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WikiLeaks Releases Cache of 400,000 Iraq War Documents
Caelesto writes "Today around 21:00 GMT, WikiLeaks declared an end to their media embargo of over 400,000 Iraq War documents after Al Jazeera released their story 30 minutes ahead of schedule. These documents, which have been kept under wraps by WikiLeaks for months, may reveal tortures and murders ignored by coalition forces during the fighting and occupation in Iraq. The Pentagon maintained that releasing these documents represented a danger to US troops, but already dozens of news outlets are scrambling to report on what could be a devastating blow to the US Armed Forces' already tattered image." Reader Entropy98 points to the BBC's coverage, as well. If you care to download the collection of files, it's available as a torrent.
...of people like this complaining about "collateral damage" is so thick you could drive a truck across it.
But I just donated 50 EUR to WikiLeaks.
As long as they're releasing factual information I find claims that I should discount that information dubious at best.
What is their agenda?
Posting these may be wrong but it does bring to like some abuses by all the groups involved which have either never been discussed or their existence never known before. Personally bringing abuses to light which were previously hidden makes this partially right.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Iraq War Logs
It is getting WorldDotted at the moment though.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Whoops...updated Link. Here is the most direct link I can find. Iraq War Logs
It is still getting WorldDotted at the moment though.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
It may be obvious, but your point will make more sense if you refer to what the obvious is. Just asserting that someone or something has "such an obvious agenda" means nothing when it is not actually obvious to everyone. This might be an "it's right under your nose" situation, so please point out what is in question for those of us who can't seem to see it. Don't let us stay ignorant.
Is that you can just categorize based on Slashdot's summary, and just vaguely use it to go on a soapbox about what you want to make a bunch of noise about.
Even the summary uses phrase "Iraq war documents". Good reason - the Wikileaks release dealt with documents that often referred to what the Iraqi police/forces were doing, and what the US forces knew about. Not that the US forces were doing those actions themselves (though you could argue that allowing such actions were as bad as doing the actions themselves...) Nevertheless, we can't on one hand say we should withdraw and then say that we should keep the Iraqis from doing things we think are bad - good or bad, Iraqis hurting Iraqis is a possible outcome of self-government.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
"scrambling to report on what could be a devastating blow to the US Armed Forces' already tattered image."
Am I the only who didn't think the first release left the US Armed Forces with a tattered image? These are huge volumes of reports from the US Armed forces about the actions of the US Armed Forces (good, bad, etc) the fact that all actions of the armed forces are so carefully logged leads me to believe that despite issues and anecdotes the US Armed Forces are actually pretty damn professional... Top level officials not wanting these documents publicly released is unfortunate but the fact that these documents even exist is a testament to professionalism on the part of the Armed Forces.
I understand what you're saying, but factual is as factual does. It's a fact that I spent the morning having one of my best orgasms in a while. It's also a fact that I was jerking off. It's a fact I was looking at naughty pictures. It's also a fact I was speeding the other day. Every one of those is a fact and can be combined and contorted to create specific versions of what is and was real. The problem with facts is that they're easily picked and attached to dubious endevours - Wiki has been unabashed about holding a specific philosophical view - which is admirable really especially given that they're so honest about it - and that viewpoint has an effect on what they chose to present as the truth. There is a concern therefore that they're filtering to support their own conclusions - just the same way flat-eathers filter, or indeed supporters of string theory.
I'm curious why we've not seen any releases of Russian actions in Chechnya, by these folks.
As some one said "all are guilty, but all are responsible". I am ashamed and feel complicit in that which enables our fellow human beens do great evil to each other and yet find some solace that they are those who are willing to risk their lives to expose lies fed to us all by the US government. Kudos to WikiLeaks for doing what they do.
Americans are complicit in all their government does since they do not stop it.
I do what I can: I vote for candidates who are not from the demonstrably corrupt main parties, or who have a proven track record of doing good (despite their party allegiance). As such, I reject your accusation that I am complicit in my government's actions.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
The US around the world (and its mini me Israel) stand for only injustice, pain, suffering, oppression, torture, murder, evil.
Same could be said for a dozen other countries. China. North Korea. Iran. Somalia. Uganda. Etc
Americans are complicit in all their government does since they do not stop it.
That is vague. Americans in general are not for the above statements. It is the global interest and reigning plutocracy that has led us to the state of New Rome. Because of the wealth gap, money buys power, and the wealth distribution controls what really happens in America. I am not talking about middle upper class folks, I am talking about the old money families with hundreds of millions. New money not so much, but old money, they do what ever they can to really maintain the status-quo and expand their empire, and they do it through lobbyist and all the classical 'morally corrupt' things you can think of.
You may argue that my counter is vague as well, in response I provide my citation, read The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy. It summarizes our situation (the world as well) and sites hundreds of legitimate references.
Elections are coming up... if you vote for a Democrat or Republican you are guilty of all the crimes revealed in these documents (and more). Stop voting for the single party rule which just equals more of the same. If you want your vote to count, vote Libertarian, Peace and Freedom, Green, independent, etc.
I agree. Now why couldn't you be as civil in your first paragraph? The immediate soapbox flaming is a good way to get modded into oblivion.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
> The Pentagon maintained that releasing these documents represented a danger to US troops
Yeh, but the last time they said that, they lied:
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/10/17/170227
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
It's too bad Wikileaks has such an obvious agenda. I like the idea of them, but that the same time, knowing they have such a clear agenda, makes me wonder what they decide not to release because it doesn't flow with what they want the world to think.
Why is it too bad? What the fuck are you talking about? Would you rather have them have a hidden agenda? Like the government bullshit they expose?
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Actually it's the Iraqis that are the butchers. Clearly you didn't read the article.
Now that opens up the question of what exactly the US Army is supposed to do if the local Army is up to no good. Are we supposed to "reconquer" them again and start over from scratch and prolong the occupation of Iraq even longer than it would be otherwise?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Wikileaks released 400,000 more dox that will shake the very foundations upon which the Middle East War rests upon and the news organizations will just sit around masturbating over "Was this ethical? Are people really endangered? What does this mean in regards to bloggers vs. journalists" but never looking at a single document or citing it for the sake of delivering news instead of the storyline which has been perpetuated for the last ten years.
I like to think of it as the release of secret information has an obvious anti-american bias.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Thank you. It is simple as that. So many people after 9/11 beat the war drum, and now almost a decade later are horrified that bad things happen in war. I am not condoning or supporting the way the war has gone, but it is truly frustrating the way some folks just imagine bubble and sunshine and invasion before really considering the repercussions of their voting decisions (plebeians and bureaucrats alike).
War is nasty. Lets think this shit through next time. If diplomacy is not an option, and all other options have failed, and there will be an provable danger to us or our allies by not acting, then bomb the motherfuckers. Otherwise can we please just stay out of the rest of the world's business? Do it quickly, cleanly, with a solid plan, with an exit strategy, accomplish the goal, and move on. War cost money, and between the MID profiteering it, the globalist loving it, the extremist encouraging it, the only people that lose are the taxpayers and the unnecessary casualties.
Why is that so hard?
If our civilization overcomes the thread of annihilating itself, I hope dearly that it becomes peaceful and moves away from dogmatic BS and more towards science and reason. I don't care if it is after I am dead. I just would sleep better knowing that the human race will make it over the next 1000 years. It really doesn't look so good. I don't think the idiots can handle the fruits of the scientist labor in a responsible manner.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
cappp (1822388) writes on Friday October 22, @09:38PM: "It's a fact that I spent the morning having one of my best orgasms in a while. It's also a fact that I was jerking off."
The internet never forgets. You are screwed if you ever want to run for office. And you will be doing the screwing *ducks*
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
So... what are the mitigating facts which support torture and murder, again? The US military is welcome to add their own facts to the picture...
I just tried to post the link to the torrent on my facebook, and got this:
This message contains blocked content that has previously been flagged as abusive or spammy. Let us know if you think this is an error.
Hmmmm... the link hasn't even been up that long, has it? Me thinks Zuckerberg and company are staying on Uncle Sam's friendly side...
Three things occur to me:
You should never Slashdot after a few pints
Jerking off probably isnt the best example of a fact
My presidential slogan "Capp, He Jacks Off So You Don't Get Fucked" probably needs some revision
If Obama wasn't such a coward, the last president would be behind bars (along with most of his cronies), we'd have single-payer-for-all health care, and Wall Street would actually be held responsible for treating the economy the way Michael Vic treats dogs....
FTFY
The problem with facts is that they're easily picked and attached to dubious endevours - Wiki has been unabashed about holding a specific philosophical view - which is admirable really especially given that they're so honest about it - and that viewpoint has an effect on what they chose to present as the truth.
If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts.
If you have the law on your side, pound the law.
If you have neither on your side, pound the table.
Claiming bias makes it rather transparent that you're pounding the table.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
You should never Slashdot after a few pints
I think some people on Slashdot really need a pint quite badly.
Jerking off probably isnt the best example of a fact
Jerking off, in the context all of men and women, is probably one of the best examples of a fact. I would say that one could argue it is a law. I am reminded of a study done by Johnson & Johnson that concluded that 99% of all people masturbated. The other 1% lied about it.
Which brings me to another question, what have you got against string theory?
You broke it, you bought it
- Colin Powell
http://michaelsmith.id.au
many of us think this is a key point in history where freedom is clashing with government invasion of privacy. we see escalating levels of snooping on the part of 'the officials' and the people are forced to endure this treatment under the guise of 'making us safer'. we know its not for that purpose but we are told we have to give up our privacy to the government.
well, wikileaks is giving them a taste of their own medicine. not for that reason primarily, I don't think, but its in there to some extent.
its a statement of: if you are going to dish it out, you BETTER be ready to take it.
the governments (all over the world) are trying to limit free speech (the internet) and seem to have fallen in love with keeping detailed data on all its citizens. they want a one-sided arrangement.
its not fair but there was nothing the little guy can do, no matter which country you are in. (name one that is really 'free' these days. please.)
wiki is sort of a dose of 'fuck you right back'. again, even if not fully intended, it kind of comes off that way.
sort of like a big bully getting a dose of medicine.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
It's too bad Wikileaks has such an obvious agenda.
Really? You mean to publish leaks? Or do you think it is something else?
Because if you think it's to paint somebody as good and somebody else as bad, I don't see it.
If you think it's to specifically paint the US government as bad, well there is at least one leaked document that does the reverse:
One of the most infamous episodes of killings by American soldiers, the shootings of at least 15 Iraqi civilians, including women and children in the western city of Haditha, is misrepresented in the archives. The report stated that the civilians were killed by militants in a bomb attack, the same false version of the episode that was given to the news media.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If you read TFA with fewer mental filters you'll see that the US Army is guilty in a direct fashion as well.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I'm pretty sure that would be Masters and Johnson.
This is the American war in Iraq. It only exists because the Americans started it.
Clearly you drank the cool-aide
"Actually" apparently means different things to different people.
I've grepped the documents themselves, and they tell a different picture. The colour designations indicate that there are far more "blue white" than "green white" incidents, which is scary considering that there are far more green than blue people.
(And there more "blue blue" and "blue green" casualties than "red blue" (a.k.a. "friendly fire") incidents, which is even more frightening. Most of which are marked secret with the justification of potentially inciting public/media unrest, which is downright chilling)
For those who don't know the colour designations:
Blue = US and allied forces
Green = Native "friendly" forces: military, police and mercenary
Red = Enemies
White = Civilians
"blue white" or "blue on white" means an incident where US and/or allied forces engaged a civilian target. One is one too many.
What he left out was that he did it while choking himself with someone's discarded nylon stockings.
If Obama wasn't such a coward, Guantanamo Bay would be closed, habeas corpus would be restored, our former president his vice president, and a few other select members of his cabinet would be behind bars, and the people responsible for the economic meltdown would either be up on fraud charges, no longer running their companies, or the heads of bankrupt companies.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
or, providing you don't document all the terrible things you do.. or providing that the people doing the terrible things don't hate what they're doing.
all this shows, is that the USA, like other nations, does terrible things sometimes. the difference: somebody took a stand and disagreed with what they were being told to cover up.
Maybe it takes more than lip syncing to Lady Gaga to steal information from those countries.
