Bradley Manning Makes Statement

Bradley Manning, the 25-year-old U.S. Army soldier who allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of internal memos about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has been held by the government for two and a half years. On Thursday he pleaded guilty 10 of 22 charges brought against him, and now he has released an official statement. Here's an excerpt: "On 3 February 2010, I visited the WLO website on my computer and clicked on the submit documents link. Next I found the submit your information online link and elected to submit the SigActs via the onion router or TOR anonymizing network by special link. ... I attached a text file I drafted while preparing to provide the documents to the Washington Post. It provided rough guidelines saying ‘It’s already been sanitized of any source identifying information. You might need to sit on this information– perhaps 90 to 100 days to figure out how best to release such a large amount of data and to protect its source. This is possibly one of the more significant documents of our time removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of twenty-first century asymmetric warfare. Have a good day. After sending this, I left the SD card in a camera case at my aunt’s house in the event I needed it again in the future. I returned from mid-tour leave on 11 February 2010. Although the information had not yet been publicly by the WLO, I felt this sense of relief by them having it. I felt I had accomplished something that allowed me to have a clear conscience based upon what I had seen and read about and knew were happening in both Iraq and Afghanistan everyday."

Comments

overlords:1 manning:0

[turkeydance]

zero is the number.

Its hard to tell

[DFurno2003]

If any good come from this... Has it caused any measurable change in government policy? Or did it just cause tightening of their grip on classified data?

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

No measureable change that has been acknowledged publicly. A lot of government organizations have tightened their grip, though. New security policies, programs that allow and encourage coworkers to report potential security risks, more thorough background checks and monitoring of access to data just to name a few.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking about this the other day.

WRT Manning: I feel a bit bad for him. I absolutely understand that there's a need for secrecy in war-fighting, and I appreciate that the military has the ability to enforce that secrecy with punishment. I still feel bad for him. This young man was not in the best frame of mind, and it sounds like he really thought he was trying to do something right.

WRT the material: The first strike seems entirely legit. The one that killed the two Reuters people. They met with armed belligerents, at night, in an area where they knew there was fighting. Everyone wishes they hadn't been in the mix when our pilots and gunners did what they were supposed to. This, however, is going to happen when you have reporters pushing the limits of sanity to get a story in a war zone. Beyond that, it's chopper gunners shooting at a group of enemy combatants with RPG's and small arms, just like they're supposed to.

The second strike was wrong, and demonstrates what Manning was talking about when he talks about the fog of war. Bad things happen. The people on the guns obviously weren't trying to kill innocent, unarmed people. But they did, acting on invalid assumptions from the earlier strike, and it's tragic. There's no way around that.

WRT the handling of the material: The military's approach to the material (denying FOIA requests) was shady, but a pretty obvious function of, "err on the side of keeping stuff secret." You can't have war without casualties, and any time it happens somewhere where people live, some of those are going to be bad kills.

That said, handling of the material was absolutely atrocious. The "collateral murder" video was a selectively edited, perversely annotated, propaganda piece. Every effort was made to point out there were two people with cameras, not AK's, and no efforts (at all) were made to point out the loaded RPG's and small arms carried by the people they were meeting.

It's a mess. I feel bad for the kid... he was in a bad place before, and an even worse place now. I feel bad for every serviceman that got a bad rap from this situation, and I can see how unfair the whole thing was to our military in general. I do think the military made it worse by denying the release in the first place, and turning Manning into a Streisand situation.

WRT lessons learned: Don't deal with wikileaks. Deal with proper news outlets carefully. Don't deal with shady 3rd parties over IRC. Do everything you can to stay "on the level", lest you become the story, instead of what you're trying to report.

Re:Its hard to tell

[IamTheRealMike]

Given that the only people who knew what was in the files before BM were the people in the government, it's hard to see why it'd cause any changes in government policy. It did embarrass a bunch of politicians in other parts of the world (and revealed a US spy in the German government), but mostly these days those other parts are too focused on domestic economic problems to think much about foreign policy.

I think the impact of what Manning did is real, but it'll be a slow burn, long term kind of thing. People read day after day in the news about the US drone strike program, but whilst ink on paper is one thing, seeing a video of a bunch of journalists get nuked from the air is something quite different. It really brings it home to people in ways other mediums just can't. The other thing it did is expose to what extent much of the rest of the world had become servile to US interests, for instance, the al-Masri story was quite shocking and I think the cables were really the first time hard evidence surfaced that it was true. Before that the best evidence that the story was correct was isotopic testing of his hair. It also revealed that the German government had basically been penetrated and owned by the CIA at several levels.

Just generally there's a ton of useful background on so many issues in those cables that people will be using them as evidence to back up positions for years to come.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Knuckles]

No measureable change that has been acknowledged publicly. A lot of government organizations have tightened their grip, though. New security policies, programs that allow and encourage coworkers to report potential security risks, more thorough background checks and monitoring of access to data just to name a few.

Which would be a very big success for Assange.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

" People read day after day in the news about the US drone strike program, but whilst ink on paper is one thing, seeing a video of a bunch of journalists get nuked from the air is something quite different."

Except the insipidly titled "collateral murder" had nothing to with drones. It was footage from an Apache gunship.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

but a pretty obvious function of, "err on the side of keeping stuff secret."

In other words, it's a perfect example of the evil 'safety and secrecy are more important than freedom and privacy' mindset. Like the TSA, the Patriot Act, and all other sorts of nonsense that the government has been forcing on us.

Re:Its hard to tell

[drinkypoo]

" People read day after day in the news about the US drone strike program, but whilst ink on paper is one thing, seeing a video of a bunch of journalists get nuked from the air is something quite different."

Except the insipidly titled "collateral murder" had nothing to with drones. It was footage from an Apache gunship.

The point was akwardly made, but you still had a responsibility to try to understand it before wasting our time with a comment. People hear about murders due to drone strikes all the time, but that sort of thing seems impersonal on many levels. This was a case of humans willfully blowing up humans, and we had footage of a kind most of us had never seen before, unless they managed to catch some of the very best footage of Waco. And no, there were no helicopters there either, but yet there's still a parallel to be drawn. See if you can figure out what it is before you drop another bomb like your last comment.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

WRT lessons learned: Don't deal with wikileaks. Deal with proper news outlets carefully. Don't deal with shady 3rd parties over IRC. Do everything you can to stay "on the level", lest you become the story, instead of what you're trying to report.

Which is exactly the lesson the government wants you to take away from this situation.
Do not go against the establishment or the establishment will make an example of you.

Steve Biko, Victoria Mxenge, Neil Agget and tens of thousands more all paid an even higher price for going against the establishment.

Re:Its hard to tell

[femtobyte]

WRT the material: The first strike seems entirely legit. The one that killed the two Reuters people. They met with armed belligerents, at night, in an area where they knew there was fighting.

Funny that the term "belligerents" is rarely used to refer to the side that imported routine flaming death from the skies to the region, and actually has the option to pack up their stuff and go home. The horrifying thing revealed/verified to many people by these leaks is not that "a few bad apples sometimes do wrong in the fog of war," but that the US has created a system where it is perfectly normal and "legit" behavior to be flying around looking for folks to gun down. The phrase "the banality of evil" comes to mind for this.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

What are your thoughts about Adrian Lamo who outted Manning as the person who leaked the documents?

Re:Its hard to tell

[VinylRecords]

WRT Manning: I feel a bit bad for him. I absolutely understand that there's a need for secrecy in war-fighting, and I appreciate that the military has the ability to enforce that secrecy with punishment. I still feel bad for him. This young man was not in the best frame of mind, and it sounds like he really thought he was trying to do something right.
It's not just the military information though. Manning was leaking diplomatic information to wikileaks. Thousands upon thousands of pages of documents of diplomatic cables given over to a foreign entity with no oversight whatsoever. Many of those cables containing information and messages that were extremely sensitive and were made public without any attempt to redact or withhold the sensitive information.

There are needs for secrecy in war. Diplomacy. Business. Personal affairs. And no matter how much Julian Assange argues, you can't really have a world where everything is in the open. There are still files from WWI that are secretive because they contain information that might cause international incidents. When you have countries fighting over centuries old conflicts and warring over ancient religions you might want to bury things that could escalate conflict. This was the rational behind hiding Bin Laden's dead body photos. Rather than make him a martyr and have his image being a rallying symbol for terrorists the government censored it.

You think if wikileaks had photos of Bin Laden that they wouldn't release them? They don't care about security of the free world. It's a little game to them to show how powerful they are. "Look at us.....we got Bin Laden's photos WORLD EXCLUSIVE". They are no different than the tabloid media who exploit any (personal) information just for magazine sales and internet clicks.

WRT the material: The first strike seems entirely legit. The one that killed the two Reuters people. They met with armed belligerents, at night, in an area where they knew there was fighting. Everyone wishes they hadn't been in the mix when our pilots and gunners did what they were supposed to. This, however, is going to happen when you have reporters pushing the limits of sanity to get a story in a war zone. Beyond that, it's chopper gunners shooting at a group of enemy combatants with RPG's and small arms, just like they're supposed to.
If three armed bank robbers storm a bank are you going to rush into that same bank with a ski-mask and a camera so that you can cover the story better? These journalists rush into war zones dressed like militants. And they carry cameras that are tripod mounted or have telephoto lenses that look like weapons from far away. When you're in a helicopter and you've just seen a man firing a weapon from the sky, then another man runs next to him with a two foot long metal object, are you going to risk that being an RPG if it is one, instead of a camera?

WRT the handling of the material: The military's approach to the material (denying FOIA requests) was shady, but a pretty obvious function of, "err on the side of keeping stuff secret." You can't have war without casualties, and any time it happens somewhere where people live, some of those are going to be bad kills.

That said, handling of the material was absolutely atrocious. The "collateral murder" video was a selectively edited, perversely annotated, propaganda piece. Every effort was made to point out there were two people with cameras, not AK's, and no efforts (at all) were made to point out the loaded RPG's and small arms carried by the people they were meeting.

The government is fucked either way. They hold onto the material and everyone assumes the worst. They release the material and wikileaks will selectively edit the information just like the 'collateral murder' video to fit their agenda. The military loses every single time. No matter what the agenda that the media wants pushed is pushed. The military has to defend themselves from something, either withholding information, or "MURDERING INNOCENT BABIES".

Re:Its hard to tell

[elashish14]

WRT Manning: I feel a bit bad for him. I absolutely understand that there's a need for secrecy in war-fighting, and I appreciate that the military has the ability to enforce that secrecy with punishment. I still feel bad for him. This young man was not in the best frame of mind, and it sounds like he really thought he was trying to do something right.

It is absurd and disturbing to believe that someone is in a bad frame of mind for believing that there should be justice and accountability for the deaths of innocent civilians. I would argue instead that his frame of mind is above that of anybody else, as he has demonstrated the morality and the courage to fight for awareness and justice in a situation where nobody has supported him.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

No. This is exactly what I'm talking about.

It's a perfect example of how every military in the world treats war zone intelligence. Military in the midst of war have never, and will never, err on the side of total disclosure in all cases. And in their defense, doing so would be absolutely moronic and reckless.

The trick is finding the appropriate compromise, such that the people we ask to conduct wars are able to do what we ask them to, but are still somehow accountable to the public for conducting it as well as can be expected.

Re:Its hard to tell

[nametaken]

He wasn't in the best frame of mind because he was having serious psychological issues related to gender identity disorder, sexuality in a "don't ask, don't tell" military, and a handful of other issues. He was looking at a possible discharge from service.

Lay off the rhetoric, it's making you jumpy.

Re:Its hard to tell

[elashish14]

This discussion is based on whether it is the right state of mind to follow the military's orders (the Nuremberg defense, in this case, would be to cover up the incident) or to take steps against authority towards the retribution of a humanitarian crime. The gender identity of the person in question is irrelevant in the moral issue.

Re:Its hard to tell

[RazorSharp]

There are needs for secrecy in war.

But is there a need for war? How is it that we can agree not to use this or that in war, we can agree to handle enemy combatants a particular way, we can agree that civilians are off-limits and total war is a no-no -- we can agree to all these particulars on the ways in which war is conducted, but we cannot agree to simply not wage war?

The most ironic thing is, American school children are taught in history class that the reason we are independent from the UK is because the British were stupid enough to believe that rules applied to war. By breaking their rules -- by using guerrilla warfare -- we achieved victory. Strange that the countries with the largest and most capable armies are the ones who also always insist that war be fought according to their rules.

I believe that Assange does what he does because he believes that the world is far too advanced to conduct warfare, and I agree. The only reason that warfare still exists is because there is a multi-billion dollar industry built around it. We could have killed Bin Laden without ever invading Afghanistan. There was absolutely no good reason to invade Iraq. The foot soldier is an anachronism, a horse and buggy that provides no useful function. They're too dumb to be useful, so we give them guns and send them off to the desert to kill brown people so we can pretend like they're actually doing something that matters. We don't want them to die because that looks bad, so we don't even send them on the most dangerous missions -- those are reserved for mercenaries -- and then when the foot soldier returns home we shower them with praise for being so brave.

Wanna know who's a helluva lot more brave than any army grunt? Julian Assange. He's taking on the world.

If you believe there are a need for secrets in war, you're right. But to conduct war under the rules of the Geneva convention is a far greater atrocity than to conduct total war -- at least when one commits to total war they're not deluding themselves into believing that they're behaving in an ethical manner. Manning tried to expose the activities our military engages in for what they are -- high tech barbarism. Good for him, and good for Wikileaks for fighting for civility. Because, in a civilized world, there's no need for secrets. A government of secrets is not a government for the people, it's a government that rules the people. There's a name for a government of secrets: fascism.

Re:Its hard to tell

[nametaken]

The context of the sentence was feeling bad for him. Any indication that the OP thought the willingness to drop data is prima facie evidence of diminished capacity exists only in your own mind.

You took it out of context, poorly, for an excuse to state your mind. You got called on it. Suck it up and move on.

Re:Its hard to tell

[elashish14]

Revisiting the original post demonstrates the exact opposite of your claim:

This young man was not in the best frame of mind, and it sounds like he really thought he was trying to do something right.

The post states he was not in a good frame of mind (with which I still disagree, and you have made no attempt to address), and he was faced with a situation where he was uncertain of what was the right thing to do.

You took it out of context, poorly, for an excuse to state your mind. You got called on it. Suck it up and move on.

I would argue the opposite, as you introduced irrelevant information into the discussion (namely, that of his gender orientation, and that it played a role in his decision-making process). I find nothing convincing, revelant or even remotely logical in your arguments. What you suggested previously is the fact that orientation issues and the military's policy have any significance on the moral issue of following amoral orders vs. seeking a higher moral authority, and there is no logical connect. You have made no effort to address this, and I see no reason to continue until you do.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Ihmhi]

Yeah, that goat farmer with an RPG in Afghanistan is an imminent threat to my ability to post shit to the Internet.

Re:Its hard to tell

[RazorSharp]

You are a disgusting human being.

I hope you thank those "dumb" foot soldiers for giving you the ability to post your crap.

Oh, yeah, I completely forgot that America has been invaded recently and if it weren't for the amazing combat prowess of our jarheads I would be speaking Arabic right now. Keep buying into The Ministry of Truth's taboos, such as, "Thou shall not speak disparagingly of the military." The only positive thing the military does is give jobs to dumbasses who can't think for themselves and give jobs to intelligent engineers so they can design toys for the dumbasses to play with.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

The video was edited to remove the guy with the RPG that was targeting the helicopter. The journalists were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Re:Its hard to tell

[__aaqvdr516]

That's about as narrow a world view as I'd expect from i_have_mental_health_issues email address.

Unfortunately, that's pretty representative of about half of the population at large (based on my own observations).

Please leave the war and the killing to the big boys and go back to watching "reality TV", please.

Re:Its hard to tell

[ScentCone]

but we cannot agree to simply not wage war?

That only works if everybody agrees. Ask people living in Mali if they think that their agreeing not to be violent towards militant Islamists is going to stop militant Islamists from killing those who oppose their attempt to take over that country. The peaceful people can agree they don't want a fight, but if the people who invade neighboring countries think that concept is hilarious simply ignore your "agreement," then what? Do the people willing to use force simply get to always have their way, because the people who don't want a fight are going to be perpetually agreeing that they don't want to fight ... and thus always ending up living at the point of a sword? That's what the people with the swords want, of course.

Wanna know who's a helluva lot more brave than any army grunt? Julian Assange. He's taking on the world.

Oh, please. He's an insufferable misogynistic attention whore who cherry-picks his outrage to raise cash from people who think he's cool. His capricious, intermittent ethics and generally jerky personal behavior alienate his fanboys and fangirls once they get to actually know him, and his transparently political shenanigans aren't "taking on the world," unless you mean "looking for lots of international press" so that he can find a way to go back to living comfortably on other people's misconceptions of his wonderfulness. "Brave?" Brave would be going to Sweden to explain away his asshattery with the two women he pissed off. Nobody, including him, thinks he's going to be magically taken away by angry governments if he returns there. He knows it, you know it, and everybody else knows it. He just doesn't want time spent explaining his offensive behavior to distract from the martyr theater production he's been busy running. Save your hero worship for someone who doesn't publish information exposing the family names of Iranian democracy activists/organizers.

There was absolutely no good reason to invade Iraq

So, you were cool with Saddam's invasion of Kuwait? And you were cool with his slaughter of people using WMDs? And cool with his continued import and manufacture of long range weapons, and his continued shooting at allied aircraft protecting the no-fly zones? How were you with the cash he was paying (on TV!) to the families of suicide bombers? Comfortable with his skimming UN cash for more palaces and re-arming his Republican Guard, while he deliberately withheld that support from his own citizens? Happy, were you, with his regime's deliberate lies and obfuscation about the disposition of tons of VX gas previously observed by UN inspectors? Liked his ongoing SCUD projects, did you?

