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WikiLeaks Set To Release Unpublished Iraq War Docs
Tootech writes with this snippet from Wired:
"A massive cache of previously unpublished classified US military documents from the Iraq War is being readied for publication by WikiLeaks, a new report has confirmed. The documents constitute the 'biggest leak of military intelligence' that has ever occurred, according to Iain Overton, editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a nonprofit British organization that is working with WikiLeaks on the documents. The documents are expected to be published in several weeks. Overton, who discussed the project with Newsweek, didn't say how many documents were involved or disclose their origin, but they may be among the leaks that an imprisoned Army intelligence analyst claimed to have sent to WikiLeaks earlier this year."
"They're really cute puppies too," said a CIA spokesperson. A Swedish prosecutor immediately filed charges of animal cruelty against the Wikileaks founder, then retracted them, then filed them again.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The concept is nice: A tool for exposing corruption
But the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Even as someone who is very strongly in support of open government, the methods used by Wikileaks just feel a bit too... cowboyish?
I don't really know, perhaps someone can explain better, but I just get this bad feeling the way they are going about this.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
This is a good thing and a positive step for democracy, because, without knowing -what- our tax dollars are used for, how can we make decisions on how to spend them? Without the -full- intelligence from Iraq and Afghanistan, how can we know the true cost to make a rational decision on whether to continue them?
A democracy (or republic) can't work unless people have all the facts, otherwise it falls apart. The more information the better.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Not the fact that Wikileaks is publishing information like this. Not the possible side effects from "inside information" being released.
No, what bothers me the most is that something like Wikileaks needs to exist at all.
Living With a Nerd
lets hope they cleaned the documents properly
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
No no everybody! Don't believe the leak! Not when Old man Assange is going around raping women and punching newborns.
Where next to none of the incidents were really unknown and all it really showed was that field reports by low level soldiers tend to not be very accurate. But hey, it named a whole bunch of informants who'll now find themselves dealing with a drastically life expectency, that was good right?
The only thing that really came out that was surprising for the British papers that looked over the documents was that it was the first time we'd heard the military accuse Pakistan intelligence and military of supplying weapons to extemists. They'd always tiptoed around this in the past, not admitting it publically.
"it named a whole bunch of informants who'll now find themselves dealing with a drastically life expectency, that was good right?
Where do they name informants, my understanding is they were redacting any such information.
There is no other option. You are providing evidence against a powerful wrongdoer. One that holds a special right to employ physical force against you. You cannot play "let's make a deal" with them. They will bury you. The only option is to be aggressive, just as government was aggressive in hiding their wrongdoings in the first place.
I salute those who engage in whistle-blowing and hold the highest respect for them. They are the ones making personal sacrifices to help us all, not the elite at the top of the power pyramid.
Anyone doing anything for him? If he wouldn't have taken a stand on this, nobody would have known anything.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
I don't really know, perhaps someone can explain better, but I just get this bad feeling the way they are going about this.
For better or for worse, this is going to seriously shake any confidence a person or country is going to have when offering sensitive information to the United States. The United States conducts a lot of operations both good and bad throughout the entire world. If you think that overall the United States' actions in other countries is good then you would probably have a bad feeling about this. Let's say I know where a warlord is hiding out in Sudan but if I tell US forces about it and anyone finds out that it was me, I'll lose my life. After being able to peruse their entire set of documents from Afghanistan and Iraq, how much confidence can I have in them?
Hopefully bringing in Bureau of Investigative Journalism is a way to protect those people but at the same time relaying the important information to the public in a way it doesn't further jeopardize lives.
My work here is dung.
Wait a second.. Is this a leak about a leak?
*ENGAGE SARCASM MODE*
When you are blowing the whistle, you got ask permission first. Because I am SURE the pentagon would happily lend a hand and help with releasing video of its soldiers slaughtering unarmed civilians complete with audio track of the soldiers enjoying the slaughter as if it is a game.
*END SARCASM MODE, SWITCH TO QUIET DESPAIR*
The above post is sadly a growing movement of "don't rock the boat" people who just don't want to hear anything that upsets them. If you tell them their house is on fire, they blame you, not the fire. Shoot the messenger, so you never have to hear anything disturbing. Trust the state, keep quiet and all will be well.
