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DoD Study Contradicts Charges Against WikiLeaks
Voline writes "Last Summer, after WikiLeaks released 90,000 leaked internal US military documents in their Afghan War Log, Pentagon officials went on a media offensive against WikiLeaks, accusing it of having the 'blood on Its hands' of American soldiers and Afghan collaborators who are named in the documents. The charge has echoed through the mainstream media (and Internet comment threads) ever since. Now, CNN is reporting that after a thorough Pentagon review, 'WikiLeaks did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods, the Department of Defense concluded.' And, according to an unnamed NATO official, 'there has been no indication' that any Afghans who have collaborated with the NATO occupation have been harmed as a result of the leaks. Will the Pentagon's contradiction of the charges against WikiLeaks get as much play in the media as those original accusations did?"
Will the Pentagon's contradiction of the charges against WikiLeaks get as much play in the media as those original accusations did?
Thats not how FUD & propaganda work.
Seriously, who cares? Assange has an agenda, and so do we. If we can point out Wikileaks' bias and colr them as they try to do to us, than all the better.
to note seemingly half of ./ comments were dead set against Wikileaks for exactly this reason...
It's about getting people with the first impression that hits them in their emotional, not rational center.
Once you control somebody's emotions, they'll change their thinking to justify it.
Only if their donations account is reopened.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Every smear against wikileaks gets maximum exposure but retractions are barely heard.
As it is with pretty much every news article. Retractions are on page 43, or a 3 second clip at 4 AM.
Let us get the word out since the media sure as heck won't.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
Yeah, and even in this report Gates says both of these things:
and...
Wait so which is it? If nothing was compromised so far, why is this risk likely to cause significant harm or damage? Haven't they heard of Bayesian statistics?
It sounds like he's just covering ass, but is compelled to tell the truth. After all, they were out in the media saying that Assange has "blood on his hands" - apparently, it was imaginary blood.
People wouldn't change their behaviour even if X was different. They're just using X as an easy rationalisation for their existing bias.
Evil person gives sacred information to our enemies. Holy troops threatened! Tune in at 11.
vs
Some guy posts some stuff and people don't die.
Which do you think will get more eyes and sell more ads?
Saying something doesn't disclose sensitive intelligence sources or methods doesn't mean no harm was done. Sort things into two piles: things that harm the troops or the US position, and things that harm the ability to collect intelligence. This statement says it had no impact on collecting intelligence. It doesn't say no harm was done to troop or the US position.
I'm a military veteran and I may have authored some of the documents that were leaked. But pretty much all of the information was already publicly available in some form or another. We all knew Pakistan was playing a double game. We all knew that the CIA was operating secret drones along the boarder - who else could it be, the Mongolians? If you drop a bomb on somebody, you can keep it secret from the press, but everybody on the ground will know about it. It just takes a little investigative journalism to get at the truth. The main problem the Pentagon has is one of credibility. The fact that a low level intelligence clerk could smuggle out many GBs of classified documents while lip syncing to Lady Gaga makes the military and the entire chain of command look like a bunch of incompetent boobs. It just goes to show that WallMart has better protection against shoplifters than the military has against internal leaks. So the initial reaction is one of self-preservation. "If you leak this, people will die." Which is another way of saying, we royally screwed up and we're placing the blame on you because we don't want to be the ones getting busted over this. I am no longer in the military, so I can speak my mind on this. I still think Julian Assange is an idiot, but that's another topic.
Uhhhhh Wikileaks was trying to do exactly what the 'media' and pentagon officials accused them of. They ADMITTED as much. Wikileaks wanted to damage the US in some way. It took literally an army of people to go thru it to figure out it wasnt worth much. Do you think wikileaks had such an army? No. They wanted exactly the effect they were accused of. Now that it has come to light that the info was not worth much we will hear the backtracking begin. All people involved acted like asses on 'both' sides.
Yes, please. Everyone line-up here:
-
to apologize for claiming patriotism and being a tool by shouting on previous threads here that Wikileaks had got people killed in Afghanistan.
Writing a hundred times: "I will not watch FOX anymore" should do it.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
Exactly what part of "there has been no indication' that any Afghans who have collaborated with the NATO occupation have been harmed as a result of the leaks" are you having trouble with?
This seems like a perfect example of what khasim (1285) just said in the sibling comment right above yours.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
All people involved acted like asses on 'both' sides.