Because, in a civilized world, there's no need for secrets

Tell that to the family of people who work undercover against organized crime. I suppose you'd like a web site somewhere that lists the activities of federal agents right up to the minute they go in to bust a kiddie porn ring, or seize a load of heroin, or stop a container of counterfeit currency from being delivered. Right? Right! There should be no covert activities, ever! Because it's definitely better if North Korea knows who in their country is looking out for the interests of neighboring countries. And it's definitely important that Somali pirates are kept up to date on exactly what is being shipped where, on what schedule, and which freighters are ideal targets for theft and hostage harvesting. It would help, I'm sure, if they had a web site where they could go to help plan attacks without having to worry about anyone in government keeping them unaware of what they want to know.

Manning tried to expose the activities our military engages in for what they are -- high tech barbarism.

No, Manning is spinning it that way, now, so that apologists like you have something to cling to. What h

Re:Its hard to tell

[ultranova]

And no matter how much Julian Assange argues, you can't really have a world where everything is in the open. There are still files from WWI that are secretive because they contain information that might cause international incidents.

And keeping them secret sends a powerful message: you can do horrible things with no regard to long-term consequences, because those who come after you will keep your secrets safe. Both your reputation and the cause you committed atrocities for are safe no matter what you do, so go ahead and shed more blood, no one will ever know. You are not accountable.

You can have a world where everything is in the open, but the slimy things that live in the dark don't want it, for light would send them scurrying for cover. For everyone else it would be a far better world.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

The military allows you to type on a nice cheap toy and use up resources disproportionately to your real worth, so I say it does it jobs.

Do you think the seas are safe by magic? Do you think they give us their natural resources at almost free prices because its in their best interest? Nah all that is because we put cool despots in office and create instability we can exploit.

I do agree with your points in principal through, but dont discount the contributions of a dominating military to ones country.

Our outrageous spending in medicine and weapons subsidizes the world so we should stop that through.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

May God bless you, sir.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

Please leave the war and the killing to the big boys

Yeah, big boys. Propaganda swallowing simpletons with the mental maturity of teenage boys.
Semper Fi! Ugg ugg ugg.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Runaway1956]

"The trick is finding the appropriate compromise, such that the people we ask to conduct wars are able to do what we ask them to, but are still somehow accountable to the public for conducting it as well as can be expected."

The biggest, and most obvious problem here, is that only a relatively small percentage of Americans ever know what war is.

It's perfectly alright for a young mother in Viet Nam, Korea, or Afghanistan to witness her children being torn to shreds in an artillery barrage, or an air strike. But, that graphic portrayal of war is and always has been banned here in the states. Government doesn't want civilians to understand the horrors of war. Civilians mostly can't be bothered with understanding. Veterans aren't very inclined to talk about it. Government officials are mostly clueless - to them the numbers are just scores, with no horror attached.

So - how do "we the people" hold anyone accountable?

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

And no matter how much Julian Assange argues, you can't really have a world where everything is in the open. There are still files from WWI that are secretive because they contain information that might cause international incidents.

And keeping them secret sends a powerful message: you can do horrible things with no regard to long-term consequences, because those who come after you will keep your secrets safe. Both your reputation and the cause you committed atrocities for are safe no matter what you do, so go ahead and shed more blood, no one will ever know. You are not accountable.

You can have a world where everything is in the open, but the slimy things that live in the dark don't want it, for light would send them scurrying for cover. For everyone else it would be a far better world.

I couldn't agree more. I strongly believe that within a year of information no longer being extremely sensitive it should be released to the public without any need for a FOIA request. I also believe that any crimes associated with that information should then be punished with a 2x penalty multiplier and culpability that climbs the chain of command when superiors approved the illegal action. I imagine every US president would spend his post political life in prison, but I don't see that as a downside.

Re:Its hard to tell

[rtb61]

Hate to puncture you lie but they were using attack helicopters after President Bush had declared victory, so they were bloody policing with attack helicopters shooting anyone they felt like they could get away with.

Now tell me arse hole what is the law in the United Stated of America for someone carrying a weapon, is it you shall be gunned down by an attack helicopter or is there some constitutional limitation on that. Yet the US military freely breaks US law in over seas situation because 'er' 'um' they are foreigners and hence sub-human and not entitled to any rights.

Re:Its hard to tell

[zakkie]

Do you think they give us their natural resources at almost free prices because its in their best interest? Nah all that is because we put cool despots in office and create instability we can exploit.

And yet you still think it a good thing? You've just taken the bully stealing lunch money concept and scaled it up to global scale. Yes, *this* is why we hate you, and this is why what you do is wrong.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Ultracrepidarian]

And some of us learned this in Vietnam. My thought as I left, "We make enemies faster than we can kill them."

Re:Its hard to tell

[WinstonWolfIT]

In hindsight, one or two key facts released deep-throat style might have been more prudent. Involving a rank lunatic like Assange will simply never end well.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Razed By TV]

WRT the handling of the material: The military's approach to the material (denying FOIA requests) was shady, but a pretty obvious function of, "err on the side of keeping stuff secret." You can't have war without casualties, and any time it happens somewhere where people live, some of those are going to be bad kills.

My gut instinct is that for the public to make decisions about the necessity for war, this sort of information needs to be available. Is it the place of the military to hides its faults to prevent public dissatisfaction? Is it the place of the military to defend itself from scrutiny to allow perpetual operation?

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

And you are not really adding anything informative to the discussion here (just attacking him/her personally). You just told someone that he is not allowed to have an opinion (on slashdot). Hilarious.

Re:Its hard to tell

[fredgiblet]

Assassinating Bin Laden leaves the Taliban in charge of Afghanistan AND gives them a martyr to use for recruiting. Also there's plenty of people who whine like crazy over assassinations of any kind regardless of how justified.

As ScentCone said agreeing to not wage war only benefits those who are willing to break their word.

We didn't break the rules against the British, there were no rules, we just did something different.

Assange does what he does because he's an anarchist who believes there shouldn't be any governments.

There were plenty of good reasons to invade Iraq, few that were technically actionable, but plenty good ones nonetheless.

Re:Its hard to tell

[RazorSharp]

That only works if everybody agrees.

Just because there are wars doesn't mean the U.S. has to participate in them. If I was French I would probably disapprove of their intervention in Mali. If a foreign country attempted to attack the U.S. I would support the use of our military to defend our borders. Of course, that's not going to happen. We could shrink our military to a tenth of its current size and there still would be no threat of that happening.

You failed to understand my position: I'm saying total war or no war. No bullshit Geneva convention rules. There's no ethical way to go about conducting war. Either you're willing to kill your enemies indiscriminately or you're not willing to kill at all. Any middle ground is a dishonest attempt to rationalize and moralize an unnecessary use of force.

If North Korea, for instance, were foolish enough to launch a missile at the west coast, I would support wiping Pyongyang off the map with a nuclear warhead. I would not support sending American troops over there for an invasion. That would be completely unnecessary.

Julian Assange

I don't give a damn how much of an asshole Assange is. I just agree with him that information should be free and I'm glad he fights for that goal.

So, you were cool with Saddam's invasion of Kuwait?

Yes. And yes to all your other questions. Are you cool with 28-37k people dead so we can demonstrate our moral superiority to Iraq?

The fact of the matter is that not every country is a first world country. Hell, most countries aren't. Saddam Hussein wasn't the world's worst dictator and he certainly wasn't a threat to American national security. I believe that as long as the U.S. claims the right to hold nuclear armaments we have no right to tell another government what weapons they can and cannot have. As long as our prison population dwarfs every other country's in both size and proportion I find it hard to believe that we have the moral high ground regarding how we run our country. Saddam was actually turning Iraq into a pretty nice country until we decided to blow it to smiterines.

Tell that to the family of people who work undercover against organized crime.

Maybe we shouldn't have such agents. Maybe the corruption of such agents have only contributed to organized crime. Ever hear of Whitey Bulger? And Somali pirates and North Korea? Wow, that's some desperate FUD right there. Furthermore, you're completely missing my point -- the whole "in a civilized world" doesn't include North Korea or Somalia. Hell, it doesn't really include the U.S. in it's current form. I should have said "government secrets" -- by not specifying I left myself open to pedantry. Freight shipments and the like are private enterprise and I'm okay with private secrets, just no government secrets. Regardless, Somali pirates will continue to be stupid and they'll continue to get shot when they jack the wrong ship.

Regardless, I don't think that a totally secret-free government is something that should be implemented tomorrow. The world is not ready -- in this regard I probably disagree with Assange. But I do think it's the goal that we should strive for. Unfortunately our government has progressed towards a state of more secrets, so excessively so that I no longer have much respect for our system of government. We've become a fascist oligarchy.

The rest of your post avoids the actual issues. The documents that Manning released weren't as sensitive as you imply. They were embarrassing, and that's what all the fuss is about. I find it very hard to believe that someone would risk their life as a whistleblower for the sake of being a drama queen. Your theory for his motives fails Occam's razor whereas mine doesn't. You'd have to present some evidence to suggest that Manning didn't feel ethically obligated to do what he did for that explanation to sound even somewhat plausible.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking about this the other day.

WRT Manning: I feel a bit bad for him. I absolutely understand that there's a need for secrecy in war-fighting, and I appreciate that the military has the ability to enforce that secrecy with punishment. I still feel bad for him. This young man was not in the best frame of mind, and it sounds like he really thought he was trying to do something right.

WRT the material: The first strike seems entirely legit. The one that killed the two Reuters people. They met with armed defenders, at night, in an area where they knew there was fighting. Everyone wishes they hadn't been in the mix when the invaders did what they do. This, however, is going to happen when you have reporters pushing the limits of sanity to get a story in a war zone. Beyond that, it's hopped-up gunners shooting at a group of outgunned freedom fighters.

The second strike was wrong, and demonstrates what Manning was talking about when he talks about the fog of war. Bad things happen when you target non-combatant rescuers. The people on the guns obviously were trying to kill innocent, unarmed people. It's known as the double-tap strategy.
There's no way around that.

WRT the handling of the material: The military's approach to the material (denying FOIA requests) was shady, but pretty obviously a function of, "err on the side of covering our asses." You can't have war without casualties, but brown people don't count. That said, handling of the material was absolutely atrocious. The "collateral murder" video was a selectively edited, correctly annotated, propaganda piece like all news. Every effort was made to point out there were two people with cameras, not AK's, and everyone knows how dangerous pictures can be.

It's a mess. I feel bad for the kid... he was in a bad place before, and an even worse place now. But at least he has his honor. I feel bad for every serviceman that deservedly got a bad rap from this situation, and I can see how unfair the whole thing was to our poor military in general. I do think the military made it worse by double-tapping at every opportunity.

WRT lessons learned: Do deal with wikileaks. Deal with proper news outlets carefully. Don't deal with shady 3rd parties over IRC. Do everything you can to stay "on the level", lest you become the story, instead of what you're trying to report. Don't trust Adrian Lamo.

Re:Its hard to tell

[burdickjp]

In our current world there is rather blatant and easy justification for war. I don't know what world you live in, but you sound like someone who's never stepped out of their own living room. Things can look relatively easy from a living room window. Here's the easy justification for war: there are people in this world who do not hold any reservations about using violence to get what they want. In many instances of this the offending party can be stopped without resorting to violence, but in cases which happen all to often the only way to stop them is by reciprocating the violence. There's similar justification for secrecy; there are many people in this world who hold no reservations about exploiting vulnerability. Do I believe this justifies the situation? No. I don't. But we can't change the past, or undo other people's wrongs. The situation is what it is. If you feel being there was an injustice, fine. Punish those involved, but with the situation given it would be equally wrong to leave a devastated state to be exploited. That would be at LEAST equally unjust, if not more so. There are many, many people who see the military as a direct way of helping the most vulnerable people defend themselves against the most violent. These people get to make a positive impact on others' lives which is on orders of magnitude greater than they could otherwise. So while I agree with you that there ought not be war, just like there ought not be violence, I don't foresee a future where there will be no war or violence.

Re:Its hard to tell

[nyback]

Bad things happen.

Your way of stating "Bad things happen" WRT the second strike is as wrong as calling the first strike entirely legit. The moment we start to excuse bad things with "Bad things happen" we will accelerate our ride down the slippery slopes.

The "collateral murder" video was a selectively edited, perversely annotated, propaganda piece.

For those that has not visited http://www.collateralmurder.com/ for a while i recommend a re-visit. If you dont like the "selectively edited, perversely annotated, propaganda piece", you can watch the unedited full version of the video and make your own opinion what is propaganda and what's not.

But most of all watch Ethan McCords eyewitness story from what happened not only in the video of said incident, but what was the instructed ways of handling incidents on the streets of Baghdad given by US military to its soldiers. Then take a few moments to consider what is your opinion on this.

WRT lessons learned: Don't deal with wikileaks.

WRT lessons learned: Keep yourself well informed. Have an opinion. Do what you can to affect society in the direction YOU think is for the good of all. Like Bradley, like Ethan.

Re: Its hard to tell

[Jahava]

The reason we have rules of war is so we can react with some degree of international cohesion when they are broken. It's a deterrent for the little guys: follow the rules or the wrath of god will come down on you. Supporting you will be poison and in all likelihood you have damned your cause.

Honestly it seems like a win-win for humanity. The premise is, of course, that larger nations have the incentive and wherewithal to avoid total war. This cornerstone becomes the foundation to pull other nations without the maturity or international presence up to these standards.

Obviously if any nation, alliance, or cohesive group is adequately threatened they will never pull total war off the table. Rules of war / engagement help keep it off the table in areas where armed conflict is a threat with a much higher frequency than the first world. Frankly, autonomy and sovereignty have not existed since economies globalized, and that's also probably a good thing. We're moving towards a humane and cohesive world, but we're not there yet, and constraining war is a triage until we are.

A world without war is not a pipe dream, and, I would argue, an inevitability as countermeasures and technology continue growing in destructive power and ease of acquisition. However, looking at the state of the first world, much less its trading partners and the rest of humanity, we all have a lot of rapid cultural development and normalization to go through before we're ready.

The Internet will be the herald of all of this. So, tech world, keep up the good work.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think the seas are safe by magic?

Good (rhetorical) question. I think the seas are safe because of people like Hugo de Groot, not because of people like Lord Nelson.

Re:Its hard to tell

[AmiMoJo]

There are needs for secrecy in war. Diplomacy. Business. Personal affairs. And no matter how much Julian Assange argues, you can't really have a world where everything is in the open.

On the other hand there are things that need to come out about foreign policy, behaviour in wars and corruption/illegal activity in politics and business. There is no way to uncover just those bits, the only option was to leak all the files and then let hopefully responsible journalists sort out what needs to be published.

Unfortunately the journalists turned out to be not so responsible, so in the end Wikileaks just dumped everything with as many redactions as they could manage. It's unfortunate but considering what was revealed and what we now know have been the consequences of the leak it seems worth it, on balance.

Re:Its hard to tell

[AmiMoJo]

There's no ethical way to go about conducting war.

You could try not deliberately targeting civilians who are not fighting you. Killing unarmed, defenceless people is usually considered bad sport.

If North Korea, for instance, were foolish enough to launch a missile at the west coast, I would support wiping Pyongyang off the map with a nuclear warhead.

So all those oppressed people who had nothing to do with the decision and who would have been thrown in a forced labour camp for daring to state their opposition to the leader's actions all deserve to die in a nuclear fireball or from radiation sickness in the aftermath?

That would be an example of unethical conduct in war, a massive over-reaction when the US is perfectly capable of taking all just military targets. Really, what possible justification can there be for doing that?

Re:Its hard to tell

[dbreeze]

Bingo.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

"WRT the material: The first strike seems entirely legit."

Only if you're a tea party retard with absolutely no grasp of either the rules of war, or how to win a war. Hint: both the rules of war, and the ability to win a war rely on avoiding wanton murder of civilians.

The pilots were incompetent, it's absolutely as simple as that. The "do not fire until fired upon" rule exists precisely to avoid killing civilians and exists expressly to avoid situations like this. Worse, not only did they avoid this rule in the engagement, there was not even an immediate threat. The "armed belligerents" (which appeared to not actually be armed for what it's worth) were a few blocks away from US ground forces and way outside effective RPG range of the Apache (check the range finder on the Apache footage). In other words, these pilots fired both without properly and correctly confirming they were facing a threat, and without there even being the possibility of a threat. This is ineptitude of the highest order and something any other competent western military would investigate and heavily penalise a pilot for - if nothing else this showed that ineptitude of at least some US apache pilots is both tolerated, and even encouraged. It appears there is a desperate need for training on verification of targets and rules of engagement in the US military demonstrated not just by this event, but many - from US engagement of a British Tornado with a patriot missile, to US engagement of a British convoy in Iraq, to this incident, to many more (some of which are detailed in the Wikileaks cables - such as indiscriminate artillery strikes on civilian areas).

You say that "Beyond that, it's chopper gunners shooting at a group of enemy combatants with RPG's and small arms, just like they're supposed to." - no they're not. What if they were friendly special forces working undercover? What if they were legitimate Iraqi police/military? What crime had they actually even committed given that there was no law against carrying such weapons in Iraq? How do you know they weren't just a peaceful militia defending their neighbourhood just like American watch groups do and certainly would in such times? Certainly if they had a couple of Western journalists around them they sure as hell weren't the crazy jihadi types that were going to do a Daniel Pearl on them were they given they were walking around freely. The American pilots fired against all rules of engagement. That's a criminal offence period, that's murder, period. There's no justification for it when absolutely no evidence that they were even a threat to allied forces was in place - whether they were armed or not.