Reagan did this well, soothing voice, zero policies zero convictions. No wonder people want him back. No matter that he killed the economy. All is well because he said it was.
If you read the news and your blood doesn't boil every other article, you ain't reading news, you are reading entertainment.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I feel like the site has developed (and in part always had) a primary purpose of attacking U.S. foreign policy. The site needs to be more than that if it is to be a true data haven. Some have said Cryptome comes closer, I am not well read enough to agree or disagree. The problem of editing is a big one. Failing to edit out the names of informants for instance. The easiest way is to be neutral and edit nothing, allowing the posters to retain responsibility for all that is posted. That would flood the site with false data though, and part of the service wikileaks provides is at least rudimentary verification. If wikileaks wants to be what it claims it set out to be, it needs a larger diversity of leaked content.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
This is only happening because the US war on Iraq was whipped up unjustly for motives that are still not clear. In a free and open society you should expect this kind of fallout when so many lives are destroyed and so much debt incurred for no apparent reason.
If the army realy did care about their safty they should not have put their real name in report in first place. In attempt to shut wikileak, they act like they care now. But to them they are just expandable foreigner. So really, blame the army, not Wikileak.
the site's stash of Iraq documents is believed to be about three times as large as its Afghanistan collection.
So only 1/3rd of the number of people who bothered to read the Afghanistan collection will read the one on Iraq?
Discuss
he betrayed his military duties. a functioning military has to expect certain things of its members, or it doesn't work. if you betray those agreements, people can die. he betrayed his military duties, therefore he is being punished. yes, you can say he was following a higher conscience, a higher duty. that's fine. but he has to pay a price for that from the military's point of view
this is real life: if you have a higher conscience, if you have a higher calling you are going to make sacrifices, you are going to suffer for them by crossing vested interests. doing the right thing in this world is not easy, and you are a fool if you believe doing the right thing is easy and without personal cost
in fact, it is a simple inescapable fact of life that if you care and work for something that goes against vested interests, you will be nailed to a cross
so be prepared to suffer for what you believe in, or stop believing in that thing, and lead a nice cozy life
that's the choice we all face in this world: sell our conscience, and live comfortably, or have a conscience, and suffer for it. there are no other choices. the effort to make this world a better place is a road of suffering, no two ways about it
you don't get comfort in this world without some unease about what your comfort costs you in terms of self-regard and the rest of the world in terms of what it takes to support that comfort. think of that next time you put gasoline on your SUV
additionally, you don't get to have a clear conscience, made clear by facing and fighting vested interests, without suffering for it, often dearly
welcome to the real world, no one said it was all rainbows and unicorns
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I feel like the site has developed (and in part always had) a primary purpose of attacking U.S. foreign policy. The site needs to be more than that if it is to be a true data haven.
It sure does look that way. Assange clearly has political goals that go beyond exposing corruption, fraud, and the like. How can I trust him to not be selectively suppressing things or even editing things?
Originally I recall there was an emphasis on corporate wrongdoing. So-and-so just dumped 50000 gallons of dioxin in the Mississippi River, some OS keyword searching your email and forwarding some of it to the RIAA, etc.
That "collateral murder" thing removed any doubt I had. First of all, "murder" is a specific type of killing; it is a particular class of unlawful killing. Neither accidents nor acts of war qualify, of which the events were both. Before even releasing the original video, he made a short version of of the video which lacked much of the context. He stripped out pictures that showed people running around with AK-47 and RPG-7 weapons. He also stripped out scenes that might remind viewers that there is much confusion in battle.
It is excellent that Wikileaks is releasing information, it needs to release everything completely and not look at anybody pointing fingers how they 'endanger the troops'.
The only people who endanger the troops are those who sent them to Afghanistan and those who will not get them out of there now.
All information that can be retrieved, must be released. All of this information is of prior situations and it shows that Afghanistan war is just as screwed up as all other wars, it has no chance in hell of achieving anything substantial that can change lives of residents of that country. The US/UN war machine will move on, and Afghanistan will be what it was, what it always was. As they say in Afghanistan: the West has the clocks, but we have the time. It's true, US/UN/Anybody can't last in that war forever, they'll move on and things will go back to where they were, except now there will be more people, who made billions on war and there will be millions who lost lives/limbs/health counting all sides.
