WikiLeaks Set To Release Unpublished Iraq War Docs

Tootech writes with this snippet from Wired: "A massive cache of previously unpublished classified US military documents from the Iraq War is being readied for publication by WikiLeaks, a new report has confirmed.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."

Comments

CIA to Release Video of Assange Kicking Puppies

[elrous0]

"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.

I like the concept, not the implementation

[IndustrialComplex]

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.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ugly. No doubt. Really really ugly but in a ugly world can you really play with kid gloves on?

I like that it contributes to the accountability but it frightens me that I believe wikileaks. Is it any worse then believing (insert major news outlet here)?

In a world filled with neverending bullshit, anything different can't be bad though.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you would like something more beaurocratic? Maybe the government should run Wikileaks so we can all feel more comfortable about it.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[Ltap]

I think that we're enjoying a good period right now where Wikileaks is still useful. How much time will we have before groups start to release faked documents to it in an attempt to discredit their rivals? Poisoning the well must only be a few years away, assuming they don't manage to dismantle the entire organization by then.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[Kristopeit, M. D.]

i think the word you were looking for was "revolutionary" and not "cowboyish".

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

If they were making it all up, the government wouldn't care what they said.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[betterunixthanunix]

I don't really know, perhaps someone can explain better, but I just get this bad feeling the way they are going about this.

Well, here is the situation we have right now: the government labels a document classified, and we are expected to assume that it would be dangerous for anyone without clearance to read the document. After all, we are at war, and if the enemy were to learn about our planned troop movements, it would result in many dead American soldiers.

Great, in theory, and it makes sense -- the military has always needed to keep certain things secret during times of war. Unfortunately, the military also has a habit of classifying documents inappropriately. An old video of an attack that left two reporters dead? Reports about the numbers of casualties? We live in a democracy, and we need to know what is happening in order to make democratic choices. The inappropriate classification of documents is the reason Wikileaks does what it does. The government can only lie about the reasons for classifying documents so long before the people stop trusting the government, and we crossed that line a long time ago. Wikileaks exists to fight back and show people what the government (and other powerful organizations) does not want them to know. Sure, Wikileaks has some responsibility for ensuring that civilians are not harmed in the process, and they try to redact the leaks. They even asked for government help in redacting the leaks. In the end, though, Wikileaks is run by volunteers, and the government is not willing to help them, so yes, some civilians are harmed. That is unfortunate, but it is not Wikileaks' fault -- Wikileaks is not responsible for the war, and Wikileaks is not responsible for the government misclassifying documents to the point of becoming untrustworthy.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it any worse then believing (insert major news outlet here)?

No, it's much better because they release all source information - whereas [major news outlet] do not, and in the process have failed to uphold their obligation as the 4th estate. Wikileaks is helping investigative journalism regain some credibility.... no more rhetorical questions at last (at least on the internet).

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[c0d3g33k]

Assenege seems like someone with a hard-on for power and attention, a bit of a megalomaniac. Why should a random person have this amount of power just because they came up with / helped implement the idea?

Kind of comes with the territory, doesn't it? Anyone with the balls and motivation to pull this kind of thing off in an effective way on the world stage isn't going to be a small-time whistle blower with a small-time ego or a small-time sense of risk-taking. Anybody with this kind of drive and motivation will seem like a megalomaniac to the sheeple.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[BoberFett]

The US government could neuter him by not being so secretive. If the only things that were kept a secret were those things that were truly important he'd have no power.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[ptbarnett]

How much time will we have before groups start to release faked documents to it in an attempt to discredit their rivals?

To measure that interval, your clock would have to run backwards.

Fake, but Accurate

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[BobMcD]

The inappropriate classification of documents is the reason Wikileaks does what it does. The government can only lie about the reasons for classifying documents so long before the people stop trusting the government, and we crossed that line a long time ago.

What if we made it a crime to over-classify documents, with identical punishments to disclosing classified material? Seems like an easy fix to me...

