law' thing is one of the reasons our form of government does not fit very well there. A big strong federal government does not sync well with a people who are used to (and have traditionally preferred) localized authority.
Bigger and more centralized is not always what people want or understand.
It should also be pointed out that there are fanatic factions within the Taliban, but for the most part it was made up of fairly pragmatic local authorities. Local authorities with an interest in keeping wealth local... they were at least an evil that the population knew how to live with.
I doubt that 1-2 million civilians killed during Soviet occupation would agree with that. Soviet version of pinpoint strikes involved flattening entire mujaheddin controlled towns and villages with carpet bombing. Btw, if you care to look at the history of Afghanistan, the disaster that it is now started with a leftist Soviet sponsored coup in 1978. Look up Saur Revolution. The communists manage to so thoroughly exterminate the previous government and elite (corrupt but secular and reasonably centrist) and implement disastrous land reforms and forced state atheism that it ensured that the opposition to Soviets consisted almost entirely of Muslim extremists groups which were the only ones around to take over the moment Soviets left (which they would eventually with or without US assistance to the mujaheddin). So it's a reasonable argument that it was the Soviet Union that caused Taliban to come to power and that the US role was incidental.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I remember when the government tried this tactic, too. It is still absurd.
So we really knew, for example, that Pakistan was taking part of the money we gave them and funneling it directly into the Taliban for use against our allies?
We knew that?
Really?
Really??
I'm not sure how it's dodging the question; I thought my response was kinda obvious.
Look: it's not a choice between "leak the documents" and "don't leak the documents". The only options you're being offered are "leak the documents without your input" and "leak the documents with your input".
If the release of my personal documents might lead to the potential death of hundreds of civilians and there was no way for me to stop the leak outright, then yes of course I would assist in the redaction process. I like to think that any human being with an ounce of empathy would choose potentially saving lives over having an "I won't help you evar!" hissy fit.
But honestly, I bet you anything the Pentagon has already analyzed the documents and located the majority of the places where civilian identities might have been compromised - after all, where do you think they got that "hundreds of civilians" statistic? They just decided that the potential loss of those civilians was acceptable, because every body can be used as a round against Wikileaks.
They had to kill those informants to save them.
They both should, IMO. I don't understand what sort of deal he's made with the Obama administration that's kept him out of jail.
Specific to western democracies no, but it is a common characteristic that they share which is not universal to all governmental forms. Soviet style communism did not resonate there for the same reason.
puts American soldiers are greater risk
This statement must sound pretty funny to the soldiers themselves who know that they are mostly expendable. If anyone actually gave a shit, making Pakistani involvement public should have been enough to get them out of harm's way entirely.
Strawman? Since when is personal documents which are a privacy issue the same thing as war documents which is a secrecy issue?
But we need to know WHAT they are doing in order to elect intelligently.
You don't elect generals. Generals are chosen. At the top by the President, the appropriate service secretary and chief. Approved by congress.
What you attempt to do is pick a president who will be competent at choosing secretaries and directing the DoD. He doesn't need to be, shouldn't be, involved in the specifics about how patrols are run.
Wars today are easily more about politics and viewpoints than they are about bombs and guns.
I don't read AC A human right
The "only 3 names" canard is based on someone literally grepping the records for the word "informant" and then looking for names nearby. However, there are many more names in there, and if you actually READ the records, many of them name people passing information to US forces without them being called "informant" in the text.
If you think the Taliban are going to be using grep, think again, and please stop with this misinformation already.
The elected representatives are elected to be our representatives so they can know for us.
BTW, almost none of our elected representatives have access to stuff that the military marks as secret. A few on committees are told some of it under a vow of secrecy, but then their hands are tied when they find out someone is doing something questionable.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I guess it depends on your point of view. Personally I think that countries where the populace is given the opportunity for self determination should do a lot more to help bring the rest of the world to those same circumstances.
In the case of Afghanistan you have to look at what it was like there while the Taliban was in control. For example, if you happened to be a woman or girl, living under the Taliban was a pretty shitty hand to be dealt. No education, no role in the public sphere, no rights independent of the men around you. I.e. chattel. I think fourteen million people being denied the chance to reach their potential, being denied some dignities and rights, should be reason enough for the rest of the world to be, if not outraged, then at least concerned.
Yeah, they failed to even try to be reasonable. He gave them a chance.
How long until this self righteous assange goes on trial for murder over his wanton disregard over the lives of innocents? He effectively released a hit list and made it freely available to one of the most violent organizations on the planet. At a minimum that's manslaughter in most countries.
Oh, I figure about two weeks after Shrub goes on trial for doing the same thing - except he didn't have a "list", and he gave it to the MOST violent organization on the planet. I'm sure it will be very heartwarming to the million or so dead in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By exposing how one has acted and reacted in the past, it makes it easier for one to predict how one will act and react in the future.
Are you supposing that the documents revealed anything along this line that the Taliban didn't already know after fighting us for eight years?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You forgot C) This stuff doesn't really make a difference anyway. It's 90,000 pages of nothing. The collateral murder thing was news... it told us stuff we didn't know. All these documents did was reveal ground level Afghan informants to the world. The only people that gained useful information from this leak were the Taliban.
By the way, RWB/RSF is a French NGO to begin with.
Yeah, nice try. RWB is a US neocon propaganda front, and If you had read the references you would have seen this:
After years of trying to hide it, Robert Menard, Paris-based Secretary-General of Reporters Sans Frontieres or RWB
How does that disprove what I said? Last time I checked, Paris was in France.
confessed that the RWB budget was primarily funded by “US organizations strictly linked to US foreign policy.” [6] Those US organizations behind RWB include the Open Society Foundation of billionaire speculator George Soros, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Congress’ National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Also included is the Center for Free Cuba, whose trustee, Otto Reich, was forced to resign from the George W. Bush administration after exposure of his role in a CIA-backed coup attempt against Venezuela’s democratically elected president, Hugo Chavez. [7] As one researcher found after months of trying to get a reply from NED about their funding of Reporters Without Borders, which included a flat denial from RSF executive director Lucie Morillon, the NED revealed that Reporters Without Borders received grants over at least three years from the International Republican Institute. The IRI is one of four subsidiaries of NED. [8] The NED, as I detail in my book, Full Spectrum Dominance:Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, was created by the US Congress during the Reagan administration on the initiative of then-CIA Director Bill Casey to replace the CIA's civil society covert action programs, which had been exposed by the Church committee in the mid-1970s. As Allen Weinstein, the man who drafted the legislation creating the NED admitted years later, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” [9]
So, stooge of the US neocon right, to be more specific.
Some of those organizations are left leaning, some are right leaning. And I wouldn't say Soros is a neocon at all.
RSF/RWB opposes Cuba's (and China's, Iran's, ...) attitudes towards reporters (i.e. jailing, torturing, murdering). If that's a political agenda, if that's a bad thing, if that makes you a stooge of the US gov, then I'm afraid I'm a stooge too.
So?! every reporter outside any of these regimes condemns them. It is what RWB do to set themselves apart that makes them very special. Take their reporting on Georgia (country) leading up to the elections, largely acknowledged now to be US orchestrated coup, followed up with a neocon war. Oh, and now Georgia is a US puppet state, the Pipelines from Georgia to Afghanistan can't be privatized quick enough - bringing the plan together to profit from this dirty war long after it is over.
Yes, RWB is one of the worst pro war propaganda fronts out there - they are just supposed to be clandestine about it.
The issue with Georgia is more complex than that. I suggest you read more about the events that led to the war in the Summer 2008.
If you look at what the author did, you will see that he merely grepped for the word "informant" in the text. This is stupid, because there are many other records that name people who passed information to the US military who are NOT literally called "informants", but are referred to by their village, position, etc.
Grepping and pattern matching is no substitution for understanding natural text, as anyone who has done natural language processing would tell you.
Dear God, not just you but also a sibling Anon both failed to read past the first line. I can understand not R-ing TFA, and sometimes even skipping TFS, but not even RTFC you're responding to? That's a new level of lazy.
They're fucking collaborators with an illegal occupation force, what do they expect? Not to Godwin the thread, but French and Polish Resistance fighters who killed collaborators during WWII got medals. Rather expect the Afghan people will do the same when Karzai and his gang of thugs are kicked back to Miami.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Sorry mate, you are right :) I was lazy. It was just that I saw seeing so many comment heading the same way, that I tough yours would be also. But it was my fault. Sorry again.
At great risk to my karma, I will answer that question: the rest of the world is stupid enough to allow the United States to do whatever it wants.
You may throw rocks at me now.
I'd hardly call that reasonable. It was a nice try; worth giving a shot. But I can't find fault in the US Government's refusal to assist in Wikileaks' actions. And I hardly find that as an excuse to ignore Wikileaks' responsibility in the actions they take.
I get that Wikileaks feels that they have a moral imperative to take these actions. But a part of taking that stance is accepting the responsibility of those actions.
Enemies of the US? If the Taliban were enemies of the US they'd be here taking down the electrical grid, poisoning the food supply and tearing up the transportation system (all three things trivially easy in our society). Instead they're in Afghanistan, fighting an illegal occupation force. When the US finally admits defeat and leaves the Taliban will still be in Afghanistan, and they'll stay there. They want to create an Islamic society in Afghanistan, not in Nebraska. They didn't attack the Soviet Union once the Kremlin pulled out their troops, and they're not going to attack us either.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
We now have the privilege of mostly being sorted into two rather neat piles:
Authoritarians
or
Decent human beings.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's been a long time since I've heard any politician say that the Afghanistan war was being waged well. About the only thing I've heard is that, "it's going to get better with our new commander." And I've heard that a lot. And maybe they're right this time. I have no doubt that the US could reach its goals in Afghanistan if they are willing to put in the time and effort, but there are two open questions right there.
Qxe4
What about the people who think these documents should have been released, but only after real professionals redacted names?
Like whom? the US government? given the past nine years, if you really believed that you'd be in the same camp as those who wish for a free pony courtesy of Obama.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Yesterday I watched “The Most Dangerous Man In America” a documentary about Daniel Ellsberg who released the Pentagon Papers. Its interesting how true Ellsberg's thoughts about government secrecy are, and how little has changed since 1972.
Wikileaks received a large number of documents, what did they do? they released most of them to the public with some redaction.
Let's be honest: Wikileaks SOLICITED classified documents.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
And for the record, I'm pro-responsible-leaking. I don't like that wikileaks rushed to publish this information and did a shitty job of redacting information that puts people at risk, but I don't fundamentally begrudge their right to report the information, so long as its done in a responsible & ethical fashion.
The world is never black and white.
Qxe4
Still an improvement over life under the warlords. The Taliban were slowly rebuilding roads and infrastructure, creating markets and potable water systems, and bringing order to the prior chaos. They were hailed as saviors in most of the country.
Look at it from the viewpoint of an Afghan woman. Would you rather live in a society where you were prohibited education, etc. but were safe, or would you prefer to live in a society where you could be raped and/or killed at any moment by any bastard with a Kalashnikov and a relative in the warlord's household? Which is worse, knowing your son will have to go to a madrassa for several years, or that they'll have to become child soldiers for some warlord in his continual internecine spats with the other warlords?
Not that the Taliban were nice guys, because they certainly weren't. The warlords are worse though.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Nations don't have any binding laws, if US doesn't like some international treaty it is possible to unilaterally withdraw from such treaty. It is up to the affected nations to act based on the withdrawal. Alternatively US government can produce laws that make previously illegal (according to US laws) acts legal.
Therefore when talking about nations there is no such thing as legal and illegal. All actions can be made legal and all opposing actions can be made illegal. Current wars are very clear example of such behavior. Invasions were "legally" justified first as retaliation, then as containment of WMD and later humanitarian effort to save peoples lives. Same time opponents were vilified as terrorists even when vast majority of them are defending their home land from invasion. We can only look at our own moral compass to decide whether a nations actions are justified, legal theater plays the history so that the winner/stronger is always the good guy.