I don't really think that the US military will be able to stop leaks, Wikileaks itself could go under but the underlying mechanisms might simply grow more sophisticated. The people who leak this information are not enemies or "unpatriotic"---if they were, the more effective way to use sensitive information would be to surreptitiously hand it over to Iran/"insurgents"/whoever, like an old-school spy might. Publicizing classified information is more or less a call for transparency. Maybe the military needs to recognize that it needs to have a greater degree of transparency, or transparency will be imposed on it.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
If the released reports are biased, the government will give us the whole story, right?
Right?
Wikileaks may have a bias, but they also know their message is destroyed if they are shown to censor data for their effort. The 'Collatoral Murder' fisasco showed that. Even there, they provided the full video but put the focus on where *the issue* was for a short attention span viewing crowd.
Why is he a scumbag?
The FUD story about the earlier disclosure causing grief for named people turned out to be false.
So what's left?
He's a scumbag for making the US government lose face?
He's a scumbag for exposing that the US government leaks secret documents and clearly can't be trusted by our allies?
He's a scumbag for being the messenger of bad news?
We have bias on two sides: Wikileaks, and the US forces who wrote the reports.
The facts in them, though, should be fairly accurate.
If the reports aren't factual, I think it is far more likely that they were falsified by those who wrote them in the first place than by Wikileaks.
You can make a different interpretation of them if you think the reports are too biased (by either side).
A typical Obamaphile liberal argument. Nevermind substance, nevermind facts, just call names and throw poo. How old are you, six?
You broke it, you bought it
- Colin Powell
Colin 'Saddam Hussein has WMDs, honest' Powell. LOL.
In the old days kings used to lead their soldiers into battle. In modern times this is impractical and counterproductive.
But you can still have leaders lead the frontline in spirit.
Basically, if leaders are going to send troops on an _offensive_ war/battle (not defensive war) there must be a referendum on the war.
If there are not enough votes for the war, those leaders get put on death-row.
At a convenient time later, a referendum is held to redeem each leader. Leaders that do not get enough votes get executed. For example if too many people stay at home and don't bother voting - the leaders get executed.
If it turns out later that the war was justified, a fancy ceremony is held, and the executed leaders are awarded a purple heart or equivalent, and you have people say nice things about them, cry and that sort of thing.
If it turns out later that the leaders tricked the voters, a referendum can be held (need to get enough signatures to start such a referendum, just to prevent nutters from wasting everyone elses time).
This proposal has many advantages:
1) Even leaders who don't really care about those "young soldiers on the battlefield" will not consider starting a war lightly.
2) The soldiers will know that the leaders want a war enough to risk their own lives for it.
3) The soldiers will know that X% of the population want the war.
4) Those being attacked will know that X% of the attackers believe in the war - so they want a war, they get a war - for sufficiently high X, collateral damage becomes insignificant. They might even be justified in using WMD and other otherwise dubious tactics. If > 90% of the country attacking you want to kill you and your families, what is so wrong about you using WMD as long as it does not affect neighbouring countries?
I'm pretty sure that would be Masters and Johnson.
You know, you're right about that. Johnson and Johnson is the manufacturer of hand lotion.
No idea how I got those two confused.
Thanks.
At least the money would be very welcomed, since it seems no corporation wants fund such organization.
And, of course, it would be fun to see they winning the same prize Obama won a few years ago.
Let's take you up on that idea. Suppose I vote for Green Party. Oops, since I didn't vote for the Democrat, the Republican got more votes and won. Now the Congress is taking up a motion to drop out of the UN and back out of treaties. Great.
I understand your frustration, but the problem is quite large. I'd favor better education in schools on US foreign policy and international issues and history, the creation of instant runoff voting and election law changes to favor third parties. While I blame general ignorance, I don't know if I can blame every American, especially since I see so many trying to fix the problems.
It's a fact that I spent the morning having one of my best orgasms in a while.
I thought we were talking about wikileaks... how did you manage to make it about your leaks?
Why is everything posted by wikileaks seen as fact? Even if they modified a few entries or slipped a few new ones in, would anybody notice? If the US gov't then said "These things aren't true." - would anybody believe them? By just assuming everything wikileaks releases is incontrovertible truth, you're giving them license to fabricate whatever "reality" they choose.
You just don't get it; there are like some facts that go this way and some facts that go that way: It's a fact that I'm typing on a keyboard now, just like it's a fact I was speeding yesterday, get what I mean?
So definitely ignore this media release and don't believe a thing WikiLeaks puts out or Assange says. Make sense?
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Well, to be fair, we were pretty sure they were all guilty. After months of torture they finally broke and told us exactly what we wanted to hear.
The file in the torrent is a 355mb csv file with 4437707 rows. And neither Open Office or Gnumeric can open it. They just chug away forever and ever taking more and more memory (up to 3.7gb atm). I wonder if anyone using any other spreadsheet application has more luck... It shouldn't be that damn hard loading a 355mb csv file.
Football Odds
Hi MR AC! Only problem with your theory is either way your vote is a complete and total waste because the MSM is owned by those same D & Rs and therefor NO third party unless they have Perot money has a snowball's chance in hell. Quick, and without doing ANY research, can you tell me which candidates in the above parties are for term limits? Can you tell me which ones are for less government? Hell can you even tell me the name of the person they are running or what their beliefs are?
You can't, and neither can the populace, and THAT is the problem in a nutshell. The MSM is one of the most dangerous creations in the history of this country, simply because thanks to deregulation the keys to the eyes and ears of the public are owned by a handful of multinationals who have NO loyalty or allegiance to this country. Therefor they WILL continue to marginalize, ignore, and if any gained traction most likely outright slander, any that didn't follow the current "You want a new law? Give me a check" corrupted rotting system we have now.
For all it matters you can vote Communist party for every single election, because they are NEVER gonna win anything higher than state office, ever. Because they will NOT be allowed to attend any meaningful televised debates, they will NOT be invited on national shows to tell their beliefs or takes on the issues, and thanks to this marginalization and ignoring they will NOT be able to raise the funds required to get the word out or compete. Sorry MR AC, but the entire election system is currently a rigged game, and any vote at all is simply a waste of time at best, a sham at worst.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
after the 2009 SOFA, i was told that i was to "advise" IP and IF that torture was counter productive and then promptly leave the area so as not to be involved with anything the did. it's their rules, once we give them self government. sure makes the bad guys pine for the days when the "evil" americans were in charge.
Holy Apples-to-Oranges, Capppman!
http://warlogs.wikileaks.org/id/50A2284C-BF55-E1FD-BEA7B6AED9A0AD20/
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
These documents, which have been kept under wraps by WikiLeaks for months, may reveal tortures and murders ignored by coalition forces during the fighting and occupation in Iraq.
While there's been some speculation that Wikileaks has an anti-US bias, I don't see that. You're not going to get leaks from non-democracies. Nor are you going to get incriminating leaks from democracies that aren't engaging in significant combat (especially with an insurgency that blends in with the general population). So it'd be natural for them to get such documents from the US.
Having said that, the Slashdotter who submitted the story had a blatant anti-US bias. Hyping the release as "may reveal" bad things (even worse, "ignoring" bad things which somehow got documented anyway) is irresponsible, not that we had any expectation of responsibility from this guy. It's almost like the Slashdot editors picked the juiciest bit of flamebait they could find to dangle before the slavering hordes.
Here is an example of one of the writeups: A FORCE FROM //%%% RAIDED AND SEARCHED '%%% AREA - -%%% PROVINCE. 6X SUSPECTED WERE ARRESTED. THE RAID ENDED AT %%%. NO INJURIES
It's very typical, the "%%%" are WikiLeaks censoring information; dates, places, times, names, even things you would think wouldn't matter to release. They really censor a lot of info, and the majority of reports are pretty mundane, probably giving a fairly good idea of the documents they received.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
It's too bad Wikileaks has such an obvious agenda
You mean "agenda that I personally disagree with." For almost a decade, the white house administrations and both parties have been putting out propaganda in favor of the war. You're okay with that but not someone pointing out that it hasn't all been roses and smiles?
Well, fine. The war is going perfectly, nothing is hopeless or unjust. Don't worry, be happy. In fact, the war was over 3 minutes after we got there, everyone realized it was just a big miscommunication, and then our soldiers came home.
And that's how we got a second term for GWB instead of Al Gore - all you folks who voted for Ralph Nader and so on handed the White House to the Republicans.
And vice-versa. All you folks who voted for Gore instead of Nader handed the White House to the Republicans.
There's a reason why The Daily Show often tops the polls as the most trustworthy news source on television.
It's because they're upfront with the fact that Jon is liberal, and also they're upfront about their agenda: to tell dick jokes and poke fun at the absurdity of the system - often by using dick joke.
It's too bad because they don't have the balls to attack countries that will kill them for doing it. They claim to be high and mighty about truth, but in the end they won't raise a finger against companies like Russia because they'll end up dead rather than with standing warrants and strongly worded letters.
In fact it doesn't matter who says what !
"you broke it, you own it"
- pure propaganda; I wonder if Powell even came up with it.
This is not a business... well, in a way our wars are big business and that dictates our policies; but corruption aside, comparison of geopolitics to crap like that is just false reasoning. We have no obligation to fix Iraq because we made a bad situation even worse by trying to fix it. Clearly, by "fixing it" we made it worse! Common sense says do not continue to fix the mess you made if you just make it bigger.
Since when did ethics really become part of our geopolitics??? its just propaganda. Even then, we are not required to repair nations we break - the morals went out the window when we attacked in the 1st place.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Second term election for GWB was GWB vs. John Kerry.
Drink yourself.
By company I meant country.
And vice-versa. All you folks who voted for Gore instead of Nader handed the White House to the Republicans.
In a practical sense, complete bullshit.
Gore lost by a very slim margin, where Nader and the rest of the fringe had no chance at all.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Funny how the very rarely release the information they are given about China, Russia and other such countries. You would think that an unbiased source would not hold such information back, but they do.
If you aren't a Western Democracy you are safe from Wikileaks.
And you have proof of them withholding information?
That's only true if the people are from Florida. If you're like me and From California, it doesn't matter who you vote for until you get such a large percentage voting for the third party that they might actually become viable.
Besides, how do you know he wouldn't have voted for Bush?
Qxe4
Actually, the US forces might generally be considered neutral party, the bias coming from their superiors and the decision makers who wish to show the campaign in a positive light towards the American public. Vietnam gave a lesson on the consequences of 'beautified' reporting from the field.
Yes, the 40 million or so people who voted for Dubya had nothing whatsoever to do with his win.
But could you explain to me again how it is Ralph Nader's fault that the Democrats have the White House, the House of Representatives and a super-majority in the Senate and still can't get much of anything worthwhile done?
Wikileaks may have a bias, but they also know their message is destroyed if they are shown to censor data for their effort. The 'Collatoral Murder' fisasco showed that. Even there, they provided the full video but put the focus on where *the issue* was for a short attention span viewing crowd.
The "Collatoral Murder" video is a really great example. That wasn't simply pairing down the information to cater to short attention spans. It was a nicely done propaganda piece. For me, that propaganda effort over-shadowed the opportunity to hold the US Military accountable to mistakes made. But then, it also played very well with the anti-war movement. I'd hazard to guess Wikileaks gained more supporters than they lost for their efforts.
"indirect warfare method that killed millions:" Another sensationalist statement. Dig those millions up for us, so that we can examine them. You can't find them? Hmmm. Maybe those millions are just figments of demented people's imaginations? Habeus corpus, dude, habeus corpus. Oh yeah - from your own link: 60 Minutes interview While Ambassador to the UN Albright was criticized for defending the U.N. sanctions against Iraq (under Saddam Hussein) in a 1996 interview with Lesley Stahl on a segment of CBS's 60 Minutes.[49] When asked by Stahl, "We have heard that half a million children have died [as a result of sanctions]. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it."[50][51] She expressed regret for her response in 2001[52] and wrote in her 2003 autobiography, I must have been crazy; I should have answered the question by reframing it and pointing out the inherent flaws in the premise behind it. [] As soon as I had spoken, I wished for the power to freeze time and take back those words. My reply had been a terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy, and wrong. [] I had fallen into a trap and said something that I simply did not mean. That is no one’s fault but my own.[50] Albright also claimed that the segment (for which Stahl won an Emmy[53]) ignored Saddam's culpability, his misuse of Iraqi resources, or the fact that we were not embargoing medicine or food. I was exasperated that our TV was showing what amounted to Iraqi propaganda.[50] This "trap" has been called a loaded question.[54][55] Her failure to "refram[e the question] and point[] out [its] inherent flaws"[50] has been called "the non-denial heard 'round the world"[52][56] because "by not challenging the statistic, Albright inadvertently lent credence to it."[54] When asked about her response in 2005, Albright said "I never should have made it, it was stupid," and that she still supported the concept of tailored sanctions.[57]
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
...all you folks who voted for Ralph Nader and so on handed the White House to the Republicans.