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[betterunixthanunix]

How would that law be enforced? If you cannot read the documents, how do you know whether or not they have been overclassified?

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[Beezlebub33]

Removing the names of innocent people (Afghans) would be nice.

In theory, 'responsible' news agencies should get the documents, try to make sure that they are not going to get innocent people killed, and publish as much as possible. I don't think that Wikileaks has a clue about how to do that, so they release everything.

And Assange is an ego-manic of the first order. I think that releasing the documents to Cryptome is a better way to do it.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[Kristopeit, M. D.]

a cowboy acts for himself... wikileaks is claiming to act for the people, generally by acting against the government.

perhaps they don't intend revolution, but their actions are closer to revolutionary than cowboy.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[BobMcD]

Insiders, leaks, etc.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[IndustrialComplex]

How would that law be enforced? If you cannot read the documents, how do you know whether or not they have been overclassified?

I have argued that items be reduced in classification from Top Secret to Secret. The entity with Original Classification Authority agreed and the classification level was reduced.

The parent has a point.

Even for non-classified documents or procedures. Consider a building permit. The group granting permits can only LOSE if they grant a permit which should not have been granted, but little to lose if they deny the permit for a new design. That is why we have so many homes built on previously approved designs, it makes the approval process safe for all parties. Classification is similar. No one wants to be the guy who reduced a classification level, and later we find out that it should have been higher. The burdon is dangerous and it is asking someone to accept responsibility and potentially liability.

I have proposed processes by which we increase periodic reviews of classified material with a de-emphasis on losing face or embarassment. (it isn't supposed to exist now, but being humans it will always be there) Naturally that won't fly without a LOT of pressure.

I would prefer such a system to the current wikileaks approach of "Release it all and let God sort it out". It is irresponsible.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[OldeTimeGeek]

I like that it contributes to the accountability but it frightens me that I believe wikileaks.

Improve accountability? No, all this will do is force the decision-making process further away from the prying eyes of public scrutiny. Arguments and discussions will only take place "off the record" and in ways that can be immediately destroyed. No decisions will be documented - at least not in a way that can be used against anyone. Don't like the amount of paper that a bureaucracy produces? You won't have to worry about that much longer...

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[FriendlyLurker]

Improve accountability? No, all this will do is force the decision-making process further away from the prying eyes of public scrutiny.

How I wish you were wrong - but this weeks major, (incredible, unbelievable, and under-reported) news proves you very very right....

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[Dorkmaster Flek]

Yes, but that can be the response to any attempt at holding politicians accountable for their actions. That's their fault, not Wikileaks.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[Smidge204]

Hey everybody! Conspiracy Of Doves is wife beating, drug dealing homosexual pedophile rapist kleptomaniac who acts as an informant for terrorists cells. Be sure to spread the word to everyone you know, especially local law enforcement, neighbors and anyone who might be looking to hire.

(If I'm making it up, you shouldn't care right?)

The real point is Assange more or less bragged about twisting and editing the information he gets for "political effect." He also seems to specifically target the US and only the US, as if no other country is currently doing dubious shit.

He has an agenda and everything he pushes should be viewed with that in mind.
=Smidge=

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[Rayonic]

Unfortunately, the military also has a habit of classifying documents inappropriately. An old video of an attack that left two reporters dead? Reports about the numbers of casualties? We live in a democracy, and we need to know what is happening in order to make democratic choices.

The military seems to classify by default. There are probably a few simple reasons for this:

1. "I don't have authority to decide if something should be classified or not. That's up to my superiors."
2. "I don't have time to read all these documents and watch hundreds of hours of video and still do my main job. Just keep them classified."
3. "What if I un-classify something sensitive by mistake? I'd get in trouble, so screw that."
4. "Who the hell would want to read all this crap anyway?" (i.e. 99% of the leaked Afghanistan documents)

I'm sure there's occasions where something sensitive (or bad looking) is deliberately kept classified, but that's a minority of the time. Just remember that the military is an enormous bureaucracy first, and a fighting force second. (Or it just seems that way sometimes.)