America seems completely unaware that the reason it lost in Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and now Afghanistan is because war is more than just about "blowing shit up" - it even recognises this in official statements about how much it cares about avoiding civilian casualties etc. yet in practice it seems to do the complete and utter opposite. It seems to blow shit up and nothing else. You can't win wars like that, you'd think with the many thousands of American servicemen and women who have lost their lives losing such wars America would've learnt this lesson by now, but apparently they've not only not learnt it, but they're actively defending the reasoning behind their repeated inability to win wars. There's no patriotism in defending the death of your servicepeople through incompetence, merely stupidity.

"WRT the handling of the material: The military's approach to the material (denying FOIA requests) was shady, but a pretty obvious function of, "err on the side of keeping stuff secret." You can't have war without casualties, and any time it happens somewhere where people live, some of those are going to be bad kills."

Yes, if you flagrantly disregard rules of engagement. Not just the Apache pilots, but the guys at the other end of the radio not making damn sure the pilots have evidence they're firing at bad guys, at real actual threats before giving

Re:Its hard to tell

[Cytotoxic]

How's this for an idea? We the people stop allowing our leaders to go to war unless we are willing to accept massive death and destruction, including lots of what they euphemistically call collateral damage. If it isn't important enough to justify killing large numbers of people, including women and children, let's just not do it. Somehow I think if we held ourselves to that standard finding some "appropriate compromise" wouldn't be necessary, and war would be a much less frequent occurrence. As a side benefit, the military's job would become much more straightforward: destroy the enemy. No more half-war, half-nationbuilding. Just kill people and break things.

In fact, if that were the standard, perhaps war would quickly become a relic of the past. We'd be extremely reluctant to go to war, and any potential enemies would have to weigh the possible consequence of complete and utter annihilation.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Runaway1956]

Ohhh, you seem to understand the concept of a punitive campaign.

I actually approved of declaring war on Afghanistan. I never approved of meddling in their politics, and nation building nonsense.

At the time we invaded Afghanistan, we wanted to get bin Laden, priority one, and we wanted to punish the Taliban for thumbing their noses at us.

We were very successful in punishing the Taliban, within 60 days. We also had bin Laden holed up in the Tora Bora hills within a short period - less than 90 days, if I remember correctly. Afghanistan's war making capability was in a shambles, the Taliban was on the run, and bin Laden was within our grasp. All we had to do, was to grab him, either summarily execute him or bring him back to stand trial, and we could declare victory.

Unfortunately, we were unwilling to go into bin Laden's defensive structures, and go hand-to-hand with him and his troops. We pussed out. He laughed at us, got tired of waiting around for us to grow some balls, and sneaked across the border to Pakistan.

Of course, once we allowed bin Laden to escape, there was no more mission in Afghanistan, and we could not justify invading Pakistan to get him. At that point, we should have come home.

All the worst things that have happened in Afghanistan, have happened during our "nation building" bullshit. The punitive campaign went quite well, up until we decided that we lacked the balls to get into the trenches with the enemy.

No-balls warfare seems to be more costly in human life and equipment, than real warfare.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Lumpy]

bad rap? I consider any serviceman that disobeys an illegal order, or releases top secret information that is covering up things that are morally wrong to be the highest form of HERO that the united states has.

You fight for your COUNTRY, which is the people, you DO NOT fight for your superiors, good soldiers know this.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Lumpy]

"Veterans aren't very inclined to talk about it."

They are told they can't. AND would you want to brag to buddies how you shelled the hell out of that enemy encampment only to discover it was a village? All because you accepted the coordinates and orders from your command without question.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Lumpy]

Welcome to what war really is. If you think War is only army against army, you need to read real books on the subject.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Lumpy]

"Yeah, that goat farmer with an RPG in Afghanistan is an imminent threat to my ability to post shit to the Internet."

So you are the one posting all those SCAT videos...

Re:Its hard to tell

[Lumpy]

If you think all those "jarheads" are for fighting people outside the country, then you are woefully misinformed.

"To fight enemies both foreign and domestic" - Just wait for it to turn domestic.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Runaway1956]

They are told they can't? Bullshit. Who told you that?

Maybe you've forgotten that our current secretary of state happens to have made up stories about war atrocities that never happened, and told those stories in front of congress, and the national media.

John Kerry ought to be sitting in a cell with Bradley Manning, for the lies he told.

If what you say is true maybe you can find a few veterans who have been told that they cannot speak of their war experiences. I'm a member of several forums where a lot of veterans congregate. Very, very few of them have ever made mention of the fact that they "can't talk" about something. In my own case, the only restriction on talk about the ships I served on, involved scheduling or possible scheduling, which has been available for public consumption almost since the internet existed. And, this tidbit: "I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons aboard the USS Richard E. Byrd." That is, if we had them, we couldn't confirm that fact for anyone, and if we didn't have them, we still didn't want the Soviets to know it.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Internetuser1248]

These journalists rush into war zones dressed like militants. And they carry cameras that are tripod mounted or have telephoto lenses that look like weapons from far away. When you're in a helicopter and you've just seen a man firing a weapon from the sky, then another man runs next to him with a two foot long metal object, are you going to risk that being an RPG if it is one, instead of a camera?

Dressed like militants? They were wearing civilian clothing. The Reuters guys (I am assuming the ones carrying things are them) appear to be wearing shirts and black pants. This means I am also dressed like a militant as I type this (shirt and jeans). As to weapons, a bazooka is much longer than two feet long. Also armed combatants don't just walk around in the middle of the street like that.

All of this is beside the point however. It is senseless for us to argue whether or not the actions of a few soldiers on the battlefield are right or wrong, things like this are guaranteed to happen in war. The point should be that the war was waged unilaterally and under false pretenses. Civilians were killed. The world is not asking for soldiers to be punished they are asking for leaders to be held accountable.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Viol8]

"Maybe we shouldn't have such agents. Maybe the corruption of such agents have only contributed to organized crime"

I can't tell if you're a troll or young and naive about human nature and how the world really works or just desperately stupid. But its certainly one of those.

Re:Its hard to tell

[RazorSharp]

"Maybe we shouldn't have such agents. Maybe the corruption of such agents have only contributed to organized crime"

I can't tell if you're a troll or young and naive about human nature and how the world really works or just desperately stupid. But its certainly one of those.

I can't tell if you failed to take Logic 101 or if you forgot what a false dilemma is or you failed to understand the most basic informal fallacies, but it's certainly one of those. It also appears that you failed to take English 101 or you forgot how to properly use an apostrophe or you failed to understand its function.

You can call me a troll -- that's the easiest way to dismiss controversial opinions.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

But we have always been at war with Eastasia!

Re:Its hard to tell

[Viol8]

"failed to take English 101 or you forgot how to properly use an apostrophe or you failed to understand its function."

There needs to be a godwins law style name for people who revert to commenting on typos or irrelevant points of grammar when they have nothing else to argue against.

"You can call me a troll -- that's the easiest way to dismiss controversial opinions."

There's controversial and then there's moronic. Yours fall into the latter category. However I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and I'll assume you're just a naive student spouting the standard issue anti establishment rubbish that that age group is fond of doing until they get some life experience.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

I thank Alan Turing for being able to post my crap.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

If any good come from this...

Has it caused any measurable change in government policy? Or did it just cause tightening of their grip on classified data?

Did any good come from the release of the video of a US warship killing a Reuter's journalist? Did any good come from the release of the Rodney King beating video? Or did releasing that information just cause an increase in the resolve of the institutions responsible to not get caught doing it again?

I honestly don't know the answer, but I have the unshakable sense that not exposing wrongdoing when you see it is the wrong way to go regardless of your level of pessimism or optimism as to whether or not you think that any good will ultimately result from revealing it.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm currently an engineering scientist (albeit only with a masters), and I have served as a grunt in the 82nd, so I feel qualified to say that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Wanna know who's a helluva lot more brave than any army grunt? Julian Assange. He's taking on the world.

Yeah, and he's a hit with the ladies. Not.

Anyway, oh keyboard badass, show up to your local military base and run your mouth. Please.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is a perfectly reasonable position to take. Except he didn't release just things relating to cover ups. He released A LOT of completely legally classified information, and he will have to pay for that the same way anyone else would. Whistleblower should only protect him from disclosing illegally classified materials, not for disclosing legally classified materials, otherwise classification has no meaning.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

i learnt that an enlisted american goes on tour for roughly two weeks. One week into which they come home for a "mid-tour leave". #firstworldproblems

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

Assassinating Bin Laden leaves the Taliban in charge of Afghanistan

No, it doesn't.

AND gives them a martyr to use for recruiting.

Or him actively recruiting. We prefer it this way, now that their propaganda figures are all rotting corpses.

Also there's plenty of people who whine like crazy over assassinations of any kind regardless of how justified.

There are plenty of people that won't get vaccinated either. That doesn't mean you stop passing out vaccines.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Lumpy]

My father was told so. He was in Korea and operated under Classified conditions.

Several friends I have that were in Desert storm also can not talk about it as what they also did was Classified.

You must not understand how the military works.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Runaway1956]

Well, I only served 8 years. Maybe I don't understand.

Some people think that classified information stays classified forever. Other people like to impress their friends that they know classified information that can't be repeated. I don't know any of the people that you refer to, of course, so I can't say if any of them fall into either category.

I do know that as intel ages, it tends to be declassified.

Re:Its hard to tell

[strikethree]

. The horrifying thing revealed/verified to many people by these leaks is not that "a few bad apples sometimes do wrong in the fog of war," but that the US has created a system where it is perfectly normal and "legit" behavior to be flying around looking for folks to gun down.

And you are why the military is forced to keep secrets. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about or what military members experience and are asked to do and yet you make a pronouncement like this. Really?

It is through their efforts that you can sit all nice and comfortable while making such asinine statements. If there is a problem, it is with the civilian control (politicians) of the military. I am pretty sure it was wrong to invade Iraq even if getting rid of Saddam and shaking up the entrenched power structure there was a good thing. It was not the military that made that choice though.

Casual murderers? Just shut the fuck up and crawl back under your rock.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, what possible justification can there be for doing that?

'merica! Fuck Yeah!?

Re:Its hard to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad things happen.

Your way of stating "Bad things happen" WRT the second strike is as wrong as calling the first strike entirely legit. The moment we start to excuse bad things with "Bad things happen" we will accelerate our ride down the slippery slopes.

You're assuming that, "bad things happen" was stated as an excuse instead of a mere statement of fact.

The "collateral murder" video was a selectively edited, perversely annotated, propaganda piece.

For those that has not visited http://www.collateralmurder.com/ for a while i recommend a re-visit. If you dont like the "selectively edited, perversely annotated, propaganda piece", you can watch the unedited full version of the video and make your own opinion what is propaganda and what's not.

Yes, they should. And more important, they should read as much as they can about what happened that night. It throws the whole media hack-job into sharp relief.

WRT lessons learned: Don't deal with wikileaks.

WRT lessons learned: Keep yourself well informed. Have an opinion. Do what you can to affect society in the direction YOU think is for the good of all. Like Bradley, like Ethan.

That's a fine in theory, but I'd really rather more people abstained from having vocal opinions until they knew what they were talking about. Too many make judgements and sweeping generalizations that are provably false based on bad material like... wait for it... edited video clips. How many people saw that thing and didn't bother to find out what really happened? Think about it.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Lumpy]

So the US ARMY should have called my father and told him, "Hey you can talk about everything now." Is that a standard operating proceedure?

He was told it was classified and to not talk about it and he did not, this is what 95% of all soldiers do.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Runaway1956]

I made no mention at all of anything that was "classified" for the first decade after I left the service. We have this wonderful thing called the "internet" today. Some of the things that I had witnessed while in uniform, I found published on the internet. I thinks to myself, "Self, that's odd - isn't that shit classified?"

It took little digging to find that a whole BUNCH of stuff is declassified with time.

Uncle Sam has never sent me a letter, to notify me that stuff has been declassified, but I no longer feel obligated to keep stuff secret. In fact - now that my ship rests at the bottom of the ocean, I can probably reveal the fact that, yes, in fact, we DID carry nuclear armed ASROCKs. Only for a very brief period, while I was aboard, did we NOT have nukes aboard. We carried those on every deployment.

It is very unlikely that the average grunt knows anything that stays classified for ten years or more. Our Cryptology Techs certainly know stuff that stays classified longer than that, but they aren't exactly "average grunts" either.

Desert Storm is now ancient history, and it's VERY unlikely that any of your friends has any pertinent information that remains classified. Your Korean War veteran relative is probably in the clear to blab anything and everything he knows. In fact, much of it is probably available on Youtube today.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Pav]

You can't blame the civilian masses for failing in their duty. The worldwide protests certainly sent a strong democratic signal. I don't think the parent post is blaming the military either. The military MUST follow the chain of command - anything else is anarchy and/or military dictatorship. You're right in that the politicians are to blame. In addition the civilians have been coddled/shielded from the reality of war which is not healthy in a democratic society IMHO. Politicians like having the military option easily available however, so an informed public would never do. The parent post pointed to a systemic problem which I think is a pretty fair assessment.

BTW, he did not say anything about "casual murderers". That's a bit strawmanish don't you think? ;)

Re:Its hard to tell

[AK Marc]

And the US has been in a war of some kind or another almost constantly with only very very short breaks since WWII. When you are *always* at war, then everything must be secret all the time.

Re:Its hard to tell

[AK Marc]

Funny how you only mention Democrats who lied about stories. You could have easily named Bush who deserted and left daddy to clean up his mess, or the swift boaters, most of whom had actual proof come out they weren't where they said they were for their stories that were all lies about John Kerry, and the rest are presumed liars because the official records do not support any of their stories. They made up lies to sabotage a presidential candidate.

And plenty of people I've talked to from the military told stories about what they can't tell stories about. One guy indicated he worked on a weapon that was later declassified, but he'll "never" be able to talk about it because giving dates and details could give improper insight into the procurement process or capability development times. So everything he did was declassified, but he isn't allowed to discuss it. Not unlike the rules on doctors and lawyers. They can discuss the generalities, but not the details. "It was fun, I got to point something at something else, and spend $1,000,000 of experimental ordinance to make stuff go boom." Is about he'll ever be able to say about it. And even then, giving a dollar figure may not be appropriate, though it was only a guess for a grunt that has nothing to do with the money.

Re:Its hard to tell

[Runaway1956]

Well, you've mentioned Herr Bush's indiscretions - so that's covered.

As for "official records" to back up Swift Boater's stories - I'm not sure about that. I witnessed a couple of incidents while in the service, which don't seem to be part of any "official records". In fact, searches on the internet don't find anything, in spite of the fact that those incidents SHOULD have made newspaper headlines in the countries in which they occured. Without the deck log from my ships, it's impossible to verify the incidents.

Re:Its hard to tell

[ClioCJS]

Well no.. Not for everyone. If a list of every human being's fetishes they practiced were to turn up publicly, there would be very many people who are not "slimy things that live in the dark" who's lives would be negatively affected. And people who break laws that shouldn't be would be negatively affected as well. Homosexuals, for example. I am on Wikileak's and Assange's side, but your last statement, while ideologically true... Is not actually true.

Re:Its hard to tell

[ClioCJS]

Congratulations: You attacked the original poster personally, and used personal facts about yourself to justify it. That's not how this worked. You've beaten your chest like a dumb ape, and to top it off, you've done it anonymously. Look at the anonymous coward declare his authority on bravery.

Re:Its hard to tell

[euroq]

So, you were cool with Saddam's invasion of Kuwait? And you were cool with his slaughter of people using WMDs? And cool with his continued import and manufacture of long range weapons, and his continued shooting at allied aircraft protecting the no-fly zones? How were you with the cash he was paying (on TV!) to the families of suicide bombers? Comfortable with his skimming UN cash for more palaces and re-arming his Republican Guard, while he deliberately withheld that support from his own citizens? Happy, were you, with his regime's deliberate lies and obfuscation about the disposition of tons of VX gas previously observed by UN inspectors? Liked his ongoing SCUD projects, did you?

I didn't like it, but there were other much better ways to spend one trillion dollars of the U.S.'s money and over 4000 lives.

Re:Its hard to tell

[tehcyder]

At the time we invaded Afghanistan, we wanted to get bin Laden, priority one, and we wanted to punish the Taliban for thumbing their noses at us.

The US wanted to punish someone, and decided the Taliban were an easier target than Saudi Arabia. If the Taliban had actually organised and carried out the 9/11 attacks that would have been an act of war which justified the US response. Unfortunately, the worst they could actually be accused of was harbouring bin Laden, which is a police or diplomatic matter, not a justification for a ground invasion as part of the "war on terror".

Re:Its hard to tell

[tehcyder]

Welcome to what war really is. If you think War is only army against army, you need to read real books on the subject.

So you're fine with people using poison gas or nukes on civilians? You don't believe that there are such things as war crimes?

Re:Its hard to tell

[tehcyder]

If you're capable of getting (or have) a masters degree why would you enlist as a grunt in the military? Surely you should be aiming to be an officer? Or are the US armed forces so charmingly democratic that everyone has to start at the bottom?

Re:Its hard to tell

[tehcyder]

Assassinating Bin Laden leaves the Taliban in charge of Afghanistan AND gives them a martyr to use for recruiting.

That would make complete logical sense if bin Laden had (a) been in the Taliban and (b) been in charge of the Taliban/Afghanistan. Sadly for the real world application of your words, neither of those were true.

Re:Its hard to tell

[tehcyder]

But to conduct war under the rules of the Geneva convention is a far greater atrocity than to conduct total war -- at least when one commits to total war they're not deluding themselves into believing that they're behaving in an ethical manner

That is an extreme pacifist argument, but there are a lot more shades between the black of "total war with no rules" and "total pacifism with no fighting whatsoever".

I would rather live in a world where people like the Nazis can be tried and punished for war crimes. Clearly, this requires a reasonable amount of openness, so that the public can find out if, for instance, our soldiers are torturing civilians or whatever.