Oh shut up! All you folks who voted for George Bush handed the White House to the Republicans. Wouldn't have mattered anyway so all of you should quit your bellyaching.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
And that's how we got a second term for GWB instead of Al Gore - all you folks who voted for Ralph Nader and so on handed the White House to the Republicans.
Yeah, I mean - it's not like the guys who voted for GWB are to blame...
The scorn heaped on Nader's voters by the Democrats that I've seen in person is several orders of magnitude greater than that heaped on the Bush voters. The guy who votes for Nader is lampooned and criticized to death, but the office colleague who voted for Bush gets a free pass, usually.
How typical of Democrats: Can't take on the guys in power, so they pile it on to a weaker crowd.
Beetle B.
Except all the "other side" of the 'truth' has already been published. It's actually the ONLY fact presented so far.
If nobody ever had said anything anywhere about the US military, and wikileaks published this, then it might have been a half truth, or at least something to be taken with a grain of salt. But what actually happens is that everyone, always and everywhere is fucking talking about the "heroes" that are "fighting for freedom" over there at the "axis of evil". Everything we've heard so far is their side. So, accusing wikileaks of being one sided is fucking stupid. The other side is the whole fucking media. All the fucking media against a single fucking website. Don't be such a fucking hypocrite.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I have a better idea: Stay the fuck away from that country. What none of you question, ever, is the real reason and validity of being there in the first place.
Give me one fucking valid reason why you need your troops anywhere outside your own territory murdering people.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Weird. The country with the world-record in political assassination is the US. Explain to me why I should be more scared of the shitty remains of the USSR than of your chacals?
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
The idea of Wikileaks (i.e. the ability to anonymously expose government secrets) is valid and needs to survive. Currently Wikileaks is the only working instance of that idea. We cannot kill it simply because it is a bad implementation. In the years to come, there may be others and one of them may work better.
In particular the helicopter video, the one people tried to use to vilify them, I felt did the opposite. Was it disturbing? Yep, but war is disturbing business anyone who expects otherwise is. Were the airmen callous? You bet, but then soldiers get that way, as can we all. However it showed professionalism, and restraint. The engaged targets per the ROE, which remember are not the same as civilian rules. They did their job, they didn't just kill random people.
That's what I expect. I do not expect perfection from our military, it is made of humans and they are flawed like all of us. I expect professionalism, and I expect that when someone is not they are punished.
China, Russia dont leak in that way due to history. Their systems are closed and tight for some very good reasons.
Russian learned hard from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project
Computers, radio and networks are bad in their part of the world as the NSA, CIA ect taps at will. Tunnels, oceans, radio, sat is all open to the efforts of the NSA. GCHQ had the Little Sai Wan base in Hong Kong, later Tai Mo Shan. What did they get out of China? Some nuke testing data and post ww2 China/Moscow embassy intercepts.
The US and UK have massive international networks staffed by under paid, very very smart young men and woman all over the world.
Their work is boring, lonely and exposes them to the reality of friendly death squads, drug running, nuclear 'deals' and other developments that will never make the talking points in the US press.
So expect to see much leaking from the US. The UK has learned from its massive cold war leaks to sure up security and train/understand its staff better.
Its the nature of the staff mix and has nothing to do with "release the information they are given about China, Russia". China, Russia are very very different.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The truth.
And one of the reasons I don't like the release. As far as I can tell, these documents were not released for the public good. They don't show the public anything they didn't know, and anything they need to know. When you are given classified data, you promise not to release it. It is a matter of trust, and for good reason (usually). As such, as with any trust, I think it is important to uphold it EXCEPT if there is a greater good in betraying it. In the case of classified data, that good would be the public good. If it is both something that the public is not aware of, and something they need to be aware of, something where the good in revealing it outweighs the harm, then you do it.
Nobody showed me anything in the first set of documents like that and I have to image if it was in there, it would have been major on the Internet, if not the news. That to me means that the documents never should have been leaked.
Two things at work there:
1) They are just learning from other journalists. You may notice the media LOVES bad stories, loves speculation, and generally loves trolling. Fox News may be the most egregious but they all do it. Why? Gets viewers. For some reason, people eat that shit up. Slashdot is just emulating that, trying to get page views. I don't agree with it, but I can understand why they do it.
2) A lesser factor is just that you may have noted there are a lot of US haters on Slashdot. They believe the US government sucks and so on. They are just catering to a part of their fan base.
Unfortunately Slashdot does not have what you'd call good journalistic standards.
...World War II? Wasn't that worth getting involved for? Wouldn't you have preferred it if we had got involved sooner, or at least let Jews seek refuge here?
for being a decent human being? #621258 up there has a great point. if people would hold each other accountable for their actions: we'd see that the previous US president was a scumbag, and deserves to be behind bars.
instead you're just sitting here perputating MORE hate, lying to yourself, and making the world a worse place again and again.
I'm not a religious person, but I hope for your sake that you are and that your local minister tells you how horrible a person you are: and you understand what he/she says.
America: Better in some ways than Russia
You should start an advertising company.
Drink Dioxin! It's less poisonous the strychnine.
Try reading some of the summaries offered on Wikileaks (not accessible at the moment, I can only get to the new Iraq stuff). If you think those summaries are unbiased...
Given the message most people get from wikileaks is basically what their summaries say, yes biased summaries are a big deal. If you want to argue the facts will speak for themselves, go ask people about "Climategate".
My webcomic
well, with folks like you in office, you won't need a plane full of military men landing in a foreign country to make mischief in order to get your rocks off.
in fact, you could save us a lot of money if you were president. ...you could call yours the pleasure party.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
you do realize that a single person in the US government is given the de facto ability to wage war without any approvals- the president (huge over-empowerment imo). The senate just declares it a war. The last war that was declared was world war two; Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again, none of them were ever approved by congress. We tend to have highly militaristic presidents, and no, party doesn't matter.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
lemme spell this out for you: P-o-l-i-t-c-i-a-n
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
e.g. people will bash him no matter what, or he's scum because he's a politician, take your pick.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
What's more scary is that the disinformation campaign includes agents who infiltrate popular website to spread this "theory" in order to discredit it as yet another conspiracy theory.
Hold on guys, there's someone at the door.
400,000 documents? We couldn't get people to read the 1000 page health care bill. Who's going to read these?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Jews did seek refuge here. That's why we're at war with the Arab world in the foist place, nyuk nyuk nyuk.
Oy, VEY!
The leak highlights the high numbers of civilian, military, and Iraqi casualties. If the war in Iraq had been worth it, then maybe none of this would be so bad. But I have yet to see one political leader, including the former President Bush, explain why the war in Iraq was necessary or worth it. My advice to future Presidents is if you're Generals and pollsters are advising you to go to war, ask yourselves this question. "Are we all willing to send our own children out on the first wave?" If the answer is no, then the war is probably not worth it and we should stick to diplomatic means. I am an American and a veteran who served in Iraq. I was personally all for invading Iraq. The American people wanted to invade Iraq, and President Bush did what at the time was a very popular thing. Now every one wants to criticize the last President for doing that they themselves advocated. Some day America needs to come to terms with this. Or will America just ignore the lesson and blame it all on Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. and bumble on to the next mistake? Americans are not famous for self reflection, so I expect America to just blame the Bushies and move on.
there are like some facts that go this way and some facts that go that way: It's a fact that I'm typing on a keyboard now, just like it's a fact I was speeding yesterday, get what I mean?
Yeah.
So definitely ignore this media release and don't believe a thing WikiLeaks puts out or Assange says. Make sense?
No.
If there are two sides of a story, the best way to find out what really happened is not to ignore both parties and make something up in your head.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Are you for real, are you that naive and simple?
Do you know how much money war makes? So what are you talking about?
Majority of people think that the portion of their income taxes that goes towards SS actually stays in the coffers as some investment fund, making more money in the process.
Those people are deluded, simple, naive creatures, very silly, mostly ignorant of the world around them.
Money that is taken from you in form of income taxes, payroll taxes are used up by the government immediately on government programs.
Politicians promise their constituency everything under the sun and that is why they get voted into the office. However these politicians never tell the truth and the truth is, in order to PAY for the promises they make there is no money.
So in order really to pay for the politicians' promises taxes must be raised. However that is not part of the platform on which these politicians run, they are not talking about increasing your taxes to give you more of these things they promise to you.
Of-course there is no money, so to pay for the promises politicians take the money wherever they can get them from and what is there? Income taxes, SS, borrowing, printing into inflation.
So the SS money is NOT kept in some investment fund, it is NOT being multiplied by some investment, it is a huge lie. SS money is being immediately spent on all the entitlements, on wars, on all the government programs and on various government agencies.
So the war is never about the war itself, it is always about the money.
Money. Cash. Dollars. That is what drives the wars. SS is a pyramid scheme because there is no money there, so it is a promise to pay for the old people by robbing the young people, nothing else.
WHY must young people tolerate this insanity? Obviously they are getting an increasingly shorter and shorter part of the stick, they are getting robbed. Because it is the old people who voted in the politicians to get the spending without paying for it, the SS that the old people paid was spent long ago and now it has the be the young serfs who'll pay for the quality of life of the old.
This is the same across the world. Greece. France. UK. USA. You name a country with a budget hole, with a huge trade deficit, with an enormous government and spending - that's a country that wants to make the young to be slaves of the old, who have created this system in the first place.
Well, the old will find out that the young are not interested in being slaves. The young will emigrate, will leave to go to countries that have no trade deficit, that have no insane policies of taxing income to pay for the promises of politicians that cannot be kept to the old.
----
It is always about money. Politicians lie to get into office. Income taxes and SS are a pyramid scheme. If it wasn't a pyramid scheme the money would have been there, actually in investments of some sort making interest, which implies the gov't wouldn't be running huge spending programs, running wars, inflating the money.
This is all a lie.
Do not pay your income taxes, your slave taxes. Leave.
You can't handle the truth.
I saw one document on here which really disgusted me. The American troops had someone detained, some soldier walks in, pulls out a browning and fires 7 rounds into the detainee for no apparent reason. That soldier then gets detained for a while then he's let of. WTF, this is bullshit.
My problem with Nader is that he lied to Congress to get safety standards passed he knew would kill infants and purposefully didn't warn anyone because he didn't want bad press for airbags. He's a baby killer, and anyone that voted for him supports a baby killer.
Learn to love Alaska
Like you said, even Wikileaks probably has an agenda even if they say they're completely unbiased. That's a very good way of thinking: maybe they really are in this business only to help people tell the truth to the world but maybe they also have a preconceived idea about who is lying and who is not which makes them unknowingly biased.
What I'm trying to say is that yes, you cannot take anything anyone else says as complete truth because everyone has a different view of the world. However you can't just ignore everything and be all "BLA BLA BLA, you're all lying".
What you must do is understand their view, their world so you can make an educated guess on whether they're lying and find out what is really the truth based on the information you have. Of course you can only know in degrees of probabilty but that usually works ok.
ics
What war?
The war in Iraq officially ended in 2003, with lots of flag waving.
The documents released by Wikileaks are for the period 2004-2009.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
It's too bad Wikileaks has such an obvious agenda. I like the idea of them, but that the same time, knowing they have such a clear agenda, makes me wonder what they decide not to release because it doesn't flow with what they want the world to think.
US killed 100,000 people.
What fucking agendas are you talking about, you piece of shit?