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[Scrameustache]

Improve accountability? No, all this will do is force the decision-making process further away from the prying eyes of public scrutiny.

How I wish you were wrong - but this weeks major, (incredible, unbelievable, and under-reported) news proves you very very right....

Apparently it's now legal for the government to kidnap and torture anyone and there's nothing the courts can do about it if the government calls "state secret". Horrible. Just... horrible.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[Smidge204]

From the "Most Read Countries" category:

Pages in category "Iraq" - 1,746 total
Pages in category "United Kingdom" - 384 total
Pages in category "Afghanistan" - 382 total
Pages in category "Germany" - 278 total
Pages in category "China" - 215 total
Pages in category "Canada" - 159 total
Pages in category "Australia" - 134 total
Pages in category "France" - 128 total
Pages in category "India" - 120 total
Pages in category "Poland" - 83 total
Pages in category "Sweden" - 73 total
Pages in category "Denmark" - 70 total
Pages in category "Russia" - 57 total
Pages in category "Israel" - 49 total
Pages in category "Thailand" - 42 total
Pages in category "Greece" - 38 total
Pages in category "Iran" - 11 total
Pages in category "Italy" - 3 total

Pages in category "United States" - 9,719 total

Note that there is a great deal of overlap here. For example, a majority of articles in category "Iraq" are also (for obvious reasons) in the category "United States."

But you really think that even ignoring the huge overlap, the US's shenanigans outweigh all those other countries combined by a factor of nearly 2.5? Clearly I'm the one turning a blind eye to the rest of the world, right?

Or maybe the US is just really bad at keeping things secret. I guess that's also possible...

And none of that addresses the fact that he admits to editing documents and videos for impact. It's basically impossible to do that without introducing some sort of bias.
=Smidge=

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[conspirator57]

if they hadn't released raw data... then this wouldn't have been possible:

http://www.colorado.edu/ibs/pec/johno/afpak/docs/OLoughlin_Wiki.pdf

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[conspirator57]

independent like the federal court system which used to review classified submissions in camera, ex parte? sorry, but Bush and Obama put the kaibash on that safety valve.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[HungryHobo]

It could also be the fact that wikileaks and wikileaks philosophy is far more popular in the US.

You assume that all those leaks are things which are bad for the US.

6,717 of the 9,719 documents under the US are in fact from the Congressional Research Service

Read this:
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Congressional_Research_Service

Although all CRS reports are legally in the public domain, they are quasi-secret because the CRS, as a matter of policy, makes the reports available only to members of Congress, Congressional committees and select sister agencies such as the GAO.

Members of Congress are free to selectively release CRS reports to the public but are only motivated to do so when they feel the results would assist them politically. Universally embarrassing reports are kept quiet.

personally I'd consider that pile of documents to be an unambiguously positive thing for normal americans.
Releasing them was not an anti-american thing to do and it accounts for the majority of the US documents.
After all, you paid for the research to be done, you should get to see it even if it embarrasses some politicians.

Most of the remainder is accounted for in 2 or 3 large document leaks about the iraq war.
for example 1500 in one large leak.

So no.
wikileaks isn't picking on the US in particular just because the number is big and you were too lazy to drill down and see why the number was so large.
The US is somewhat overrepresented but then the US has a large population, leaking documents is respected to a certain extent and when it comes down to it the US is the richest and most powerful nation out there so there's going to be more to leak anyway.

Re:I like the concept, not the implementation

[moeinvt]

What "consequences" would those be?

Suppose that the soon to be released documents are similar in number and detail to the leaked documents regarding the Afghanistan war. The volume and scope of the information is so vast that any attempt to establish simple cause->effect relationships between the released documents and what might happen in the future is futile.