Reporting involves analysis (and, hopefully, a basic understanding of what one is writing about). Assange isn't reporting. He's puking up someone else's documents on a Web page. Hopefully, they never hand out Pulitzers for that kind of thing.
Even the Pentagram admits that the Afghan "election" was rife with fraud. Karzai only occupies his post because of the thousands of US soldiers there propping him up. His partisans don't even control all of the suburbs of Kabul, much less the country at large. Calling Karzai and his band of thugs, drug smugglers and money launders a 'government' is rather like calling my house cat a pride of lions.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
"Lawful" doesn't preclude "Good".
Emotions! In your brain!
And at which point does it become "the person who stole shit's" fault that something was stolen?
That was more the point of the "awful analogy".
But I'd also point out that "receiving stolen goods" is generally a problem, legally, as well... Placing the pawn shop in a position where it may run afoul of the law and find itself having to answer some embarrassing questions.
How convenient for you that my analogy is false!
Can we agree that the burglar is responsible for the burglary, perhaps? Or is it always the victims' fault?
they put an open invitation on their site to send them "classified, censored or otherwise restricted material of political, diplomatic or ethical significance.".
Soliciting implies trying to convince people to send them documents or offering something in return.
Which they do not do.
They simply leave an open offer to anyone who has information which fits the criteria.
I make mine the words of Anonymous Coward.
And I quote:
1) Invade and occupy another country
2) Dethrone the current government
3) Get your own government/puppets in charge, especially easy if you can hold a "democratic" election where not everyone's represented
4) Get new government to ask for your help
SEE WE'RE NOT ILLEGALLY OCCUPYING [anylonger]
Sorry, but how stupid do you think the rest of the world really is?
Send your spendthrift head of state this
A quote from Göring comes to mind:
Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
"Die endgueltige Teilung Deutschlands - das ist unser Auftrag." - Chlodwig Poth
Yes, I can see where you would naturally conclude that the victim of theft is to blame for the theft, given all that. After all, banks couldn't exist without robbers, either, right?
Assange is not an American citizen.
If he got hold of Taliban secrets, would you argue that it would be unethical of him to release them because it put Taliban solder's lives at risk? I highly doubt it.
What you are demanding, in effect, is that someone who is not from the US, who has no duty to have a loyalty to the US, take the US's side.
Now, it may be that the US is actually the cowboy in the white hat here, with its hands clean. And maybe the Taliban is the cowboy in the black hat. The reality is, though the Taliban (or any theocratic movement) is dangerous to liberty, we are NOT some shining beacon of freedom in the world. We fucking CREATED the Taliban, essentially.
You can like what Assange does, you can hate it. But he has NO ethical obligation to take sides in a war and make sure he protects the lives of combatants on one side while not protecting those on the other (and in fact, by protecting one, likely cost lives of the other)
He, as a non-involved party, can actually, ethically just publish EVERYTHING he can get his hands on, and let the chips fall where they may with regard to the two sides fighting. It's THEIR war, not his, and the results of their war is their responsibility and their problem.
This space available.
I think its wrong, and do think it IS illegal.
Read the Constitution of the United States and when you find something about the head of the Executive having the discretion to wage-war-on-some-country-because-they-think-some-dude-that-blew-up-a-building-of-theirs-might-be-hiding there, please lemme know.
I understand your point, though. You got me there.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
On a side note, given that employees of the guardian did approach wikileaks when they heard about the documents it would be far more accurate to say that the guardian SOLICITED classified documents than to say that wikileaks did.
Wikileaks accepts classified documents, it doesn't send reporters into the field to try to convince people to hand them over.
Soliciting implies trying to convince people to send them documents or offering something in return. Which they do not do.
No, it's exactly what they did.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
They were hailed as saviors in most of the country
Only in their own propaganda.
Look at it from the viewpoint of an Afghan woman.
Wait. Let me put on my burqha and remove 99% of my knowledge and rights. Then I'll be ready for your seminar on the wonderful Taliban.
Not that the Taliban were nice guys, because they certainly weren't. The warlords are worse though.
The warlords weren't a threat to the rest of the world. It was shitty that Reagan pulled us out unceremoniously and left Afghanistan to itself, but when the people there didn't organize a functioning nation and a despotic dictatorship moved in, that made it worse, not better.
No, really they don't have a right to know about the operational details of the war until it is over.
And a Global War on Terror will never be over, and can never be escaped from, and will require pervasive covert operations, and so all the executive actions of any government running such a war could legitimately be considered 'operational details' and kept secret forever.
It seems as if war is fundamentally incompatible with democracy, and we're fast approaching the time when we have to choose either one or the other.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
/. version 'comb through' the files to ensure lives are not placed at risk.
TFA version comb through them to ensure Afghan lives were not put at risk
They aren't even pretending to protect individual NATO Soldiers.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Interesting piece of moral equivalence, inasmuch as it lacks the morals.
It isn't like they have a choice.
Would you be satisfied with this response from your local police force, if your house was burglarized? "sorry, can't help you, it's your own fault for not securing things better."
Or would you perhaps instead insist that they catch and punish the guy who stole shit from your house, and then recover your stolen crap from the pawn shop, and punish the pawn shop owner if it can be proven that he knew the stuff was stolen?
Well, we are dealing with legalities here. First, it would legally have to be a country to illegally occupy it. Then we'd have to illegally occupy it. Seeing how the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan never actually controlled all of Afghanistan, and had been recognized as a government by three countries in the world, there is a question if it was even a country to begin with. That we came in and helped the Norther Alliance which controlled the other part of Afghanistan also would muddle up the things. Then, or course, war is not illegal. Countries go to war all the time. I'm sort of unsure what actually counts as an illegal war. It was illegal by the US constitution as that went through the courts already and found the if congress ok's it, then it's a war.
As for how stupid the rest of the world is, it's not like anybody actually objected to us going into Afghanistan. 9/11 was certainly a cause for war against another nation, if there was even a nation to go to war against in this case. That only three (other Islamic run nations) even bothered to recognize them as a country speaks for how much they were actually liked. It's much like Iraq. Nobody really objected to us going into Iraq except the countries who were already doing business pumping and distributing their oil. Everybody else seemed to think it was a chance to get rid of the crazy dude on the block that nobody liked that often attacked other people.
Really, if you want to claim it was illegal, you're going to have to come up with some laws to actually back that claim up.
Iraq is an illegal war. Not by any international-law measure, but by American law. It was started by a rogue President who lied to the Congress to get the funding to wage it, and who had already transferred men, money, and material there from the legitimate Afghan conflict without their authority.
Sure.
Concerned, yes.
Dropping bombs and having armored divisions roll in, no.
There IS a difference.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
The U.S. didn't actually go there to give Afghanistan democracy.
The U.S. went there to protect itself, and in the process the rest of the world, from the people who had taken over there and were participating in attacks on the U.S. and other nations.
Democracy and a shift in the local value system are just part of the means of ensuring the world stays safe from the dangerous people who are still among the non-dangerous people there.
They are already risking the lives of our soldiers by simply posting their tactics and secrets.
Counter to risking their lives by sending them into a pointless war, I presume?
If this shortens the war by just one year, it will have saved many more lives than it could cost even in the worst case.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It is only journalism when you report both sides,anything less is biased or propaganda. Wikileaks is not posting both sides, but only information collected by the US. Where are the reports on what the Taliban do to innocents in the name of their unholy war?
Win if you can... Lose if you must... But always CHEAT!
so someone from wikileaks approached staff in the army and tried to convince them to send copies off military databases?
or was it more like reality, where they just offered a safe place to send documents if you felt it was important enough that the public hear about it.
As such in what way is that different from what any (good)newspaper does?
What do you want to bet that we probably aren't killing very many innocent bystanders compared to previous wars? I'd like to see the comparison between the Afghan war and WW2 with regards to civilian casualties due to various causes including bombing, mistaken identities, and other mistakes. I suspect that you'll find that the Afghan war is quite clean comparitively due to increases in technology as well as discipline. It's just that even that level is probably more than the average person is willing to deal with. It's like taking your average family to a slaughterhouse so they can see where their food comes from when they've never been to one before.
When did we overthrow the king of Afghanistan?
Win if you can... Lose if you must... But always CHEAT!
no but armies really couldn't exist without enemies.
I can see how you delude yourself that army intelligence has no duty to do more than a half arsed job protecting secrets from foreign agents.
If some organisation like wikileaks can get their hands on it without even trying, seriously- they just offered the equivalent of an open mailbox, you don't think the actual enemy who make an actual effort to get their hands on it don't already have it?
If the victim of a theft is an old granny living in the suburbs your logic would be fine when it's army intelligence in the middle of a fucking war then the blame rests squarely on them for not doing their jobs and not the newspaper, activist group or other which publishes the leaked info.
which would be great if wikileaks was the burglar even by any twisting of that analogy.
don't forget that the guardian and the new york times are the other 2 pawn shops.
"combing through" the documents to 'save lives' is bullshit and they know it
Sounds as dubious as someone combing through their code to make sure it is "bug free". How can that ever be assured?
Furthermore, if only 10% of the money that is spent on the US military in Afghanistan is spent on simply bribing everyone, from Karzai down to the most lowly peasant, the Taliban would not have a leg to stand on.
Compute. yearly spending on contracts and pay alone in Afghanistan in 2009 was $43.2 billion (source ). The Afghanistan GDP was $10.6 billion in 2006. So, simply dumping 4.2 billion dollar per year in the population would lift the GDP by a third!
Better yet, there are 27 million people in Afghanistan, spreading out $4.3 billion will give each Afghani, man, woman and child, a check of $1600 dollars annually. Given that the per capita income of the Afghani was a mere $800 in 2008, this will mean a 200% rise in income. Promise the same amount for the next 10 years (1 year of warfare), and focus on building an infrastructure that works. Of course, in Taliban controlled areas, the check cannot be paid out. And witness what the population will do.
It might not solve the problem, bribery and buying drugs is morally reprehensible (killing apparently isn't), but it seems to be a hell of a lot cheaper than trying to shoot your way out.
the point where they are the military at war.
if a bunch of soldiers get drunk in the field, pass out and get shot by an enemy patrol have they fucked up?
yes.
is this equivalent to some braindead analogy about you getting drunk at home and some thug breaking in and shooting you?
no.
If army intelligence keeps such a pisspoor control of it's classified documents that their entire database can be sent to a forgien activist group and international newspapers have they fucked up?
yes.
is this equivalent to some braindead analogy about robbing a bank?
no.
did the serviceman who stole the documents steal from the US army?
yes.
Did the new york times steal from the US army?
no.
did the guardian steal from the US army?
no.
did wikileaks steal from the US army?
no.
did they handle classified US documents?
yes.
Is this an issue for organisations which are not under US juristiction?
no.
I agree that Julian Assange isn't reporting. He's doing something much better than that: providing authentic, raw data. That way noone is dependent on one report's interpretation, biases and preconceptions, instead we're getting hundreds of different analyses and lots of results from datamining the information.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
You're a fool for throwing in Serbia. That's actually a success story. ( I know, because I live next to it. )
Greetings from Hungary
wow, you're getting into really garbled analogy territory.
I take it you want the new york times to be punished as well then?
in the case of information "recover your stolen crap from the pawn shop" makes about as much sense as trying to empty the ocean with a bucket.
There is no recovering information in the wild unless you've not actually still got your own copy.
the damage is done, it was not done by wikileaks, it was done by the armies failure to secure their systems and by whoever sent the info to wikileaks. Whoever it was could have just distributed it over freenet or some other medium if wikileaks didn't exist.