I liked this one:
I think the whole world already knows how we operate. This only proves the point.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The documents reportedly also tell about incidents of torture by coalition forces, and of civilians being killed at checkpoints (for speeding to get their wife to the hospital). There is an incident described where a single terrorist on the roof of a building caused the military to obliterate the entire building and everyone in it (civilians).
Time to queue up the politicians whining about how evil it is releasing secrets about the torture and murder or civilians and at no time admitting the real evil was in the acts themselves.
``Weird. The country with the world-record in political assassination is the US.''
Hmm. Have references for that? And what constitutes political assassination, exactly?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Well, this is what happens when the U.S. military starts to *not* act as the world's police force. What did people expect? Happy joy bubbles to break out between the various Iraqi factions?
I read the Guardian's overview article ... they focused quite a bit on the so-called "murders" as reported in the documents: cases where the Iraqi army or police tortured and killed prisoners. Apparently, the official military policy on this, according to the Guardian, is for the military to take any report and feed it back to the Iraqui army or police for investigation. The military will formally investigate if one of their soliders is reported as abusing a prisoner, but they push it back to the Iraqis if it's one of their soliders/police doing the abusing. Again, this is my summary of the Guardian's reporting.
I'm surprised so many people are so upset that the US (and UK) are turning a blind eye to this. I mean, really -- the meme that's been repeated incessantly these last nine years is "The U.S. shouldn't be the world's police" and "The U.S. should get their nose out of other people's business". So here we have documented evidence of the U.S. doing exactly that -- having the Iraqis police themselves and getting their nose out of the Iraqi's internal issues -- and people are now complaining because the U.S. is not doing enough? WTF people, make up your minds -- either you want the U.S. to be the world's police or you don't!
This is how the Iraqis police themselves, apparently. The interesting thing in this case is that there's a 3rd party on hand (the U.S. military) to document the abuse/butchering the Iraqis are inflicting on themselves. Is the U.S. innocent? No - and the U.S. military still hasn't pulled out completely. But everyone who said the U.S. should stop being the world's police should be applauding them now.
Actually all that video showed was the agenda (and the propaganda skills) of the persons who posted it. As a matter of fact the US soldiers acted correctly, according to the RoE which are about as restrictive and aimed towards avoiding collateral damage as any army has ever applied in any war. So the name "Collateral murder" is particularly inappropriate. "War is hell" would have been a better name, as that is all it shows.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
If they lie about how our heroes die, how are we to trust them on how our enemies died or were treated.
``Thank you. It is simple as that. So many people after 9/11 beat the war drum, and now almost a decade later are horrified that bad things happen in war.''
This is why I think it's good that people are being shown what actually happens. I watched the video where civilians were shot from a helicopter, and it looks like a honest mistake to me. The message here isn't "OMG the US army is evil! They're killing innocent people!" The message here is "This is what war is like. Innocent people get killed."
People get upset about the horrors of war (and rightly so) while sitting at home in their comfy chairs. Now imagine yourself being in the middle of that. Your enemy's strategy is to stay hidden until you are close, then kill or maim you before you have had the chance to do it to them. When you see something that looks like a threat, are you going to pull that trigger? One moment of hesitation could cost you your life or limbs, or those of your mates. Pulling the trigger will cost life or limbs of whomever you're shooting at, enemy or innocent. Welcome to the "theater".
The fact that what WikiLeaks does is a big deal is telling. If we knew what was really happening out there, there would be nothing that WikiLeaks could do that would be a big deal. It would just be fluff: over the top commentary on something we already knew about. The reason people get so excited about WikiLeaks is that they are actually bringing news. Innocent people are getting killed. Many innocent people are getting killed. By us.
We know what the government said. War on terror. Weapons of mass destruction. We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. We have to help our NATO allies. We are making the world a safer place.
WikiLeaks is showing what is really happening out there. Apparently, it's shocking. Apparently, this was meant to be kept hidden from us. Personally, I am not surprised. I am no military expert at all, but the wars are going pretty much as I had imagined they would. If anything, I am surprised we have been holding on to Afghanistan for so long.
Now that WikiLeaks has shown us what war is really like, I think it's time to answer some questions. All things considered, have these wars been worth it? We know they have cost a lot, and continue to do so, both in terms of money and in terms of suffering, but what have we gained from them? Has the world become a better place because of these wars? Knowing what we know now, if a similar situation presented itself, would we go to war again? And the one I still can't wrap my head around: Why _did_ we invade Iraq? I don't believe for a second it was about weapons of mass destruction, but what was it about?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Let me guess, that doesn't bother you.
That'll tend to happen when the other side a) like to kill you and b) don't wear uniforms. Have to hassle everybody. Duh, that's why the rules about unlawful enemy combatants got started.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat
Samizdat (Russian: ; Russian pronunciation: [smzdat]) was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader, thus building a foundation for the successful resistance of the 1980s. This grassroots practice to evade officially-imposed censorship was fraught with danger as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials. Vladimir Bukovsky defined it as follows: "I myself create it, edit it, censor it, publish it, distribute it, and get imprisoned for it."
It's quite odd to see that people who are always offensively waving their engorged patriotism in your face support the idea of the divine right of Kings that can never be questioned instead of a Republic.
Governments lie and have to be held to account. There was a revolution about it a couple of centuries back.
How can we tell truth from lies?
Find a historian specializing in the WWI or WWII - and he would tell that are pretty common events for a war.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
What are the new international rights for Americans?
Now let's suppose a group of Canadian terrorists bombs a building a China. You couldn't complain if the Chinese consequently invaded the USA because you are harboring Canadians. The Chinese could march up to Washington, catch Bush, Obama and friends from pits in the ground, and execute them after a fake trial. While hunting the terrorists, they could kill innocent civilians with a ratio 5:1. These events, they could hide them actively from the media and from being ever discovered, because it is the patriotic thing to do and to protect the Chinese freedom fighters. If your family was killed at a checkpoint, you could witness people on Chinese internet forums discussing that it is irresponsible to have information about this incident released, that this would be anti-Chinese and evidence of a strong bias and sensationalism of the person of organisation releasing that secret info. There will be much torture, and those who expose it will be branded traitors, while the torturers walk. Many Americans and Canadians will be shipped to a remote prison. The new Chinese ruler who will keep everything the same will get the Nobel Peace Price.
Maybe he has better stuff to do that actually matters.
Let me rephrase: the war fuels the terrorist attacks against the US.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
None of what you said changes the fact that sanctions under Clinton killed more Iraqis than war under Bush. Pointing out that Saddam was culpable is the same as me pointing out that the insurgents are culpable in civilian deaths by a) not wearing uniforms b) deliberately mixing with civilians, c) killing hell out of of a lot Iraqi civilians themselves. Are you aware that by far most of the civilian deaths in Iraq have come from the insurgents, not from the US?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I find it amusing that otherwise rational Slashdot crowd does not see a logical fault in accusing the US army and the government for the tortures and crimes that Iraqi government did.
Letting people seek refuge is fine, and something we should be doing a lot more of. But when it comes to acts of war, no, the US was absolutely justified in waiting until it was attacked to enter the war.
I am trolling
Healthcare reform. Getting the troops out of Iraq. The Dems are doing what they set out to. What do you think they're failing to do?
I am trolling
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1835400&cid=33995054
By making the horrors of war itself unacceptable, the pentagon feels forced to hide them but WITH that hiding they can hide far more. Area 51. If you even dare ask what is dare, you are quickly put with the alien nutters who think marsians are everywhere. A very effective cover.
If you scream when you see some blood in a butchersshop, they will sanitize the meat production until meat is something that comes in little containers with tissue to soak up the blood. But that makes it very hard to question food production practices if you somehow expect your daily meat but don't want any blood. That allows real cruelty, unneeded cruelty to animals, to be hidden. If you want beef, a cow has to die. Once you accept that you can ask how the cow should be killed. It doesn't have to made to suffer endlessly or be transported hundred of miles to do so. BUT those who want their meat AND not see blood allow a curtain to be raised behind which darkness can reign unchecked.
The Iraq war is often claimed to be for resources. Fine, lets assume it is. Then do YOU not claim those resources? Anyone who drives a car about a single metric ton, is in need of the Iraq oil to do so. The US needs oil because its people want oil, but they don't want the nasty truth that wars have always been fought for resources.
The real horror of this story is that for all the outrage, when the prices of petrol goes up, resistance against the US protection its supply lines will go down. It is a whole sordid deal that begins with YOU wanting to drive a 3 ton SUV goes through a president who doesn't want high fuel prices and ends up with some country being invaded or the CIA supporting yet another dictator. Just see the mess the US is causing in Mexico right now. All because the US can't deal with its drug issue. Iraq happened because the US can't deal with its oil needs. It would be far simpler if it didn't have to appease the Arabs to keep oil while also wanting to support Israel for the sake of freedom. No oil dependence it could simply tell the Arabs to go to hell and this would never have seen Sadam in power or supported in the war against Iran. Iran would have no money to cause a fuzz. No oil, the arabs would be the backward nations their faithful wish to be. Sucks for all the other Arabs but hey, at least our hands are clean.
World politics are not nice. There are so many intrests fueled by a public that wants it fuel.
And then we send rednecks who couldn't get a job anywhere else to deal with johny foreigner in a fair and even handed manner after they just been shot at...
Sadly, I am to cynical to be outraged because I can see how the outrage at the "simple" crimes allows the extreme right, the powers that be, to hide behind the wall of the middle who might be outraged if only they didn't worry about fuel prices more. The teabaggers defend the indefensible because they feel forced into a corner. And the fact the teabaggers are here already shows how deeply divided the US is. Left and right, pro and anti-iraq war are so deeply divided that both sides feel compelled to side with their own, even if they are inside deeply against it. Got to support the troops, is a battle cry behind which covering up mass rape and murder are allowed to happen. Out of Iraq is a battle cry that allows an attitude that you got to tolerate everything in the world no matter what because someone might get hurt.
I am old enough to remember all the lefties in Holland demanding the world interfere in Iraq to stop the gassing ot the koerds. When finally the world did interfere, that was bad... but with the same breath they also demanded the world went into Darfur... can't have it both ways.
I have no solution for all of this. The US powers that be have allowed themselves to get once again dragged into a war, have its string pulled by people banned from Iraq to support them, believes that these people could hold power, believes that democracy can be enforced, demands for low petrol prices, etc etc. And in all that, countless forces make their own struggle for power. Hard to see how to get out of it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Because democracy is only good when it's on your side. If it's not then you have two choices: live with it or whine about how people voted "wrong".
Sadly opposition almost always chooses the latter one instead of bringing something constructive to the table.
You don't know what you don't know.
The idea of Wikileaks (i.e. the ability to anonymously expose government secrets) is valid and needs to survive. Currently Wikileaks is the only working instance of that idea. We cannot kill it simply because it is a bad implementation. In the years to come, there may be others and one of them may work better.
No, it isn't. CRYPTOME is a much older and very respected instance.
They are supposed to report the issue, and then the politicians should have made as much noise as possible to embarrass the Iraqis.
They didn't do this because the top brass in Washington belived in the effectivness of criminal actions in order to supress their common enemies.
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IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... dissenters end in jail or dead.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The military is trying to paint war as an exact, precise business. People have to be reminded that it's messy and bloody.
Problem is, it was supposed to be a liberation, not a war.
When the WMDs didn't pan out, Bush went on and on about the glorious democracy they were going to bring by deposing of the evil tyrant. Well, just look at it. Isn't the guy who was driving his wife to the hospital glad you set things right?
I'll grant you that ignoring a checkpoint in wartime isn't the smartest decision one can make, but chances are under Saddam he would still be alive. And I thought that the whole point of this was making things better.
There's something to be said for spoiler effect, but frankly if Gore couldn't convince enough people to vote for him, then that's on him.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Give me one fucking valid reason why you need your troops anywhere outside your own territory murdering people.
Do you mean right now, or ever?
Pacifism only works if everyone is a pacifist.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I don't believe the report said the US killed 100,000 people. It said 100,000 died as a result of the war. Not exactly the same. How many died because of inter-tribal warfare and score settling?
In fact, it does. I don't think the Civil War should've been fought. The Southern states would've failed on their own and would've one-by-one begged to come back into the Union. The Union could've been a safe haven for escaped slaves. I think it would've been better all around.