Maybe the FedGov has a point, and the documents will put people's lives in danger from a tactical standpoint. Then again, maybe the documents will cause enough outrage to reinvigorate the anti-war movement and end these operations sooner rather than later, thus saving lives. Maybe the evidence proving that the government always lies to the people will mean that the next military crusade (Iran?) never even happens, thus saving thousands of lives.

This is a case where we're talking about principles. An informed citizenry is essential to the basic functioning of a democratic society, and it's obvious that we won't get any true information from the government or mainstream media. Cheers to WikiLeaks and the patriots who are supplying this information.

Good

[Darkness404]

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.

Re:Good

[Bill_the_Engineer]

This is a war not monday-night football. We don't need arm chair commanders making political hay over day-to-day operations.

I'm for an open government, but I don't see how knowing intimate details about operations will make the government more open about the war. Sure you can point to the effectiveness of the ground forces, but your totally disregarding the defense contractors who are really raking in the money. In fact I believe these documents will serve to focus our attention on old field reports and distract us from Haliburton, Blackwater (Z), and others who are profiting from the war. Worse these documents are really just increasing Wikileaks visibility at the risk of endangering US troops and worse the Afghans that helped.

Now if wikileaks could disclose documents between congressional leaders and these contractors, then I would be very impressed.

You know what bothers me the most?

[Pojut]

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.

So will this be like the last hyped release?

[abigsmurf]

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.

What other option?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What other option?

[Anonymous Coward]

The elite have everything to do with this. Wikileaks wanted help sanitizing the thousands of pages of documents. Help from the Department of Defense. They said fuck no, take down what you've published and destroy what you haven't.

If you can withhold your help sanitizing the documents and thereby kill the publication of your secrets, you would never help. So, the DoD gambled and now their personnel and informers on the ground are at risk. If it was that important to the decision makers, they shouldn't have gambled. You don't bluff with what you can't afford to lose.

The common people are already feeling the effects of actions taken by bad actors. American taxpayers paying the bill, service personnel risking their lives and being posted away from their families, and civilians dying. If the government can continue to do what it does in secret, that shit will keep happening.

There are two sides to every problem, and either side can solve the problem. There are some solutions we don't feel are viable because we blame one side or the solution is worse than the problem. The solutions available to the government, though, are not these things. 1) They could not have started a war based on trumped up "evidence" of WMDs. 2) They could've fucking stepped up and agreed to sanitize some goddamn documents that describe how much douchebaggery would've been engaged in, but we do actually care about the people on the ground so we're going to make sure they're kept out of publication. But yeah, its so much easier to vilify Assange and Wikileaks.

what about the dude in prison?

[bl8n8r]

Anyone doing anything for him? If he wouldn't have taken a stand on this, nobody would have known anything.

Re:what about the dude in prison?

[choongiri]

If you're "highly sympathetic and indebted to him" for doing something good and right, the logical conclusion would be for you to support the law being changed, not support him being in prison. Governments abuse the classification of information to bury information that would harm their personal interests as opposed to necessarily protect all of us. That is the crime here.

Re:what about the dude in prison?

[BobMcD]

If he's the one who leaked these documents, he frankly belongs in prison. He broke the law.

Let's not forget that he's probably legally a whistleblower as well:

In the logs, Manning explains his growing disillusionment with the U.S. Army and foreign policy.[14] He gives one example of being assigned the task of evaluating the arrest of Iraqis for allegedly publishing "anti Iraq" literature, only to discover that the writings were in fact scholarly critique of corruption in the cabinet of Iraq Prime Minister Al-Maliki titled "Where Did the Money Go?".[18] He reportedly said to Lamo, "I immediately took that information and ran to the officer to explain what was going on. He didn’t want to hear any of it. He told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding MORE detainees."[14] Manning reportedly characterized some of the allegedly leaked cables to Lamo as, "explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective."[9]

Before we hang him, let's pause to consider motive...

Re:what about the dude in prison?

[Americano]

Maximum sentence under the UCMJ for the charges he's facing is 52 years. It's possible that some will be dropped, or he won't be found guilty on some - or all - charges, and receive less.