The only correct strategy to these wars is to move out of the regions and bring all troops home, all troops, from all bases around the world, and do it immediately. If the leaks of documents help to achieve any part of that, then wikileaks document leaks would be most important actions taken for peace and economy.
You can't handle the truth.
The reasons are pretty clear. Saddam purposefully let the world believe he had huge stockpiles of chemical weapons and WMD's to keep Iran at bay because he was fearful of Iran crossing the borders.
Coupled with a gung-ho president wanting to finish his father's legacy and that's why we went in.
And please, keep in mind that the world not going into Iraq is a bit of a black eye. Iraq was a country run by a brutal dictator. Leave the hyperbole at the door before talking about American tyranny. Bush went in for poor reasons, reasons Iraq wanted them to believe (and just never expected they would come). But countries like Iraq should not be allowed to exist in the modern world. And for that matter there's dozens of other countries we have all turned our back on and their citizens are forced to live in fear and ignorance of a brutal government.
when they start publishing similar information from countries which would be more inclined to take the actions some suggest the US does in response to WikiLeaks
There are times where I cheer them on, there others where I think they only do what they think is safe.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
without knowing -what- our tax dollars are used for, how can we make decisions on how to spend them?
I'm not usually consulted about how to spend tax dollars.
And, I hope that attack kills hundreds and can be directly linked to the leaked documents on Wikileaks.
Please read the cease fire documents from the First Gulf War and get back to us.
Didn't we see this exact headline a month or so ago?
Oh wait, this is the Iraq war. Nevermind.
Just because Wikileaks is a liberal weenie organization does not give them the right to reduce our national security, whether they agree with the war or not.
Another prime example, a friend of mine, who is politically moderate, was sent a spreadsheet from a hacked system that contained detailed information on everyone who signed a mailing list for a political candidate. They had no right to compromise someones system and steal private information, not to mention sending it out to everyone that was on that list. Almost as if to say to everyone they disagreed with politically, "hey, we know who you are"
IMO, Wikileaks, just as the ACLU, had a clear and valuable purpose a long time ago but now have become too political, irresponsible, biased, racist, are unethical and have lost their moral base.
We do not live in a democracy. Never have. We (USA) are a representative republic. The founding fathers NEVER wanted us to be a pure democracy because of the chaos that happens from being a "mob rule" type of government. The problem we have now, in my opinion, is that the representatives do not represent the people, but represent those that contribute the most money, namely corporations, special interest etc. Until the money is taken out of politics, it will not change. Why do you have people spending MILLIONS per election cycle, on a job that pays less than 200,000.00 per year? Easy...POWER! They crave the power the government, through their interpretation of the constitution gives them. Take away that power, and you'll see a lot of them give up that job. The easiest way to take away their power is to completely overhaul the tax code. How to do that? ELIMINATE the IRS via a flat tax, consumption tax or some other means that CANNOT be tinkered with. Each year, millions of Americans spend tons of money trying to figure out the massive tax code. Eliminate that, you'll see hidden money return to America, and investment in America rise.
read some Glenn Greenwald. Yes, the same Greenwald that excoriated Bush. It's called consistency in pursuit of your beliefs.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2009/10/06/obama
But perhaps you missed the recent decision and its history.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/09/08/obama/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/opinion/09thurs2.html?_r=1&hp
for those who say it wasn't Obama, it was his Justice department, for which he appointed Holder, "champion of civil rights"... except when it matters.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
But countries like Iraq should not be allowed to exist in the modern world. And for that matter there's dozens of other countries we have all turned our back on and their citizens are forced to live in fear and ignorance of a brutal government.
This is patently false. Only the citizens living under that dictator have the right to rebel against him. Further only they will ever be able to actually succeed.
What we've witnessed/been witnessing in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan really should have taught us this lesson by now. This isn't a matter of just finding the right way to do it, this is a matter of logical incongruity.
In short, if the people aren't willing to rise up and overthrow this leader, then why are we? And what happens when we leave, and a new power takes over?
The entire premise is deeply, deeply flawed, and if this were our first failed experiment in it I might be more forgiving. But this clearly never, ever works.