Congratulations on your gymnastic equivocation, but from where I sit lying is worse than having an abrasive personality.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Clearly the CIA is way too busy to assassinate a few of their own informants for the greater good. Check back with them in a few months and they'll have bodies available.
As opposed to the US Military who is ultimately responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians during the genocide that followed our toppling of the Iraqi government?
I know you're trolling, but give me a break, the DoD is the last organization that should be commenting on another organization's bloody hands.
It depends on who you are. George Bush was extremely irresponsible, yet he walked away totally free.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
That means precisely zip. All it means is that they're expecting further leaks and are preparing for it. It also means that they realize that there's more material that could be leaked.
Beyond that it really doesn't mean anything at all.
here has been no indication' that any Afghans who have collaborated with the NATO occupation have been harmed as a result of the leaks
The word that was left out was "yet".
On the other hand the Pentagon killed half a million civilians (collateral damage) in war based on false premises. Sorry, Assange wins.
You know, I've never seen that claim used to back up a rational position. Maybe that has happened somewhere out there, but I've never once seen it. The primary use of loaded words like "patriotism" is to create emotional fervor that shuts down things like dispassionate inquiry and critical thinking.
Therefore, the people who use "patriotism" in the media don't have the same definition of it that I do. My own preference is for that definition that "a patriot supports his country always and his government only when it deserves it." While I can still see sensible decisions being made on the local and state levels, my federal government hasn't deserved my support for a very long time.
If we were so concerned about people getting killed, then we wouldn't invade a sovereign nation and destroy their government because they asked for evidence that bin Laden was involved in 9/11 in response to our extradition request. So clearly, saving lives is not our priority here. It follows that if the government is pissed off about their secrets being leaked it's not because someone might get killed. It's because it makes them lose face and especially because the utter lack of negative consequences reveals that the reason for having those secrets was invalid to begin with.
FOX didn't cause Americans to become a mindless, fat, stupid, herd-mentality, emotionally driven, reactive, childish, flavor-of-the-week, decadent people who hate critical thinking and believe whatever the TV tells them like good little citizens. FOX merely capitalizes on it. They'd risk bankruptcy if they didn't tailor their programming for bovine America.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Gates doesn't have a crystal ball. He's saying his assessment is that the probability of damage from the leaks is high.
Just that no damage has been caused yet.
Remember, the initial fear was that the mere leak of some of the travesties shown in the documents would result in a severe backlash against allied troops. That didn't occur. Why? Maybe the enemy is stupid. Maybe they didn't want to read the entire thing. Maybe they did, and got bored. Maybe there wasn't any immediately useful info now, but will be.
Further, as a result of the leak, precautions may have been taken that mitigated or alleviated damage. We don't know if because of the leak, we adjusted before the enemy did. While the typical /. post bad mouths the military regularly, such as your post, and are happy to see military brass go down because the poster finds the war wrong or unpopular, it doesn't correlate that the military is actually stupid--they know how to handle information leaks like this.
And maybe we just weren't as effective lately as we want to be, despite the lack of lost lives.
I'm not sure why anyone is discounting the potential of the damage from the leaks. It's often pointed out in other matters on /. that because something didn't occur, doesn't it was likely to or unlikely to. The same applies here.
Not to mention WikiLeaks with the 2nd attempt was going to release names (a big infight occurred) and it seems the materials one way or the other wasn't really reviewed by them entirely anyways very carefully. iow, maybe the military just got lucky this round. And the big anti-Wikileaks news is the reason why the 2nd leak, which is likely more damaging if the /. stories are correct (and aren't they always...) is being more carefully reviewed, because of the national news scrutiny.
If so, then this perceived overreaction to the leaked documents will have done it's job.
But you see, if you can say "everybody's a luser", then you don't feel so bad about supporting "your" fuckwits.
Happens to me all the time elsewhere when I bitch about the Republicans: one or two people will always come up and say how awful "both sides" are... never mind that there are more than the two sides, and that the person saying so is conservative, i.e. it's a polite form of "shut up".
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Gates doesn't have a crystal ball. He's saying his assessment is that the probability of damage from the leaks is high.
He shouldn't be using one. Crystal balls are the stuff of myth and fantasy. What he should have is enough controls on the classification regime to understand exactly why a particular piece off information is classified, and what damage will result from improper disclosure of that bit of information. And no, political embarrassment doesn't count.