He's awaiting an Article 32 hearing right now - similar to a Grand Jury, in which the determination is made whether or not enough evidence is available to proceed with a court martial. Charges could be changed, or dropped as a result of that, as well.

My expectation based on what I've heard of the case so far is that there will be a court martial, and that he'll get a pretty stiff sentence as a result - maybe less than 52 years, though, since that would require evidence that he's guilty on all charges.

Re:what about the dude in prison?

[jonnythan]

I can't support the law being changed, because I think there is some information that needs to stay classified.

You can't make an exception in the law, saying that classified documents are OK to release as long as one person thinks they should be and, well shucks, just really means well.

It *has* to be illegal for one low-level person to break confidentiality and distribute classified military information.

I agree that governments grossly abuse how they determine information should be classified. Perhaps that process is what needs to change, but we can't simply say it's OK when a single person leaks thousands of classified documents.

Shatters Confidence of Control

[eldavojohn]

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.

Re:Shatters Confidence of Control

[conspirator57]

Obama promised openness and accountability. He delivered more secrecy and persecution of whistleblowers than Bush. Ergo he deserves what he gets. Maybe with enough popular backlash (and make no mistake: domestic or not wikileaks and thinking Americans' support for it constitutes popular backlash) politicians will start considering *doing* the things they promise in order to get elected.

Here's an alternative view for you: if, for example, rather than hiding pictures of our torture behind claims that releasing them will incite those near our victims, what if we instead had a firm policy of releasing pictures of our wrongdoings, prosecuted those responsible, and had that whole accountability thing? Maybe the fact that we don't have any accountability (because we're tacitly approving heinous activities) is *actually* more damaging to our national security than releasing these sorts of documents. But hey accountability and transparency have never worked before. Nope. The Church Commission was completely wrong about that one. Whoops. There went 20 years where we could've been torturing more than we did.

Re:Shatters Confidence of Control

[conspirator57]

and here's one for his persecution of whistleblowers:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/05/25/whistleblowers

What makes this trend of escalated anti-whistleblower activity particularly notable is that Obama, during his career in the Senate and when running for President, feigned serious support for whistleblowers. Today, Bush DOJ whistleblower Jesselyn Raddack -- while pointing out that "Bush harassed whistleblowers mercilessly, but Obama is prosecuting them and sending them to jail" -- notes that Obama previously made commitments like this one (click on image to enlarge):

Of course

[SmallFurryCreature]

*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.

motivation

[nten]

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.

This is happening because the Iraq war is unjust

[cryfreedomlove]

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.

Re:named informants ?

[abigsmurf]

http://jonslattery.blogspot.com/2010/07/times-wikileaks-data-identifies.html

Source article is paywalled but the Times indicated that they were able to get dozens of names and locations of informants just from a fairly casual search of the documents.

About informants names

[Bobakitoo]

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.

Yep. I'd thought the intent was different.

[r00t]

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.

Re:Kinda makes you wonder...

[iONiUM]

I thought the general argument was that they release this information because the US citizens (and indeed, the world, since the US likes to romp around with its army) should have got these facts from their government in a more safe way. However, since they did not, it falls to wikileaks who tries their best to censor it safely, and even (so I hear) gave the US gov't a chance to censor the names further.

Am I wrong?

do you live in a hole? citation is easy.

[conspirator57]

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.

Re:Kinda makes you wonder...

[Klinky]

Maybe you should be more concerned about how the US.mil takes care of it's own informants and translators?

http://www.vetvoice.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2636

Also, try getting the US.mil to take any sort of responsibility for things like no-bid contracts, friendly fire, civilian deaths or even it's own injured vets...

Easier to close your eyes and blame WikiLeaks I guess.

Re:This is happening because the Iraq war is unjus

[BobMcD]

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.

Haha

[copponex]

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.