*sigh*
Your analogy is false because no one is blaming the victim here. Or have you seen someone claiming that it's the soldiers' fault if they get killed as a result of the leak? It's obvious that it's ultimately the fault of whoever pulls the trigger. That doesn't mean others are not to blame for creating the circumstances that allowed the killing to happen.
You want a better analogy? Imagine a boarding school for girls. Let's say that the guard on night shift in the dormitory has a habit of sleeping on the job. A journalists finds out about it and writes an article for the local newspaper. Another man reads it, sneaks into the dorm at night and rapes one of the girls.
Now, whose fault is it? Obviously not the victim's. Apart from being the victim, she's not a party in this discussion. The rapist is of course guilty of the actual crime. But who's guilty of creating the circumstances that allowed the crime to happen? The journalist, who exposed a hole in the dorm's security, or the guard, who created that hole?
My opinion is that the guard it guilty. His job was to protect others and he failed it. Similarly, it's the fault of whoever was responsible for keeping the documents secret if their exposure results in somebody's death. The journalists were simply doing their job - drawing public attention to the failings of people who were supposed to protect others.
The casus belli for the 1999 was much weaker than the casus belli for Operation Iraqi Freedom, yet Bush has been getting hammered on it for 7 years now.
What a horribly constructed argument...
Umm, the Clinton administration escalated and carried out just as many acts of war as the Bush administration did, yet for pointing that out we are "hung up on Clinton"?
Somalia escalation in 1993
Branch Davidian assault in 1993
Haitian invasion and occupation
Numerous strikes on Iraq
Strikes on Afghanistan
Bosnia
Strikes on the Sudan
Serbia
Desert Fox
I get that Wikileaks feels that they have a moral imperative to take these actions. But a part of taking that stance is accepting the responsibility of those actions.
That's pretty much how I feel about it. It's one thing for WikiLeaks to claim the right -- or even the responsibility -- to publish the documents. (I personally find it reprehensible, but at least they have the right to argue that way.) But to turn around and disclaim responsibility for what happens because of their decision is ludicrous. Its no one's responsibility but theirs to make sure that what gets published doesn't get anyone killed. If they're not sure about it, they shouldn't publish any of it. That's the responsible thing to do. They can't just whine about no one helping them redact the material, and then publish it all anyway. (Well, they obviously can, but it's a profoundly stupid position to take.)
I can't mod this up right now, but for what it's worth: +1*10^350
You would have a point IF the USA was 100% innocent in any shenanigans in the Middle East or the world. So someone finally said fuck it, lets fly.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I do not believe that anyone has a duty to act, whether it's engaging in military combat in a distant land or stopping and helping someone who has been in a car accident or a bystander intervening in a bar fight. But you'll definitely lose a lot of my respect if you don't (not that you need my respect.)
Should you not be a bit embarrassed about your procedure and the carelessness in which you put lives in the hands of your retarded 19 year old nephew? Do you now expect that this is the first and only instance of the information falling in the wrong hands? Do you consider yourself blameless?
By exposing how one has acted and reacted in the past, it makes it easier for one to predict how one will act and react in the future. Also, it may be transparent to one who is not in the middle of the conflict as to how certain information can expose tactics, capabilities, and sensitive information. You ask for a specific example. I'd love to give you a specific example, but I think it's enough to state that the kind of information that wikileaks is getting a hold of is the kind of documentation spys were trying to obtain in the past.
OMG General Petraeus is a spy!
http://www.amazon.com/Marine-Corps-Counterinsurgency-Field-Manual/dp/0226841510
The information isn't required to be entirely harmless. It only has to be a lot more helpful than harmful. I personally wouldn't wish to take the moral burden of causing unintended deaths or injuries and if it would happen (didn't yet, as far as we know) Assange would have to bear that burden.
But why is it that noone talks about the number of lives that the release of these documents will save? The US military now knows it can't just cover up a cowboy operation that went bad, because if it's bad enough someone will leak it sooner or later. The only option the military has is to be more careful. The US military and political leadership can't pretend everything is going fine with the war. They got jolted out of the denial phase pretty quickly. Obama's reaction was that "and THIS is why we're changing things on the ground, see?". John Kerry started discussing the Pakistan problem seriously.
In the long run, this leak might have been the best thing to have happened even for the US political leadership and military, cutting down on the time needed to change direction on how the war is handled. Of course, some of this is conjecture, but if it's allowed to play games with hypothetical informant deaths, then surely discussing the hypothetical/possible good effects of the war logs is fair game aswell?
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I am not sure what you wanted for morals. I am against non-consensual violence. There may be situations where it is justified on a very small scale, but, never on the scale of a war. I have far more sympathy for a person trying to resist an occupation than an occupier.
Now, in the past, many armies were armies of conscripts. You can't really blame a conscript for marching to battle, and fighting for his live when he arrives. Our army is one of volunteers. As such, I do feel that you can blame them for their piss poor moral decision to join a war.
At least the Afghani or Iraqi resistance fighters have a legitimate claim to having their hand forced by the foreign occupation force. They are acting out in violence against... people who volunteered (and thus consented) to being in a war. Sorry if my heart doesn't bleed for the occupation force just because they fly the "right flag".
Now I don't so much think they are doing the moral thing, even by fighting the occupation force, however, I understand and sympathize with why they do. I do think that they should look to find better and less violent modes of resistance, but its not like they started the fight.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Who says that reporting raw data is necessarily better? In fact, I would argue that raw data is much worse, precisely because it's not screened for sensitive information that could get people killed. (And by the way: The fact that Assange says he hasn't heard of anyone getting killed because of the information means precisely nothing, even if you assume he's telling the truth.)
If you want to save lives, then get out of Vietn.... I mean Afghanistan now. It was wrong to go, it's wrong to stay.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Do you even bother to read the context of ANY post you respond to? Or do you just spout off without any knowledge of the context?
My response was a specific response to this statement:
So Mr. Assange, by widely publicizing the names, bears no responsibility for the lives lost - it's solely the people whose data was stolen who are at fault?
I would want the NY Times to bear some responsibility for publicizing names of informants as well, if they have done so. Thankfully, they seem to have some journalistic standards.
Well, I grew up under US occupation. I get to say what I want when I want. I worship what I want when I want. I have enough security that I don't have to worry about being gun down in the street. I can go into a supermarket and buy just about anything I can think. I can make enough money to support my needs and even indulge in some excess material gain. At the end of the day, I even have time for a hobby or extra academic pursuit. Basically, I am free to be the person I want to be and enjoy doing that for a whole lot longer than any Afghani can. I didn't have a choice where I was born. I am sure lucky I was born here.
If I live in a utter shithole and the world's wealthiest and strongest nation decided dump a shitload of cash into my country because religious zealots who rule my life with fear and brutality wrongly figured that they could attack that country with impunity, I would do everything I could to advantage of that situation. I would take their money and build something, I would learn everything I could from them, and I would seriously question how things were done in the past. The way afghanis did it before brought about 30 years of war, poverty, and brutality and turn Afghanistan into an utter shithole. I would hope to make it better.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
You know, that's funny because I could swear that's exactly what you did:
North America...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Those fucking stone-age barbarians in the Taliban decided to support and give aid to a terrorist organization that conducted a blatant attack on the United States.
Where's the evidence? And edited videos(by whom nobody knows) of boasting by said barbarians does not count. The people who paid for the attacks have yet to surface. Oh wait, you think these people do all this for free??? Pull the other one..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
If some chinese person emailed you classified chinese tank plans and you published them on your website for the public to see would that make you a spy? unless you're in china, no, it would not.
I wouldn't exactly want to a trip to see the Great Wall of China after that. Some people call that spying and some people would do everything in their power to punish it.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
I have actually been analyzing the documents, and thanks to a tip from another /.er, I have found at least 25 names (tip: look in medcap category) So while I have and still am waiting to see some sort of official analysis with hard numbers to come out, I can tell you there are more than 3. I'm a semi-supporter of the leaks (it's complicated), but just thought I'd throw some real info your way.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
I think you should read 1984 by George Orwell and consider what would happen if the war is never over?
After all, what is your (or your Governments) estimated date for when the 'war on terror' be over?
As a lowly software dev, if I said I was going to embark on a very important, critical but big complex job that would take trillions of dollars, the people paying might want to have some oversight as to how it would end and if the money was being well spent. Even to ask if it was working a few years down the line.
And what would create greater harm - a government operating with total immunity from criticism, keeping everything secret (even if it turns our that they got into a bit of creative torture or genocide), or the possiblity that some information published endangers some individuals in a country at war. It seems to me that somebody local working with Americans in Afganistan might be endangered anyway.
It may be that there have only been 3 INFORMANTS names released.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
I don't see anything in that Wikipedia link about 1-2 million being killed. It says thousands were killed. The US invasion was responsible for 10,000-20,000 deaths. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_of_the_War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%93present)
One of the great flaws of the Soviet Union is their (sometimes senseless) brutality. Of course the US has been equally brutal sometimes, for example in Vietnam and in Iraq (where they leveled Fallujah, indiscriminately killing civilians). If the Soviet Union and the US asked me how they should conduct their military operations, I would have told them to avoid killing civilians, and not to torture and kill their political enemies, but they didn't ask me.
My original point is that the Afghanis didn't want us there. The elections that we set up were a sham (illiterate peasants casting votes when they had no idea what voting was). We're justified in fighting the Taliban, who attacked us, but we're imposing ourselves on Afghanistan.
It's hard for me to find any reason why the Afghanis should prefer us to the Soviets, except that the Soviets were more effective in creating security, schools, equality for women, industry, housing, electricity, health care, and a modern infrastructure in at least the urban areas and some rural areas. The Soviets conducted those mining and mineral surveys, don't forget. (Although it's not fair to compare the Soviets to somebody as incompetent as George W. Bush.)
Iraq is an illegal war. Not by any international-law measure, but by American law. It was started by a rogue President who lied to the Congress to get the funding to wage it, and who had already transferred men, money, and material there from the legitimate Afghan conflict without their authority.
Technically, the Iraq war started as Desert Storm with Bush1 had a cooling off period (but no peace treaty), and was ended by Bush2.
Yes, and if someone pukes out raw NSA intercept streams that show us the real name and address of the Anonymous Coward we're responding to, that would be a good thing. Even if he gets loses his job. Because information "wants to be free" - never mind the world we live in.
Neal Stephenson in "diamond age" argues through a character, that as moral relativism took hold, the natural desire to point the finger became more difficult. "I'm not wrong, I just have a different value system" became a valid defense against any accusers. To allow for the blame game to continue we elevated hypocrisy from a relatively minor vice, to the single most serious (and perhaps only) moral violation a person could commit. I agree with the character in the story, that a person who has a value system I agree with, but who often fails, is far more noble in my eyes, than someone who is completely consistent with a value system I hate.
I'm not sure that applies to this case because the question of motivation. But the underlying assertion that actions I perform, that I claim to be "good" are less good because I inconsistently perform them, is an assertion I vehemently disagree with.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Julian Assange is acting a spy really, getting stolen documents about operations and publishing them.
spy?
or (to use a business expression that is trendy these days) is he instituting a disruptive model, thus shaking up those who used to research and report news?
"but he's not doing it like the rest of us do!"
yeah. we noticed that.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
You didn't answer the GP's question. How are we supposed to know when to kick them out? Or are you simply suggesting that we are not supposed to know how our elected leaders are doing until the war is over? That means that if your elected leaders are abusing their power and position, then you will not know until it is all over. If the abuses are heinous, do you think it is moral to just say "oh, well, we aren't supposed to know until it's over"? What if the abuses of power are to remove any repercussions for the abusive behavior, or remove rules like FOIA, due process, etc.? What do you do if the war never really ends (Korea, terrorism)?
No, in the end, your philosophy is fundamentally flawed, and inherently dangerous at its core. Not only am I awed and afraid of your ignorance, I can't imagine how you managed to get +4 insightful from the Slashdot crowd.