On the other hand the Pentagon killed half a million civilians (collateral damage) in war based on false premises. Sorry, Assange wins.
War on false premises? We are are talking about Afghanistan here, right?
He's referring to the war in Iraq I believe. It's not totally irrelevant if his point is that the Pentagon/DoD/US government/whatever you call it has done much worse than what Assange/Wikileaks are accused of. It doesn't make endangering people's lives justified, but the irony of the Pentagon talking about morality is just unbelievable. It really sends the message that it's OK if the Pentagon do something, but if someone else does a fraction of what they do then it's a scandal.
Also, the actual number of dead civilians is 100k I believe, not half a million. Note also that this number includes all civilians who died as a consequence of the war regardless of who directly killed them. All these 100k civilians were not shot/bombed by US troops, they may have been killed by Talibans. I'm not sure if this number includes people who died as an indirect consequence of the war, for example people who died of illness/hunger because the war may have made medication/food unavailable. If not, then the total number of civilian war casualties is higher and may in fact reach half a million.
And by the way, it's not entirely unfair to pin these 100k deaths on the Pentagon/US gov. since it doesn't take a genius to realize that a war like that one is going to cause so many deaths one way or another (they knew Talibans would not mind shooting in crowds and hiding among civilians), and of course it's common sense that a war will cause a shortage of medical supplies, especially in a third-world country. I remember quite a few European countries (the one that comes first to mind is France) were warning the Bush administration that such a high death toll would result from this war.
I notice that it also doesn't mention that the Wikileaks posting hasn't caused the entire male population of the United States Army to become sexually impotent...yet.
"Yet" is such an important word. It's too dangerous for you to be using so irresponsibly, Pharmboy.
I also notice that you haven't ridden a unicorn naked through downtown Metropolis...yet.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Newsflash: The suspected pedophile rapist Assange's terrorist spy network has once again come under the scrutiny of our glorious leaders. While no direct threats were reported, there remains a high level of suspicion about this egotistaical selfish showoff who's only agenda is to hate our freedom. More at 11.
If this training had been happening in Waziristan, would you still support going to war over failure of extradition?
We destroyed Afghanistan to make us feel better about 9/11, plain and simple. Afghanistan was an easy scapegoat for our own intelligence failures and bullshit foreign policy that contributed to 9/11 in the first place. It's a country that hasn't had a strong central government in decades, because every time one forms, a foreign power invades and dismantles it.
That's why Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon. Pakistan is home to Al Qaeda and the Taliban as well, but so far no American government has been dumb enough to consider invading a nuclear power that borders two other nuclear powers. North Korea's government is batshit insane but we don't invade because they have nukes, as well as their proximity to China. Pakistan's government is enormously corrupt and has close ties with terrorist organizations, but we don't invade because they have a nuke. Now, on two of Iran's borders, America has unilaterally invaded simply because we could without fear of repercussions. If you were an Iranian, what would you rather have? Nukes or a foreign army occupying your homeland?
If American planners are dumb enough to pursue terrorist organizations into third world nations that barely have electricity or running water every time there's a successful terror attack, then the War of the Flea tactic will destroy our economy within two decades. We're already spending one trillion a year on warfare and weapons research. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including interest, will cost well over two trillion dollars according to the CBO by 2014.
If we're serious about ending the use of terrorism as a military tactic, the first thing we should do is stop using terrorism as a military tactic. Stop threatening sovereign nations with invasion if they don't capitulate to our demands. Use international law to address international issues through peaceful and diplomatic means as outlined in the UN charter we signed. Stop giving money and weapons to Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia until they all sit down and settle their diplomatic relations. That will involve denying all aid to Israel until they formally agree to stop colonizing Palestinian land with settlements, and sign a treaty to accept the 1967 borders in exchange for full diplomatic relations with the Arab nations. Then we should push Israel and India and Pakistan to sign the NPT and open themselves up to international inspections.
Anything else is just pissing in the wind.
Yeah, if only Wikileaks had asked the Pentagon for help in redacting the names. I'm sure they would have agreed to do it, because after all saving people's lives is far more important than political ass-covering, right?
Oh wait except Wikileaks did ask the Pentagon for help, and the Pentagon refused. I guess we know what their priorities are, right?