Sad days to be an American

[FriendlyLurker]

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

Horse puckey

[copponex]

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.

Re:NO!

[hao3]

A 'representative republic' is a democracy. It may not be a 'pure democracy' but it's a democracy nonetheless. No country is a 'pure democracy'. It's just ludicrous word-games masquerading as intelligent analysis and fabricated history. It's part of the problem.

There's no panacea to fix all the world's problems in one fell sweep either. Or even just to fix the USA's problems.

Try reading less demagogic opinion and more actual analysis.

Re:do you live in a hole? citation is easy.

[conspirator57]

the eff thinks otherwise.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/jewel-v-nsa-roundup-media-obamas-position

Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald and others in the left blogosphere were on the story early, just as they were throughout the fight over telecom immunity last year. Greenwald declared the Obama position to be worse than Bush:

It is hard to overstate how extremist is the "sovereign immunity" argument which the Obama DOJ invented here in order to get rid of this lawsuit. I confirmed with both ACLU and EFF lawyers involved in numerous prior surveillance cases with the Bush administration that the Bush DOJ had never previously argued in any context that the Patriot Act bars all causes of action for any illegal surveillance in the absence of "willful disclosure." This is a brand new, extraordinarily broad claim of government immunity made for the first time ever by the Obama DOJ -- all in service of blocking EFF's lawsuit against Bush officials for illegal spying.

The Raw Story weighed in on the case, and TPM Muckraker checked in with constitutional scholars Ken Gude, Amanda Frost and Lewis Fisher to see if they agreed with Greenwald's analysis:

Is it a sweeping power grab by the executive branch, that sets set a broad and dangerous precedent for future cases by asserting that the government has the right to get lawsuits dismissed merely by claiming that state secrets are at stake, without giving judges any discretion whatsoever?

        In a word, yes.

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.

Leaks from other countries?

[TheMadTopher]

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?

Re:NO!

[GooberToo]

from being a "mob rule" type of government.

This is specifically why they only wanted land owners to be able to vote. The rational is land owners are typically more educated, have a vested interested in their community, are better informed, and are far less susceptible to "mob rule" mentality or easy manipulation. The day that was abolished was the day the US immediately began a downward spiral.

These days the uneducated (typically poor) are commonly manipulated for their vote come election. Its so prevalent they are frequently considered tipping votes. This means the uneducated, who have no idea what they are doing, are frequently the tipping voice in our elections. This means the ignorant and uneducated and often responsible for setting policy in the US. Our forefathers would absolutely be disgusted. And if you think about it, you should be too. I know I am.

Re:NO!

[Abcd1234]

The easiest way to take away their power is to completely overhaul the tax code./i.

No, the easiest way to take away their power is to finally shed the delusion that money == speech. Campaign finance should be tightly regulated by a neutral third party so that institutionalized bribery can finally be eliminated.

'course, this is about as likely to happen as your ridiculous flat tax idea...

Re:This is happening because the Iraq war is unjus

[Fantastic Lad]

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

Re:NO!

[BobMcD]

Isn't the notion of 'landowners only' a bit more palatable during the colonial era? Back when they wrote that particular rule, all one had to do to be come a land owner was build a cabin. It's a tad more complex today, and I'm not at all sure that they would want it to have stayed the same.

Re:NO!

[10101001 10101001]

from being a "mob rule" type of government.

This is specifically why they only wanted land owners to be able to vote. The rational is land owners are typically more educated, have a vested interested in their community, are better informed, and are far less susceptible to "mob rule" mentality or easy manipulation. The day that was abolished was the day the US immediately began a downward spiral.