I used blockquote for the above, when blackquote didn't work. It strikes me that there are more conjunctions of black and white in this world than are dreamed of in your philosophy. One that springs readily to mind is whether life is A) cheap, or B) precious.
You can boil this down another way. America is morally superior to other nations because A) Americans are better people (minus a few bad Islamic apples since deported to Guantanamo), or B) Americans have a better political system of checks and balances.
The right wing seems to implicitly believe proposition (A). From this view, disclosure serves no real purpose and potentially compromises human lives (mostly the cheap variety), national interests (bought and paid for), and the influence and careers of Pentagon demagogists.
Neither Milgram's authority experiment nor Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment provided any scientific backing for this view. But no matter, the right wing fringe discounts science to begin with. Moral superiority is a faith-based enterprise.
On the matter of checks and balances, there are differences in opinion on whether it was good enough to have written them down back in 1787, or whether you actually have to live by what you proclaim in order for the virtuous halo to take effect. Checks and balances prove annoyingly inconvenient. Who knew? In any case, American congress has lately taken the path of honour in the breach. There's oil at stake, among other things.
If Wikileaks helps to end a war that has outlived its political mission and degenerated into war-machine profiteering (that never happens) then ultimately it will save more lives than it compromises. Of course, if you're firmly welded to "life is precious" the one person who dies in violence as a result of Wikileaks outweighs a thousand intangible lives saved. Life is most precious when discussing the fate of a single individual.
I don't have a strong opinion on Wikileaks one way or the other. Whether his disclosure has a salutary effect on the future of Afghanistan depends on information unavailable to the thinking public. See also "checks and balances". Generally I believe that systemic secrecy is corrosive to moral wisdom. It has to stop somewhere. Is this the best mechanism? One would like to hope not.
Against that hope, I sure haven't spotted much American vigour lately in the department of ethical self-disclosure. Both sides agree on one thing: ethical disclosure is an expensive undertaking and doesn't play well on TV. I nearly drowned in my own spittle when BP first announced the leak rate as 1000 bpd. Don't blame BP. They were merely aping recent American political norms.
heya,
Err, no, I think they're both pretty s*itty situations. But if you're a women, living under Taliban rule was much, much worse.
You say that Afghan women were "safe" under the Taliban? What are you smoking.
I mean, the most recent copy of Time magazine floating in my house has a photo of an Afghan women with her nose cut off. Apparently she ran away from her wife-beating husband, and the Taliban went after her, held her down while her husband watched (and I assume cheered), and cut off her nose. She's currently residing with some care organisation, I believe, after they left her for dead.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2007269,00.html
Oh, and just look here for some classic examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban_treatment_of_women
I mean, the Taliban would rather they die slowly than get medical aid, because *gasp* male doctors can't treat female patients. Oh, and since women are denied education after the age of 8, it's hardly like they're going to become doctors, is it?
The thing is, any society like this is eventually going to run itself into the ground, or degenerate into some pre-Industrial revolution tribal free-for-all. The thing is, as developed Western countries, many of us find it somewhat difficult to stomach something like that happening in our backyard. That sort of widespread damage being caused to people...I think we have a phrase for that...hmm...human rights abuse?
Now, that wasn't the primary reason for ousting the Taliban - their support and harbouring of Osama Bin Laden, and continued funding for Al Qaeda was, but hey, it's not that bad a thing, what we're doing in Afghanistan, giving them the vote, and emancipating their women.
Also, it's funny how now that the American public has revealed themselves as spineless and without enough stomach to see things through to the end, and the US government has opened up the possibility of negotiating with the Taliban. Guess who's screaming the loudest "NO! NO!" - gee, gosh, how about the Afghan people themselves? I think most of the 22 million people in that country wouldn't want that pack of sadistic and heartless sycophants back.
Cheers,
Victor
Funny that people still trust the government. No, really, it's scary. Very scary. Things will never change at this rate.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
If they're going to do it anyway. Not the OP, but by agreeing, I have the opportunity to add disinformation by redacting other than what would be strictly true, thereby diverting my enemy's attention from the more dangerous bits. Unless of course allowing them to leak the lot allows me to achieve something even better.
Under customary international law, it is a war crime to wage a war of aggression, where a war of aggression is defined as a war without the justification of self-defense.
Dozen of post-WWII US wars have tried to skirt around this by either twisting the definition of a war (oh, this isn't a war, this is "police action" or some other BS) or trying to define self-defense extremely broadly (oh, look, a couple of private citizens have done an act of terrorism against our citizens, and it seems they might have some ill-defined link with an ill-defined group that's currently working, among other places, in Afghanistan, so lets go at war against Afghanistan. But lets call it a war against terror so they don't think it's personal...) Same rhetoric for the war against Iraq (Hussein must've got weapons of mass destruction, we still got the old receipts, so let's wage war against his country under the pretense that he could somehow decide to hit us at some time, even though that would be clearly against any of his interests... that rhetoric could as well be used to justify a war against Canada, since canadians might think about burning the white house, because they've already done it once)
Anyhow, both the Iraq and Afghanistan war clearly fall under the umbrella of War of Aggression.
As it happens, the US -- as well as Britain and Germany, two of the coalition partners -- has signed such a treaty. The Kellogg-Briand Pact was created in 1929 to renounce war as "an instrument of national policy", barring acts of self-defence. The treaty remains in force to this day.
Of course, whether the argument can be made that invading Afghanistan could be considered self-defence is a different question. But for the signatories of this treaty, war outside the parameters of self-defence is indeed illegal.
Being a smartass is a much better thing than being the alternative.
Btw, if you care to look at the history of Afghanistan, the disaster that it is now started with a leftist Soviet sponsored coup in 1978.
[...]
So it's a reasonable argument that it was the Soviet Union that caused Taliban to come to power and that the US role was incidental.
Hmmm, no. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a major american geostrategist that served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981 (and then to various very influential neoconservative thinktanks) boasted himself that he enticed the Soviets into Afghanistan as a way to pull them into a quagmire, weakening their empire. (Many more links of similar interviews with him are available if you look, he was quite open about his strategies a decade and two later)
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [From the Shadows], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Also, here's a more recent interview with the man himself, that reveals depths of geostrategy that you might not even have dreamed of.
One of the problems with western style democracies is they tend to focus power into urban centers and drain rural areas of resources... so the cities (small percentage of the population) are getting wealthier but the countryside (most of the population) is getting poorer.
There's nothing specific about "western sytle democracies" with regards to this. It's happened with all forms of government throughout known history, and probably before then as well.
Yeah but if the natural situation in Afganistan is to have ten strong state governments and a single national figurehead with no power, then the US won't favor that because they want a single person they can negotiate with.
For me Afghanistan is a bit of a political museum. Other countries have their federal systems (take Malaysia for example) but give the national government enough power to be credible internationally. Doesn't work in this case.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
So far as I can tell, this is only the release of day to day operations material, and not something detailing corruption or war crimes.
Unless your day to day operations commonly entail corruption and war crimes.
Um, I'm pretty sure "what was dangerous to the US armed forces" is CLASSIFIED and would come with some hefty jail time if it were disclosed by someone with a security clearance. Please stop using this idiotic argument. It only makes you look completely ignorant of how the military works.
Well, clearly he wasn't asking for any information he didn't already have. He asked for help redacting it. One can't yell at him for not being competent to properly redact a document when they had a part in denying him this competence in the first place.
I'm pretty sure that there are very specific guidelines governing exactly who can classify/declassify information, what information is to be classified at what level, and how it is to be done. This is not a matter of opinion, it is an absolute fact.
It is a fact that US law issues the guidelines you describe. Whether US law should be the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong in this case seems to be very much in debate - particularly when the person doing the publication isn't within its jurisdiction. Sure, the US can ban publishing classified information, just as I can ban wearing the color blue. The only difference is the US government has more guns than I do, so generally speaking it is prudent to listen to what they say. Moral right/wrong is related to civil law, but not with 100% correspondence. I would ask in this case whether this guy has done more good for society, or ill.
Do you really believe that there is a document out there that says "anything showing us with our pants down is to be classified at level X, anything showing us without pants is to be classified at level Y," and so on?
Clearly not. By your logic then, the matter is settled. Clearly nobody in the military would possibly misuse the law without written orders to do so. This is also why lobbying isn't a problem either - clearly there are no written policies granting exceptions to bribery laws, so our elected officials would never accept them. I suppose you'll be claiming that there were no written policies that the CIA and the President should lie about WMD in Iraq either? Guess we need to keep looking...
Sorry mods, but how the fuck is this flamebait? Simply requesting backing up your claims with actual quotes or page and line-numbers, would be something of value to this discussion. Is even /. now infiltrated by the US gov't?
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
"Trash Island" must be worth serious cash. It's only a matter of time before someone goes and harvests it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Have you even looked at wikileaks? Operational details, troop movements, and similar information is not the majority of information on there.
An overall truthful reporting of the war is what's being revealed on wikileaks. Far more truthful than conventional media are reporting on in any event.
Sure, wikilinks is biased. According to their Wikipedia article, they eavesdropped on a TOR exit node that Chinese hackers were using to gather intelligence from various foreign governments and organizations. Wikileaks released some of the information on foreign governments, but privately warned non-governmental organizations (such as Tibetan associations) that they were being spied on, didn't release that data. I suppose that the "fair and balanced" thing to do would have been to release everything?
As for "Where are the reports on what the Taliban do to innocents in the name of their unholy war?," I would suggest looking at the rest of Western propo^H^H^H^H^Hjournalism. Where are the reports on the benefits of Taliban rule? (Hey, we're restoring family values!)
To probably mis-quote Heinlein, "The government lies. The media lies. But in a free country, they aren't the *same* lies."
They are already risking the lives of our soldiers by simply posting their tactics and secrets.
"combing through" the documents to 'save lives' is bullshit and they know it. They just want to post the dirtiest, effective secrets that can have maximum damage.... which will in turn hurt our soldiers.
No, our government is risking the lives of our soldiers by keeping them over there, in a fight we aren't winning, won't win, and can't win.
Be seeing you...
Lets not forget, if the tables were turned, and we were Afghani, these people would be "traitors".
Well, yea, sure.... that is if you want to be Taliban/Al Qaida fighting to terrorize western civilization because you disagree with the the moral views of the west.
Dishing out some charity (financed by heroin sales and foreign donations) in order to win over population is not the way to build a sustainable economy. The job of the government (same applies to Afghanistan as does to US) is primarily to provide a stable rule of law (not arbitrary executions at the whim of the local mullahs). If the country has poor resources and is unable to produce anything worthwhile then it is probably going to be poor. There is no magical way for the government to change that and to conjure up wealth out of the rocks and sand. Taliban is a fundamentally inhuman organization that would sacrifice a million people in a blink of an eye if they thought that's what Allah wants. Their first concern is with their religious fantasies not with actual human beings. So please don't defend them.
funny you should say "conjure up wealth of the rocks and sand." seeing as that is where we now know that afghans wealth is.
Be seeing you...
Huh?!? Are you of the bizarre misunderstanding that the rest of the world is primed to follow the Taliban's example, or what? How are they a "threat to the rest of the world"? Are you afraid of the Amish too?
Not even most of the rest of the Muslim world is going to be interested in living in their society. I don't think you need to worry about being overrun by Sunni fanatics shutting down Las Vegas or the Amsterdam red light district. You give them far too much credit. They're really not that popular.
And how are the Warlords **NOT** a threat? Opiates are a horrible scourge on societies all over the world, and even worse are their floods of uncontrolled money corrupting governments, police and military forces planet-wide. If a ton of heroin can cross a border then a ton of weapons can follow the same pathway, or a kilo of botulin toxin, or a gram of smallpox, and the warlord scum have never shown any sign of moral restraint when it might benefit them in some way.