Right... the real issue is not that we're invading countries left and right, or opening up secret prisons around the world, or legalizing the assassination of US citizens, or ending the protection of civil rights that western society has had since the Magna Carta, or threatening sovereign nations with annihilation on a weekly basis, or treating the UN like it's our play toy, or refusing to submit to an international legal authority, but it's the fact that we can't keep a secret that's really bothering the rest of the world.
The reason the rest of the world doesn't trust us with information is because we often do very stupid things with it, especially when it comes to terrorism.
and yet, it exists
anyone with a conscience in this world has to offer up a pound of flesh for the actions of those without a conscience
i'm not saying this is justifiable, i am just saying it is inevitable
and i am not arguing against acting on your conscience either. i am merely making the sad, sobering point that those with a higher conscience in this world pay a heavy price, unfortunately, for the sake of the actions of all the assholes without a conscience
its the way of the world. its not fair. it's just the way it is, and always will be
that being said, progress exists in this world. justice exists in this world. we see progress and justice raped, laughed at, pilloried, and otherwise spit upon on a daily basis, and yet those of us with a conscience endure, because when all is said and done, those with a conscience are the only ones that matter. everyone else are parasites living in the wake of the hard work of what those with a conscience make possible: a fair and just society. without that, there is no education, there is no science, there is no economic growth, there is no happiness, there is no reason for living
a human conscience is the foundation upon which human civilization exists. a human conscience makes our societies possible. and both civilization and prosperous societies are real. therefore, the efforts and sacrifices of a human conscience in this world matters, and works, and therefore this highest calling is worth enduring. without our human conscience, we are nothing but meaningless darkness and death
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Thank you, sincerely, for the links.
From my reading of them, it seems Obama is no better than Bush on this stuff, and has essentially gone back on his word to be better. However, to me, it doesn't look like "more secrecy... than Bush" (as you said) -- merely the same level. Perhaps I am not interpreting it correctly.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
Well said, but unfortunately this weeks ruling means it is only going to get worse , much much worse..
Quotes from above:
"The ruling handed a major victory to the Obama administration in its effort to advance a sweeping view of executive secrecy power."
"The distorted, radical use of the state secret privilege -- as a broad-based immunity weapon for compelling the dismissal of entire cases alleging Executive lawbreaking, rather than a narrow discovery tool for suppressing the use of specific classified documents -- is exactly what the Bush administration did to such extreme controversy."
Rulings like this passed with little to no media coverage[1] show that the US is more little down the slippery slope to our Orwellian future. And people here are worried about wikileaks? The mind boggles.
[1] Slashdot posts old old news on Wikileaks instead - like there was ever a doubt that the remaining documents will be published
the sad part is that the CIA can't tell when it's made up either
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm too lazy to entirely rewrite what I wrote last time someone made this assertion:
1) The Taliban are using missiles we gave them back in the 80s to try and shoot our copters down (officially denied until the leak)
2) Many accounts given by the military to the press were wrong and underreported how many civilians died, according to the original reports
3) It exposed the "killing squads" -- also known as Task Force 373 -- recently in the news for mutilating Afghan bodies and keeping their body parts as trophies
4) It exposed the fact that many of the military operations are now classified and under the direct control of the CIA
5) It documents the rise of Taliban military capability, directly contradicting public statements made by the US military
I'll leave my snarky commentary on the press and you, the credulous American public, intact:
But you guys wrap all that up with "No Big Deal," and feed it to all the media outlets who depend on you for access to government officials? Fucking. Brilliant. They don't even have to pretend to have reported on those things before. They just say, basically, the emperor has clothes, and then Joe Sixpack nods his little beer storage unit up and down and switches back to WWE. I know, and now they're all uppity about this Australian guy possibly getting innocent people killed when we're laying civs out left and right - with secret police and secret budgets! God bless the US of Amnesia.
Please read the cease fire documents from the First Gulf War and get back to us.
Really? That's your rationalization? That the cease-fire terms of a previous artificially manufactured and totally mis-represented war provides justification for a second one?
See, the problem with living in a make-believe reality is that while you can fool yourself into self-respect it doesn't change the fact that you still look and sound like a complete fool to those around you. Better to invest in objective reality.