I hate to break it to you, but land owners weren't particularly vested in the interest of the country as a whole nor really the welfare of the local community. Southern land owners wanted to continue slavery, holding medium or large land stakes for farming which left it uneconomical for most people to own land; and the cotton gin basically demanded either very cheap or free labor (or machinery which only became viable after the exploitation of fossil fuels) to remain competitive. Meanwhile, Northern land owners wanted to have dormitories where hundreds of workers made finished goods, working 7 days a week (they could only get 6, thanks to the Bible), 16 hours a day for a penitence that would at best be sent home and with multiple other workers be enough to cover rent and food for the parents; in short, think a sweat shop but worse (since all of this was above board at the time, they could charge what they liked for the room and board (a non-negotiable aspect of the work), further decreasing effective wages. Hence, Southern land owners wanted high raw good tariffs, low finished good tariffs and Northerners wanted the reverse.

These days the uneducated (typically poor) are commonly manipulated for their vote come election. Its so prevalent they are frequently considered tipping votes. This means the uneducated, who have no idea what they are doing, are frequently the tipping voice in our elections. This means the ignorant and uneducated and often responsible for setting policy in the US. Our forefathers would absolutely be disgusted. And if you think about it, you should be too. I know I am.

Funny. It general holds true that more urban areas are better educated (on average) and vote Democrat (ie, the east and west coasts) and rural areas are inferior educated (on average) and vote Republican (ie, the middle of the US). Meanwhile, urban areas tend to have higher renting (because land prices are so high, urbanization tends to require more job switching which encourages more resident relocation through the years which encourages renting) and rural ares tend to have higher land ownership (because land prices are relatively cheap, the job market is a bit more stable, and with distances as far apart as they are most people already expect to drive long distances and hence are more intent on investing in property).

Now, it could reasonably be argued that the average people doesn't vote and the less educated or more inclined to vote. But, that says more about the apathy of the masses than it does about the stupidity of the minority or their bad voting habits. To that end, it doesn't really explain the voting behavior in the middle of the US which shouldn't see such swing voting behavior with many more land owners.

PS - Yes, I realize a lot of those "land owners" are really "mortgage holders". But, a great debt is also of rather deep concern and I think would still fit all your qualifications on why such individuals should vote better.

Re:NO!

[quacking duck]

You'd think so. But would these be the same educated, well-off landowners that sit around watching so-called reality TV, or the ones that don't even bother voting in elections anymore because they don't feel their vote will make a difference... or worse, they flat-out don't care who speaks for them in government?

Or the ones watching polarizing issues being "debated" on Fox and CNN? That's not being educated on the issue, that's entertainment appealing to base emotions, the same kind that manipulate the less educated poor, as you put it. Rational discussion is boring so they don't show it.

I'd also suggest that the wealthy, educated "property" owners (RIAA, MPAA, megacorps) are doing a piss-poor job of lobbying^H paying for laws that benefit the nation and not just themselves.

Re:This is happening because the Iraq war is unjus

[BobMcD]

Those were governments with standing armies. That era is over.

Think of the soldiers

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:NO!

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Well that's a grand notion but I don't think landownership should be the qualifying principle by which we separate the ignorant, uneducated, unwashed masses and the elite, rational, intelligent voters as you put it. You see, I am a college graduate. I work as an engineer and earn a steady, respectable wage. I keep myself up to date and educated regarding various political and social issues. I read numerous sources of philosophy, thought, culture, etc. I travel and meet new people so that I can gain new perspectives on my older views. I serve jury duty when it is asked of me. I even help my older neighbors walk their groceries from their car to their condo door. I have a very vested interest in my community. I consider myself rational and educated.

However, I choose not to invest in landownership because, at this point in my life, I have other priorities that I like to invest in (like the education of my friends and family, and some other things). So, should I be restrained from voting? Am I one of those tipping voters that reacts emotionally to whatever the latest media circus issue is? Am I consistently manipulated by politicians to give them what they want? I highly doubt that's the case. I don't vote for politicians in either of the major parties. I hardly listen to any of the crap that politicians spew out of their own mouths (I prefer to research their actual votes and actions and such). Hell, I even make a point to pay my taxes on time, after triple checking everything, to know that I have fulfilled my duty as a responsible citizen. And yet, you would deprive me of my right to vote just because I think investing in real estate, at this point in time, is a losing bet for me?