You need to go take your dog for a walk or go fishing or something that will give you some time to think the situation through.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Umm.. You forgot that treaties made between other nations which is what is commonly refereed to as international law, which also becomes US law once ratified by the congress, fully support our war in Afghanistan too.
I just wanted to point that out when more "people who don't know what they're talking about" bring up international law for a rebuttal as if it somehow trumps an sovereign nation's right of sovereignty.
The person divulging the information is generally not also the person getting killed as a result of that information being divulged.
Idiot.
"those who failed to contain that information"
and
"the people whose data was stolen"
Are different groups.
If the government didn't attempt to conceal information that the electorate rightly should have available they might have a valid complaint about having their other information released. However until the government starts acting like it is part of a democracy it unfortunately falls on the public to force accountability onto them. Wikileaks would probably have very few supporters if all they were releasing was information on informants and troop movements rather than fundamental information about the progress and administration of the war. Since the administration and military attempted to maintain support for the war by misleading the public they are just going to have to live with the consequences of that decision which is that all their info got released.
It's called the United Nation Charter, and while technically a treaty rather than law the same applies.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Can you explain why you think that wikileaks even has the capability to assess the risk for people named in the documents? Seriously. You'd need to know a whole lot more about the specifics of each individual's life, their family, the specific regional situation, the local taliban, etc. than some homeless dude with an ego problem and a grudge can possibly know.
I disagree that Wikileaks (or more relevantly the internet) haven't truly changed the game. While military (and other) leaks have existed since humanity started having secrets and beating each other up, the presence of the internet shifts the power to leak safely, widely, and successfully dramatically in favour of the leakers.
Historically leaks were limited by several factors that the internet helps overcome:
Anonymity: Even leaking to a friendly reporter meant that at least one person knew who was responsible. Wikileaks on the other hand has developed an ingenius system that ensures that even Wikileaks doesn't know the identity of the source but the source can also prove that they were the responsible party.
Scale of dissemination: The best you could hope for historically was to get newspaper or television (and those only for the fairly modern era) to spread the information from a leak. These however are institutions vulnerable to censorship, lawsuits, and are an easy target for political pressure. The internet however allows for virtually universal dissemination for anyone seeking it and the ease of mirroring and altering jurisdiction make censorship nearly impossible (see Streisand effect). If the worst ever came down to it and Wikileaks were forced to remove leaked documents it would be ineffective to prevent the availability of the document from elsewhere.
Access to the information: For the most part even widely disseminated leaks were forced to rely on a reporters analysis and subsequent characterisation. However the ease of storing and transmitting information on the internet means that anyone can have access to the raw data (though despite this it seems that reporters will just parot gov spokespeople) to review and analyse themselves. This removes a gatekeeper from the equation and decreases the likelyhood of important information being overlooked due to lack of knowledge.
If the intention was nothing more than to make this information known, we would know the information and never have heard the name Julian Assange. There are countless ways he could have made it happen. But his objective was clearly more than just making information known. He also wanted it to be clear that it was he who made that information known. And there is where his problems begin, assuming he considers them problems.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Are you suggesting, then, that the actualization of your moral worldview is worth some collateral damage?
If so, it would be a familiar argument.
You realize that dumping a bunch of money into an economy doesn't do shit unless you also increase the amount of goods and services available? Without that increase all you end up with is inflation as people compete for the same limited supply of whatever happens to be available in their local market. Unless of course you believe that they have functioning postal systems and international trade to import consumer goods in mass quantities. Which they don't.
According to Assange the release of the documents was delayed by several months while Wikileaks was in talks with the Pentagon to receive assistance in redacting the documents to conceal the identities of individuals who would be at risk. The story is that the Pentagon continued stalling and attempting to negotiate the removal of certain documents from the release. Wikileaks concluded that the Pentagon was not acting in good faith and was attempting to stall the release or prevent it completely on the theory that Wikileaks couldn't adequately redact the documents on their own and wouldn't release them if they couldn't redact them.
Whether that is true or not is a question that has not been proven either way. However the Pentagon has admitted to being aware that Wikileaks was in possession of the documents well in advance of the release and had communicated with them.
Personally I think that the known facts and general modus operandi of the involved parties would suggest that Wikileaks is relating the truth or at least the most accurate version of events.
Let's walk through this step by step.
1) "those who failed to contain that information" = the military, correct?
2) "the people whose data was stolen" = the military, correct?
3) That data names people who will (if Taliban statements are to be believed) be harmed as a result of this information being made public, correct?
4) Mr. Assange's organization is the group making this information publicly available without proper redaction of informant names, correct?
Please describe for me in detail which of these statements is incorrect & why, should you disagree with any of them.
If you *do* agree with all 4 of those statements - by what stretch of logic do Mr. Assange (and Wikileaks) bear no responsibility for the results of publishing details about the names & locations of informants?
What is being asserted here is that somehow, the military bears all the blame for this data being made public, and that Wikileaks is completely innocent of any wrongdoing or unethical behavior.
He's doing something much better than that: providing authentic, raw data
No. He and his source are both politically motivated, and have an agenda. The material isn't "raw," it was chosen by the leaker and then picked over by Assange. He is deciding what to redact and what not to, and he is decideing what - within that data - he says he thinks will endanger anyone, and he's using his "expert" analytical skills to choose what military intel and reports it's appropriate to air while people's lives are at stake. He's not reporting, or providing raw data. He's clumsily grinding an axe, and happy to have other people die so that he can stay in the spotlight. What a colossal douchebag.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Right - Mr. Assange is divulging the information.
The military is the victim of the theft of that information.
The person being killed as a result of this information being divulged is not Mr. Assange - it could conceivably be military personnel or informants, though.
So what we're saying here is that it's completely the military's fault that someone stole this data, and Mr. Assange, who is publishing the data without suitable redaction, is completely without responsibility for anything that results from his receiving the data after it was stolen, and then publishing it without subjecting it to rigorous editorial review to remove personally identifiable details.
Does this seem reasonable to you? If so, please explain how the person publishing the specific personal details of informants when that data would not otherwise be available is somehow blameless in this equation?
You show me the declaration of war that was made. Oh, there was none? They just marched in?
"There's someone in my head but it's not me." - Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
You may have noticed that I never said that the military is without any blame or responsibility for the data being stolen. So let's affirm right now that yes, the military is at least partially to blame for inadequate data security, though I fail to see how any amount of data security truly prevents a "social engineering" sort of breach like this - the kid being accused of the leaks is an intelligence analyst, who had access to this data as part of his job - if he hadn't been allowed access to it, he probably wouldn't have been able to do his job.
Does this, in your opinion, mean that Mr. Assange does not also share responsibility for publishing names of informants who will likely be targeted by the Taliban now? If so, what is the chain of logic by which you say that the man publishing these details is not responsible at least in part for the fact that this data will be used to harm the people he has named?
You don't trust your government? So you purify your own water? Generate your own electricity. Testing the efficacy and safety of all your medical treatments? Ensure the purity of your food supply? Test the safety of your all your consumer goods? Barter instead of using currency? Handle your own weather forecasting?
Didn't think so.
The world isn't as simple and uncomplicated as you seem to think.
1) "those who failed to contain that information" = the military, correct?
Intelligence Troops.
2) "the people whose data was stolen" = the military, correct?
Operational Troops.
Essentially, it is the job of Intelligence personnel to make sure their data is well protected. If it is leaked because it wasn't well protected then it is their fault.
The only actual "Harm" I care about is operational troops who might be killed or injured because of data being leaked. They are the ones I refer to as "victims"
Generally, these are not the same people.
Additionally, this very article is about how Wikileaks is combing the information it has gained to prevent point #4 from being true.
A lot of people are making the same mistake here.
"THe Military" is not a single entity, it represents Millions of people.
Individuals in the intelligence community are responsible for making sure sensitive information is not leaked.
If sensitive information is leaked, it is their fault.
Lastly, did you read the article? Or even the Summary? What do the words "'comb through' the files to ensure lives are not placed at risk." Mean to you?
Assassinating the messenger is a false argument. The government isn't blaming Assange for the contents of the documents- the issue is the act of dissemination. If the government was going after someone reporting about Assange leaking documents, that would be assassinating the messenger. Also, just because someone had to leak the documents to him doesn't make him any less culpable. If you find top secret documents on the subway, you would be an idiot to assume you are free to send copies to the local newspapers- Assange goes a step further and handles all the dissemination himself and covers his source from probable prosecution. Whether he should be prosecuted for said dissemination and harboring a criminal is dependent upon whether you think the leak is just, but these acts still bear responsibility.
The biggest problem I have with Assange is by taking no responsibility for his actions (unlike newspapers/journalists when protecting their sources)- he puts himself above the law just like many of his targets, so the government can have him for all I care. It's fine if you disagree, but painting him like he's being framed by the government is a bit extreme.
My webcomic
Politicians are merely puppets for corporate lobbyists. Much of what they do is controlled by them. I wasn't saying that I don't trust them on all fronts, I was saying that giving them this much leeway is a bad idea.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Wait. Let me put on my burqha and remove 99% of my knowledge and rights
You seem to think that it's any different under the present Western-backed government with respect to human rights. It's not, and has never been. It is obvious because the constitution of the new "democratic" Afghanistan states in no uncertain words that Islam is the state religion, and that "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam" (which, in practice, means that Sharia applies in full - beheading for apostates, stoning for married adulterers, etc).
I've spoken with an Afghani refuge, and his comments with respect to Taliban match the picture painted by GP. Specifically, he said that Taliban was brutal but maintained law and order - you could be punished by doing innocuous things that were wrong as far as Taliban was concerned, but at least you knew what those things are. And you knew that no-one else would harm you for the fear of punishment.
When Northern Alliance moved in, this reverted back to pre-Taliban anarchy where the guy with the bigger gun is always right, and murder and rape by gangs of armed people nominally in service of some warlord claiming the land for himself became routine.
when the people there didn't organize a functioning nation and a despotic dictatorship moved in, that made it worse, not better.
Taliban didn't "move in". Taliban grew out of the more religious factions of Afghani mujahideen fighting the Soviets. They're funded by Pakistan, yes, but that funding was present even before there even was Taliban to speak of. Muhammad Omar, their leader, is ethic Pashtun from Kandahar.
The warlords weren't a threat to the rest of the world.
The warlords grew opium poppy - 70% of the entire world supply. Shortly Taliban had taken over most the country, they burned the fields and executed the owners and the dealers, because to them it was in violation of Allah's commandment forbidding the use of intoxicating substances - reducing opium export from Afghanistan down by 95% in a single year. They were even paid by US for this. A year later they got kicked out by NATO troops, and - surprise, surprise! - the opium moved back in.
Next time you see a kid on heroine around your neighborhood, think about the role of your military in that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan#Soviet_invasion_and_civil_war Thousands killed was during the coup. Total casualties from the war (mostly civilians) were probably around 1 million with up to 6 million forced to leave the country to Pakistan and Iran.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
The only legality governing the actions of the military of a sovereign nation is that own nation's laws.
If that was the case, Nuremberg Trials couldn't have taken place, as Nazis didn't do anything illegal under their own laws (obviously). And yet, not only the trials took place, and verdicts - including numerous death sentences - were handed out, but US actively participated in them. The claim that those same laws don't apply to US is hypocritical.
And, just to remind, one thing that was established at Nuremberg is that "war of aggression" is a crime.
Oh, and the claim that there are no laws aside from sovereign laws of the participants in international relations (which war is, in a twisted but obvious way) is also false in general.
Dishing out some charity (financed by heroin sales and foreign donations) in order to win over population is not the way to build a sustainable economy.
Then why is the Karzai government backed by NATO forces doing just that? You know that Taliban actually banned opium sale when they were in power, right? And that it shot right back through the roof once Karzai government were handed over the country?