-FL
up +500
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You don't think the CIA actually believed that bullshit they put out, do you? The Bush admin (the CIA's bosses) didn't want fact, they wanted justification. I don't think for one second there was any serious analyst in the CIA involved in Iraq who believed Iraq had serious WMD capabilities, or were in any kind of position to develop them.
the eff thinks otherwise.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/jewel-v-nsa-roundup-media-obamas-position
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/04/06/obama/index.html
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/expert_consensus_obama_aping_bush_on_state_secrets.php?ref=fp1
tpm says it's the same, but there are new claims made by the Obama DoJ which Bush never had the audacity (pun intended) to make. to me, that's enough to make Obama worse in an objective sense. but moreover, he's subjectively worse in that he's poisonous and harmful because he both says the right thing (excessive secrecy is bad) while simultaneously cementing the bipartisan consensus and legitimizing Bush's radical and harmful policies. This is simply a grievous blow to the rule of law in America.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
theres going to be a 1000 yard rifle shot with his name on it. all they have to do is file false charges against him again and they know he has to show up....
BANG!
no PROOF the us gov't was involved, but really?
Do they ever leak intelligence from China or Russia or other countries?
I understand pushing for government transparency and that there is a fine line between exposing government behaviour and causing damage to covert ops. But why is it always (or at least it seems always) US classified material they publish? Is it only the US leaks that get the headlines?
PLEASE let them involve the ever-redacted-in-all-ways torture photos. Something to make people wake up to the (you would think.. so obvious!) war crimes of the current administrative branch. I say 'current', for it hasn't changed between nominal figureheads.
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
I'll give it to wiki leaks it destroys all those after the war books that authors were thinking they were going to write and become pontifcators of thier own secret sauce.
There is corruption everywhere and the more you look the uglier it gets.
I see the usefulness of this site to point out corruption and waste but in some sense it borders on espionage and in that game he who does not play by the rules ends up dead.
I hate to belabor the point about war, we all know very little good comes from it but it's something we can never escape when uneducated mases and in some cases deranged educated individuals shape easily swayed minds.
A chat transcript from Adrian Lamo's computer does not prove that Bradley Manning was on the other end of that chat. Manning is still being held incommunicado and there has been no verification on his part.
The press may be promoting a scapegoat offered to them by the Pentagon. For the time being, they lie when they talk about what "Manning claimed".
It could also be that Manning leaked the 'Collateral Murder' video and the Pentagon needed to manufacture a more publicly acceptable reason to prosecute him. I think this is most likely what happened. Wikileaks say they have not received the purported diplomatic cables, and I tend believe them.
That would be propaganda talking.
I had the good fortune to be able to talk at length with an ex-pat Iraqi who had a very different reality to report. He came from a long family line and described his father's life and his own. Essentially, life in Iraq wasn't anywhere nearly as bad as the Western press dictated, that so long as you didn't speak against Saddam, everybody could go about their days at a high standard of living.
A "brutal dictator" to us is a "king" to others. And the West, given its lack of wisdom and total inability to govern itself with any degree of humanity, has no business marching about trumpeting who should and should not be allowed to exist in the modern world. We preach democracy, but we haven't got one. We live as peasants under a ruling class, except our kings and dukes and princes have zero interest in maintaining a happy populace. In this bankrupted economy, a small percentage of Americans are making more money than ever before. And we know why that is. Corruption. That's our system.
-FL
And it didn't work out for Japan or Germany either? They're just poor countries still living under dictators.
I've been to Iraq. It really is worse then is reported.
And I live much better, in terms of freemdom and quality of life, then Iraq does.
I guess all those quality of life studies and freedom indexes are just fabricated crap too. Because you know, you one time talked to someone so it's all make believe.
If you talked to a Sunni living in Baghdad under Saddam I could see it not being so bad.
Those were governments with standing armies. That era is over.
Wait, so now the first war was artificially manufactured? Let me guess, in your one talk to an Iraqi that gave you you great worldview it got mentioned that Saddam was allowed to take over Kuwait just so we could go kick him out. I'm sure it's one of those regurgitated false-factoids you're going to bring out.
But hey, at least you're not throwing stones from a class house by claiming you live in reality. Oh wait....You are.
Can't we all, just like, you know, get along?
