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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."
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...
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.
True.
And the US is acting an aggressor and illegal occupant at various places all over the world.
Expect resistance.
He isn't a US citizen and therefore can not commit treason against us.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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
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."
While I do agree with what you are saying Wikileaks doesn't do anything, they just sit around waiting for the phone to ring. So they can't leak what they aren't told.
>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.
He would be dead.
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
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.
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.
Convince someone on the inside to leak 15,000 verifiable documents on any of those situations, and I bet WikiLeaks would jump on it. They aren't necessarily "focused" on the US, as much as that is what's mostly been made available to them. If the Taliban had a structure that required and kept comparable records, WikiLeaks would probably publish those, as well.
What?
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
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."
What is his name, please? There's just so much FUD around Wikileaks.
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.
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?
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
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
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.
Whoa, it's not like he outed Valerie Plame or something.
Likely, he's too high profile and too obvious to kill. The CIA traditionally doesn't "assassinate" usually anyway (in the sense of a sniper with a rifle). Usually their targets have unfortunate accidents, like plane crashes (as they did with annoying leaders like Omar Torrijos and Jaime Aguilera). In this guy's case, it would probably be better to either discredit him somehow (i.e. something somewhat less crude than the Scientology-esque "He's a child molester, says ex-wife!" but along the same lines) or to subtly threaten someone or something he cares about.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's not like Assange made it a warzone. If Assange's efforts can end the war sooner rather than later, he might end up saving more lives than he has endangered.
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.
I always see this "list of civilians" or "number of civilians" retort but never have seen such a list. Please provide a source that shows this list of outed assets or please stop spreading misinformation.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
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
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.
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.
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
Here: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread598661/pg1
Mind you, this is the ONLY thing you can read, that actually HAS any numbers. Just check all the propaganda around and you see it's just "maybe putting in danger, countless lives", etc. None of those US newspapers, none, mentions any numbers. Says a lot about how uninformed or tendentious are the journalists writing those articles.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Bullshit.
The following reportkey's contains the word heroin:
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The following contain the word poppies:
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"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
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?
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.
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.
EXACTLY. They only place where you can find numbers, says 3 names where found. Only 3. 1 already dead, one double agent for Taliban.
All the other sources: just give sensationalist headlines like "Hundred of informant lives can be at risk" ... but citing absolutely no numbers.
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.
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.
The NYTimes, Newsweek, and a host of human rights groups seem to disagree.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/world/asia/29wikileaks.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/09/AR2010080903045.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703428604575419580947722558.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLESecondNews
http://en.rsf.org/united-states-open-letter-to-wikileaks-founder-12-08-2010,38130.html
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
dozens of Afghan informants, potential defectors and others who were cooperating with American and NATO troops.
Umm, it sounds exactly like what the GP said: "None of those US newspapers, none, mentions any numbers."
And no, "DOZENS!!!1!!!" is not mentioning a number.
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.
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.
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.
*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.
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
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"
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
Names of surrendered Taliban
More surrendered
More
More
Names a suspected double agent
Didn't see any bona fide civilian informants, but I only spent about fifteen minutes looking.
How did this get modded up? Its logical connection is tenuous and it basically strawmans the parent post without addressing it at all.
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.
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."
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.
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.