The job of the government (same applies to Afghanistan as does to US) is primarily to provide a stable rule of law (not arbitrary executions at the whim of the local mullahs).
Exactly. Which is, again, something that the present government sorely lacking, and which is something that was present to a much larger extent under Taliban. Oh, sure, it was a very strict and unfair law, and I personally wouldn't want to live under it... but I sure would prefer it to no law in a place full of people with guns who think that it is their God-given right to take anything they can wrestle away from you (and optionally kill or rape you just for the fun of it).
Oh, by the way, about those "arbitrary executions at the whim of local mullahs"... you think they're gone now? Think again.
The present war in Afghanistan has absolutely nothing to do with spreading democracy or protecting human rights. Both local sides in it are equally guilty of severe human right abuses, and do not show any intention to change that.
The only reason why the West supports one side over the other is politics, and ignorance of many citizens of the respective countries of the actual events in Afghanistan; though that is changing, as more and more evidence of what life in "liberated" Afghanistan actually is like - as opposed to propaganda stories of flower-bearing locals cheering NATO soldiers as liberators - is getting out. According to the most recent polls, the majority of Canadians thinks that the present mission of Afghanistan does not serve any goals that are good either for Canada or for the people of Afghanistan. Well, better late than never.
The information isn't required to be entirely harmless. It only has to be a lot more helpful than harmful. I personally wouldn't wish to take the moral burden of causing unintended deaths or injuries and if it would happen (didn't yet, as far as we know) Assange would have to bear that burden.
You kind of lost me with the first sentence there. "The information isn't required to be entirely harmless" for what, exactly? Are you saying that espionage is protected speech?
But why is it that noone talks about the number of lives that the release of these documents will save?
Obviously, I can't speak about the motives of others, but I think that it's reasonable to assume that the dangers involved in revealing this kind of information far outweigh the hypothetical benefits. You might want to read this article about the Taliban's reaction to the leaked documents. It's a certainty that lives were put at risk by what this asshat did. At best, it's only a possibility that the length of the war will be shortened by the WikiLeaks documents. With the exception of the operational details the reports contain, a lot of this information was known by the press (and the members of the public who've been paying attention) already. It's been known (or at least suspected) for some time that Pakistan and Iran both have dogs in the fight in Afghanistan. The fact that this is mentioned in the reports shouldn't come as a real surprise to anyone.
I think the release of the information by WikiLeaks was grossly irresponsible, and Assange should be arrested by Iceland and deported to the U.S. to face trial for espionage. The person in the Army who leaked the information should face treason charges (when he/she is found) and if found guilty, be executed. If there turns out to be a Hell, may they both burn there eternally.
One side in this war is intentionally murdering civilians, so that side is objectively the Bad Guys.
If they wanted the US in their country there would have been no resistance.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
How did this get modded up? Its logical connection is tenuous and it basically strawmans the parent post without addressing it at all.
But he is an Australian, and Australia has troops in Afghanistan too.
Found in fifteen minutes of browsing:
Names of surrendered Taliban
More surrendered
More
More
Names a suspected double agent
More could probably be found with a bit more looking.
They are already risking the lives of our soldiers by simply posting their tactics and secrets.
You know what else risks the lives of our soldiers? War!
Fixed.
Let me rephrase your question.
Are you seriously saying you wouldn't jump at the chance to minimize the damage of documents which are going to be leaked, given the opportunity to do so?
This is like someone who has obtained the documents to steal your identity, coming to you and going, "Look, I'm going to publish these, if you want to redact some sections which reduces the impact of them, I'm more than happy". Then you turning around and saying "Fuck off".
You wouldn't jump at the opportunity to limit damage? No, you'd pout and winge like a child? Perhaps stomp your feet? That is the logical choice now, isn't it.
Luckily in this case, as has been mentioned previously, they WERE sufficiently redacted.
To tie this into my example, after you saying "Fuck off" the person who obtained your documents then goes "Fine, well I'll redact them to the best of my ability, for you then, at my own expense".
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
You've missed the Royalist "all who defy the King are ememies of the Kingdom" attitude of the poster above who considers wikileaks an enemy simply because it published material that is an embarassment to people in the US Government. To such people it is not treason to sell US made weapons to Iran and embezzle money on the side, it is treason for somebody else to leak that information and challenge the divine right of Kings/Government to do anything it likes.
He asked for official help in redacting, and they rejected the request. If anyone gets killed because of this, it's because of the US military and their unwillingness to protect the people in those documents.
Learn to love Alaska
You've got it backwards. They are really about the hardline feudal politics of a crowded refugee camp and they justify it with extremist religious fantasies. It's no more the will of God (Allah is God in Arabic) than it is to cut up the genitals of little girls where God is used for the excuse for that in some countries.
They value the ability to hurt others more than they value anything in religeon - whoever has the might is right. Their attitudes to rape show that clearly. A religious society would consider the rapist to be wrong but where "might is right" is the attitude then the unprotected woman is at fault. Like many extremist groups religeon is just the excuse to find a weasel way to make wrong appear to be right.
I consider group (A) to have a Republican or Democratic mindset and
(B) to be Royalists that think the state should never be questioned.
Of course reality is not quite so simple because we are talking about real documents and not general terms, but think about it for a moment guys and consider what it would be like to never allow anything like this out.
Open letter from RWB secretary general to Wikileaks founder
This is a good read, and pretty much sums up how I feel about it. Wikileaks has done a lot of good in the past, and can do a lot of good in the future, but they can't dodge the responsibility for their own actions.
Just throwing random stuff out there doesn't have anywhere near the impact nor the importance as the "collateral murder" video had. That stuff is good to expose; operational details and names of Afghan civilians who picked a side aren't.
When groups like Amnesty and Reporters Without Borders start warning you, it's really time to stop and consider whether what you're doing is really helping or hurting freedom.
Those articles sound like they're mostly about how RSF is unfair to oppressive regimes. As far as I remember, the US isn't at the top of their list of countries that respect a free press. If it's really a neocon front, I'd expect it to claim the US is better than European countries.
Completely wrong, because the mandate given to the United Nations formed coalition force as a whole was to remove Iraq from Kuwait, not to force regime change in the country. 2003 was all about a non United Nations formed coalition doing something it wanted to do, rather than carry out the mandate it had been given.
My favorite feature of this round of Wikileaks is how it divides us. We now have the privilege of mostly being sorted into two rather neat piles:
A) This stuff should never have been secret, and anyone who would hide it is un-American
or
B) These secrets are property of the government, and anyone who would divulge them is un-American
There's a lot of room in between those two. There's a huge difference between exposing current operational details and exposing details that have no current operational relevance anymore. Consider publishing the plans for Operation Overlord on Juni 3 1944, and publishing them on June 3 1946.
The tendency of military information remaining secret indefinitely (or for 30 years, which amounts to the same thing) is stupid, but exposing them while the operation is happening, means you're picking sides in the conflict. Did Assange really intend to side with the Taliban? I'd rather see him remain neutral and only publish for the sake of accountability (which is good!), rather than actively endangering the missions and the people involved (which is bad!).
I hope that makes my position in this matter clear.
The Taliban, who were in control of Afghanistan at the time, were not 'participating in attacks on the US and other nations' - that was Al Quieda, a separate organisation who happened to be occupying portions of mountainous areas in Afghanistan. The Taliban simply refused to cooperate with the US in the hunt for Al Quieda within their own country, so they got grouped in with them and declared hostile. And this is the result - they became hostile.
You Forgot [to specifically name] Poland!
---
I don't think a lot of people here are upset about exposing military and political decisions and procedures. What upsets people (me at least) is endangering the lives of civilians and soldiers on the ground.
I guess that from my point of view, that is located in Europe, being un-American is not really the thing I care most when I am forming opinions.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
No it's not. There's a huge difference between: "this is secret and should never be exposed" and "this should be exposed in a responsible manner".
Letting informants live and continue to inform risks the lives of freedom fighters trying to shake off the bonds of occupation.
What makes the US military and its sympathizers and collaborators so much more important than other factions in this idiotic and unnecessary war?
Lets not forget, if the tables were turned, and we were Afghani, these people would be "traitors".
-Steve
An astonishing assertion that demonstrates how dire the situation is. We have completely lost our compass and the world will be 10,000 times poorer for it. Your smug little world is doomed - in one of two ways.
To get it clear.
1. The Taliban are not freedom fighters
2. The other factions seek to enslave and murder you and your family, after (of course) having enslaved and murdered anyone who they don't like in their own country - women, intellectuals, christians, jews, muslims that they don't agree with, scientists, doctors; and that list is just a start.
3. If the tables were turned you would be dead, your house would be burned, I would be dead, my family would be dead. The internet would be off, the power would be off, almost all books would be burned.
I would hope that we would be able to muster the will and resources to stop these people without recourse to collapsing our democracy and freedoms, but comments like yours make my blood run cold and the realization dawns on me that in fact this may not be the way that things play out. We do not, as a society, share the collective understanding and values that will allow us to do this. Since the alternative is unthinkable (see above) we are going to go down the route of totalitarianism and a military state.
Welcome to 1000 years of a boot stamping down on a human face, again, and again and again.
My advice, to everyone, keep your head down, be kind to those around you, preserve what you can, bury it if necessary. Wait for the knock at the door and go quietly when it comes, for the sake of your children.
Hope that some bright morning in the future someone finds what we have hidden.
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
An organisation that has in the past been accused of being a CIA front criticizes wikileaks.
Colour me supprised.
Enrique1218, on a personal level I totally agree with you. I am a western atheist and I personally couldn't stand to live in a medieval, religious tyranny. However, most of the locals are perfectly HAPPY with their religious bullshit and are all for the kind of fucked up, oppressed world where every aspect of life is circumscribed by idiots. Who are we to tell them otherwise?
The thing that gets me, is that we are in there trying to change the lives of people who (on the most part) don't want to change. Yet the people who DO want to change and make their own (dangerous) decision to get the hell out of there (i.e. refugees), make it to our shores only to be called "boat people" and "illegal immigrants" and we lock them up in detention centres and yell at them to go back to the shithole they came from. Way to fucking help. We're all for human rights until you get to our borders. Then its "back the fuck up!"
Talk about mixed messages. Is it any wonder that people in the third world views the motives of the first world with suspicion?
Apples, Oranges. Her name was leaked by the US Government to discredit her husband who was against the Iraqi invasion. Wikileaks is not the US Government and they are obviously against a war in a land where Empires go to die.
Wikileaks must release all of the documents which clearly show a dirty war which is not covered by any western media in a meaningful way.
For starters her status as a CIA operative was compromised and soon afterward her face was made public.
Any undercover operations she was involved in almost certainly went in the crapper if any of the bad guys recognized her.
On top of that, she lost her job.
Anyone wanting to expose her as a spook should take these facts into consideration.
Espionage perhaps?
One more side note - we often hear the right wingers talk about respecting a nations "sovereignty" - yet the U.S. did not do it to the Afghanis, who had every legal right to wait for legitimate proof before persecuting anyone within their borders.
So much for sovereignty huh?
Yeah, I'm kind of skeptical about the idea that the UN has the authority to authorize one country to invade another. If they authorized someone to invade us or one of our friends we certainly wouldn't sit back and say "OK".
And as you (sort of) point out, the people who are quickest to drag in the UN as a justification for what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan are the people who are quickest to tell us the UN doesn't have any right to tell us what we can or must do.
The rationalizations we hear are so inconsistent, dishonest, or lame, because there isn't any rationalization that will stand up to scrutiny, and the actual reasons would outrage too much of the public if admitted. (The shame being that they don't outrage *all* the public.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You can't claim that a group is both a neocon propaganda group *and* funded by George Soros. Soros gave millions of dollars to the Democratic party during the 2004 election and stated that removing Bush from office was his central focus in life.
1) Invade and occupy another country
[...]
You'll have to point out to me the treaty all nations signed giving up the right to ever engage in war with another nation thereby making it "illegal".