...but might it not be in their best interest to only publish hashes of the content and distrubute the content itself via P2P outlets? From the legal and hosting perspectives, it would seem to have a lot of advantages. First, they don't have to have permanent possession of the content; they may not ever have to have possession of the content. Second, it would be nigh on impossible to prove that they were responsible for it's distribution. Third, hosting providers are going to be less afraid of the repercussions and the hosting itself would be cheaper and easier. Are there P2P engines that calculate hashes, so you could find the document you wanted, first time, every time? Thanks, Chaz
If the new set of documents doesn't contain smoking-gun evidence leading to war crimes trials for Bush Administration officials, they just shouldn't bother releasing them.
I originally thought it was Osama bin Laden, but it seems that OBL is not really pushing the public's buttons. Perhaps Assange is the new "bad guy"? Of course the media elite needs to continue tearing him down until all we see is hate, but give them time, they're very good at character assassination.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Well, OK if we're citing differences. Vietnam was a conflict based around the North's desire to take over the south and the US's desire to contain communism.
Afghanistan is a pretty obvious case of the US being attacked by the controlling regime. Shockingly to you the economy and freedoms in Afghanistan have improved since the US occupation.
And Iraq is a case of their leader puffing his chest to a cowboy. And they technically had a standing army. And who knows how that's going to turn out. Well, except for the Kurds where it's already improved drastically?
So what was your point? That Vietnam was the US/French trying to stop an invasion by the North? That Iraq had a standing army? Or that the quality of life in Afghanistan/Kurdistan has improved?
If he spread his efforts all over the place he would not get anything done.
Does it ever occur to you that the people who REALLY change things are the ones who pick a subject and dig DEEP?
Sure you are just making it all up, and clearly you're not impugning Conspiracy of Doves, but it's YOU that ends up looking stupid.
Of course. Think of the soldiers. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
The elite at the top of the pyramid are precisely the people who put those soldiers in danger. Not only did they put them there, but they further endangered them with policies that explicitly allow the killing of innocent civilians.
Let's call a spade a spade here. The releasing of government secrets does not put soldiers in danger -- it puts the war agenda in danger, along with the billons of dollars the war agenda is valued at. Am I implying that the elite at the top of the pyramid are motivated by money alone, and money alone is the reason they sent those soldiers to war? You're damn right I am.
But hey, at least you're not throwing stones from a class house by claiming you live in reality. Oh wait....You are.
A "class" house? Really? I'm tempted to leave it right there.
Look. All wars are manufactured on the political level. Nobody forced Bush Sr. and the coalition to go storming into Iraq. It was a deliberately marketed war complete with spy craft, manipulative diplomacy, fake atrocity stories; the whole nine yards. It wasn't about freeing anybody. It was about securing oil resources and expanding US influence in the middle east.
Is this really news to you? Do you REALLY believe that it was about freeing the helpless and fighting the good fight to spread democracy and popular justice? That crap was just a sales pitch to get the trusting masses to sign their lives (and tax dollars) away to the government military weapons dealers and oil barons. And I'm sorry, but Santa isn't real either.
Get it together and do the research! Wars serve nobody but the elite. We are being manipulated. And yes, we ARE being bombarded from the 'class' houses, but I'm not the one throwing those stones.
-FL
I was going right along with you until you said that the solution to take power away from politicians is to establish a flat tax and/or consumption tax. Forgetting the fact that a flat tax and/or a consumption tax system is a stupid idea, how does implementing that take power away from politicians?
The economy in Afghanistan is 'improved' almost entirely via corruption, primarily in the form of opium. This is not an improvement.
Iraq's army was demolished inside of a week. That was several years ago. Clearly the army was not the force we ultimately needed to defeat during that conflict. In fact, Saddam may have been the only force keeping terrorism in check in Iraq. Once we deposed him, all hell broke loose. It is still in utter chaos today. Tell me again what impact the defeat of the army had in Iraq.
You're not being intellectually honest.
Vietnam is, I think, the best example because it was almost a conflict between armies. The people, however, turned out to be the force that decided which side was going to win. The vast majority wanted to be VC, and thus it came to pass. We poured a lot of blood and money into that country trying to change it, but failed to do so. The French saw the writing on the wall and suckered us into taking their place. And yet educated people today still refer to this popular uprising as an 'invasion by the North'. It's remarkable, but the fact remains that the effort was an utter waste.
