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WikiLeaks Under Denial of Service Attack
wiredmikey writes "WikiLeaks has reported that its Web site is currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack. The attack comes around the time of an expected release of classified State Department documents, which the Obama administration says will put 'countless' lives at risk, threaten global counterterrorism operations and jeopardize US relations with its allies."
"lives at risk" "threaten global counterterrorism operations" and "jeopardize us relations" all sounds like politicianese for "we really fucked up and don't want anybody to know about it"
Whatever happened to justice against people who commit (war) crimes?
When the US State Department classifies a cable as secret, it's usually because of some situation that will embarrass the pants off of someone there.
Let' look at a typical situation that results in a 'classified secret' set of missives:
The US undersecretary of African Affairs refers to the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of the People's Democratic Republic of Bongo as a 'retarded monkey' because he stole half of the $150 million NGO grant for an egg farm and deposited it directly into his Swiss bank account without first wiring it through the Cayman Islands like the undersecretary told him to do. Now the transaction is transparent and the undersecretary won't get his $155,000 consultancy fee from the hedge fund firm that his Yale frat brother runs down there that was supposed to handle the transaction in the first place.
The situation is compounded by the fact that the US undersecretary and the Bongoian Deputy Minister are sharing a mistress who is a top fashion model. The undersecretary made the remark about the DM to his mistress in bed and she texted it to her sister in Paris. The communication was intercepted by the NSA/CIA and put into an official memo to the State Department. Now the DM will be pissed as hell and will make all sorts of accusations of 'USA imperialism' and 'racist corporate profiteering' at the United Nations. The undersecretary will have to buy the DM a new Mercedes to cool him down and get passed over for promotion until a new Secretary of the State Dept is appointed after the next election.
The only person who might be killed is the mistress/fashion model if she makes the mistake of going back to Bongo before the Deputy Minister gets his new Mercedes. Even then, she better allow the DM to indulge his special inclinations lest she find herself floating down the Bongo river, trying to catch up with her head.
-------- This is how diplomacy works and why all these cables have to be kept secret. Let's hope that the WikiLeaks people had the sense to make multiple copies and distributing them widely before announcing that they were going to post all this stuff!
The document are out, and The New York Times is already reporting on the good stuff.
One of the more embarrassing items is this: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official "that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S."
The last leak contained the needed evidence. It assumed the new will also reveal more, but nothing on this has been reported yet.
Also, please remember the war crime commited by Danish and British soldiers is primarily: Handing over prisoners to foreign states that engage in the use of torture. Where the foreign state in question is the United States of America.
Let me repeat that: It is now considered a war crime to hand over enemies of the US to the US, because of the way the US treats them.