I think much of the cultural divide we face today is because of the Civil War.
Aside from that, I'm very suspicious of extra powers granted a president in wartime, and I don't think I would've been any too pleased to have seen habeas corpus suspended by Abraham Lincoln.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
So, we're now the radical left if we think that a whole building full of people don't deserve to die because there is a sniper there? Great. Hope you weren't anywhere in DC when there was a sniper there...
Invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and no WMD is not a valid military tactic. To compare the invasion of Iraq with liberation of Europe is laughable. Would you suck it up with "War is hell" if they did this in your country? And "muslims killing muslims" - well, what if I invaded and put the KKK in charge of the US - would that be OK as "Christians killing Christians"? When you remove power and authority and hand it to psychopaths you are NOT absolved of whatever they do.
So FUCK YOU armchair warrior. Your "War" was illegitimate, the hell you brought with you is horrendous, and if it makes me a radical left winger to say so, we DO need to see what the results of our "War on Terror" are and become outraged that thousands of civilians have been killed FOR NOTHING. I don't want to be desensitized. I don't want to get used to it. I want it to stop happening, unless it's the absolutely fucking last resort, which it was not in this case.
The idea of Wikileaks (i.e. the ability to anonymously expose government secrets) is valid and needs to survive. Currently Wikileaks is the only working instance of that idea. We cannot kill it simply because it is a bad implementation. In the years to come, there may be others and one of them may work better.
The incentive for a better one might not exist while there is a de-facto standard.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Give me one fucking valid reason why you need your troops anywhere outside your own territory murdering people.
Give me one country where US troops are present where the local government doesn't want them there.
Give me one such government that represents the will of the people in that question.
I wonder how long they'll keep that respect when all they seem to be doing is bashing the competition with the obsessiveness of a 9/11 thruther.
Bringing your wife to hospital? Did you grow up in a movie? In reality, there is no emergency. Labour lasts hours even with mothers who had babies before.
Okay, this may run completely contrary to your worldview so it may be best to sit down and steady yourself : giving birth is not the sum total of a woman's existence. If someone is rushing their wife to hospital then there is a very good chance that it has nothing to do with making babies. And yes, in reality, it may be an emergency. People use hospitals in emergencies. Even women who aren't giving birth. Does that make any sense to you at all?
That US troops didn't do the murder and torture? It's just being spun that way? That would certainly be mitigating. If the Iraqi government is torturing and murdering dissidents against the wishes of the US military, then we're just seeing them mature into the inevitable. It's the middle east, not Canada. How did we think things were going to work after we left? I'm just guessing here, but really, no ones see the documents as a whole yet. Wikileaks releases what they want the world to believe first and then bury everyone in a half a million documents so we're living with their spin for at least a week or two until people finally sift through it all and get some context on the few papers they selectively released at the outset.
If you're like me and From California, it doesn't matter who you vote for until you get such a large percentage voting for the third party that they might actually become viable.
A viable third party in California? I'll believe it when I see it! If such a magic unicorn came into existence, I'd give ten to one odds that they'd be more liberal than democrats and just as beholden to special interests. (To be fair, both parties are destroying the state.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
You mean: to stop favoring the duopoly.
Instant runoff, et al, aren't about favoring third parties, only about allowing them to thrive, unfettered by strategic voting. (OK, unrestrained by the absolute worst of strategic voting. To be clear, I'm a proponent of the Smith Criterion.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Afaik, wikileaks agenda is maximizing the impact of their leaks. They've released documents that benefited the U.S. by embarrassing Iran, China, etc. and helped us catch U.S. citizens hiding income in Swiss bank accounts. If wikileaks suppressed an interesting leak, we'd just see that leak on cryptome.org with the subheading "Suppressed by Wikileaks".
You are of course correct that we need more organizations like wikileaks, ideally run by less flamboyant people. In fact, all the "real" news organizations around like Independent Media Center, Al Jazeera, BBC, etc. should be racing to set up separate but similar blind document submission networks.
In any case, I'm fairly happy that Julian Assange is playing wanna-be martyr chicken with the U.S. intelligence services. Americans must eventually choose between our freedom and our empire.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I find it very funny, that a believer in UFOs decided to post about what is fringe and what is not.
In this case there are no "fringe" arguments - any and all travesties commited by the troops in Iraq should be mentioned - time and time again.
The truth is that the war in Iraq was caused by the US. Therefore, the US cannot just brush away accusations of civilian deaths by saying "well, it's a warzone". It is a warzone only because the US made it so, and therefore it should now accept the responsibility and admit to the real number of casualties caused.
Human nature is hell, but when you provoke a war, don't pretend that it's not your fault when all hell breakes loose.
And even as far as warzone behaviour goes, the US' is pretty extreme. Read the Guardian article about US troops shooting up the British - on a regular basis. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/american-troops-friendly-fire-iraq
give me one country where US troops are present where the local government who is in favour of US troops being there wasn't put there by the USA
> War is hell. Get used to it.
> War is hell, accept that. Civilians are going to be killed...
> We ask the pentagon to go to war, then we have to accept the results.
I don't think that's a particularly accurate summary of the maniacal push to war. Plenty of normal civilians already know that war is hell, and that civilians inevitably get killed, and that's precisely why so many people protested and demonstrated on the streets making it quite clear that no matter how much the pentagon and the politicians were desperate to start up their war machine, the public DIDN'T WANT IT.
Don't claim that we asked the pentagon to go to war, that's incredibly insulting.
If you think women never experience any complications during childbirth then you're an ignorant douche bag.
In reality, there is no emergency. Labour lasts hours even with mothers who had babies before.
really? Funny, my daughter was born 45 minutes after my wife went into labor at 4AM at home. Try telling her there was no need to hurry.
time for you to step down form that pedestal.
And that is not including the deaths from the draconian sanctions that the US forced over the last couple of decades and the corresponding systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure like water, power and sewage systems. Estimates for these reach over a million, a staggering proportion of which were children.
You are correct. War is hell. And it takes the stupidity and arrogance of this planet's sentient, intelligent, and "civilized" species to knowingly and willingly bring this hell upon themselves over and over again, sometimes for the most idiotic reasons.
We don't need imaginary evils like a Satan or a Hell when we do such a bang up job all by ourselves.
~X~
We ask the pentagon to go to war
Actually I don't think we did ask. We were told they had weapons of mass destruction so therefor we had to do this. No one asked for it or wanted it and congress was replaced with the left because of it. I'm still waiting on said WMD's to surface.
Perhaps if there were more transparency the whole thing could have been avoided in the first place.
A coalition of groups in the U.S. wanted the Iraq war:
The U.S. government has killed an estimated 11,000,000 people since the end of the 2nd world war, by invading or bombing or causing political problems in 24 countries.
Are we going to demand the arrest of policy makers? Military leaders?
Or just watch The Daily Show and shout "yeah take that government!!" all day?
I'm serious about this...I see a lot of passion, but what is anyone going to do?
Your use of expletives causes you to look irrational and takes away weight from something I might have considered otherwise. To paint the entire media as supportive of the mission in Iraq is a simple over-generalization and I am sure you are aware of this, and will remember when you calm down and stop trying to argue with the internet.
You say that pointing out the bad things that happen in war is wrong because in war they are inevitable, well they are not. The real issue is that the war was illegal, injustified (unless lies are currently a justification for anything), and in direct violation of international law. Even enemy soldiers getting killed is a tragedy and worth speaking up about, let alone pregnant women on their way to hospital, and for the record labour is quite often an emergency, especially where poverty and bad hygiene are involved. Ask a doctor if you doubt this.
I have a joke for you: A man breaks into a house and starts raping a woman living there. Her husband interferes. In the ensuing struggle the husband and wife are both killed. In court the rapists lawyer says: "Rape is a messy business, that's the reality. People get killed sometimes." So the judge lets him off the murder charges.
Also, the idea that you should silence the critics of war in order to have a rational debate about atrocities committed is absurd, I hope you realise this.
Now that the silliness is out of the way, can we talk about REALity?
Sorry I haven't had time to go through all 400,000 documents yet, but the news sites that have had access to the database for much longer are not alleging that US troops tortured anyone. If any troops are to blame, it's the Iraqis.
You lost the logic flow by having the words 'murdering people' removed from the sentence before that.
There are plenty of places US troops are there with the invitation of the real, not-installed-by-the-US government...but it's places like England, where they presumably not killing anyone.
You're right that in essentially all places that the US is engaged in active combat operations right now, they're operating with the support of a local government essentially installed by the US.
Except Pakistan, where the government was only partially installed by the US, so they're only partially in favor of our military operations, which is a rather good exception that proves the rule.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
There is no shortage of politicians from both parties who claim to be for term limits! By a strange coincidence, they almost always happen to be running against an incumbent who has held office for a long time. For example, George Nethercutt defeated the sitting Speaker of the House in a campaign with term limits as a central issue. In the course of that campaign, Nethercutt solemnly promised to serve no more than three terms (six years), unlike his long-serving opponent. Opposition to term limits was a major reason for his victory, and the people spoke!
Nethercutt served in that office for five terms (ten years).
The REAL problem is that because the left is so outraged that war ain't nice, they scream at the wrong things and then allow the really bad things to be hidden instead.
The real problem is that the right has been trying to paint us as white knights riding in on horses to save the Iraqis from a brutal regime. Yet here we are, imposing our own form of brutality. It's not as bad as the brutality before us, but it's still wrong. If it's a fact of war that bad things happen, then why is the US government so mad about the documents describing what we should already know? Probably because they don't want us to know. It shatters the illusion that we are paragons of truth, justice, democracy, mom, and apple pie that they've been trying their damndest to create.
War is hell, accept that. Civilians are going to be killed especially in wars were the enemy has no qualms about hiding among them.
Undoubtedly. Which is why we get pissed when a president sells us on a weekend war against Saddam where afterward the population will greet us with with open arms and lay our lawn chairs on the beach and bring us mai tais.
THEN you can go and question why so many died, why it needs to be kept hidden. Remove the left fringe and you can then force a real discussion and demand that REAL figures are always shown because then the pentagon wouldn't claim they need to hide them to keep the radical left from using the horrors of war against them. We ask the pentagon to go to war, then we have to accept the results. But we can then also demand to know the full results and ask, if there was no other way.
So a "real discussion" only involves people who don't have a problem with civilian deaths (or at least enough of a problem to do anything about it)?
Are you saying Americans were directly liable of detainee abuse? Sorry. It's not there. Would you prefer another foreign military to take people out of American prisons because we have the death penalty or notify authorities and allow the American process to fix that? And if America chooses not to change that position you don't agree with (death penalty is legal here. In Iraq, DETAINEE ABUSE IS ILLEGAL), do you declare war again to correct this problem? New sanctions?
Most people in America would rather foreign governments to respect our sovereignity and just bring any serious infractions of humanitarian standards to public notice after allowing the government time to fix it themselves. Even the broad generalizations from (most) websites pointed out that ALL of this detainee abuse was pointed out to different levels of authority in the Iraqi government and still the Iraqis chose to do nothing about it. What is America's recourse then? Snatch the detainees away? Hold onto more detainees when public opinion at the time was so adamant we shouldn't hold on to them? Where would we send them if we're to withdraw: Guantanamo? Maybe try an Iraqi in American courts for crimes committed in Iraq? Think through your assumption and then get back to the internet.
This is a statistics question, not a policy question. Americans didn't report all Green on White incidents because there was not a 1:1 parity of people reporting incidents with the number of Green patrols, raids, etc. We don't have a complete record of Green on White incidents because we can't have a complete record. Sectarian violence played a big role in how those things played out.
Well said. The framing of this stuff is insane. Another thing that disturbs me is the quote of 100,000 killed. That's just the recorded incidents of "killed by munitions". The number of deaths due to the destruction of the clean water supply, hospitals, food supply, electricity, roads etc is vastly huger. By nearly any standard the Iraq War is a war crime.
How is it Ralph Nader's fault that Obama is busy bombing the fuck out of the Afghans and is letting circa 50,000 mercenaries from US-based firms continue the brutal occupation of Iraq?