Re:Its hard to tell

[tehcyder]

It is through their efforts that you can sit all nice and comfortable while making such asinine statements.

The Taliban and Saddam Hussein were no threat to me here in the UK or to anyone in the US before we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Dealing with terrorists like Osama bin Laden should be an international police matter, not an excuse to launch a ground invasion.

If there is a problem, it is with the civilian control (politicians) of the military.

Let me guess, the US could have "won" in Vietnam if only the politicians hadn't hamstrung the military?

Re:Its hard to tell

[Runaway1956]

Uhhhh - actually, harboring bin Laden was justification for declaring war. Police? What police? The Taliban expressed their contempt for the US by harboring the most wanted man in the world, and that was cause for the punitive campaign that I outlined above.

Re:Its hard to tell

[fredgiblet]

Both of the things I said are true, neither of them are dependent on the the things you're claiming they are.

Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[anagama]

Read this by Harvard Law prof, Yochai Benkler:

The Dangerous Logic of the Bradley Manning Case:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112554#

If Bradley Manning is convicted of aiding the enemy, the introduction of a capital offense into the mix would dramatically elevate the threat to whistleblowers. The consequences for the ability of the press to perform its critical watchdog function in the national security arena will be dire. And then there is the principle of the thing. However technically defensible on the language of the statute, and however well-intentioned the individual prosecutors in this case may be, we have to look at ourselves in the mirror of this case and ask: Are we the America of Japanese Internment and Joseph McCarthy, or are we the America of Ida Tarbell and the Pentagon Papers? What kind of country makes communicating with the press for publication to the American public a death-eligible offense?

Note, the espionage act doesn't apply only to people in the military.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[turkeydance]

it makes us all of that. good/bad/ugly. we're all that. bring everything to the table and present your side with evidence. convince a sample of the population. yes, it's been done before.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Brucelet]

The press has already been so grossly compromised by corporate influence that it's "critical watchdog function" isn't currently all that functional anyway

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Jessified]

Al Qaeda is perhaps the most brilliant organization on this planet. With such limited resources, they sure have crippled this great, free country to a common dictatorship.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Anonymous Coward]

He signed and swore oaths to protect the classified information he was entrusted to access

And the military swore to protect follow certain rules. They broke it first and Manning would not have broken his oath unless they had done so.

He's a traitor and deserves a traitor's death

And you are a traitor to everything that is good and right, what the fuck is your excuse?

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You've clearly never lived in a real dictatorship then if you think the US is a dictatorship.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[greenbird]

he press has already been so grossly compromised by corporate influence that it's "critical watchdog function" isn't currently all that functional anyway

Yup. And that's why organizations like Wikileaks and technology like encryption and Tor are so critical. They've taken over that function. Actually they're even better for that function because there much less likely to be influenced by political pressure of any kind.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[mosb1000]

Pentagon papers: common knowledge that should never have been classified in the first place

Really? It certainly was big news.

nonetheless if the source had ever been found, that person should have been executed

Just because you attach two sentences with a semicolon doesn't mean they logically flow into each other. Reaching this conclusion is insanity. You're saying we should kill whistleblowers, and you aren't giving any good reason at all for that assessment. You come off as being senseless and bloodthirsty.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[mosb1000]

And you are a traitor to everything that is good and right, what the fuck is your excuse?

The person you're responding to is clearly a brain-dead asshole. Asking him for an excuse is like asking a scorpion why it stung you.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Demena]

Um... Murdoch is a left-leaning ideologue? Really?

Just wondering how you could possibly come to that conclusion.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[drinkypoo]

Pentagon papers: common knowledge that should never have been classified in the first place

Really? It certainly was big news.

I just went through this on G+ with a douchebag who thought we learned nothing from the release of the video. It was big news even to our shitty media, but apparently it was of no actual consequence.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[drinkypoo]

Asking him for an excuse is like asking a scorpion why it stung you.

A scorpion would at least have a logical reason.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[girlintraining]

Al Qaeda is perhaps the most brilliant organization on this planet. With such limited resources, they sure have crippled this great, free country to a common dictatorship.

People blame the terrorists for our plight, but let's look at this objectively: How much damage is this organization directly responsible for? A few buildings? Few thousand people dead? Whatever answer you come up with, even if you declare large swaths of the general population malignant, you can't approach the damage caused by our reaction.

If America fell, it wasn't because of the terrorists, but us. We allowed our elected representatives to do this to us. We voted them into office repeatedly, and willfully. There is no "it just fell from the sky and killed our country" option here. We did this to ourselves.

Point the finger in the right direction: Right back at you. Terrorists didn't do this, we did.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Anonymous Coward]

If Bradley Manning is convicted of aiding the enemy

... then the prosecution will have proven that this was Manning's intent, so what's the problem?

the introduction of a capital offense into the mix would dramatically elevate the threat to whistleblowers

Bradley Manning is not a whistleblower. He did not intend to expose wrongdoing. He simply dumped as much classified data into the public domain as he could.

What kind of country makes communicating with the press for publication to the American public a death-eligible offense?

Where is this coming from? The initial claim was that Manning might be convicted of aiding the enemy, that he "knowingly and intentionally provides intelligence to the enemy through the indirect means". Manning can only be convicted if he communicated with the press for publication to the enemy, not the American people.

This is coming from a law professor?

Restated in terms of staying on topic:

What kind of country makes communicating military secrets to the press for intentional publication to the enemy a death-eligible offense?

Consider that question, not a straw man.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Jessified]

That was my point :)

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[anagama]

But the technology won't matter if people face the death penalty for leaking information regarding government malfeasance. That's the heart of this issue, the Government's desire to control every piece of information about what it does. Certainly the mainstream media (i.e., administrative stenographers and press release mills) has gotten to total lapdog status, but the reason WikiLeaks was so hated was because it actually performed the function the press was supposed to perform. But what will WikiLeaks or its successors leak if people honestly fear that death is the punishment for getting caught? If nobody comes forward, the technology is irrelevant.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Anonymous Coward]

TOR was developed by the military. Is this press release a covert way for Maning to instruct us all that TOR is not anonymous and has a hidden backdoor?

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[anagama]

I can tell by your comments you did not read the article.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[fustakrakich]

Yes, and behind all of our 'insanity' you will find cold biological logic also. This is what happens when you give an animal an opposable thumb

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about accountability for handing over important information? Accountability is good right, like this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/9896509/WikiLeaks-US-to-call-bin-Laden-raid-Navy-Seal-to-testify-against-Bradley-Manning.html

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Demena]

In order to defeat Tor you need to control or have the logs from only 1% of exit points. There is about 3,000 active at anytime. The use of Tor will not protect you from a serious nation state who have the ability to compromise 300 servers. It will protect you from local police authorities but not a national security organisation.

There are means to take it further but they are lengthy, time consuming and expensive. Not something many individuals could accomplish.

That will remain true until that are a couple of orders of magnitude more exit points

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[peragrin]

You do realize the ecuadorean government makes the crap the USA government has done look good right? Oh and Ecuador is currently running Wikileaks. And you can't prove otherwise As Assage won't let go control of wikileaks and is hiding out in a Ecuadorean Embassy.

Since those documents wikileaks hasn't really done anything. Everything big they say they have release has been oh that's well known.

So how isn't wikileaks not being influenced by political pressure?

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[tlambert]

Um... Murdoch is a left-leaning ideologue? Really?

Just wondering how you could possibly come to that conclusion.

For some things, he's very liberal, such as hosting a fundraiser in 2006 Hilary Clinton's Senate reelection campaign, or his 2008 involvement in the New York Post's endorsement of the Obama presidential campaign.

In other areas, he's "pro business", which is to be expected, but his support of SOPA and PIPA were mostly self-interest, and were no stronger than e.g. Barbra Boxer's similar support of both bills on behalf of Hollywood.

His "path to legality" stance for illegal immigrants already in the U.S. is also relatively liberal, although you could also argue that it's simple pragmatism, that pragmatism is based in business interests involving cheap labor and an unwillingness to enact certain social reforms in the face of current minimum wage arguments. Given the anti-immigration stance of the Sun (also a Murdock paper, but British), it's more or less just printing what people who are willing to buy papers want to hear.

So the answer is more or less "it depends on which way the wind is blowing".

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Demena]

Okay, disclosure. I am an Australian as is/was Murdoch. I have been alive through most of his business manipulations. I was once even an infinitesimal part of his empire. Never in my life have I known him to do anything altruistic. Everything is/was based on self interest. I wouldn't consider him liberal in any way. Even when he appears liberal it is based in self interest or maintaining power in both camps. Someone who appears liberal when the wind blows that way is not a liberal to me. A liberal has to be liberal in principle; has to have liberal principles and not switch as the wind blows. Murdoch has never appeared to fit this image. So I cannot see Murdoch as a liberal. Not in any way.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[RazorSharp]

The press has already been so grossly compromised by corporate influence that it's "critical watchdog function" isn't currently all that functional anyway

That's terrible. Too bad there isn't some way that everyone from around the world can share information independent of large corporate media entities. Just imagine, some system that could connect everyone to information that anyone can publish. I bet if such a system existed, whistleblowers could use it to anonymously disseminate pertinent information. Then they could use this same system to brag about it to their friends, who turn out to not actually be their friends, but CIA informants, who will then turn them in to face charges of treason. And then -- remember all this is strictly hypothetical -- we could discuss this situation on this system of connected communication. And as part of this discussion, we could complain about how the press is grossly compromised by corporate influence and how our critical watchdog no longer exists. It's sad. Too bad such a system doesn't exist. If it did, we could be discussing it right now.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[deniable]

The source was Daniel Ellsburg. It's common knowledge. You may also want to look at Mike Gravel, Senator and presidential candidate.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[tibman]

The UCMJ only applies to the military.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[quax]

From you tag line I take it you are of libertarian persuasion.

I'd wish there was a political force that could bundled common goals of liberal and libertarians to the extend that they derive from the word liberty. I.e. personal freedom, no wiretapping, no pointless war on drugs, no expensive interventionalist foreign policy.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[dbIII]

Cool - then those people blocking military spending to try to prove a Democratic government is ineffective because it cannot protect the USA from Republicans can get charged with "aiding the enemy"?
I know that's a ridiculous idea, but so is the "aiding the enemy" charge against Manning.
The bar was set low with Oliver North selling weapons to Hezbolla only a year after they killed over one hundred US military personnel and a lot of civilians (with Iran as the middleman in the sale FFS), and not being considered to the "aiding the enemy". Why should Manning be charged with such a thing for a dump of not very highly rated documents that over a million people had full access to? He certainly looks far more like a patriot than North - letting the people of the USA know that they have been lied to is far more patriotic IMHO than what North did.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[dbIII]

He actually is from his Boyer lectures, but not when it gets in the way of making money. He likes the idea of government funded infrastructure and education, so long as he personally doesn't get to be taxed more to pay for it.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Anonymous Coward]

And the military swore to protect follow certain rules.

The government has made it position pretty clear, what it will do if it catches breaking the kinds of rules that Manning broke. And yet nobody can really say who will do what, if the government is caught breaking certain rules.

Or maybe we can say. We The People have given this matter some thought, and the consequences to the government shall be..

..nothing.

We won't revolt. We won't even vote against it. In the "soap box / ballot box / ammo box" escalation, we don't even get to step two. Isn't that pretty much a sign that we don't care about the rules, and we ought to stop expecting them to be followed? Maybe it's time to get off the soap box, and admit that most of us want evil government.

After all, that's the one we all vote for. Look at how well Obama and Romney did in the election. Add up their shares and there was nearly nothing left.

A lot of awkwardness might be avoided, if we stopped asking the military to swear to obey certain rules.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Anonymous Coward]

For the love of Buddha, create a third political party that stands for nothing else other than the eradication of corporate influence over the US political system.
Anyone who has been taking any notice for a while knows that both political parties are just two sides of the same worthless coin.
At least your government is predictable. On any issue, when the good of the common man conflicts with the good of the corporation, at least you can bee 100% sure which way it will go.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for fun I would like to see the US government withdraw all it's military forces from every foreign country on the planet. The US has global reach and when it comes to military actions. The B2's can leave Kansas and fly to another continent to carry out a mission and be back the next day for dinner. If something serious needs to be done the US submarine fleet can also carry out any operations needed. Then the US should politely refuse to participate in any UN causes. They can stay in the UN but abstain from approving anything that could lead to using US troops and military assets. Then the US can adopt an amoral foreign policy. This type of policy might sound hash but China has successfully adopted this pattern when dealing in international problems. Let the Taliban govern anything they can grasp and just ignore them unless they sponsor any actions against US interests. Let the entire ME commit suicide any way they wish but make sure to ensure oil exports. The US really shouldn't get involved in this at all because the US only gets about 10% of it's oil from the region. Let the Europeans and far east bloc of countries who cannot get their oil from somewhere else. The US should fall back to dealing with countries bi-lateral talks to benefit US interests. Oh I forgot! The US should stop dealing with Isreal and let them do whatever they feel is necessary to secure themselves. And I do mean anything. The world is already bemoaning the lack of US interest in Syria and other countries. The US will also have to put up with Iran and NK nuclear arsenals. Let Isreal take care on Iran and let China deal with NK. Perhaps if the US adopted this military non-intervention strategy the people always complaining about war and violence would shut the fuck up. The non-sense of "International Law" should also be shit canned. There can be no Law without the means of enforcing the laws. If someone harms American interests then some good old cruise missile or drone diplomacy might be in order. The atrocious distortion of the facts effecting today's decisions will eventually lead to irate citizens pressuring their governments to do something to fix whatever issue they are protesting this week.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Al Qaeda is perhaps the most brilliant organization on this planet. With such limited resources, they sure have crippled this great, free country to a common dictatorship.

People blame the terrorists for our plight, but let's look at this objectively: How much damage is this organization directly responsible for? A few buildings? Few thousand people dead? Whatever answer you come up with, even if you declare large swaths of the general population malignant, you can't approach the damage caused by our reaction.

If America fell, it wasn't because of the terrorists, but us. We allowed our elected representatives to do this to us. We voted them into office repeatedly, and willfully. There is no "it just fell from the sky and killed our country" option here. We did this to ourselves.

Point the finger in the right direction: Right back at you. Terrorists didn't do this, we did.

This has been Al Qaeda's written, public strategy for more than a decade. They are specifically aiming to bankrupt us through overreaction and eliminate our liberties through more overreaction. While our politicians are directly to blame, it is kind of impressive that AQ managed to succeed even though they freely shared their full game plan over the internet in advance. They took into account the fact that our national security apparatus would always choose increased profits and power, even if it meant impoverishing the nation and eliminating our freedoms.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[greenbird]

But what about accountability for handing over important information?

You're looking at this wrong. What about accountability for our Government? Who has the potential to do more damage, an individual or the most powerful Government that has ever existed in mankind's history? I know which one I fear more.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[greenbird]

You do realize the ecuadorean government makes the crap the USA government has done look good right? Oh and Ecuador is currently running Wikileaks. And you can't prove otherwise As Assage won't let go control of wikileaks and is hiding out in a Ecuadorean Embassy.

Note I said 'organizations like Wikileaks'. If Wikileaks comes under the influence of forces that limit what they'll release there are other organizations and hopefully even more coming.

And I really don't buy your premise on Wikileaks. They release a number of different things since Assage was forced to flee to the embassy. And I don't need to prove otherwise. You can't prove a negitive. Show me some evidence of influence.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[greenbird]

From you tag line I take it you are of libertarian persuasion.

I really don't affiliate with any particular political party's philosophy. Ayn Rand had some interesting and deep social and political insights. And she earned them the hard way.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[greenbird]

But what will WikiLeaks or its successors leak if people honestly fear that death is the punishment for getting caught?

I think you underestimate people. At least from historical evidence people have fought oppression in the face of death or even worse punishments when caught.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[greenbird]

That will remain true until that are a couple of orders of magnitude more exit points

So what we need is some freedom loving nations to support and/or sponsor TOR exit points. Oh the irony drips deep...

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Demena]

Not nations but individuals in many nations preferably.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You should know that no U.S. "liberal" has any liberal principles, liberal is nothing but a synonym for a piece of shit over there. Correctly so since the "liberals" are socialists, communists, and social democrats who intentionally appropriated the term to make it meaningless, just as they're now doing with libertarian and as they did long ago with the term "progressive".

Everything is/was based on self interest.

And since he's unlikely to admit that but instead weasel it into something good for this or that interest group it makes him a true leftist. Makes perfect sense that he would cozy up to Hillary and Obama and the rest.

Murdoch has a habit of portraying himself as fighting the good cause against the establishment (that is the very reason he gave for getting into the newspaper business in the first place). If he was up for election he would be championing for the poor and for gay rights and calling everybody else racists. Never mind that Murdoch is and would be part of the same establishment but can anyone name any successful leftist who isn't?

The choice between honest assholes ("extreme far right") and dishonest assholes (everyone to the left of them) isn't much of choice.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Tom]

You are mistaking the occasion for the cause. Common mistake in history, and one of the worst.

WW1 didn't start because of an assassination. The powers involved were pretty much thirsting for a war and that event simply gave them the opportunity to finally start one.

Same with the war in Afghanistan, Iraq and the turn of internal US politics into whatever you want to call today's sorry state of affairs. It has little to do with 9/11 in a causative sense.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Demena]

I think you make a mistake. The extreme right are dishonest assholes too.

And there are some honest leftists and socialists as well as a few rightwingers. There are some with principles. But politics brings out the worst in both sides. Nevertheless I prefer those who at least are forced to maintain the image of having a social conscience rather than those that don't. Government should be "for the people" even if it isn't "by the people".