There's a hell of a difference between "invade and occupy another country" and "engage in war".
And though I don't know what kind of treaties we are party to in this regard, we sure as hell prosecuted the German leadership for invading and occupying other countries in the Nuremberg trials. (The link will show you the four charges brought against the group in the main trial, the first two being of relevance to this thread.)
Notice that a couple of the people who were executed (Keitl, Jodl) were simply military high command, not Nazis. Notice also that Hess was found guilty of the two "Crimes against Peace" charges, but innocent of "War Crimes" and "Crimes against Humanity", and still got life in prison.
Thoughtful readers will want to scroll down and read the sections "Criticism" and "Legitimacy".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The treaty is called the United Nations Charter. Perhaps you've heard of it. "All nations" haven't signed it, but the United States signed it on 26 June, 1945. Article 2, Principle 4 of the treaty reads:
The treaty makes it illegal to use force against any state without a specific resolution of support from the UN Security Council, which was not granted in the case of Afghanistan or Iraq. It might be argued that the invasion of Afghanistan was an act of self-defence following the attacks of 11 September, 2001, but no such justification exists for the invasion of Iraq.
That makes it an illegal war. Illegal, not in some vague rhetorical sense, but in the very specific sense of breaking a treaty that the United States signed.
The force then met resistance from the Taliban and (under UN authorization) removed the government.
Not true - the UN Security Council did not authorise the removal of the government; it only approved the creation of the International Security Assistance Force after the government had been replaced.
Hi AC.
It'll be fine.
signed
A. Laywer*
* Not really
An overall truthful reporting of the war is what's being revealed on wikileaks. Far more truthful than conventional media are reporting on in any event.
The MSM are barely reporting on the war at all, other than the political fights over surges and withdrawal schedules.
If an alien came to visit and turned on the evening news on a random night, it probably wouldn't discover that we are fighting two wars.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Sorry mods, but how the fuck is this flamebait? Simply requesting backing up your claims with actual quotes or page and line-numbers, would be something of value to this discussion. Is even /. now infiltrated by the US gov't?
I don't concern myself overmuch with moderation of individual posts anymore. Some moderators obviously have a political agenda, some are apparently insane, and some apparently moderate at random. But ignoring occasional specific posts, moderators do a pretty good job on the overall effect.
So just say what you think needs to be said, and don't worry about how it gets moderated.
I do think the moderation system could be slightly improved if there weren't any negative mods - use upmods only, and maybe raise the cap a little. More spread should help the generally good mods rise above the noise.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
So you'd go so far as to say that it is un-American to use such a word?
No, I wouldn't. America is geography so the concept of "un-American" applying to a person's behaviour is incoherent. I suppose my 'u' in behaviour gives away that I am "un-American". :-)
I wasn't singling you out for using the term; my hackles raise every time I encounter it and yours happened to be the post in front of me when I decided to speak out.
As for the choice? Gov'ts are ephemeral and can only form from principles (for good or ill), so I would think that basing one's decision on principles would be more productive.
"We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" -- Kurt Vonnegut
the treaty all nations signed
For the thoughtful, is is a problematic issue. On the one hand it seems unjust to hold country X accountable to some treaty it never signed, but on the other hand, it's beyond absurd to say that if country X invades a neighbor and exterminates the population, it is only a crime if X is a party to a treaty that forbids doing that.
The prevailing doctrine seems to be that if most of the world's nations agree on something like this, then it applies to everyone. (Unless of course you are a superpower or have one in your pocket.) However, according to various relevant Wikipedia articles, the notion has been under continuous debate since the Nuremberg trials.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Iraq is an illegal war. Not by any international-law measure, but by American law. It was started by a rogue President who lied to the Congress to get the funding to wage it, and who had already transferred men, money, and material there from the legitimate Afghan conflict without their authority.
Also a serious abrogation by Congress to exercise its constitutional responsibility for deciding who we're going to go to war against.
Though that responsibility has already been eroding for decades, and, practically speaking, that part of the US Constitution has been retired.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
When groups like Amnesty and Reporters Without Borders start warning you, it's really time to stop and consider whether what you're doing is really helping or hurting freedom.
I went to amnesty.org and searched for wikileaks. The most recent hit was from 26th July, regarding the original release by wikileaks with Amnesty calling for NATO to provide a clear and unified system for accounting for civilian casualties in Afghanistan. They go on: "The leaked documents support Amnesty International's concern ..."
If you could cite the warning from Amnesty to Julian Assange it would help, thanks, else I'll continue to believe what I read on Amnesty's site to be a true reflection of what Amnesty actually has to say on the matter.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Well, I grew up under US occupation. I get to say what I want when I want. I worship what I want when I want.
But there will be Hell to pay if you want to establish a Muslim community center a couple of blocks from Ground Zero.[*]
A very substantial number of USAians are no better than the Taliban. The people who are quickest to wave the flag and declare their patriotism don't actually subscribe to some of the most fundamental traditional American values.
[*] Misrepresented by the media as wanting to build a Mosque *on* Ground Zero. Jon Stewart's treatment of the topic a few days ago should be mandatory watching. (Warning: video link)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
He likes the shock value. He is the type to put something out there because it is dangerous.
Several people have commented on his values and motivations. Do any of you actually *know* any of this?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Ya, one really has to assume an existing functioning government to actually have laws. We and many parts of the world are fortunate to have them, though some we might bitch about from time to time.
However when you government either A) Doesn't exist, B) Does exist but has no real authority or ways to enforce the rule of law, or C) is really just a puppet to foreign powers or internal warlords, then the term "illegal" and "law" no longer really have the same meaning. In some instances the have a more gray areas. You could really throw in a D) in there for corrupt government officials and the application of law, but it likely depends on how rampant it is as a definition of lawlessness.
One example I saw of this that starts to show the reverse is also true, particularly from a diplomatic perspective was Pakistan. While most would likely agree that Afghanistan is pretty messed up right now, and what control the government really has is pretty minimal, and that it can barely be called a government. However during the conflict the Taliban would simply slip across the border into Pakistan and hide. The allies would want to go after them, but could not, because that was the "sovereign" nation of Pakistan. It then raises the question, well if you cannot enforce the law in your own country (or at least in that physical area), just how "sovereign" are you. Eventually Pakistan HAD to do something, or risk in the eyes of the world to not have sovereign control of that particular area, so the sent in the army to exert that governmental control and prove their sovereign rights to the area.
in a fight we aren't winning, won't win, and can't win.
Sadly, I think immediate withdrawal from both countries - several years ago - is the only sensible strategy.
"Sadly", because I certainly don't expect nice things to happen when we withdraw, but clearly we can't win in any meaningful sense, and staying there just prolongs the misery and postpones the inevitable.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I think you give these groups FAR too much credit. They survive the way they do primarily because of where they are.
I fundamentally don't think that we have anything to fear from them. Look at the rest of the world, the vast majority of people have no desire to live their way, not even within the muslim world! Its crazy to think that they are going to make any inroads beyond their backwater niches in the mountains.
This is not the rolling big red machine (which was also a joke), these are a few muslim hillbillies who go around terrorizing some towns in the mountains. There really is no military solution for what amounts to a small cultural problem.
Seriously, some pissant terror group takes down two buildings and you are still shitting your pants nearly 10 years later. Get over it already. This is not a worthy adversary.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Just watched "9th Company" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417397/
The phrase: "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." comes to mind.
Also: "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." as I am sure all the military brass were thinking that with all their advanced weaponry that this would now be a cake walk against such primitive savages. I wonder what they think about a determined foe with the ability to make simple IED's now?
Yes just like Canada now apparently has a boatload of Tamil Tiger Terrorists (although the triple alliteration is fun) headed for Vancouver looking for Asylum. I am sure they think of themselves as revolutionaries and freedom fighters, but of course the Sri Lanka government calls them terrorists. The high commissioner for Sri Lanka in Canada, basically wants us to turn hundreds away just like Australia did, or send them to Sri Lanka to face trial (or what the Tamils might argue as persecution).
It really is a matter of perspective. On one hand I don't really want "terrorists" moving to Canada, on the other I hope we are open to helping those that are in real need. I don't envy the immigration officials on this one. Given our current government, it will be interesting to see if this evolves into a political issue and if they take active steps to interfere with the normal process.
FYI, George Soros is a liberal, much hated by conservatives.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It was on Slashdot last Monday.
It worked well for President Wilson in WWI.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
And on Tuesday, an Amnesty offical is quoted as saying 'that while other human rights groups had also sent a joint letter to WikiLeaks, Amnesty was not among its signatories.'
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Nancy Pelosi used the word to describe opponents of the health care bill. It's alive and well.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Neither - I'm not American. I guess that fits your original statement that we "mostly" fit into one of two piles. I guess then, that those not in the "mostly" camp land in some other pile.
So I'll pick pile C) please Bob. Or D) ... depending on what the other piles actually are.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Overall, I don't like the term "terrorist".
Yes the group that some people belong to has resorted to violence to make political points. That doesn't mean that any individual thrives on killing or is some sort of murdering monster. It means that he sided with a group, for his own personal reasons, and that group did what it saw as needed.
A tamil tiger removed from sri lanka, has no specific reason or need to fight in Canada. If such fears were realistic, then how could we justify even bringing our own troops home after a war?
I really think pidgeonholing terms like "terrorist" lead us away from seeing the big picture. Few, if any, real "terrorists" do what they do out of a love for killing and destruction. Its a means to an end and, it is the means, which we should take issue with. Though its hypocritical to do so, while employing them wantonly.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
"Actually, what whistle is being blown here?"
Have you read these reports?
They detail a special forces assassination squad which is murdering children and the repeated and routine murdering of innocent civilians and labeling them as 'insurgents'. At least during the time these reports were collected this was happening so much that the vast majority of casualties were innocent civilians mislabeled as 'insurgents'.
If that doesn't constitute a war crime I don't know what does. I find it very interesting that all pro war/military comments are being upmodded and everything else downmodded.
Its almost like someone is conducting an intelligence campaign here and now.
Yes, just as I was pointing out how the Dubya whiners are doing the same thing by whining "But Bush did it too!!!" whenever Obama attempts to outdo Dubya in stupid when it comes to foreign and domestic policy. Just because Clinton did something doesn't excuse Dubya same as just because Dubya did something doesn't excuse Obama's latest braindead policy.
I think the word "terrorist" is just fine, though in recent years the term has become even more inflammatory.
I am not so much worried that some Tamil is going to come to Canada to blow something up, as you say, that would not make any sense. I am more concerned about hosting folks that perhaps raise funds, recruit, and generally operate out of my Country to further their aims in another. That I would not like so much. If they simple want to come here to live and integrate and be free of oppression, then I say welcome! However if this as seen as simply a base of operations to promote terror elsewhere, well then I don't really want to be your neighbor.
Anyway that was all I was getting at really.
you could be punished by doing innocuous things that were wrong as far as Taliban was concerned, but at least you knew what those things are. And you knew that no-one else would harm you for the fear of punishment
So benevolent dictatorship it is! I'll inform Washington.
No, wait. Tell you what. I'll inform them to keep fighting in Afghanistan until the dictatorial powers are exterminated and a real democracy, with real law and order, are instituted.
Then you'll have your semblance of law and order, and I'll have my actual law and order.
never on the scale of a war.
I think most people would hope for a world like that, but it isn't that way.
There are places where dysfunction in the culture results in the false determination that that place's culture is far superior to its actual worth. That then breeds attempts to impose their decisions on others. And weapons make that easier. Even when those weapons are four commercial airliners and some box-cutters.
Following that, you may see overwhelming application of self-defense. Over time you may lose sight of how it started. That's an enormous mistake.
Not as enormous as thinking you can leverage self-defense in one theater into profitable offense in another, but still a mistake.