In short, Vietnam proved that even under the very best of circumstances, it still won't work.
I've been to Iraq. It really is worse then is reported.
Worse than what? Reported by who?
And just as importantly, when? When did you visit Iraq? During, before or after which war?
It's hard to understand what you're talking about, because you are being terribly unspecific and your grammar is all over the place. And what quality of life studies are you referring to? What did they say? I'm sure you have a point, so maybe you should slow down and make it.
-FL
Now that Wikileaks has been firmly established as the rebel hero of truth and justice, (Go Big Media Owned By. . . who?), and any information bubbling up from saint Julian's hard drive gets to skip past all vetting processes. . .
Would it be any surprise if new "Leaked" documents happened to contain somewhere within them evidence that Iran is deserving of a good bombing?
Remember; you heard it here first.
-FL
Why didn't this happen Bush was still in the White House and a withdrawal from Iraq could have saved lives and billions? An early withdrawal from Iraq and a trial for Bush would have been great. To bad we didn't get that.
Oh, so Saddam Hussein's forces didn't invade Kuwait and start a war? And, he wasn't in violation of the cease fire agreement which stated Iraq would allow inspectors full and unfettered access?
it's fucking disgusting to have people support these assholes whose only objective is to damage the U.S.A. Yeah make no mistake they don't want you to know any "truth", it's just about damaging the US.
Nobody forced Saddam Hussein and his government to invade Kuwait. Or, are you denying that Iraq invaded Kuwait? Or, are you just ignorant of the First Gulf War?
I don't have mod points but I do have karma to burn. How the hell can facts be marked trolling?
What doesn't work? Removing regimes? It does work sometimes and sometimes it doesn't. In Germany and Japan you had an educated population that already had expectations of a certain lifestyle and went back to it right away. In Iraq/Afghanistan you really didn't.
To say Afghanistan is only improving because of the drug trade isn't fair. To say Iraq is chaos today compared to before isn't fair. Are more people dying today then before from unnatural causes? Is it the whole country? Or just the preferred middle? The north and south are definitely more secure and more prosperous then before. And measuring the long term results after only a few years isn't fair either. Compare Germany in 1955 to Germany of 1965. Large difference.
Posting Anon for obvious reasons:
My Dad works at the NSA (GS-15 I believe) in the Information Architecture Threat/Risk Analysis area, has done a multi-year interagency tour at the White House (OSTP) and is now working on the "Dark Side", aka the offensive side of the "cyber war" at the NSA. In short, he knows his way around the "secrets" block.
His quote: "No one ever went to jail for classifying something that shouldn't have been classified. The reverse is not true."
You know, the same general terms you threw around like "life in Iraq wasn't anywhere nearly as bad as the Western press dictated". I was specifically talking about South Western media, but whatever. Really, I was using your generalization, and I was there in 07.
Or other great crap you wrote like "a "brutal dictator" to us is a "king" to others. And the West, given its lack of wisdom and total inability to govern itself with any degree of humanity, has no business marching about trumpeting who should and should not be allowed to exist in the modern world."
Really, I don't remember the last time we executed a woman for having sex, or whipped her for being in public without covering her face.
Can you name some Western atrocities? Sure. No place is perfect. But the utter lack of common sense from people like you is appalling. I love the Pakistani's buring American flags and screaming death to Christians because someone might burn the Quaran. If everyone wants to be whipped because they didn't cover up, I'm all for letting them be whipped. But I'm all for reaching out to those that don't want to cover up or be whipped.
We went into Kuwait because they were invaded and because we didn't want Saddam to have their oil that we wanted. Shocking!!!! A country we were on friendly terms with and that has something we want with getting protected. OMGZ!!!!
And really. "class out". If you think a typo on the interweb is a big deal you should stop right there and not respond. Your points aren't very interesting and are rather naive.
How is this a troll?
We'll catch the bastard and have him shot this time.
Coupled with a gung-ho president wanting to finish his father's legacy and that's why we went in.
You are a deeply naive fool.
We went in because war makes money for those in power at no cost to themselves. This is how it's always been.
You know, the same general terms you threw around like "life in Iraq wasn't anywhere nearly as bad as the Western press dictated". I was specifically talking about South Western media, but whatever. Really, I was using your generalization, and I was there in 07.