However anything works that minimises the disparity of wealth. If you look at countries and time and places both the country and the people are are most successful and happy when that disparity of wealth is the least. Despite any politics

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[sesshomaru]

"hosting a fundraiser in 2006 Hilary Clinton's Senate reelection campaign"

I'm afraid that tells you far more about Hillary Clinton than it does about Rupert Murdoch.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Anonymous Coward]

In order to defeat Tor you need to control or have the logs from only 1% of exit points.

..in addition to being able to do traffic analysis on a large portion of internet, I presume?

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Demena]

Not so much. You would be looking for matching entry and exit times from the logs of your compromised servers. Eventually you will track down your mark. You don't actually need the route.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaYdCdwiWU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rnbc_9JnVtc

These videos cover some of it.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is easy to see weak points in western culture because the culture is so young and shallow. Military power is not cultural power and aq is pointing that out in a very concrete way.

Strong and old cultures are strong for a reason. A strong culture 'knows' human nature, it formed around and in shape of what and how humans are. Western capitalist system only tries to ride on one of the traits of human nature, greed. It is failing, but from that downfall the western culture learns something new, takes cues from older, more successful cultures and it will try again. With better knowledge.

A culture is a massive sociopsychological structure that has its own will, because no individual has voice strong enough to steer it. But the structure moves according to the human nature. Mortal fear moves it, lazyness moves it, vital resources moves it. It is like a patch of semi intelligent mold, because, on a large scale, that is all we humans amount to. For now.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[UsuallyReasonable]

>>If Bradley Manning is convicted of aiding the enemy, the introduction of a capital offense into the mix would dramatically elevate the threat to whistleblowers.

I'm missing how this is a negative thing. Treason, death penalty, I'm cool with that.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Xest]

"If America fell, it wasn't because of the terrorists, but us."

This is absolutely true. Far more Americans lost their lives going to war in Iraq, a nation that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, than lost their lives in 9/11.

Bush took the 9/11 casualty figures, and multiplied them by three with his actions if you include Afghanistan also. That's quite a colossal fuck up of a response to the initial problem.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Lumpy]

If he kept his mouth shut, he would never have been caught.

Moral of the story, if you dont want to become a Martyr... Keep your mouth shut.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Lumpy]

Just wait 8 more years....

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Lumpy]

The Rich wont let us.

The ONLY WAY you can become president is to be a billionaire. If you dont have Millions upon Millions and spend them like mad you have zero chance of even making it to a primary.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Lumpy]

"This is coming from a law professor?"

He has far more credibility than some idiot hiding behind an AC posting flapping his lips and not adding ANYTHING to the argument but opinion.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Jessified]

Most certainly. Turning the US into a police state has been in the works for a long time...all that was needed was a precipitating event.

Pretty much the only reason I ever gave one second of thought to the conspiracy theories. Not that I think the US would have done the attacks themselves, but they could have intentionally let down their guards. I mean it's not like we've never lied to go to war (Iraq, Vietnam etc).

I read a book a while ago that made the point that despite common perception, historically there isn't some magical evolution to democracy as a government. There was a very specific set of circumstances that led to democracy, and it can just as easily vanish if not properly safeguarded.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[phantomfive]

If your definition of liberal is "altruistic and not self-serving" then there aren't very many liberals in the world.....

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is why the MSM journalists sold out WLO when Assange wouldn't pander to their over-inflated egos.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[elucido]

he press has already been so grossly compromised by corporate influence that it's "critical watchdog function" isn't currently all that functional anyway

Yup. And that's why organizations like Wikileaks and technology like encryption and Tor are so critical. They've taken over that function. Actually they're even better for that function because there much less likely to be influenced by political pressure of any kind.

Technology like WIkileaks and Tor will only create political pressure to further militarize the internet. Wikileaks and Tor will be viewed as weapons in an arms race and other nations will develop their own.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[fatphil]

Well, these events are causative, but these triggering events aren't necessarily /sine qua non/.

proximal/immediate cause(s): assasination of FF; 9/11
distal/ultimate cause(s): decades of history; decades of history

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[bluefoxlucid]

You can't prove a negitive.

I can prove that Martha Stewart doesn't have a penis.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[bluefoxlucid]

You have terrible taste.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[bluefoxlucid]

Are you saying we should execute the Government?

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[bluefoxlucid]

People get arrested, thrown through mock trials, and have their lives destroyed for being politically unfavorable. The police are a mob.

Then: "You don't know what a police state is, don't bitch. You live in a wonderful utopia."

Okay shithead, just because you live under Putin's KGB, that doesn't mean the "less bad" isn't still a terrible hell.

Re:Before all you blowhards cheer the Feds ...

[greenbird]

You have terrible taste.

It's funny. Almost everyone I've encountered that bags on Ayn Rand completely misinterpreted the point she was trying to make.

Re:Leaving this site forever

[DFurno2003]

Which one are you? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wilson

Arab Spring

[betterunixthanunix]

This was a big factor in the Arab Spring. There is a chance of good things resulting from that (it will be years before we know).

Re:Arab Spring

[anagama]

Democracy in the middle east is not considered a "good" by the Feds. They much prefer friendly ruthless dictators. Not for example how we've never invaded Saudia Arabia and never have a bad word to say about them. Or how HRC considered Mubarak a friend of the family ( http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/01/secretary-clinton-in-2009-i-really-consider-president-and-mrs-mubarak-to-be-friends-of-my-family/ ).

Re:Arab Spring

[Anonymous Coward]

You seriosly believe there is "democracy" in Egypt now. Or Libya.

It's true that the old dictators were toppled but now there is a power vacuum where new overlords are fighting for top dog position. Egypt have had an increase in islamic terrorism which is kept silent in media to not make it worse. Do you think the air balloon full of tourists that exploded was an accident or terrorism? Blonde women can no longer walk in Cairo without escorts for fear of rape. Seriosly, dude.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Re:Arab Spring

[the eric conspiracy]

I don't think they care if it's a dictatorship or not. The key word is friendly.

For example Turkey has been a staunch ally since the Truman Doctrine and has the highest Democracy Index in the region excluding Israel.

Re:Arab Spring

[jhoegl]

Actually, the key word is predictable.
If a leader is unpredictable, no one can do business with them.

Re:Arab Spring

[drcagn]

I don't disagree about how our terribly our government works, but it's kind of funny that you conveniently left out the very next question in that interview:

QUESTION: Is this file, by any chance, connected to the invitation – extended invitation – for President Mubarak to visit the United States?
SECRETARY CLINTON: No. It’s an annual report. It is not in any way connected. We look forward to President Mubarak coming as soon as his schedule would permit. I had a wonderful time with him this morning. I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family. So I hope to see him often here in Egypt and in the United States.
QUESTION: How do you view the presidency in Egypt, the future of the presidency in Egypt?
SECRETARY CLINTON: That’s for the people of Egypt to decide. That is a very important issue that really is up to Egyptians.

Re:Arab Spring

[Anonymous Coward]

The key word is friendly.

You misspelled subservient.

Re:Arab Spring

[drinkypoo]

Talk is cheap, and since Secretary Clinton started collecting big business checks at the same rate as everyone else (better than most, actually) we found out what hers was worth.

A charitable soul would believe that she was on the side of good until they shot down single-payer health care, and she gave up and joined the dark side since if you can't beat 'em, you might as well get paid. I am not that charitable, but it had to be said.

Re:Arab Spring

[Anonymous Coward]

I am told that Arabs patients of a friend consider Julian Assange the hero of the Arab Spring. That they could sort of live with being dictated by their own but not when they found out Empire of the USA was behind it. It is a largely anti American movement for good reasons ("really, all our income must be based in US dollars or you lose 90% of your economic leverage"). And I want to see how many geeks have no working definition of and will deny the word Empire.

Re:Arab Spring

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA has never invaded Saudi Arabia due to oil connections with Texas.

It is well known that there are very strong links between the Saudis and (for example) the Bush family.

They Saudis have been very good donors to the presidential campaigns of (for example) George Bush Jnr.

They've essentially "bought" their way out of invasion.

Re:Arab Spring

[peragrin]

really? from where i sit I see more blood thirsty militants in control of weapons they dont understand.

is Egypt really better off right now? 15% of the population is hiding in fear of their lives from the current ruling class. The leadership has taken massive steps to become ever bit as violent and dangerous as Murbak was.

Libya? sure that jerk Ghadiffi is gone, but you can't walk around there without bribes and armor plating.
Syria? still burning going into the 3 year of a civil war.

Iraq? nope still a mess, Iran still trying to build nukes,

Jordan? there is still a king though he gave up some random powers to the congress so maybe you can put that in the win column.

Yep Arab Spring sure was good.

Saddam Hussien might originally have been a puppet who became a real boy. But he kept sectarian violence down, and relative peace between the violent versions of Islam.

Re:Arab Spring

[cold fjord]

Democracy in the middle east is not considered a "good" by the Feds. They much prefer friendly ruthless dictators. Not for example how we've never invaded Saudia Arabia and never have a bad word to say about them.

Your post is largely nonsense. Democracy is considered good, even in the Middle East, although elements of the local culture and religion can make that problematic. Saudi Arabia has never given the US cause to invade it as it is a friendly government to the United States, one which the US spent considerable treasure and blood to defend. (You may recall that it was Saddam Hussain's conquest of Kuwait and direct threat to Saudi Arabia which resulted in the first big step towards his downfall.)

And yes, the US does ciriticize Saudi Arabia, regularly.

2010 Human Rights Report: Saudi Arabia

The following significant human rights problems were reported: no right to change the government peacefully; torture and physical abuse; poor prison and detention center conditions; arbitrary arrest and incommunicado detention; denial of fair and public trials and lack of due process in the judicial system; political prisoners; restrictions on civil liberties such as freedoms of speech (including the Internet), assembly, association, movement, and severe restrictions on religious freedom; and corruption and lack of government transparency. Violence against women and a lack of equal rights for women, violations of the rights of children, trafficking in persons, and discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, sect, and ethnicity were common. The lack of workers' rights, including the employment sponsorship system, remained a severe problem.

One more thing, since so many people are confused on this point, the fact that 15 of 19 of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia points to the problem they have with extremists, not to hostile action by the Saudi government. The 9/11 attacks against the US were no more Saudi government policy than the Fenian raids against Canada were US government policy.

Re:Arab Spring

[VicVegas]

The people I know living in Egypt would beg to differ with you, especially your comment regarding blondes in Cairo.

Re:Arab Spring

[TubeSteak]

If a leader is unpredictable, no one can do business with them.

North Korea and Iran have been fairly predictable, but they've been sanctioned like hell by western nations.

Re:Arab Spring

[wmac1]

For example Turkey has been a staunch ally since the Truman Doctrine and has the highest Democracy Index in the region excluding Israel.

That was a joke , right? Israel and Turkey? Democracy?

"Turkey 'world leader' in imprisoned journalists, IPI report says": http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=ipi-report-declares-turkey-world-leader-of-imprisoned-journalists-2011-04-08

Re:Arab Spring

[wmac1]

Or this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_Turkish_coup_d'%C3%A9tat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Turkish_coup_d'%C3%A9tat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_military_memorandum_(Turkey)

Turkey holds a record in army interventions and copes in the region

Re:Arab Spring

[Anonymous Coward]

"Saudi Arabia has never given the US cause to invade it"

19 of the 20 aircraft hijackers on September 11th, 2001, were Saudi Arabian nationals.

AC

Re:Arab Spring

[dbIII]

It's relative. For instance in Russia a troublesome journalist was murdered as a birthday present for Putin.

Re:Arab Spring

[ColdWetDog]

Dwarf.

Re:Arab Spring

[quax]

Saudia Arabia is state sponsor of Wahhabism and supported the spread of madrassas in Pakistan/Afghanistan that teach this radical form of Islam.

There'd be no Taliban nor Al Quaeda if Wahhabism wasn't so influential and well funded.

Re:Arab Spring

[techno-vampire]

Just because we can generally predict what North Korea and Iran are going to do doesn't mean that we like what they're doing.

Re:Arab Spring

[Runaway1956]

Read up on Operation Ajax, the operation in which the United States toppled a perfectly legitimate democracy, in order to install a (spineless) puppet dictator, for the sake of saving some money on oil.

Anyone who believes that the US government believes in democracy is a blathering idiot. Our government worships oil, and nothing else. Damned near everything we do is aimed at securing energy, almost all of it in the form of oil. Democracy is a fool's dream and a lie, pablum spoon fed to the idiot masses.

Re:Arab Spring

[cold fjord]

Regarding Operation Ajax, I suggest you do the same. Operation Ajax was a counter-coup. If you actually know the history you know that the United States didn't install the Shaw of Iran in power, but helped return him to it after he had been overthrown in a coup by Iranians looking to ally with the Communists of the Soviet Union. The Shaw was hardly a puppet, and not a dictator but an emperor.

If people who believe the US government believes in democracy are blathering idiots, what does that make you for overlooking Iraq? You do know that Iraq is a parliamentary democracy today, right?

I'm pretty sure that not everything the US government does is aimed at securing energy, given the evidence: blocking Keystone pipeline, anti-fracking, huge increases coming in EPA regulation aimed at shutting down coal plants, shutting down oil rigs and exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, not approving nuclear plants, etc., etc.

Although you state that, "Democracy is a fool's dream and a lie, pablum spoon fed to the idiot masses", I think you've both drank and are selling a bit of snake oil yourself.

Cheers

Re:Arab Spring

[Anonymous Coward]

has the highest Democracy Index in the region

Emphasis added. Just because a superlative adjective was used does not mean that the adjective by itself would be fitting.

Re:Arab Spring

[Anonymous Coward]

Operation Ajax was a counter-coup.

lol bullshit

Re:Arab Spring

[cold fjord]

Very simple to settle. Just answer the question - Was the Shah in power at any time prior to Operation Ajax? The answer is yes. Now, how can you put someone in power if they are already in power? You can't. Why was the Shah, the legitimate head of state, out? A coup against him. Returning the Shah to power after the coup against him makes it a counter-coup. The bull is in what you believe.

Re:Arab Spring

[ph1ll]

A counter coup? Citation needed.

Mosaddegh's was democratically elected (citations provided).

Re:Arab Spring

[cold fjord]

Wahhabism is problematic, to say the least, especially when coupled with the immense wealth and backing of the Saudis. However, it isn't the all-encompassing explanation of the difficulties regarding Islam in the world.

A Wahhabism Problem - Misleading historical negationism.
WAHHABISM: STATE-SPONSORED EXTREMISM WORLDWIDE

Re:Arab Spring

[cold fjord]

And did you read your citation? You might be missing some history from just that. Your "democratically elected" Prime Minister was ruling by decree. Also, notice who he appoints as Speaker of the House - from a party he then proceeds to antagonize, and undermine.

. . .Mosaddegh convinced parliament to grant him emergency powers for six months "to decree any law he felt necessary for obtaining not only financial solvency, but also electoral, judicial, and educational reforms".[37] Mosaddegh appointed Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani as house speaker. Kashani's Islamic scholars, as well as the Tudeh Party, proved to be two of Mosaddegh's key political allies, although relations with both were often strained.

With his emergency powers, Mosaddegh tried to strengthen the democratic political institutions by limiting the monarchy's unconstitutional powers,[38] cutting Shah's personal budget, forbidding him to communicate directly with foreign diplomats, transferring royal lands back to the state and expelling his politically active sister Ashraf Pahlavi.[36]

In January 1953 Mosaddegh successfully pressed Parliament to extend "emergency powers for another 12 months". With these powers, he decreed a land reform law that established village councils and increased the peasants' share of production.[37] This weakened the landed aristocracy, abolishing Iran's centuries-old feudal agriculture sector, replacing it with a system of collective farming and government land ownership. Mosaddegh saw these reforms as a means of checking the power of the Tudeh Party, which had been agitating for general land reform among the peasants. --- Mohammad Mosaddegh

So, he was ruling by decree, interfering with the affairs of the head of state, using his power to undermine other political parties.... getting a sense of things yet?

To prevent things from going against him, he usurped the Shah's power by dissolving the parliament - an act that only the Shah could legally perform - and extended his powers indefinitely. He tried to wash the stink off that with a fraudulent vote.

IRAN: 99.93% Pure - Monday, Aug. 17, 1953

Hitler's best as a vote-getter was 99.81% Ja's in 1936; Stalin's peak was 99.73% Da's in 1946. Last week Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, the man in the iron cot, topped them all with 99.93%.

This is the way he did it. Having unconstitutionally dissolved the Majlis, Mossadegh ordered a national referendum to judge his act, crying: "The will of the people is above law."

---

On Saturday 15 August, Colonel Nematollah Nassiri, the commander of the Imperial Guard, delivered to Mosaddegh a firman from the Shah dismissing him. Mosaddegh, . . . rejected the firman as a forgery and had Nassiri arrested.[52] --- 1953 Iranian coup d'etat

After the unconstitutional dismissal of parliament and the fraudulent vote, the Shah signed a decree dismissing Mossadegh as Prime Minister, as was his power and right as monarch. The officer sent to remove Mossadegh was arrested by Mossadegh's men.

A Prime Minister that rules by degree, unconstitutionally dissolves parliament, ignores the constitution, and refuses dismissal from lawful authority is no longer a simple "democratically elected" Prime Minister, but a tyrant. Usurping the power of the Shah and refusing dismissal was overthrowing the head of state - coup d'etat.

The Shah fled the country for his safety until Mossadegh the tyrant could be overthrown.

The data is there, you just have to know where to look. Interesting the way the information is partitioned in Wikipedia, almost as if it was designed to obscure instead of enlighten.

Mohammad Mos

Re:Arab Spring

[Ly4]

Shorter you: Mossedegh bad; Shah good. I'd love to hear your views on SAVAK: Great secret police, or greatest secret police?

You comment is unusually partisan - unusual, since there aren't that many people with a partisan view of Iranian history here on /.