Even if you want to reduce it to "Democrat or Republican - forever" voting for a third party is still useful; its a way to identify a vote as up for grabs. Perhaps about the only way under those circumstances. Consider it a form of what England did in their elections. LibDems were not even close to actually taking majority for themselves - but because they decided who would they wielded (and wield) a disproportionate effect.
A 'Third party' vote is likely the *best* vote you could make.
"Problem is, it was supposed to be a liberation, not a war."
Good thing we didn't have more public interest in the "liberation process" (as opposed to the conventional force-on-force battles) of Europe.
The idea that these things can be anything other that awkward, horrible bloodbaths has always been absurd.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
>>>The sniper? It is war. Always been part of war, always will be.
The Iraqi husband and his wife would not have to dodge bullets or checkpoints or death, if the American soldiers had *stayed home*. The first act to prevent death, is to not start the war in the first place.
And no, I don't think the ~3000 killed on 9/11 was reason to go to war.
We've had fifteen times that number die just from driving cars (this past decade).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I guess we all knew this sort of stuff was happening, but to see the actual reports with photos and all is horrifying.
Kudos to wikileaks for having the balls to actually cover the war like the mainstream media should have been doing from the start. Every single person in our country is complicit in these crimes. If you haven't actually looked at the raw documents, please do so. It's your duty as a citizen to see what is done in our name.
I voted for Bush in '04. I've never been so ashamed of anything that I've done, and like most people I've done some pretty shameful things. If you're an American citizen, please go out and vote in the upcoming elections. Unfortunately the scumbag politicians will never get what they truly deserve, but we can throw every single one of these lying, murdering motherfuckers out of office.
>>>The real problem is that the right.....
I wish you (and other posters) would stop saying "the right" as if we all think with one hive mind. I'm on the right (tenth amendment constitutionalist) but I'm anti-"war on terror", and always have been since the towers collapsed. Stereotyping is a bad thing to do.
If you want to denigrate, then be more specific with your targets. "The real problem is that the Bush/neoconservative Republicans from 2001 to 2008 were pro-war and..." i.e. Don't include me in your 2-minute hate, because I was NEVER sided with them. And there's lots more like me (Ron Paul, Judge Napolitano, Harry Browne, et cetera) who also were against the war.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Say, by sampling randomly and not finding anything wrong or obviously framed?
It is harder to fabricate such a large amount of information consistently than you might think.
If some of it is fabricated and later used to point fingers, it shouldn't be too hard for those with all the information (the military) to disassemble it, which would completely ruin wikileaks and be contrary to their mission.
Oh sure, if the "fabricated" parts are never put under scrutiny we might never know! But it would also be moot, since it would never be used for anything.
Wrong; The military has NEVER painted this, or any war, as "an exact, precise business." Show me the citation where someone IN the military said "War is an exact, precise business." You won't find it.
Impetuous! Homeric!
BTW there are also a lot of people on "the left" who were pro-war.
Go back and look at the Congressional Authorization for War in 2001.
The Democrat representatives voted near-unanimously to go to war.
Even now the Democrats continue forward with war, even though they've held Congress since 2006 and could have ended the war anytime they felt like it. IMHO they should have ended it then, or immediately after Obama became inaugurated.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Well, they'd certainly get the "attempted" record just for all the attempts on Castro.
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
He's a baby killer, and anyone that voted for him supports a baby killer.
Assuming, purely for the sake of argument, that what you say is true.
So anyone who voted for Bush is in 2004 supports a people killer, as well as favors the Patriot Act.
Anyone who voted for Obama in 2008 favors the Patriot Act, and supports a people killer (he continually voted to fund the war).
Boy, if I think long enough, I could make a huge list.
You remind me of a friend who in 2008 announced that he didn't like McCain or Obama, and was in search for a viable independent candidate. He went through each one, and found something in them that he didn't like, and ended up voting for Obama. I asked him: "What? You didn't find anything in Obama you didn't like either?" The complaints he had against the independent guys were petty ("Too feminist"). The original complaints he had against against McCain and Obama were much more serious.
Why are independent candidates held to a higher standard?
Beetle B.
Actually - China seems to be getting a huge portion of Iraq's oil. Now - think. How does that benefit the US and the rest of the west? Think. China has a supply of oil, and they have less need to look at oil which we are pumping. It's the old "supply and demand" thing - the greater the supply, the less the demand. Iraq's oil doesn't need to flow in our direction to benefit us.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Give me one fucking valid reason why you need your troops anywhere outside your own territory murdering people.
You really can't think of any reason why it's better to conduct military operations outside of your own borders?
Really?
*sigh* back to work...
Instead of playing the "This Information Could Endanger American And Iraqui Lives", which only has a limited number of uses, the Pentagon should just announce "Julian Assange is a HUGE asshole!" That would probably play better in the blue states and will win more street cred, which they can cash in later ("Don't leak our documents or we'll call you a HUGE asshole!")
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Troops were scheduled to leave Iraq by Dubya. They are leaving on Dubya's time table.
So... ummm, Hope about getting them troops out of Afghanistan?
Six examples of local governments not inviting the US to be present in their country at the time.
No! I noticed that the New York Times is saying that these documents show that the death toll is around 100,000. They do no such thing. They simply report this number of deaths. This is not the same as determining that this number has been killed, since these documents didn't set out to report all deaths. There have been very few comprehensive studies on the actual death toll, but it is much higher (see http://web.mit.edu/CIS/pdf/Human_Cost_of_War.pdf).
I have two eyes, I have two feet.
That's what the insurance companies spent burying health care reform. How the fuck is Obama suppose to compete with that kind of money? Fuck, 70% of Americans want socialized medicine but we can't have it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
um how about some polonium-210 in your tea
"Precision guided smart bombs"
"Surgical airstrike"
No one from the military ever came out and gave that exact quote that you demand, but the language has been sugar coated for decades.
Who is not a journalist. We're talking about journalists/civilians here. Not heads of foreign govt or revolutionaries
That's a bullshit notion about Iraq situation I see again and again. It is NOT a war, that is a lie. It is an ongoing atrocity against mankind for the purpose of lining the pockets of elite and increasing their power. Just as our arming and support of Saddam was. We have the blood of Saddam's actions on our hands as well as the blood being spilt now.
We lied that we would liberate the people from Saddam, instead nine years later our military and contractors are slaughtering, raping, and murdering innocents for amusement.
We lied that Al Qaeda was in Iraq or aligned with Al Qaeda, and then through deliberate poor strategy turned the place into magnet for Al Qaeda and recruiting ground.
We lied that Saddam was making new WMD.
We lied that this is war, by Constitution it is not. By purpose it is not.
We lied that we would bring freedom and democracy to the middle east, instead we force our puppets at gunpoint and have rigged elections.
Afghanistan is the same thing, those who attacked us aren't there and the elections are fake and not the people's choice. Those who don't go along with our farce are labeled "Taliban" and murdered.
I do what I can: I vote for candidates who are not from the demonstrably corrupt main parties, or who have a proven track record of doing good (despite their party allegiance).
Really? Voting is all you can do?
Are you running for office? Are you a political activist? Are you trying to convince others of the need to unite and get organized in the struggle for justice? Are you actively working in any way to achieve your goals?
Nobody is forcing you to do any of that. But don't say you're doing what you can if you said no to all the above questions.
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
I'm not saying that Americans were directly responsible. If you read the article, I believe it says that while the majority of cases were prisoners in Iraqi hands, that a few cases were for prisoners in our hands. It also talks about misreported and underrepresented civilian casualty counts when those casualties were caused by US troops, and a specific case in which US troops were ordered to fire on someone trying to surrender.
And I disagree that we can't be held at all responsible for what the Iraqi police and military did. We were supposedly rebuilding their country after toppling their existing government. The behavior of their police and military are our responsibility during that time. I fully agree with you that in other cases sovereignty issues take precedence, but Iraq is a special case (like Japan was for a few years after we won WWII).
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
In other words, you're denying that the language associated with warfare has been deliberately sugar coated.
That's all fine, but I draw the line at lying to purposefully kill babies.
Learn to love Alaska
War is hell. Get used to it.
Maybe the dumbest, most callous and cynical argument ever. I refuse to get "used to it", and I find people who do "get used to it" are nothing better than sociopaths. The wholesale murder of innocents for silly merely ideological dogma is not something that we should EVER get used to. War should be horrible, it should be painted as horrible, it should cause fear and trembling, it should give us nightmares. Its terror should boggle out minds every single time we think of it.
Why? Because all of it is true. Also; because it keeps it from being easy and common. America doesn't like this, we glorify "warriors", and we must "support our troops", since they "defend our freedom", meaning we randomly pick a country every decade, and then slaughter them so some American politician can get re-elected, and some rich American businessmen can get a bit richer from spendy defense contracts, and so the American population can sit around waving Chinese made flags, saying "we're number one!" (at what, out of how many, and why?). To me none of these things are worth a single life, foreign or domestic. War is not glorious, it never has been, it never will be, only mislead fools think otherwise.
WWII was as close to a just war as there ever has been, and the soldiers in that war fought for decent causes. My grandfather was one of the first American troops to Auschwitz, and he would never argue about the "glory" of war. He never glamorized it, he never romanticized it. All he got in the end was a life time of nightmares and a deep hatred of humanity. The same goes for basically everyone I know who saw action in Vietnam, or either of our purely political Gulf Wars. None of the people I know emerged whole, and none of them are really that proud. What flag waving inanities they do still spout are a rather transparent cover for sorrow, a post-hoc justification for atrocities that they committed but cannot reconcile.
We forget, this terrorist on the roof was fighting for reasons just as valid, if not more so (being that he IS defending his homeland, and we just said we were), and the innocents that we killed to get to him were killed in a war that has no reason. It is the epitome of meaningless deaths. It serves no purpose. They died for no reason whatsoever. And we, the American people, did it. Should we feel happy? Should we just claim "get over it!"
If "yes" is the answer, I say we just "get over" 9/11. Who cares? War is hell! Glory to the warriors, praise be to Allah^W "Truth Justice and the American way!". The story is the same. We just like to paint a difference. All war is the same, no side is right, all sides are wrong. I have no sympathy for anyone who actively engages. I have no respect for warriors, soldiers, or the petty politicians that control them. Murder is murder, whether some elected official (or cleric) calls for it, or not. You, as an individual, make the choice.
We need a media channel that shows the bodies. That actually shows death and horror to the American people. We need war to be real, not some fictionalized drama, not some grand fictional patriotic narrative. We need to see the guts, the viscera, the crying families. We need to see our dead, and our "enemies". We need the full experience.
War is hell. And we should NEVER deal with it lightly.
(sorry for the rant, I just read through some accounts of this latest leak, and am feeling rather sickened.)
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
It's not being divisive to diagnose the problem correctly. AC is spot on.
The problem with the radical left wing is that it is measured in distance from the right. Which keeps moving to the right. In the 1960's you had to be a hippie in a minivan or a communist or a black panther to be called radical left wing. These days all it takes is for you to say "gee blowing up children might not be a good thing."
If you want a serious dialog on this, I'll tell you what. We of the left will happily become more centrist. Just as soon as you put down the Fox news driven fear and paranoia, and really think about what is best. A good start would be to just simply head to youtube and watch a few recordings of the Dalai Lama speaking.
I've done my part. I'm a registered Democrat and I'm pro second amendment. And guess what? My head didn't explode. So that's my first step. What will yours be?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Well, enlighten me then.
And for the record, I don't watch CNN (and don't live in the US either)
If the States had helped us out in Europe earlier we could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Instead they sat back and did nothing, well until the war was already practically over for us, then did a little mopping up at the end for which they tried to claim an inordinate amount of credit.
If we'd sat back and let Hitler take over then a lot of people would still be alive today. Instead there was carnage all over Europe. Afterward, Germany went through a terrible depression. As did some other countries. We only paid off our debt to the States a few years ago for the war loans, and Germany has only just paid off its war debts in the past year or so.