I think your classification criteria needs revising.

Re:NO!

[Abcd1234]

And thus you've introduced a new party that could stand to benefit from the elections.

Apparently you don't understand the concept of a neutral third party.

Go look up Elections Canada and see how it can be done, and done well. Just because you Americans can't seem to sort this stuff out, doesn't mean its impossible.

Re:NO!

[BobMcD]

Depends on where you want to live and own land. There are plenty of places in the country where you can get a house for under $50k.

Dig deeper. You're quite likely to find that those places do not offer work opportunities enough to recoup that $50k.

Re:Non-sequitur

[Stradivarius]

I think the idea is this:

Since politicians reward their favored special interests by means of exemptions to the income tax, if you change to a consumption tax you have removed a potent source of political favors. If the tax were fixed at a flat rate, then you wouldn't have a place to insert special tax favors. Even if they started putting in favors, they would have to be in the form of exemptions for certain types of consumption. It's harder and more politically dangerous to insert, say, a consumption tax break for buyers of multi-million-dollar yachts than it is to give that same demographic an income tax break. And folks only buy so many yachts, so you'd need a larger number of favors to get the same dollar value of special-interest goodies. Hence the politicians are more limited in their power to favor certain groups.

It doesn't completely eliminate such favors, but it might prune it back a little bit.

Re:Non-sequitur

[moeinvt]

"... how does implementing [a flat tax or consumption tax] take power away from politicians?"

It wouldn't really take away their delegated powers, but it might curb their exercise of those powers. If every single voter had to share some of the pain when government raised taxes, elected officials might just think twice about establishing big new entitlement programs or embarking on foreign military crusades. I'm sure that many voters would still be too myopic to realize that runaway deficit spending is going to bite them in the arse down the road, but with this sort of tax system, any new government spending plans would certainly be met with increased resistance.

Re:Non-sequitur

[IndustrialComplex]

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?

Initially, that was sort of built into the Constitution, but quickly ignored. I'm also not going to get into a discussion regarding the benefits/drawbacks of a flat tax system outside of your question.

Right now politicians have a HUGE amount of power that they are not authorized to have (by the Constitution). They are able to do things which they are not normally allowed to do by not directly implementing such laws, but by using taxation (or tax breaks) as incentives to encourage the actions they cannot legislate.

As an introduction, Congress really has no authority to set a drinking age. That IS left up to the states. However, by using funding, they can threaten to withold funding from the States unless certain conditions are met. Even though if they tried to set a 21 year old drinking age directly, it would be found unconstitutional, this method has been determined by the Supreme Court to be constitutional because the states can always opt out of receiving the funds, and thus are not actually bound by law. That sets the premise for how you can get around the constitution and perform actions which you normally are prohibited from doing.

So you have taxes, and you can't tell people that they must do this, or they can't do that, or even if you could, it wouldn't have the votes to actually pass an all out ban. So you create a tax break for behavior that you want people to do, and a tax for behavior you don't want people to do. If you take away the power of politicians to put all these little tweaks into the tax code and only modify it on very general terms with a lot of public scrutiny, you VASTLY limit their power.

You don't need a flat tax to do so, but you would remove a great deal of power from them if you limited the ways in which they can manipulate the tax code for political gain.

That just addresses the 'power' aspect of it. I also object to it because it can be a very unjust tool. Since it is circumventing the constitution, it essentially allows almost anything to be done. If you were to sufficiently raise taxes to the point where living without certain tax breaks is a sufficient burden, you have the ability to pass 'laws' which don't have the same oversight yet essentially penalize people for behaving in legal, but not approved ways.

People think it sounds good now when it's just applied to 'Nasty, things people should know better, sins' (Smoking, Drinking, etc) but it slowly gets applied to lifestyles (Eating, exercise, Cars, homes) and eventually will become the 'official government way of life' and we won't have enough disposable income after taxes to do otherwise.