Re:Arab Spring

[cold fjord]

"Saudi Arabia has never given the US cause to invade it"

19 of the 20 aircraft hijackers on September 11th, 2001, were Saudi Arabian nationals.

I know you think that is meaningful, but it isn't. (And it is 15 of 19, by the way.) The hijackers were not acting on the behalf of the Saudi Government either directly or indirectly. The hijackers were outlaws, terrorists, that wanted not only to attack the United States but to overthrow the Saudi government as well. If the United States attacked Saudi Arabia for (probably) anything but the gravest threat in the most limited way, it would help them to accomplish their goals: the Saudi government would be gone, and the US would be at war with the Muslim world.

Re:Arab Spring

[ph1ll]

Are we reading the same Wikipedia page?

"With his emergency powers, Mosaddegh tried to strengthen the democratic political institutions by limiting the monarchy's unconstitutional powers."

That sounds like a good thing to me.

Why did you selectively edit that quote from Wikipedia, omitting a critical part of the sentence? Here, let me reinstate it: " More popular than ever, a greatly strengthened Mosaddegh convinced parliament to grant him emergency powers..."

What's wrong with (temporarily) ruling by decree if those were the powers parliament legitimately gave him during a state of emergency?

Why is Mosaddegh called a tyrant in your post and the unelected Shah is not?

And why does any of this then give the United States and the UK the right to intervene?

(I cannot see the Time article because it is behind a paywall but since it was published in 1953 it will not have any benefit of hindsight.)

Re:Arab Spring

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, sure, the Arab Spring is just great. Even more widespread extreme fundamentalist Islamic government takeovers. You must really enjoy praising Muhammad.

And they were so overjoyed in Egypt that they couldn't help but rape the friendly U.S. citizen who was there to report the "joy" people toppling governments. I'm sure you wish you could've been there to also stick your fingers in her pussy, you know, "for Democracy".

Re:Arab Spring

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah sure the problem is wahhabist/salafist movements, who merely teach going back to the origins of their ideology. Absolutely ... nobody look at the elephant in the room.

Weird that the world is full of "back to origins" movements, quite literally from programming or chess to capitalism and communism ... and strangely none of them want to commit genocide, never mind genocide on the scale that all these muslim movements (these 2 are hardly the only ones) seek to commit genocide, nor do most even want to kill at all to restoring their order. Even the many nationalist movements have nowhere near the bloodlust as these wahhabi/salafi's and dozens of other islamic movements.

Can we please just use non-arabic names for everything ?
taliban - students of islam
wahhabist - followers of saudi (which is the same as salafi, except for one small point relating to who speaks for their god)
salafi - early islam (in other words, the prophet)

The problem with all these movements is quite simply that the islamic prophet was a paedophilic thief, a massacring warmonger and a slaver, and the "righteous" first muslims a band that enthusiastically raped and pillaged the entire middle east. THAT's what they're bringing back. You just can't find any worse people in history than this disgusting monster, it just does not exist. The idea that islam has anything worthwhile to say is much more ridiculous than that we should bring nazi germany, or imperial japan.

Re:Arab Spring

[Lumpy]

And the US government will make sure he suffers greatly from that "good".

Sadly, what angered and caused the arabs to uprise, barely made US citizens blink. Most found it an annoyance as the breaking news interrupted dancing with the stars and america's got talent.

Re:Arab Spring

[Lumpy]

Agreed, they both are doing what the USA wants to do to it's citizens. But they do it far to openly and Americans can see it and not like it. Therefore we are against them to ease the worries and slide in the exact same thing slower in order to get them used to it.

Re:Arab Spring

[Anonymous Coward]

"the Saudi government would be gone, and the US would be at war with the Muslim world."

This would make it far easier then. The war would be over in days. Start carpet bombing every village and city, wipe them all off the map. The survivors will gladly renounce any extremist parts of their religion and adopt whatever the new American Overlords would tell them.

You see a real war of "oppressors" would be swift and utterly devastating. we could eliminate the Iran threat in mere hours. Yes the USA could destroy Iraq in a 4 hour window overnight with the morning bringing the people surrendering. IT would result in probably 60% civillian casualties, but would be effortless on our part.

But instead of acting like true oppressors, we send people on the ground to try and shoot only bad guys.

I suggest studying books on warfare. The USA is in a police action, not a war. it's being called a war to appease the people at home.

Re:Arab Spring

[Internetuser1248]

If we are talking about whether the US government supports democracy in foreign countries I have a few more citations: Chile Nicaragua. Yes I know Nicaragua was not a democratically elected government but it was a popular revolution, and was certainly more on the side of the people than the terrorists that the US funded and supported.

Re:Arab Spring

[Runaway1956]

That counter-coup nonsense has already been addressed by others. I don't buy it, in the least.

Ask yourself a couple questions. What was the motivation for the CIA's involvement in the coup (or counter-coup, if we accept your point of view)?

MONEY!

The US claims to love democracy. There was a democratically elected government in place. There was a handy dictatorial puppet at hand. For the sake of money, we established that dictatorial puppet, in the process destroying a democracy.

YOU WILL NOTE PLEASE:
I have made no claims that any of the existing government officials were "good guys". I have made no claim that none of those officials were power hungry mad men. I have made no claim that Mossadiq was a saint. Iran had it's problems, and was certain to encounter more. Iran may or may not have become our freinds, or our enemies, as a democracy. But, Iran's government was a legitimate democracy, and we were hypocrites to topple that government.

Our one and only goal, was to enrich ourselves, and incidentally BP, with oil. Today, all of our meddling in the mideast is still aimed at that one goal - to secure a cheap supply of oil. We don't give a small damn for the people living in the areas that are rich in oil. And, we certainly do NOT respect democracy.

Re:Arab Spring

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA believes in the illusion of Democracy.

Even the founding fathers understood that the unwashed masses were not right to rule the land. That is why Congress has 2 parts. The House is the democratic, representation of the citizen. The Senate, which was to be appointed by the state political structure until the law was changed, has a lot more power than the House does. All confirmation hearings, impeachments, etc go thru the Senate. A Senator runs for 6 years, the Reps are 2.

Flash in the pans like the Tea Party are exactly why the terms are structured like they. So that the people "feel" that they are being heard. Then when the fervor settles down, new Reps are put in, but the Senate is still there.

Re:Arab Spring

[the eric conspiracy]

Compared to most of the world, they are definitely about average in the spectrum from say Norway which probably has the best democracy to North Korea which is probably the furthest from democracy.

That is definitely better than the average for the middle east which is the worst region in the world overall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

Re:Arab Spring

[SteveFoerster]

Democracy is considered good, even in the Middle East, although elements of the local culture and religion can make that problematic.

If American policy makers actually believed this, they'd have recognised Somaliland sometime in the last decade or so.

Re:Arab Spring

[AK Marc]

Bush claimed we went in to Kuawait to "restore Democracy" and you do realize that the US started the Vietnam war by refusing to participate in democracy so that the US could set up a proper puppet dictatorship? The US put in power or supported after in, Castro, Noriega, and Saddam Hussein. We also ousted 2/3 and tried to oust 3/3. You'd think we'd have learned our lesson the first 10 times or so. Why is it that the US requires not only democracy, but that the people vote the way we would?

Re:Arab Spring

[AK Marc]

How about how the US blocked the elections in Vietnam to start the Vietnamese war where the elected head of North Vietnam "invaded" the south to take the capital he was elected to serve in? Or the support given to Noriega and Castro before they took over their countries?

Re:Arab Spring

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, the ay-rabs are a threat to democracy (and not the west)? That's rich. So our Al-maliki's crackdown on iraqi journalists (with the Obama administration's express consent) isn't in opposition to free speech and democracy ? what about the Obama administration's continued approval of dissident yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider shaye? is that consistent with democracy and free speech?

Please. everywhere you equate the west with democracy, you lie by omission.

Re:Arab Spring

[cold fjord]

That counter-coup nonsense has already been addressed by others. I don't buy it, in the least.

It has been addressed.... mainly by hand waving and denial.

There was a democratically elected government in place. . . . For the sake of money, we established that dictatorial puppet, in the process destroying a democracy.. . .But, Iran's government was a legitimate democracy, and we were hypocrites to topple that government.

I suggest you take another look. Iran's democracy was gone before the counter-coup removed the tyrant Mosaddeq. After securing the power to rule by decree he illegally dissolved the parliament and tried to cover his tracks with a fraudulent vote. He then refused to comply with the check and balance of the Shaw being able to remove the Prime Minister, making his overthrow of both the legislature and the executive complete while he remained to rule by decree. You don't have democracy if the parliament is dissolved, never to meet again and the ruler has no check and balance against him, and his whim is law. You are badly confused if you think that is democracy.

Democracy in Iran was overthrown by the tyrant Mosaddeq, not by the US, UK, and the Shaw.

Or do you deny the historical record?

The US spent considerable blood and treasure helping rebuild Iraq after 2003, and to protect the Kurds in the 1990s. The US spent blood and treasure driving Saddam from Kuwait, which he unjustly annexed.

The US did what it could to help stabilize Lebanon on several occasions (where is the oil in Lebanon?).

I'm afraid your history if faulty, and your understanding of the US is badly flawed.

The US has brought democracy or a return to democracy to many countries, including Germany, Italy, Japan, Haiti, Iraq, and others.

Re:Arab Spring

[wmac1]

That is definitely better than the average for the middle east which is the worst region in the world overall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

Says who? A western website.
With what methodology? A methodology based on western values.

Not that I believe M.E. has better situation. I just think many western countries just have illusions of democracy.

Re:Arab Spring

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick question, cold fjord: did your family move permanently to the West around 1979?

Re:Arab Spring

[steelfood]

That's the difference between stability and instability. Right now, the region is going through a period of instability. Once it stabilizes, things will be better. But there's a big question as to whether it will eventually stabilize at all.

It should happen if left to their own devices. However, there are forces working against this. Al Qaeda is just one of those forces. "Western" governments are yet another. There may be others. Whether the local population can overcome these challenges, well, some yes, some perhaps not.

Re:Arab Spring

[steelfood]

(You may recall that it was Saddam Hussain's conquest of Kuwait and direct threat to Saudi Arabia which resulted in the first big step towards his downfall.)

Drinking the kool aid much?

Let me paint a better picture for you: Iraq had just finished fighting a bloody, decade-long war with Iran. The U.S., in fact, was a huge supporter of Saddam Hussein, as Iran was (and is still) considered an enemy. Saddam Hussein returns from the war with Iran to find Kuwait had turned their drill bits horizontal and drilled into Iraq's oil fields.

Saddam Hussein complained, and quite loudly too, but there was really no response from the rest of the world. Nobody really cared. He thought he had full U.S. backing (which he did right up to that moment), so he could send an army into Kuwait to take back his oil and shut down the drills that were drilling into his fields.

The betrayal by the U.S. when they brought in troops to defend Kuwait came as a complete shock to him. And it's a lesson that every other country takes to heart.

Re:Arab Spring

[bluefoxlucid]

I'm not sure democracy is universally "good". Political ideals are an infectious disease. Communism, fascism, and finally democracy--only the latest--have always spread by force of the great liberating the proletariat from the oppressions of tyranny.

I've made the observation several times that what America needs in these trying times is possibly a King, some form of powerful monarch who can actually fix things. Unfortunately that ship has sailed: when we fought with sticks and swords, global warfare was impossible and instability demanded uncompromising focus on restoring stability within. Now a powerful monarch has the great option to ignore internal stability, as it is pathetically unimportant to the external threat--you need a stable nation when you fight with pikes and axes, but when you fight with fighter jets and nuclear cruise missiles you only need a powerful military.

In an age passed, with similar conditions, America might best find its way out of its current political, economic, and social strife by a powerful monarch. Naturally, when said monarch outlived his urgency, he would have to provide great benefit to the people and great benevolence or else face an angry populous whose greatest threat was the monarch himself. When the monarch is less of an evil than the situation he is effectively stabilizing, he will be tolerated. Thus, when no longer useful, the monarch is replaced with a democratic system.

What we see now is the failure of the democratic system, and the lack of options for a context-correct system to replace it with. A strong monarchy would be ill-suited to a world where the external threats are addressable without concern for the well-being of the greater populous. It would be the correct stabilization system where the greater populous desperately needs stabilization for the nation to survive external threats, and thus to where the monarch's greatest pressure is to serve or to be threatened from all fronts both foreign and domestic.

What recourse have we? Strong socialism is a failure--it is as wrong as a strong monarch in our situation for the same reasons, albeit it is great and wonderful for small and unstable colonies of only a handful. Feudalism is best suited where resources are available but where capitalism cannot subsist, where the populous is too large and too disparate for socialism.

None of these options are very good. Not even Democracy, which has been made a show of disparate factions and ignorant masses incapable of self-governance and only operating under the illusion of choice and freedom.

Re:Arab Spring

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck are you talking about? Vietnam had been in a state of civil war since, what, 1950? We didn't start that conflict but we *did* end up joining in.

Re:Arab Spring

[mog007]

Not that I agree with the GP about democracy, but I would argue that not approving nuclear power is a very pro-oil position to have.

Re:Arab Spring

[AK Marc]

The French colony was a mess. The US entered (under Eisenhower, the first president to send a US troop to his death in Vietnam) to stabilize. The elections were called, and the communist-friendly government looked like they were going to win, so the US started the war to prevent democracy. What, did you learn your history about Vietnam from the Republicans? "JFK started it, the US tried to impose democracy, but the civil war was already going on before we got there, and the communists wouldn't let us hold an election." Go read some history books that weren't written in the US and approved by the Kansas and Texas school boards.

Re:Arab Spring

[tehcyder]

Do you think the air balloon full of tourists that exploded was an accident or terrorism?

In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I would assume it was an accident.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

At least it's their own boss.

Re:Arab Spring

[tehcyder]

The US put in power or supported after in, Castro

If you're referring to Fidel Castro, I think you need to buy some new history books.

As a hint, after WW2, the US was not noted for encouraging Communist revolutions and revolutionaries. Noriega and Hussein were extreme right wing dictators, who were rather more popular with the CIA while it suited them.

Re:Arab Spring

[tehcyder]

Whatever your views on their imperfections, Israel and Turkey are vastly more democratic than Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran or any other country in the region.

Re:Arab Spring

[tehcyder]

Not that I believe M.E. has better situation. I just think many western countries just have illusions of democracy.

Just because we don't have perfect freedom and democracy doesn't mean that western countries aren't significantly freeer and more democratic than almost anywhere in the Middle East.

Re:Arab Spring

[tehcyder]

The Saudi Arabian government is a vile dictatorship whose policies are not far removed from the Taliban's. But it's a fucking rich one, so we all continue doing business with it.

I, for one, look forward to the day the west no longer depends on oil and doesn't have to cosy up to the Gulf states.

Re:Arab Spring

[tehcyder]

When communists or socialists win an election, the US and its allies don't count it as truly democratic.

Re:Arab Spring

[tehcyder]

Why do you keep saying that the US supported Castro?

As it is completely contrary to the generally accepted idea that Castro fought against Battista who was a tool of the Mafia, US business interests and the CIA, you need to provide some form of evidence that the US ever supported a revolutionary Communist.

Re:Arab Spring

[tehcyder]

I suggest you take another look. Iran's democracy was gone before the counter-coup removed the tyrant Mosaddeq. After securing the power to rule by decree he illegally dissolved the parliament and tried to cover his tracks with a fraudulent vote. He then refused to comply with the check and balance of the Shaw being able to remove the Prime Minister, making his overthrow of both the legislature and the executive complete while he remained to rule by decree. You don't have democracy if the parliament is dissolved, never to meet again and the ruler has no check and balance against him, and his whim is law. You are badly confused if you think that is democracy.

You also don't have democracy when a non-elected "Shaw" is head of state and has any real power. The UK, Netherlands and so on may have non-elected royalty as head of state, but they're purely ceremonial figures. The "Shaw" was a puppet of the West, you just can't stand the fact that Mosaddeq was a left winger who didn't want Iran to be a fucking subsidiary of BP..

Re:Arab Spring

[tehcyder]

Saddam Hussien might originally have been a puppet who became a real boy. But he kept sectarian violence down, and relative peace between the violent versions of Islam.

Yeah, and Mussolini got the trains running on time.

Torturing ants

[1s44c]

The quote about how the US is similar to a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass really sums the situation up for me. As someone in Europe I see the US forcing their way into war after war to justify having a military that has grown out of all control. A country that uses torture as an interrogation technique should not consider itself civilized.

Re:Torturing ants

[dietdew7]

Are you from one of the European nations without blood on its hands? Remind me, which one is that?

Re:Torturing ants

[anagama]

Ahh, the very fine "your ancestors did something evil so you can't point out my current evil" retort. Brilliant. Settles the case for sure!

Re:Torturing ants

[1s44c]

Are you from one of the European nations without blood on its hands? Remind me, which one is that?

No, of course I'm not. But I'm from one that learned from the mistakes of the past and after centuries of war learned to get on with its neighbors.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

"But but but YOU did it too!" doesn't make it any less wrong. Nice try.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Most European nations have done terrible things in the past and to a lesser degree in the present. I am not proud of being British, slavery, oppression and empire, all under that banner.

However the US is the >current main player in the west and the key global enabler for war, torture and economic oppression. If the argument is that Europeans did things equally awful in the past, which i doubt anyone disputes... That excuses the current crop of Muslim extremists, because Christians did awful things in the past too.

Re:Torturing ants

[1s44c]

"But but but YOU did it too!" doesn't make it any less wrong. Nice try.

No country in Europe has ever destroyed two entire countries because a group part based in one destroyed two buildings.

I've heard of avenging a crime sevenfold but a country for a building represents vengeance carried way too far.