The point is we won't know if things will turn out for the better for maybe 10-20 years. The key thing is keeping the disruptive outside influences out so that the Iraqi people can determine their own future. The new government will make mistakes, it's inevitable, but at least they now have the chance to truly shape how their country develops.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Your post doesn't make any sense. Invading Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The invasion due to WMD was already a UN passed motion. There were a number of pre-requisites for halting the first Gulf War, one of which was weapons inspections for WMD. Saddam pretended to have an arsenal of nuclear and chemical WMD and refused to let in inspectors in contravention of the ceasefire agreement. The French and Russians were owed billions in arms sales, which would be written off if Saddam was deposed, so they nixed the fulfilling of the resolution by using the veto. The war wasn't illegitimate in the UK as it was passed by parliament. Not in the US as far as I know. So they did what they thought they had to do.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Well, tell me this:
How many world powers have ongoing wars right now? How many countries have an active military that is actively invading countries and conducting worldwide operations? How many countries spend more in intelligence and the military than on anything else?
The answer is simple: Only the US. The US spends 46.5% of the worlds military spending. No other country has intelligence and military operations deployed all around the world, no other country is at war at all times, no other country has had 20 major wars in the last 200 years, no other country has murdered so many people in such short time.
Therefore, it's very logical that most leaks comes from the US.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
And of course, none of them are happy with the US presence in there. Their us-appointed replacements are.
Interesting is, also, both Hussein and the Talibans where once great friends of the US, and the US helped them reach power.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
You mean like the journalist that was killed by a US chopper not long ago?
Also, the US doesn't murder journalists anymore, they usually just buy them. But the chacals did a lot more journalist-murdering in the 70's.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
No, not really. First, it wasn't the US that defeated the Nazis, it was the USSR.
And, I'd also be happier if the Nazis had managed to kill a lot more jews before they got their ass kicked by the USSR. The perfect scenario would have been: The Nazis eliminate the Jews, the Russians eliminate the Nazis, the US and the Russians eliminate each other. Then we could maybe have peace in the world right now.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Two things,
First, I don't think it's comparable to WW2.
In WW2 there was an actual war going on, with allies being attacked. There was plenty justification for various parties joining. With Iraq though, there was no war going on in the beginning. The US went and made one, and all the justifications for it are very flimsy. I'm not opposed to war when it's for good reasons (self defense for instance), but I think that it should be avoided unless really necessary. And in the case of Iraq it wasn't necessary. Iraq didn't pose any danger to the US or its allies.
Second, IMO the US screwed things up horribly from the "liberation" angle. If it's really a liberation the right strategy would have been to bust their asses protecting the population. That would mean small, surgical attacks against only the insurgents, protecting the population at any cost, and demonstrating in every way possible that if you're not an insurgent you don't have anything to worry about. Blowing up a building full of people to get just one guy on the roof should have been completely out of the question. But of course that's a terribly difficult task, and one that would have required an almost inhumanly competent and dedicated army, as well as a population willing to sacrifice its soldiers for some random people who live who knows where.
One of the best incoherent posts I've read. Lots of interesting ideas, lots of sense, could be structured into rather a good article.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Funny you should say that, the UK are trying to extradite a KGB assassin at the moment. Though he is just giving us the two fingers, as Russia are condoning it.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Eeehm... The war in Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11. Why are you trying to connect these two?
Let me rephrase: the crazy people that are going to blow themselves up may use this as an excuse instead of the other one they were going to use anyway.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Er I think you are confused between "wasn't such a coward" and "was a dictator"? Or is due legal process an inconvenience?
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
And not ONE addressed the ISSUE: The fact that this imbicile is walking freely. Seriously... you can "flamebait" it all you want and you can defend your Obamassiah, but what about the fact that no one is bothering to bring this punk to justice? I guess no one here is bothered by classified military info. being released. Let's just hope none of you loses a friend or loved on overseas because of this piece of human debris.
Person A and Person B don't get along. Person A has a bunch of data about himself. Person B gets his hands on this data. Person B picks and chooses data to make Person A look bad.
Why then would Person A not release all of the information? It would utterly destroy Person B's reputation for being a valuable source of information. It would put up the good qualities Person A has in the data that Person B left out.
There is no reason for this at all. Therefore we can say that Person B was releasing all the data like they said OR editing the data in favour of person A which no one believes. Those are the only two options on the table.
Related. The US papers on what to do about the wikileaks problem included in the section of what options are available a point about how they should be able to deal with wikileaks firmly because other countries were more firm. Listed were a couple countries like Iran and N. Korea. I can only sleep at night assuming that the writer was trying to be ironic.
Which is a troll comment since it was not a political killing. Journalists attaching themselves to military groups, be it a standing army, insurgent force, or PMC, die all the time, and not because they reported against the wrong people. Put yourself in a warzone and your chances of dying increase dramatically.
It won't matter who is elected, as long as the people want both high services and low taxes. California will be destroyed anyway.
Qxe4
What's more, if US mass media to be believed, the crazy people appear out of a thin air!!!
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Carpet bombing managed to find Hitler's bunker.
Laser guided smart bombs have yet to find Osama Bin Laden.
You tell me, have we improved since WWII ?
George W. Bush seemed to think they were connected.
Bush Defends Assertions of Iraq-Al Qaeda Relationship
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 18, 2004; Page A09
President Bush yesterday defended his assertions that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, putting him at odds with this week's finding of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission.
"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," Bush said after a Cabinet meeting.
So it's really irrelevant what YOU think, the idiot with the launch codes seemed to believe it.
>>>The war in Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11.
Which is why it never should have happened. Didn't I say that in my previous post? (shrug) I'm pretty sure I did. If American soldiers had not been in Iraq, then 70,000 civilians (including that husband and pregnant wife) would not have been killed by American bullets.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
BTW there are also a lot of people on "the left" who were pro-war. Go back and look at the Congressional Authorization for War in 2001. The Democrat representatives voted near-unanimously to go to war.
No they didn't. Half of the Dems voted against it, in both houses of Congress. Pretty much all Republicans voted for it. (Senator Chafee opposed it, but he is about as much of a Republican as Obama...)
And of course it is much harder to justify withdrawing your troops who are trying to clean up the mess they made, than not having them invade in the first place...
That proves his point even more. If that information was factual, it paints a more accurate picture of the entire situation.
Had the fact come to light that he was doing it on a city sidewalk at noon, that paints even more of the picture. Throwing in a fallacy that it was in front of a preschool distorts the picture.
It's why when you go before the court, the common perjury statement requested is, "Do you swear to the the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"
More revisionism. The tea party existed in 2007, my ass. Show some concrete proof of that. Just like all the right-wingers who now claim to hate Bush, I also see the same amount claiming the tea party protested Bush. It never happened! There was NO tea party in 2007.
What was I doing? Voting against the disaster that has become the Republican party, Ron Paul included.
Not to knock you, but can you cite the water plant destruction for me? I've heard of this else place but I've never seen it documented (first I heard of it was.... 2007?) So some sort of citation would be nice. Just curious. Thanks!
moox. for a new generation.
Not to knock you, but can you cite the water plant destruction for me? I've heard of this else place but I've never seen it documented (first I heard of it was.... 2007?) So some sort of citation would be nice. Just curious. Thanks!
This was the first thing I found when I googled it, My actual source originally (I referred to this below) was from a book of collected journalists work, called "Tell me no Lies" By John Pilger
Visiting Iraq in the wake of war [1991] UN Under Secretary-General reported that the effects of the bombing of infrastructure were 'near apocalyptic'. Twenty-eight hospitals had been hit, along with major water and sewage facilities, all eight of Iraq's hydropower dams and grain storage silos and irrigation systems.
Date in square braces added by me for clarification
These are initial situation reports that yes, may be wrong. Falsified is the wrong term, though. If civilian deaths are adjusted up or down later on in an investigation or abusers detained or charged later in the course of an investigation, these reports aren't pulled up and updated. They get the ball rolling with first hand accounts of what's happening now for others to act on.
Saddam did none of what you have described i your first paragraph.
This is not entirely true. I have to stress that the post you are replying to is absurdly wrong in almost every possible way and you deserve many mod points for pointing that out. Having said that, at least the ephasis on 'none' is wrong, if not the word itself. Saddam may have been responsible for the 1993 attempt on bush senior, as DougF said. Such a pity really.
Where do you think I'm advocating that due legal process be abandon?
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Anyone not suspecting(even just a little bit) that the data leaked may be a psy-op is too trusting. These documents do nothing but assist long term US goals. Even the civilian and blue on blue statistics probably massage the figures to about 20% of the true figure. For all we know these caches of documents have been configured for greatest effect/manipulation value by teams of psychologists and public relations experts and may have been part of an ongoing strategy that may even predate the wars. This isn't an attack on Julian. He may be the kindest and best intentioned man on the planet for all I know. It's the data that smells not the pipe.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Your use of expletives causes you to look irrational and takes away weight from something I might have considered otherwise.
His use of expletives causes you to see him as irrational. I see the use of expletives as the only rational response to the actions of this government. The writer implies, the reader infers. This situation is one of inference. HTH.
To paint the entire media as supportive of the mission in Iraq is a simple over-generalization and I am sure you are aware of this, and will remember when you calm down and stop trying to argue with the internet.
I know you really liked the look of this sentence and think it makes you very clever, but he never said every element of "the media" (as if the term had any merit) was pro-war. He said it's all you hear, and that's a hyperbolic statement that suggests that the vast majority of received media is pro-war. Since there are more pro-war media outlets than anti-war ones, and the pro-war ones tend to be bigger, it's plenty accurate. You just want to seem cleverer than you are by attacking him and his comment. You do not seem clever to me.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
From the source you cited:
"The Tea Party movement is a political movement in the United States that emerged in 2009 through a series of locally and nationally coordinated protests." --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement
So, it would be inappropriate for the UN to try and stop any genocides going on in the world?
Don't forget the financial waste and abuse. If the system ran efficiently, we'd still need to cut some things to begin recovering, but the concessions could be far fewer. We really need to stop buying things on credit (bonds). Were CA like a car, we'd get 5 mpg or less. It's pathetic.
When California declares bankruptcy, everyone will wish it was a mere mortgage meltdown!
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Is it allowed for states to declare bankruptcy?
Qxe4
I don't see why not. Cities can. If they spend more than they can repay, they will default somehow, whatever you call the mechanism. I don't think the Federal government has any enumerated powers they can play, but it might not stop them from trying...
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
By nearly any standard the Iraq War is a war crime.
By whose standards is the killing of 10^5 (give or take a factor of "several") civilians not a war crime? Could you name names?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Fine, Clinton killed more people by sanctioning the country and letting Iraq kill its own civilians.
That makes it perfectly ok for US soldiers and US military intelligence to ignore the shitty things that are going on in Iraq right now. Clinton fucked up big, so anything that goes on there now that doesn't match up to the scope of what happened previously, is A-OK.
I killed your sister drunk driving, and that was bad. But I'm sure you won't mind if I come into your house, rape your wife, torture your parents, and raze the place to the ground, because nobody died.
Get your head out of your ass. This isn't about Clinton. This is about what is going on now.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
As I said:
No I didn't. My proposal is for reducing unwanted wars.
Whether for the right or wrong reasons, if the whole country wants a war they get a war. Democracy and all that.
Except that Democratic != "the left". Obama is far to the right of where Nixon was in the 70's, is already to the right of Herbert Walker Bush, and might well finish his term in office to the right of Reagan at this rate. Remember that Reagan increased income taxes, which isn't on Obama's table (no, letting tax cuts expire is not an "increase". Reagan declared amnesty for immigrants while Obama has increased deportations since Bush left office. And most of all, Reagan signed a treaty requiring the prosecution of torture - a treaty that Obama has been in violation of for nearly two years.
That's because you are a part of a hive mind, if you haven't yet realized that the entire right wing has been a failure at every level on every issue. Wars, taxation, regulation, the economy, morality....Fail, Fail, Fail, Fail.
Sure, sure. Just like there are now a few million hippies that went to Woodstock, now there are millions of Republicans that "never" liked Bush and "never" voted for him.
That's funny, during my time in Iraq I distinctly remember GUARDING hospitals, key bridges, police stations, ING outposts, sewage treatment plants, and water treatment facilities for days or weeks at a time, in order to prevent insurgents from attacking them and destroying infrastructure. i also remember escorting US civilian contractors to water treatment facilities. These contractors were there to inspect, repair, and upgrade the facilities.