So you were seeing a post-Saddam Iraq, with its infrastructure bombed to oblivion and its social networks torn apart by war. I imagine there are relatively few places on the planet which wouldn't seem better by comparison. By contrast, the Iraqi I was talking described a country BEFORE the 2003 invasion, and before the trade sanctions went into effect back in 1990. A very different country than the one you experienced.
Or other great crap you wrote like "a "brutal dictator" to us is a "king" to others. And the West, given its lack of wisdom and total inability to govern itself with any degree of humanity, has no business marching about trumpeting who should and should not be allowed to exist in the modern world."
Really, I don't remember the last time we executed a woman for having sex, or whipped her for being in public without covering her face.
Can you name some Western atrocities? Sure. No place is perfect. But the utter lack of common sense from people like you is appalling.
I think you're confusing common sense with Pavlovian responses. Even during times of economic prosperity in the U.S. MILLIONS of people starve, go without medical care, education, because that's how our capitalist value system works. It's a human atrocity. Would you like to be invaded because another country might want to "reach out" (i.e., Bomb the living shit out of the very people they profess to be 'rescuing').
Basically, you got played. The government and the media played on your sympathies, and you got conned. Iraq wasn't saved. It's been reduced to a smoking shit hole and a small group of people made a LOT of money as a direct result. And why? Because people with good hearts weren't smart enough to see that an evil government was manipulating them.
Sorry for the bad news. Are man enough to look it in the face or are you going to continue lying to yourself?
-FL
Even during times of economic prosperity in the U.S. MILLIONS of people starve, go without medical care, education, because that's how our capitalist value system works. It's a human atrocity.
Citations please? Someone has been watching too much Fidel Castro or something.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Agreed. If a country with greater freedom than the US were to invade, bomb the whitehouse and the pentagon, assassinate every last congressman and senator, destroy most of our police force, and cripple our military, my poodle would not hold any grudge against the invaders as long as it seemed clear that they at least made some effort to avoid collateral damage and that their intent was to set us free and not to enslave us. My poodle and I would both realize that there would be some loss of innocent civilian life, but that the greater good would result in the long run. My treasonous poodle might even become an informer and help "the enemy" with intelligence information even at the risk of being shot as a traitor. The real traitors are the politicians who are turning our once great country into a police state. If I lived in a country like Iraq or Afghanistan I would be quite happy to be invaded by a nation whose genuine intent was to destroy my government with as few civilian casualties as possible. I just don't see how that could be a bad thing. Of course, I wouldn't see it as their responsibility to do so, but I would definitely be grateful for the bombs falling on my city as long as I truly believed they were there to rescue us and not destroy us. Think of how the German Jews felt about their "attackers" during the invasion of their country. Whether you view the invasion as an attack or as a liberation depends a lot on your political views I guess. The Taliban and Saddam Hussein's government were both pretty bad by any definition. Of course that doesn't explain why we are still over there.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Citations please? Someone has been watching too much Fidel Castro or something.
Really? You're not going to spend like thirty seconds on Google and consider your lack of familiarity with common knowledge to be a valid debating point? Your choice.
Food insecurity:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/101/1/e3
http://www.frac.org/html/hunger_in_the_us/hunger_index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/opinion/18wed2.html
http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/129/2/510S
Medical coverage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States
(Just follow the damned links.)
Education:
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnces.ed.gov%2Fpubs2005%2F2005021.pdf&rct=j&q=comparison%20of%20education%20in%20the%20united%20states%20to%20other%20countries&ei=9d-KTIjRBISdlgeC7KmsCQ&usg=AFQjCNHg2XP3uyuKjnED6uGl91FHXaS17g&cad=rja
I should also mention that the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration per capita on the planet, but I'll let you look that one up yourself.
-FL
Iraq had reason to be in Kuwait. We didn't.
This might shock you, but both the USA and the UK are English-speaking countries. This makes leaking documents originating there both more worthwhile and easier to verify & publish simply because more people can read them in the original form. For all intents and purposes, the Iraq is equivalent to the USA in this statistic.
Next is Germany; probably because our local efforts at transparency are gaining more traction, lately.
Then China: Huge country, lots of people, no surprise there.
Next Canada & Australia: Again English speaking.
I think I see an easily-explained trend here.