Re:Torturing ants

[Elbereth]

Paraphrasing Madeleine Albright: "What's the point of having such a powerful military, if we never use it?"

It's there, so we use it. If it weren't there, we wouldn't be using it.

Re:Torturing ants

[Ogi_UnixNut]

You do realise that a lot of countries in the EU have been implicated in the torture and the ferrying of suspects to other countries with more lax rules on "interrogation methods"?

If there is one thing that the western European nations have not done, it is learn from the past, the same stuff is still going on today, including ignoring/violating international law when it suits them. The difference is that now they have the media to gloss over and sugercoat it so the citizens honestly feel they are the good guys.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope your country isn't part of the UN. The UN has been the puppet organization of the Europeans for when they want to swing the sword of US military might. That's really what it comes down to. If your country is a member of the UN than you haven't "learned to get along" with anyone, you've just found a way of declaring war via global opinion as opposed the the old fashion way of just throwing down the gauntlet.

Re:Torturing ants

[the eric conspiracy]

How about revealing which glass house you are throwing bricks from so we don't just have to take your word for it?

Re:Torturing ants

[onyxruby]

Ah yes, because standing by and doing nothing while innocents are being slaughtered somehow lets you claim a clear conscious. Dictators and tyrants count on people like you to turn a blind eye to atrocities and genocide as it lets them get away with murder by the million.

Clean hands you have there, keep that chin up and remember useful idiots like yourself are as indispensable to mass murders like Stalin, Milosevic, Assad etc as their own armies. Carry on with pride, job well done, no blood on your hands at all. How's that Syria thing working out for you?

Re:Torturing ants

[the eric conspiracy]

Baloney.

WW I was based on the assassination of a single individual.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

What was colonization? Destroying many civilizations just because they were there?

Re:Torturing ants

[Livius]

How is that vengeance? They haven't destroyed anything in Saudi Arabia. Not yet at least.

Re:Torturing ants

[spire3661]

Civilized human beings do not torture their enemies, ever. There is no context that justifies TORTURING ANOTHER HUMAN BEING, EVER.

Re:Torturing ants

[1s44c]

A country that uses torture as an interrogation technique should not consider itself civilized.

Never drop context, which in this case is the 3000+ deaths of September 11, 2001.

How many people died as a result of the US reaction to the 3000+ deaths of September 11, 2001? How many of those dead had no involvement whatsoever in the September 11, 2001 attacks?

Re:Torturing ants

[1s44c]

Ah yes, because standing by and doing nothing while innocents are being slaughtered somehow lets you claim a clear conscious. Dictators and tyrants count on people like you to turn a blind eye to atrocities and genocide as it lets them get away with murder by the million.

I was complaining about the US's war crimes, or don't they count as crimes if your own country does it?

Re:Torturing ants

[dietdew7]

You must be young. Have patience.

Re:Torturing ants

[Marxdot]

No doubt ChrisMaple considers himself a voice of liberty.

Re:Torturing ants

[dietdew7]

Yes, it's not like the parent poster was damning an entire nation of over 300,000,000. You would be surprised at how little control over the government the average man on the street has.

Re:Torturing ants

[the eric conspiracy]

Using torture is a war crime. It is not acceptable nor is it productive. Senior US military command is on record stating it is immoral and counter-productive. It should never happen and those who engage in it, foster it or approve it should be prosecuted.

Re:Torturing ants

[Mr. Slippery]

Paraphrasing Madeleine Albright: "What's the point of having such a powerful military, if we never use it?"

The Founders were smart enough to realize the temptations of a standing army, and tried to put safeguards against one into the Constitution. That's part of what the Second Amendment is about -- not just the RKBA, but a structural defense against the formation of a military-industrial complex by relying on a militia rather than a large standing army. Too bad we opted for an empire instead; they never end well.

Re:Torturing ants

[ScentCone]

Civilized human beings do not torture their enemies, ever.

What a relief, then, that the same waterboarding that thousands of US troops voluntarily go through so they see that it's not torture wasn't actually torture when it was used to help a handful of guys focus their minds on what they were a part of.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

"WW I was based on the assassination of a single individual."

Actually, it was *triggered by* the assassination of a single individual. The root causes were far deeper than that, and had been building for quite a while.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Ireland. And no fighting for freedom doesn't count as "forcing your way into a war". I believe Finland is also fairly spotless.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

I was complaining about the US's war crimes, or don't they count as crimes if your own country does it?

Obviously not. The USA is the most free and democratic country in the world, and it has thus moral superiority. It's God's chosen country, and it will bring justice and vengeance to the world, and it will be victorious, as it has been in all its historical fights against Evil in the world.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, this was the case with the US attack on Iraq following 9/11. After all, attacking a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks and causing the deaths of over 100,000 innocents makes absolutely no sense unless you understand the deeper roots.

100,000 were killed because Saddam "is the guy who tried to kill my dad."

See? Simple, proportionate response.

Re:Torturing ants

[ATMAvatar]

Things are not quite so simple. Our continual war also serves to justify the indefinite imprisonment of non-citizens without trial, giant military contracts handed-out to friends of those in power, and widespread and warrant-less surveillance of the public at large, among other things. In short, it's a nice means to expand power and corruption in US government.

Re:Torturing ants

[the eric conspiracy]

Nonsense. Article I section VIII of the Constitution of the United States of America gives Congress the enumerated power:

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be
for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

One of the first military acts of the Republic was to establish a standing Navy in order to protect trade. cf the Naval Act of 1794.

One of the ships built from funds thereby appropriated is still in service. I had the chance to visit her a few years ago.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

WW I was based on the assassination of a single individual.

Not to mention the war for Jenkins's ear, when England went to war because a Spanish captain was accused of cutting off the ear of an English captain something like a decade earlier...

Or the Napoleonic wars, which destroyed several countries in the name of bringing freedom to people living under dictatorships...

Or al-Qaeda's war in Mali, which Europe financed (second source)...

Or the ongoing war against the Jews, which Europe is funding (as is the US)....

Europeans might say that it's not really war if they are paying someone else to fight a war in another country outside of Europe, but that does not explain Europe's support for the war against the Serbs in Yugoslavia, in which NATO helpfully bombed the forces of secular Yugoslavia -- including those of the liberal Muslim co-governor of Bosnia -- on behalf of an alliance of Croatia's Nazi party and a Muslim force organized by Osama bin Laden... and then they did it again in Kosovo, which had been majority-Serb since medieval times and is now down to about 10% Serb due to the war.

Europe is far from innocent, including modern Europe.

Re:Torturing ants

[the eric conspiracy]

Don't forget the defenstration of Prague leading to the 30 years war.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Clean hands you have there, keep that chin up and remember useful idiots like yourself are as indispensable to mass murders like Stalin, Milosevic, Assad etc as their own armies. Carry on with pride, job well done, no blood on your hands at all. How's that Syria thing working out for you?

On the other hand, the demand for hasty action leads to stupid foreign policy blunders like supporting fascist extremists conducting genocide in a war of their own aggression against relatively secular and moderate leaders like Slobodan Milosevic and Bashir Assad.

Compare Milosevic to Izetbegovic, and then read the news from Syria: the rebels receiving foreign guns and money and winning military victories are explicitly al-Qaeda, while the Free Syrian Army is only a front group that pretends to be secular in front of Western audiences.

Re:Torturing ants

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

What a relief, then, that the same waterboarding that thousands of US troops voluntarily go through so they see that it's not torture

Yes, those troops volunteer to be waterboarded so that they will see that waterboarding is not torture. That's totally why they do it.

Re:Torturing ants

[greenbird]

No country in Europe has ever destroyed two entire countries because a group part based in one destroyed two buildings.

I don't know where you're from but apparently they don't teach history there. One little island nation in Europe has invaded 90% of the worlds countries at one time or another. And they needed no justification what so ever other than they were trying to "civilize" them. I also seem to recall this little interlude where one of those silly little nations in the middle of Europe went on a rampage destroying many more than 2 nations and slaughtering millions for no reason at all some 80 years ago.

They didn't just destroy 2 buildings. They killed 10,000 people. I realize the slaughter of 10,000 people is really nothing by the standards of European history given the millions that they have slaughtered over the years.

What idiots modded that insightful?

Re:Torturing ants

[drinkypoo]

A country that uses torture as an interrogation technique should not consider itself civilized.

Never drop context, which in this case is the 3000+ deaths of September 11, 2001.

No one is dropping the context. It is considered, and found irrelevant, because you still don't get to claim the moral high ground when you do it. We're no better than they are, we only have different customs.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly is Europe better?
Correct me if I'm wrong but quite a few European countries gladly followed the US to Afghanistan and Irak (with the exception of France in Irak, but that's because of business not because France is a peace loving country, see Mali and countless other former colonies where France still regularly intervenes in internal affairs...)
Let's not forget all those dictators and general world class assholes silently storing their stolen millions in Swiss banks (Gaddafi, Mubarak, USA's BFF Saudi Royal Family). Switzerland, the great "always neutral" country. We also have Monaco, where a prince can shoot a guy for laughs and get away with it.

Europe has been castrated, but it hasn't changed much from a few centuries ago.

Re:Torturing ants

[Demena]

I don't see how this argument applies.

The use of torture appears to be continuing to this day. The user 1s33c (correct or incorrect) was pointing out current, not ancestral, practices. Nor did the user say anything about his country of origin.

So what exactly did you mean by your post? Was it an attempt to obfuscate the issue?

Re:Torturing ants

[Misagon]

I am sorry that you still believe that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were "wars against terrorism". Missions into these countries were already planned before September 11, 2011.

Do read up on the organisation Project for the New American Century.
Read what the PNAC had been lobbying the Clinton administration to do, long before September 11, 2001, and do look at which high-ranking members of PNAC that had got high positions in the Bush administration in 2001.
This is not a theory of mine about a supposed secret conspiracy. It has been out in the open all the time. For years, PNAC had a public web site where all this information was available.

Torture is not only not civilized, it is also not reliable. The victim tends to not answer what the torturer wants to hear, not he truth.
Back in 2003, there was no indication whatsoever that Al-Qaeda had any connection with Saddam Hussein. The only testimony that there was a link had been obtained during torture - a testimony that was later proven to be false. After the invasion, no proof of any link had been found.

Re:Torturing ants

[Demena]

You got your information wrong. Iraq was not destroyed because it had anything to do with 9/11. Iraq had nothing to do with it. Saddam Hussein was an opponent of Al Quaida. Iraq was destroyed because Hussein presumed to sell oil for Euros thus elimination the world wide requirement to purchase US dollars to buy oil which would decrease the US economy if the use of Euros became widespread.

Re:Torturing ants

[anagama]

I didn't reply to 1s33c. I responded to this: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3510265&cid=43056961

which is now correctly marked flamebait. My response was sarcasm, but since the flamebait is now modded off screen, the context of my response is missing its target.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

The U.S. supports violent dictators/tyrants all over the world as long as they fall in line with American foreign policy and American buisness interests. Don't even try to pretend that U.S. foreign policy is anything close to altruistic.

Re:Torturing ants

[Demena]

Just as a point of interest can you name any countries that transitioned from a barbaric state to a civilised without a dictator or tyrant being involved? The US maybe an exception to this but then there was the tyrant George.

The more usual course was the one that Iraq was following, a tyrannical rule that led eventually to more and greater freedoms for the populace. It takes a tyrant to create order which is then a single point the populace can aim at rather than a group of local warlords that just change over over time.

Re:Torturing ants

[Demena]

Thank you for explaining. My sincere apologies. Demena

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

What about those black muslims down the street... are you mates with them?

Go #racistEurope

Re:Torturing ants

[anagama]

I absolutely hate what my government does. But ... I still pay my taxes. My dollars support torture, murder, repression, etc. If I was a truly moral person, I would quit paying taxes and do my time in prison. But I'm too selfish for that, so while I hate what is done with my money, I don't actually do anything about it.

So really, it IS fair to launch a broad based condemnation, against even people like me who whinge about this stuff all the time, because despite all that, I still kick in some money to pay the salary of some dumb fuck murderer and pay for his medal to boot.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

I blame you for the Euro, or doesn't it count as a mess if your own friends-with-benefits union does it?

Re:Torturing ants

[nadaou]

> Baloney.
>
> WW I was based on the assassination of a single individual.

Er, do you really believe that there's wasn't just a little more going on in the geopolitical arena than simply the death of little old Franz Jr.? (and doesn't his wife count as an "individual"? she got shot too you know)

Perhaps the situation was so unstable that any match, any match at all, would be enough to set off the power keg?

Re:Torturing ants

[flayzernax]

I call double nonsense on your nonsense.

I'm pretty sure the founders did not have in mind "Military Industrial Complex" when they wrote their guidelines down.

Re:Torturing ants

[flayzernax]

And where's the conclusive proof that Osama Bin Laden, or Saddamn was directly or solely responsible for 911. There is allot of what ifs. And while the Taliban is real. The Al-Queda was a construct of American lawyers.

Our leadership have not in my mind one in the common court of common sense won the right of a righteousness of invasion of self defense and protection or liberation or anything. Except business and oppression.

Or how many casualties of these wars are directly responsible for 911?

History will be written by the victors. But the word on the street says otherwise.

Re:Torturing ants

[tconnors]

A country that uses torture as an interrogation technique should not consider itself civilized.

Never drop context, which in this case is the 3000+ deaths of September 11, 2001.

Um. Stop drinking the koolaid. Manning's release of the helicopter footage that precipitated all of this, shows what was happening in Iraq. Iraq has absolutely nothing to do with the WTO attacks of 2001. The deployment to Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the attack other than it being a convenient smokescreen to a gullible American public who bought the Weapons of Mass Distraction argument. Like most American wars of modern times, this was entirely to do with gaining control of oil fields.

Re:Torturing ants

[fustakrakich]

However the US is the... current main player in the west and the key global enabler for war, torture and economic oppression.

In a world run by money without borders, the US, and all other countries are not players. They are pawns.

Re:Torturing ants

[Sabriel]

Thousands of people voluntarily jump off perfectly good airplanes all the time, does that make it okay to to force a handful to jump off at gunpoint?

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Civilized human beings do not torture their enemies, ever. There is no context that justifies TORTURING ANOTHER HUMAN BEING, EVER.

Get off your arrogant moral high horse. There's a real world with real people at stake.

Hypothetical here: you capture a terrorist who's planted a nuclear or chemical device that will kill thousands if not millions.

He's not talking, and you have NOTHING about the location of the device - but you KNOW he had one.

What do you do?

The answer is easy - you TORTURE THE SHIT OUT OF HIM AND IF HE LIES YOU MAKE HIM WISH HE WERE DEAD WITH EVEN WORSE TORTURE.

And then you go to bed with a clean conscience.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Guessing you haven't been in COMBAT - under orders. Get a fucking grip - we've been killing each other as long as we can see back in history - and all holy Europe is not with out torture, cannibals, and mass murders. STFU! You think your country doesn't use torture? Then you are blind, or ignorant.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

1 million killed in Iraq / Afganistan / Pakistan and counting to avenge 2k killed in NYC? Sounds legit.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Missions into these countries were already planned before September 11, 2011.

The mission into Afghanistan was planned because of the embassy attacks of 1998, and it was readied because of the USS Cole attack. Clinton left it to Bush II to pull the trigger, and he sat on it until the second WTC attack.

Iraq was different, but Afghanistan had nothing to do with the PNAC.

Back in 2003, there was no indication whatsoever that Al-Qaeda had any connection with Saddam Hussein.

You might want to ask Yossef Bodansky about that. He led the US Congress task force on international terrorism in the early 1990s before anyone knew to call the organization al-Qaeda.

Re:Torturing ants

[couchslug]

There is a lesson there.

Don't poke the bear. The world runs on brutal force, the only universal language.

Re:Torturing ants

[the eric conspiracy]

Are you saying that relations between the US and Iraq and the Taliban regime were just fine prior to the 9/11 incident?

Such an analysis cannot be defended.

Many wars in Europe were triggered by events far more minor than the destruction of the World Trade Center. One of the participants in this thread pointed out that the removal of a single ear was a cause of war in the past.

The claim that is the first time that the trigger of destruction of nations was such a small incident is obviously ridiculous to anyone with even a passing knowledge of history.

WWI killed how many ? 8-10 millions?

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, no WMDs were found in Iraq either.

Guess powerful people are just psychopaths then.

Captcha: simplify

Re:Torturing ants

[RazorSharp]

this was entirely to do with gaining control of oil fields.

I have to disagree with you there. I think it had more to do with providing an excuse to throw trillions of dollars at the military industrial complex. The oil just made it a convenient target. The only other target they could convince the public it was worth attacking was North Korea (remember that axis of evil bullshit?). Even though North Korea had a far worse dictator and their people suffered from his regime far worse than the Iraqis did from Saddam's, their lack of fossil fuels and close relations/proximity with China made them a dangerous target. The Bush cronies weren't so stupid as to forget what happened the last time we got involved with Korea. It's really hard to tell the difference between a Chinese soldier in a North Korean uniform and an actual North Korean soldier. It's even harder to tell the difference between their planes considering they're mostly Chinese. We didn't want to get involved in a real war, just an exhibition war where there are a hundred times more casualties on the opposing side.

So we went after Iraq. But going to war with someone, anyone (who would lose), for any reason, was the first priority. Iraq just had everything going for it.

Re:Torturing ants

[cold fjord]

And where's the conclusive proof that Osama Bin Laden, or Saddamn was directly or solely responsible for 911. There is allot of what ifs. And while the Taliban is real. The Al-Queda was a construct of American lawyers.

Osama Bin Laden Admits Planning 9/11 in Meeting with Egyptian Terrorist
Bin Laden was pretty clear about why he did it.

The Al-Queda was a construct of American lawyers.

You don't know what you are talking about.