Yes, we targeted infrastructure during the initial bombing campaign. That's Invasion 101, people. Then we spent tens of billions of dollars over the last few years on repairing and upgrading these facilities. That's what has happened in every conventional war for the last 100 years. The only difference is that instead of firebombing an entire city we can do it be hitting just the buildings directly (most of the time).
If only "common" sense was actually that common...
WWII != "war on terror" (I hate that term, but that's all we have now)
WWII was a conventional war. Hitler was a head of state and Germany was a sovereign nation. The carpet bombs didn't kill Hitler, his own gun did. Hitler's bunker was pretty easy to find once we advanced into Germany because the demoralizing effect of carpet bombing and the death of their leader caused the nation to give up. The German citizen was proud of their country but by the end they were beaten people.
WOT is an unconventional war where we are fighting a loose confederation of Islamist groups spread across many countries. Taking out Bin Laden won't really do anything in the grand scheme of things, except make whoever the President is at the time look good on TV (Bush could only dream about that). There is no single country that we are fighting. We are fighting in Afghanistan, but we aren't fighting the Afghans per se, but a small subset of them that may not even be the real force behind all of this. It's actually murkier than the situation in Viet Nam.
Yes, we have improved since WWII. Civilian casualties in the tens or even hundreds of thousands may look bad, but that is nowhere near as bad as the millions or tens of millions in England, Japan, and Europe in WWII. Gotta keep some perspective. The important distinction that the average American doesn't realize is that in an unconventional war, there is no goal line to cross, to football to spike, and no stupid "Mission Accomplished" banner to signal that the war is over and all the troops can come home.
If only "common" sense was actually that common...
Obama isn't a coward. He just has a different agenda than the one you think he has.
I'll admit that there are a few sick fucks who have done some bad shit in Iraq, but that is a VERY small percentage of the military. A blanket statement like "nine years later our military and contractors are slaughtering, raping, and murdering innocents for amusement" is highly offensive to me and to those that I served with. Not once did I nor anyone I knew rape ANYONE. Not once did I nor anyone I knew EVER knowingly injure a civilian. Sometimes we put our own lives at risk by not firing when authorized, in order to make sure that we weren't harming civilians. I went to Iraq, did my job, and I am proud of my service. The politicians got us into that mess and yet we were the ones doing the bleeding and dying. If you want to talk politics, that's one thing, but please quit spreading lies about whatever slaughter/rape fantasies you got from watching Full Metal Jacket or Casualties of War.
If you want to blame someone, don't blame the mythical "We". "We" didn't lie, the Bush administration did. The only reason that "We" are there now is because of those lies. The problem is that "We" have our hand in the hornet's nest and we can pull it out without causing a whole shitstorm of problems. Bottom line is, we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.
If only "common" sense was actually that common...
1. Voting for the lesser evil is still voting for evil.
2. The Ds are not any more or less evil than the Rs, they may be evil in different ways, but usually they just take turns.
3. For every useful idiot on the D side, there is an equal and opposite one on the R side. They do cancel each other out, and will continue to do so if both get an epiphany and vote Green/Pirate/Independent instead. If that is brought to its logical conclusions, the only people left to vote D or R will be those that truly believe in what these parties do.
And the files show the US kept records of civilian deaths, despite previously denying it. The death toll was put at 109,000, of whom 66,081 were civilians.
...
A US Department of Defense spokesman dismissed the documents published by the whistleblowing website as raw observations by tactical units, which were only snapshots of tragic, mundane events.
When nearly 2 out of 3 deaths are civilians and it's considered mundane I think it's time to do some serious soul-searching about who we are placing in positions of power. Out prison population has far more compassion than this...
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
>>>The first act to prevent death, is to not start the war in the first place.
You assume the US wanted to prevent death in general, rather than to prevent death of its citizens who remain stateside (not in the armed forces).
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
I actually think its cowardice that gave him that agenda. Maybe he was lying during the campaign, but what I really think happened is that he cut deals during the Democratic National Convention to toe the party line a bit more in exchange for full support.
He was just barely edging out Hillary in the popular vote, so he probably felt he really needed to do something to get the entire party behind him. For example, health care was Hillary's pet issue, not his, but he wasted tons of political capital pushing it through.
But, perhaps he was all pretty rhetoric and lies right from the beginning.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
All of them are.
Ask Salvador Allende, Che Guevara or Rafael Trujillo, to name a few.
No one from the military ever came out and gave that exact quote that you demand, but the language has been sugar coated for decades.
No, those are terms of relativity. Compared to firebombing a whole city, taking out just a neighbourhood *is* a surgical strike. Compared to dropping 50 bombs on a neighbourhood, dropping a single smart bomb down an air intake *is* precision (though perhaps not accuracy).
In context, the language is accurate.
Personally I disagree with the Iraq war. However, I'm with the GGP - I've never seen anyone actually in the military try to pretend war isn't messy and that innocent people won't die. That's what politicians do.
Could you name names
Too long of a list.
You'll see a bunch of them on the ballot next week, tho.
Too long of a list.
You'll see a bunch of them on the ballot next week, tho.
I take it that there is an election in your country in the near future? Are you anywhere interesting?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
No; the UN is the one body with the authority to violate national sovereignty. But individual nation states, while they can and should do there utmost to stop genocides through peaceful means (including trade embargoes and the like), should not unilaterally invade other nations.
I am trolling
No, if it's civilian infrastructure it's a war crime.
Sewage treatment plants are not military targets.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
And these citizens, stateside, were menaced by Saddam Hossein how exactly?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Actually Saddam's replacement seems to have been forced to go to Tehran to get the Iranian OK.
And Karzai seems to have his office expenses paid by Iran.
So who is appointing these replacements again?
(Cheney is the Iranian candidate, It's the only explanation that makes sense).
Watch this Heartland Institute video
In Samarra US troops interrogating captives threatened to turn them over to the Iraqi "Wolf Brigade" (Iraqi Interior ministry commandos) knowing they would be tortured. Maybe you think their hands are clean.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/24/iraq-war-logs-us-iraqi-torture
Watch this Heartland Institute video
What, you mean you missed WikiLeaks to release secret Russia, China logs.
Also http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/1026/WikiLeaks-ready-to-drop-a-bombshell-on-Russia.-But-will-Russians-get-to-read-about-it
Watch this Heartland Institute video
That's a (Milton, or possibly Thomas) Friedman slip, not a Freudian one.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Remind me which country bombed a civilian television station?
Remind me which countries president had to be persuaded that bombing another civilian television station in an allied country would be a bad idea?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I not only read the article, I read 15 other versions, ranging from the Guardian, Washington Post, the original AP news most places are reporting, and Der Spiegel's international translation. I commented elsewhere on the other matters you mentioned. I was also stationed there from Sept 2008 until Dec 2009 in Tikrit working in a Division level job with oversight of detainee processes.
The people who tried to surrender then fled capture again before ground troops could arrive. Look at the actual source. The underrepresented civilian casualties are a product of soldiers on the scene not knowing which were combatants or which were innocents in many cases. Not all, but many.
For the period of time there was a sovereign run Coalition government, we would be responsible for the actions of the Iraqi police and military while they rebuilt. But sovereign control of the country had been handed back to Iraq in 2004-2005, and we're talking many of the events in the source leaked documents occuring into 2010, when America has been "withdrawn" (despite still having over 50,000 troops there). There's got to be a cutting off point for liability. Japan took years to get a government running, like you said, but once set up, they took responsibility. Claiming Iraq is a distinct case from Japan is not sufficient. We still have troops in Japan. Japan has a known history for having an unrealistic criminal confession rate of about 95% due to police "coercion" for people to "confess." Are we liable for those acts since we helped set up a country with that kind of cultural practice? Of course not.
The guardian specifically has misrepresented many of the actual source documents. The incident where US helicopters supposedly shot people who surrendered was not explained in full. The people who "surrendered" had mortared US troops, fled, "surrendered" and while waiting on ground troops, fled again. If they stop "Surrendering" to try and escape, troops are allowed under international law of armed conflict to shoot them. Read more than one version of the story to get the whole truth instead of relying on one source that has a very decided anti-Iraq-war slant. Welcome to the internet!
"Since there are more pro-war media outlets than anti-war ones, and the pro-war ones tend to be bigger, it's plenty accurate."
Please provide scope, as in media outlets world wide or in your particular area. Statistics would be preferred, since broad generalizations are not clever either.
In fact, you're supporting my exact statement of people who make broad over-generalizations and I appreciate the anecdotal proof. The exception is you aren't aware of the broad generalizations you're making where I assumed the parent did. Welcome to the internet!
And this replies to my comment how?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The story could be deliberately misrepresented to provide more sensationalism and page views, since the Guardian has done it before. They have a tendency in other coverage of the WikiLeaks to not cite the whole story, just the parts that sound bad.
I'm not saying the parts they cite are untrue, I just know that selection bias is very prevalent and a side effect of their very strong editorial slant. Acceptable interrogation techniques were laid out in non-classified documents available on the military's own regulation websites since the war began. If a soldier violated those guidelines, ESPECIALLY after Abu Ghraib, then there would be serious criminal prosecutions shortly following. I saw those prosecutions first hand, being a JAG paralegal. The Guardian will not report on those cases which are a matter of public record, just the incidents that sound bad.
Ah, a simple ad-hom attack on the Guardian.
About what I'd expect from a lawyer.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Paralegal, not a lawyer. I don't give legal advice, I just state the facts.
No you don't, you lie.
You said:
So, what the the Guardian hide? You say:
The Guardian said:
So, what exactly did the Guardian hide?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Lie? That infers malice.
Here is the story they had on their front page on the day the leak was publicized.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/iraq-war-logs-military-leaks
Here is the excerpt from the story mentioning the helicopter.
A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
I can probably safely assume the guardian had the story you linked to on the same day I read the story they published on the front of their webpage because it was published on the same day (I'm not saying the Guardian is so lacking of credit that they would falsify publication dates).
If they had all this information and choose to leave out the relevant parts on the story that is going to be linked and read by the majority of the people, then they need to do a thorough scrub of their editorial principles and just report things as they happened in the future, even in their summaries.
The longer story states "enemy gunners try to make their escape in a dumper truck," then "then they came out wanting to surrender" and finally "The two Iraqis try to take refuge in a shack." There were several 2-13 minute delays in between each of those actions. All this language in this more specific story is more or less pulled straight from the actual documents. I am glad they published the details in full, but it doesn't absolve them of their lack of accuracy in other stories. You're assuming everyone read every story this place publishes, instead of just reading the summary article. The internet is a big place, and I'm glad there's people like you who can spend time researching all these things. People like the Guardian who research these things should spend the extra 20 words to be accurate.
Time magazine gave a similar one sentence summary that the Guardian did and didn't mention the second time the combatants fled. I didn't even misrepresent the facts in my one sentence statement that you claim is a lie. No reasonable person would think I have to read every single story the Guardian ever published when there are 399,999 other documents as well to read with facts in them. If I can't trust a publication to summarize something correctly when I have superior knowledge easily available, then I have no duty to continue reading the rest of their stuff.
Oh, also, misrepresentation is different than hiding. I don't allege the guardian was hiding things. That means they're deliberately trying to suppress something, like not ever publishing the longer story or denying that something true happened. They didn't do that. They misrepresented, as in, they had the facts and picked the ones they liked to present to further some kind of purpose.
No, it implies it.
You notice that strange blue colour to the words "an Apache helicopter gunship gunned down two men"? That's what we call a "link". You can click on it to read the actual report.
You claim the Guardian "left out relevant parts of the story" when you leave out relevant parts of the story yourself. The point of the tiny snippet of the Guardian summary story that mentions the helicopter incident is not that Crazyhorse 18 shot the "insurgents", but that a lawyer gave them the advice "You cannot surrender to an aircraft.".
You are claiming "The Guardian is unreliable, because they didn't give the full details of the 'surrender to a helicopter' incident, so we shouldn't trust them when they tell us US troops threatened to hand captives over to the Wolf Brigade knowing they would be tortured". You've made a totally cack-handed job of showing that the Guardian didn't give the details, showing instead that you didn't bother to look.
Watch this Heartland Institute video