You mean the "cooling off" period was ended by Bush2. Because it's Obama who's ending the Iraq war.
And you're not "participating in war in Afghanistan", but if you're in the U.S. you're supporting it (financially if not morally) and you're a target for reprisals (you were a target for unprovoked attacks, which is what made it necessary).
The Taliban harbored bin Laden. The U.S. had tried to extradite him for past terrorist attacks around the world, but the Taliban refused multiple times, despite clear evidence of his responsibility for those attacks.
When you harbor a criminal and refuse to give him up to the police and they come in to get him and you attack the police, that makes you a criminal. The right thing to do is to hand over the criminal.
The Taliban were Al Quaeda's friends, supporters, and members, and they are still harboring and fighthing with Al Quaeda. Trying to separate them is like trying to separate the Marines from the Army. It's a niggling distinction in the internal structure of the organization, and of no relevance to the conflict. That extends to separating the military from Americans, something that Al Quaeda didn't do, but the American military tries very hard to do in reverse with the Taliban and Afghan civilians. The fact that it's not done perfectly is what leads mental midgets like Julian Assange to make stupid mistakes like destroying an intelligence infrastructure and endangering Afghan civilians by leaking their names to the enemy.
Interestingly, that Wikipedia article says that the Soviet occupation resulted in the killings of between 600,000 and two million Afghans, but those numbers are not supported by the cited source. I could believe that it's true if I had a reliable source.
I would also want to know whether this large number of deaths was the result of the Soviet-supported regime, or the result of the U.S. involvement.
If you're discussing the morality or acceptability of political actions, I don't think it's acceptable to kill 600,000-2 million people to impose your political or economic philosophy on them, whether you're the Soviet Union or the U.S.
You're a waste of my time, posting in ignorance and without critical thinking ability. But I'll go ahead and clarify for you.
First, your leading questions:
By reviewing the information available to us
And there's your strawman. That was not what I was suggesting. Never did I attach a timescale to verification. I believe verification needs to be ongoing so that we can influence our elected representatives to do the right thing.
No, I never said that, I never implied that -- YOU are the one who attached that to what I wrote.
More of the same from you. You're taking your presupposition of what I mean, and then applying it to other things. Take a step back, realize that you completely missed the boat here, and understand that you're arguing against your own straw man.
You're "awed and afraid" of your own ignorance of my position. Stop tilting at windmills.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
And stomping all over the people holding the beliefs only serves to make them more steadfast. It gives them the enemy they want, and the opportunity to attack that they need.
"Terrorism" is a means. "Freedom fighter" is a motive. The two are not mutually exclusive.
I'll spell it out for you. I was expressing surprise and disgust that people are acting so outraged about this Wikileaks issue, and yet there was basically no public outcry or real consequences when our own government compromised people and operations for political reasons.
While I think Wikileaks should have made more and better attempts to protect people before they released the documents, at least they released them for principled reasons.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
No, wait. Tell you what. I'll inform them to keep fighting in Afghanistan until the dictatorial powers are exterminated and a real democracy, with real law and order, are instituted.
For that, Karzai and his clique would need to be hanged first - as they are hostile to "real democracy" just as well. Last I checked, this isn't happening. For now, we send our soldiers there to prop a corrupt, oppressive regime with their guns and their lives. Why do you think that keeping doing that will somehow make things any better in the long run?
Furthermore, what if the "real democracy" in this case means religions intolerance? In the case of Abdul Rahman, for example, there had been spontaneous demonstrations demanding his execution for apostasy. The only reason why he isn't dead is because Western leaders have personally pressured Karzai to intervene, which he did, effectively pushing through an extrajudicial pardon for the guy. This isn't "real law and order" in the slightest - the law (as established by elected representatives of Afghan people) says Abdul is a criminal and should have been executed.
And PVT Manning committed treason.
I think you'll find he didn't, article three of your constitution is extremely clear on that point.
Depends on which of their beliefs you're stomping on and how you do it.
The Bush administration was uniquely unqualified to be the people to protect this nation from religiously ideological attackers.
And they did a lot to create more problems by not just losing but throwing away the moral high ground to get cowboy political points everywhere they could.
They turned a 2-year conflict into what will probably be a hundred years of war by making it ideological instead of just going in and getting the job done honestly, without cooking up lies so they could attack another country.
If they'd stuck to the secular policing of unwarranted violence, and stayed honest, it would have been over by now. We need to get back to that so we can defeat the violent zealots without creating more of them, not concede to them just because they can still recruit.
Yes, I do realize this, but it would get rid of the Taliban for a while, thereby give some breathing space to actually start creating a local market, and would entice the local population to cooperate with creating such a market way more effectively than putting a gun to their heads.
He asked for official help in redacting, and they rejected the request. If anyone gets killed because of this, it's because of the US military and their unwillingness to protect the people in those documents.
Sorry, but it's Assante's responsibility. He is the one (or at least he represents the organization) that wants to release documents. The Pentagon didn't give the documents to him, and the person that did so was acting against explicit orders from the Pentagon.
So, Assange and his friends are responsible for the aftermath. However, I don't think he is losing much sleep over it, since he was recently quoted:
He expressed some ambivalence about the need to protect Afghans who have helped the U.S. military. "We are not obligated to protect other people's sources," including sources of "spy organizations or militaries," unless it is from "unjust retribution," he said, adding that the Afghan public "should know about" people who have engaged in "genuinely traitorous" acts.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704407804575425900461793766.html
So, cooperating with the US military to fight terrorists within Afghanistan may be a "genuinely traitorous act". I think it's starting to become clear whose side that Assange is really on.
The noose is tightening around Karzai, if recent stories about raids on money-laundering facilities are any indication.
As for your anecdotal evidence, well, democracy is about the people deciding the laws. If they're an Islamic state that's not the best thing, but if they're a peaceful Islamic state it's not the worst thing.
Get an Afghan voter registration card and help them out if you don't like their laws.
If Karzai doesn't like their laws, which apparently he doesn't since he fought this one, then as their leader he should convince the voters to change the laws to fit a less irrational model.
As long as they're effecting change by voting instead of flying planes into other people's buildings, that's a marked improvement.
But surely, any errors he makes in this that would kill people he should be really ashamed off, and he should deeply investigate if he's not making the same mistakes as his opponent, calling the results of his fuckups collateral damage and be done with it.
This, I can agree with. The military certainly should be reviewing it's control & vetting procedures to understand exactly how they missed so much data being leaked by a single person.
My objection is with Mr. Assange irresponsibly disclosing data that will cause harm to other people, and doing so knowingly, while claiming he bears no responsibility for that disclosure.
I don't expect he'll be "tried" for any of it, but I do think he has an ethical duty to prevent that "collateral damage" his activism is going to cause.
because ignorant replies like yours show you missed the point completely like the mods did.
It comes down to this, as other organizations have pointed out, there are many innocents in this conflict and people are willingly putting them at risk to score points, worse, when the risk is realized and those innocents are dead they will blame those who withheld the information in the first part.
Hence, it is very obvious how ignorant the self righteous here are. They have nothing to lose and freely scream their arrogance and ignorance from the safety of the computers.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Specific to western democracies no, but it is a common characteristic that they share which is not universal to all governmental forms.
Which ones don't result in it ?
As for your anecdotal evidence, well, democracy is about the people deciding the laws. If they're an Islamic state that's not the best thing, but if they're a peaceful Islamic state it's not the worst thing.
A democracy in which there is no freedom of thought is not a true democracy, because it explicitly disenfranchises the people who hold dissenting views.
By the way, one other "nice" thing about the present-day Afghanistan - its constitution, aside from declaring it an Islamic state, also has a provision that prohibits any future constitutional amendments that may remove that Islamic status. In other words, it explicitly forbids the people to vote differently even if they ever wanted to. Democracy, eh?
Get an Afghan voter registration card and help them out if you don't like their laws.
I don't want to tell them to change their laws (it's pointless, anyway). What I do want is to stop paying taxes that go towards military operations that explicitly support a regime that has instituted, and keeps maintaining, such oppressive laws. I don't care if it's a democracy or not. What I know is that, indirectly, I'm paying out of my pocket so that someone, somewhere gets stoned to death. I find that notion very annoying. Taxes are meant for different things (see my sig).
As long as they're effecting change by voting instead of flying planes into other people's buildings, that's a marked improvement.
Taliban wasn't really any worse as far as "flying planes into other people's buildings" goes. They weren't the ones behind 9/11, and they generally kept to themselves elsewhere, as well. Aside from Waziristan - where they do actually have popular support, so...
In terms of their effect outside Afghanistan, they were probably better, on the whole, considering their stance on opium production (and the willingness to go beyond mere words to actively enforce it).
Sorry, but it's Assante's responsibility.
Irrelevant. List others who share responsibility doesn't absolve anyone else of their responsibility. The US military had the opportunity to protect the people listed in those documents and refused. That makes them responsible.
Learn to love Alaska
The two of them deserve Nobel Peace Prizes to recognize them for the heroes they are.
We are told "if you don't have anything to hide, why can't we read all your emails, watch every move you make, make you go through the naked body scanners and save the images to look at later, listen in on all your phone calls, put video cameras in your house, search you and your possesions without warrents, stop you ask you for "your papers", etc..?"
Why should we NOT be able to say the EXACT same thing!? If they don't have anything to hide why can't we see these reports? What is it they are trying to hide?
The Truth is a Virus!!!
What I do want is to stop paying taxes
Fallacious argument. You pay taxes because you live and work here. You get your choice how to vote for how they're spent, but otherwise the spending and the taxing are not connected. If they were, you probably wouldn't have to pay any taxes on foreign wars, since you're only a very distant beneficiary of their produce, while the executives of Halliburton would be digging up buried caches of confederate money to pay their taxes on this one.
Although I, too, look silly when I type "conversations" when I mean to type "conservatives". Oy vey.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Capital punishment is execution following the due process of law, or at least something resembling due process.
The insurgency will just pop a cap in yo ass.
basically no public outcry
I'm pretty sure there was a huge public outcry; the only things I really remember from Bush's first term were 9/11 and the ensuing invasions, and Scootergate (I was in grade school at the time, hence the not-remembering-much)
I interpreted your post as rhetorical questions for which the answer to both would be 'No'. Apparently that's the opposite of what you meant, though, so I'm sorry for my mistake.
He asked for something that was impossible.
How is it impossible? The US government might have been unwilling to do it, but it clearly was possible (otherwise he couldn't have (imperfectly) redacted the documents himself.
Assange has brought the fog of war into the homes of people who are ill-equipped to deal with it.
Oh brother... Why don't we go ahead and ban voting booths while we're at it - clearly the US population is ill-equipped to properly select its leaders.
"The military," not individuals.
Uh, the military is nothing more than a collection of a few million individuals. You can't have a conversation with "the military" if you want to be that pedantic.
Only people who are incapable of seeing anything beyond their narrow worldview can claim to have cornered the market on absolute truth.
All the more reason to minimize the number of secrets the government keeps. I never claimed I solely had the right to judge the right and wrong of this situation. I fully appreciate the need for operational security, but perhaps if the government were more open about stuff that didn't genuinely need secrecy people would be less likely to leak stuff like this.
That's what I was going to say. Thanks for the rebuttal!
The CB App. What's your 20?
They've got to be protected
All their rights respected
'Til somebody we like can be elected
My problem with the term really stems from how it attempts to draw a line between certain violent acts as something special. I don't see whats so special about a plane flying into a building vs a bomb being dropped on it with a laser guidance system. I don't see whats so special bout it happening in this country vs happening elsewhere.
The only way terrorism seems useful to me is to draw rather arbitrary distinctions between the various attempts to use violence to change the actions of others, and frankly, its less that I disagree with deamonizing terrorists as much as that it serves to legitimize "state sponsored" violence.
I make no distinction. Murder is murder.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"