A history of terror: Al-Qaeda 1988-2008

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Civilized human beings do not torture their enemies, ever. There is no context that justifies TORTURING ANOTHER HUMAN BEING, EVER.

Please explain.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

*yawn* you lost me at the "I'm European and the us is a big bully torturing ants". At some point the pussy whipped cowardice that is 9/10s of Europe needs to get a grip. Your countries are just as much a mess... Except you are happy with being a Jon-entity on the world stage. The US does get a little carried away with trying to force democracy on the world, but European lack of value in 9/10s of the worlds situations really isn't any better.

Re:Torturing ants

[the eric conspiracy]

> Missions into these countries were already planned before September 11, 2011.

Any competent military will have contingency plans for a wide variety of scenarios in place. The idea that there were pre-existing plans means anything is bat shit crazy.

I do agree with your comments about torture though. There is no evidence that it is useful.

Re:Torturing ants

[RazorSharp]

there was the tyrant George

Make sure you include the 'W' or 'Jr.' -- H.W. wasn't good, but he certainly wasn't a tyrant.

In all seriousness, though, I completely agree with you. I don't see why we're in such a hurry to spread democracy. There are several negative consequences in attempting to spread democracy through force:

1) The violence, loss of life, and destruction will probably be far greater than an internal revolution. An internal revolution can actually avoid all of those things.

2) The majority of the populations in most of these countries consist of people so ignorant they make reality TV stars look cultured. Why would it be in anyone's best interest for them to vote? Dictators can bring education to the people. When the people are educated, society will change for the better. It could be argued that only at this point is a democracy moral -- when it's been chosen internally, by the people the government will represent.

3) Diplomacy. A tyrant can be controlled, their motives are clear, they respond to threats. God knows what these yahoos the Egyptians and Iraqis are electing will do. Afghanistan is a prime example of democracy gone wrong. When you force democracy onto people who don't believe in it, they'll just corrupt the system and it will turn into an oligarchy that pretends to be democratic. It's delusional to think of the Karzai regime as democratic.

4) Most people in these countries don't understand what's going on. But when an American plane is responsible for the deaths of their loved ones, and democracy is the banner the plane fights under, we make an enemy of ourselves and democracy.

5) We're not even a democracy and yet we demand other countries practice it. How ironic is it that a president who attained office without winning the popular vote was the same guy who insisted that we spread democracy throughout the developing world?

Re:Torturing ants

[Demena]

I actually meant the part that King George of England had in the formation of the USA but yes, very yes to all of your points.

Democracy is a tradition and a culture not a political system and a culture takes generations to change. Democracy cannot be imposed. Any attempt to do so will bring disaster.

Re:Torturing ants

[the eric conspiracy]

What the heck does that have to do with the fact that both a standing army and navy are specifically authorized in the Constitution?

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

FRANCE!

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Even a snarky liberal typically is capable of wit. Catch up.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you from one of the European nations without blood on its hands? Remind me, which one is that?

No, of course I'm not. But I'm from one that learned from the mistakes of the past and after centuries of war learned to get on with its neighbors.

Yes, lovely job you've been doing letting another country posture and fight your battles for you.

Re:Torturing ants

[a_mari_usque_ad_mare]

+ 1 Informative

Grandparent's horse is fucking arrogant.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't decide if you're dense or what. You jump straight out to call the GP crazy, but you're the one whose post doesn't jibe with the facts. You talk as if PNAC were a Pentagon strategy committee, tasked with developing detailed contingency plans in case we were to go to war with these countries, but they were not. The PNAC is a political organization, made up of neo-conservative political flacks, who were advocating the invasion of these countries according to an updated variant of the discredited cold-war-era "Domino Theory."

  When the twin towers were still smoking, the CIA informed the Cabinet that Al Qaeda's stronghold appeared to be in Afghanistan, Donald Rumsfeld (A PNAC member who had tried to persuade Clinton to invade Iraq) quickly interjected that Bush shouldn't bother with Afghanistan, because there were "no good targets" and should instead invade Iraq. The PNAC document is a statement of pet political theories held by these influential politicians; Rumsfeld rode this hobby horse especially hard.

  None of this is a secret, none of it is "bat shit crazy." It's plain and simple fact.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Mass murderers like George Bush (Iraq/Afghanistan), Eisenhower (Vietnam), and Truman(Two atomic bombs, ON CIVILIANS)?? Yeah... Get your "mass murderers" list a little more pertinent to the conversation, please.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern world Mongols and Barbarian?

Re:Torturing ants

[ScentCone]

Thousands of people voluntarily jump off perfectly good airplanes all the time, does that make it okay to to force a handful to jump off at gunpoint?

I think the better question is: should it be legal to torture your readers with nonsensical analogies?

Re:Torturing ants

[ScentCone]

That's totally why they do it.

Yes, it is. It's so they can see that it doesn't actually result in harm, that it's not actual going to kill them, scar them, or anything like that. Military people are trained to tolerate annoying, stressful treatment so they understand what it's all about and how to cope with it. The same process - combined with lots of other techniques - can wear down someone who's not trained, and who would really rather that it all just stopped. And when they realize that they're never going to get out of custody, that their militant jihaddist days of blowing up vegetable markets full of women are permanently over, the idea is to give them something to look forward to ... like having a more pleasant time of it once they answer questions about their murderous buddies.

Re:Torturing ants

[dbIII]

Then there's the stuff that was outsourced to Syria, Egypt etc in addition to the people that died being tortured in Iraq that you cannot possibly have avoided hearing about. There's no point pretending it didn't happen like the Central American stuff, it was admitted right to the top levels of government this time.

Re:Torturing ants

[dbIII]

The Neo-cons "hawks" in politics that all managed to avoid Vietnam or any form of active service on the other hand had been pushing to go into Iraq for years, and then suddenly had an excuse and no adult supervision.
The "Competent Military" were overruled as soon as Rumsfeld had the power to do so.

Re:Torturing ants

[dbIII]

Not if you don't sign up.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

No country in Europe has ever destroyed two entire countries because a group part based in one destroyed two buildings.

Please don't forget that there were people killed as well.

There was a direct attack on the Pentagon. Fourth plane speculated to attack White House, so it wasn't just an attack on some buildings, but also the government.

Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_United_States_embassy_bombings.

Re:Torturing ants

[tsotha]

So much idiocy in such a short comment. For one thing, we didn't invade Iraq because of the 9/11 attacks. For another, we haven't "destroyed" any countries. We invaded Afghanistan because their malignant excuse for a government was hosting Al Queda knowing full well what the organization was up to. That's an iron-clad casus belli (let me get you started on that one). It wasn't the first time they attacked us, either. That was the second attack on the WTC, there was an attack on the USS Cole, and two of our embassies were bombed in Africa.

The mistake we made was turning a perfectly reasonable exercise in gunboat diplomacy into an open-ended "nation building" fiasco, where we pour billions of dollars into that third-world shit hole in the forlorn hope they'll behave like civilized people as a result. We should have flattened the place for a month or so and then dropped leaflets announcing our return should they continue to host anti-American terrorist groups.

Re:Torturing ants

[gknoy]

AH, but here's the rub: How do you know that he has lied? There's no way you can trust his information before the Bad Thing happens, because it's unverifiable. And, as cold reading shows us, it's very possible for him to tell you what he thinks you want to hear, once you start hurting him enough that he'll do anything to make it stop.

There's a reason the Inquisition was able to get people to confess to things which were untrue: torture.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, just ask the Turks.

Re:Torturing ants

[geekymachoman]

>> Never drop context, which in this case is the 3000+ deaths of September 11, 2001.

According to numerous reports (you can google them) civilian (children included) deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan is 100k. Let's say it's 20 thousand.
However.. it's important to notice:

>> (The United States doesn’t officially keep body counts — at least not for United States-caused civilian deaths.)
(from: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/06/afghanistan-iraq-wars-killed-132000-civilians-report-says/)

Now, you can go ahead and talk about torture too. People that are doing all these things over there, are more guilty then al-qaeda or whatever the name is will ever be. When it comes to crimes against humanity. Sorry.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are saying there is a line you can cross in certain cases. Where is the line, according to you? What must someone know before torture is allowed?

If there is a line to be crossed (and citizens allow that using laws, not habits) I would say you should be judged by a jury that torture is allowed.

Re:Torturing ants

[cold fjord]

I was complaining about the US's war crimes, or don't they count as crimes if your own country does it?

They don't count as war crimes if they are ordinary acts of war falsely labeled war crimes, as many are wont to do.

I'm curious - do the actual war crimes or crimes against humanity of a Saddam or a Assad trouble you at all? Or is it just the actions of the United States?

Was it a crime against peace for the United States led coalition to remove Saddam's occupation army from Kuwait?

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

You are calling Milosevic forces "forces of secular Yugoslavia"? Wow. You dig out some conspiracy article and start calling people names. You really have NO idea what you are talking about so best leave it.

Kosovo: 90% Albanians. Brutal Serbian rule in the 1980/90. Nationalism in Yugoslavia was (re)started there when Milosevic started using police brutality on Kosovo coal miners.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not torture if you can say "stop" at any point with no questions asked. The point of torture is not that you can simply stop it when you don't feel so good any more. The point of torture is that you are powerless to stop it.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

I was complaining about the US's war crimes, or don't they count as crimes if your own country does it?

You go out in the forest to chop wood and come home with a bale of grass.

That's "anti-war" leftists and other assorted sheeple in a nutshell, useless "useful idiots", Stalin's "gift" to humanity. National socialism was naive for thinking they could solve the problem you represent by gassing and burning you up: there is no solution never mind a final one. The rest of us simply have to suffer your existence, mental anguish in the developed world and by bloodshed in the underdeveloped world. "Thanks".

Re:Torturing ants

[Maow]

A country that uses torture as an interrogation technique should not consider itself civilized.

Never drop context, which in this case is the 3000+ deaths of September 11, 2001.

Not a big deal, in the larger scheme of things. i.e.:

London was bombed [...] for 57 consecutive nights.[7] More than one million London houses were destroyed or damaged, and more than 40,000 civilians were killed, almost half of them in London.[4]

The bombing did not achieve its intended goals of demoralising the British [...]

Instead of setting their hair on fire and attacking France, they adopted the phrase, "Keep Calm and Carry On."

Spot the contrasts in intensity and devastation of attacks vis a vis 9/11, then compare and contrast the responses.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

What about those black muslims down the street... are you mates with them?

Go #racistEurope

The muslim ones who mostly just rape or the muslim ones who set cars ablaze?
The muslim ones who mostly just beg and shit on the streets or the muslim ones who keeps the modern slavery trade alive?
The muslim ones who mostly just lie to get elected or the muslim ones who prostitute nations?
The muslim ones who mostly just repress their own or the muslim ones who blow themselves up?

Black? Who gives a shit, plenty of Africans and Asians and South Americans are on our side.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't say much about the two first links but in the last one Andrew Wander leaves out that Osama Bin Laden got his terrorist training from the U.S. and worked for them during the cold war.

Feels like something that could be interesting to mention if you are writing an article about Al-Queda.

Re:Torturing ants

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It's so they can see that it doesn't actually result in harm, that it's not actual going to kill them, scar them, or anything like that.

So, it isn't torture for any definition of torture that only includes permanent physical damage. Got it.

Re:Torturing ants

[cold fjord]

Sorry, but that is rubbish.

CIA -- al-Qaeda controversy

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no goddamn "rub"; why disguise with your sycophantic idiom the most important fact about torture? It's not any functional difficulty which makes torture so wrong, but its disgusting brutality.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

I would consider also attacking the government to be a mitigating factor.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

10,000?

I thought it was more like 3000? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_attacks#Fatalities)

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

My reading of what you quoted is that an army should be formed as and when needed, not a permanent fixture. The Navy however would be a permanent fixture, probably because of the time it would take to build a competent Navy.

Re:Torturing ants

[ScentCone]

So, it isn't torture for any definition of torture that only includes permanent physical damage. Got it.

Or, being forced to be interrogated by a woman who refuses to cover her head is torture, right?

Re:Torturing ants

[stenvar]

Ahh, the very fine "your ancestors did something evil so you can't point out my current evil" retort. Brilliant. Settles the case for sure!

Europe continues to do evil, and Europe has pretty much been complicit in everything the US government has done. So, until you can point out my current evil, fix your own evil at home.

Re:Torturing ants

[stenvar]

But I'm from one that learned from the mistakes of the past and after centuries of war learned to get on with its neighbors.

I can't think of any such European nation; which one would that be? As far as I can tell, Europe is merely under a temporary truce due to the enormous wealth that US guarantees of military safety have brought to Europeans. You can bet that Europeans would start slaughtering each other should famine or even a serious economic downturn happen.

Re:Torturing ants

[stenvar]

However the US is the >current main player in the west and the key global enabler for war, torture and economic oppression.

The US is currently shouldering most of the military expenditures for the world because Europeans refuse to pay even for their own defense. And the US isn't the "key enabler for war, torture" in the world, it is merely trying to deal with the messes nations like yours left around the world. You can't expect the US to fix within half a century what you people destroyed over half a millennium.

And I don't get "economic oppression". Is that a code word for "you're richer than us and we hate it"? If that bothers you, make your markets, your workers, and your products more attractive. If you can't do that, at least be thankful that the US economy is pulling you along.

Re:Torturing ants

[stenvar]

I was complaining about the US's war crimes, or don't they count as crimes if your own country does it?

When has the US been found guilty of war crimes by any authority? Note: left wing journalists in the British yellow press don't count.

Re:Torturing ants

[stenvar]

A country that uses torture as an interrogation technique should not consider itself civilized.

I don't consider my country to be civilized. Are you happy now?

All I care about is whether my government conforms to our Constitution. Sometimes it doesn't. And when it doesn't, we have mechanisms to deal with that. What you think about it frankly doesn't matter.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Whose dictators are you referring to? Not our dictators that we set up and aided in secret? No, surely not: the United States surely does not have a long history of aiding and abetting horrific people only to have it blow up in the U.S. face again, and again, and again. No way is that even a feasible reality.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, it's not government-sanctioned so the thefts, abductions, rapes, and murders are (as you see it) acts of self-glorification on behalf of people of an advanced intelligence. The small-arms infighting, the insurrections, and the slow toppling of civilization there are all signs of your superior intellects. The various domestic products being overwhelmed by the incomes of criminal organizations are proof of lessons learned, and of being really neighborly decent people. Sure thing assclown!

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? There was someone who wanted to prove waterboarding is not torture, did get waterboarded volutarily and then saw that it IS torture. Are you from an alternative universe?

Re:Torturing ants

[dunkelfalke]

Refuse to pay for their own defence? Now that was funny. Next thing you'll tell me is that I'd speak German or Russian now if not you Americans.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or if you really are scum of the earth. Please advise.

Re:Torturing ants

[Lumpy]

Probably one of them that did not use Genocide to get more land for their new country as it spread from the Atlantic ocean to the Pacific...

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't see the part in there where the US trained Ben Laden. Prior to 88 when he was in afganistan working against the Russian invaders. Who were trying to establish a nautral gasline thru their country to supply southern russia.

Re:Torturing ants

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Or, being forced to be interrogated by a woman who refuses to cover her head is torture, right?

So that's what they at SERE training. Who would have guessed?

Re:Torturing ants

[stenvar]

Refuse to pay for their own defence? Now that was funny. Next thing you'll tell me is that I'd speak German or Russian now if not you Americans.

Most European nations that are part of NATO are failing to spend anywhere near as much on defense as required by their commitments under the NATO agreements.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/10/us-usa-nato-idUSTRE7591JK20110610

European governments keep calling for help from the US when they have problems in their own backyard because they can't handle it themselves.

Given your nick, I assume you speak German already, and the rest of Europe has been sleeping much more soundly because US troops have been stationed on German soil. And all European nations behind the iron curtain did, in fact, have to learn Russian, including parts of Germany; the iron curtain came down, in large part, because of US defense spending.

Re:Torturing ants

[1s44c]

I was complaining about the US's war crimes, or don't they count as crimes if your own country does it?

When has the US been found guilty of war crimes by any authority? Note: left wing journalists in the British yellow press don't count.

That depends on what you call an authority because the US ignores the ICC. There have been plenty of incidents that would be classes as war crimes if other countries carried them out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes

Re:Torturing ants

[Mr. Slippery]

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

An army raised for two years is, ipso facto, not a standing army. The idea was the Congress could raise up an army for a brief time when needed, not keep one going indefinitely.

As Hamilton noted in Federalist Paper 26, "The legislature of the United States will be OBLIGED, by this provision, once at least in every two years, to deliberate upon the propriety of keeping a military force on foot; to come to a new resolution on the point; and to declare their sense of the matter, by a formal vote in the face of their constituents. They are not AT LIBERTY to vest in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence."

Sadly, militarism triumphed, and serving in an standing army whose very existence the Founders opposed is now trumpeted as patriotic behavior.

The Constitution grants power for a standing navy because 1) building ships takes a long time, and 2) it is much less of a threat, both to your own people and to other nations; you can't use a navy by itself to put down a popular uprising or to invade and conquer another country.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't save anyone who doesn't truly want to be saved, and most people who claim to want "Democracy" really want their chance to be the oppressor for a change. The system in the US worked so well for so many years because our Government was rendered incapable of doing very much by law.

If you're so concerned about conflicts in other parts of the world then feel free to grab a gun and go help them out. I'm certainly not going to stop you. The only reason we intervened in World War II was because Hitler had plans to attack us and the Japanese had already attacked us. That we liberated any part of Europe as a result was only a side-effect.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

The very same Madeleine Albright has commented on starving or otherwise neglecting and 500 000 Iraqi children to death during the 90s due to the US sanctions:

"Yes, it was worth it".

A rare source of wisdom she is, indeed.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Ans so it was with Afghanistan and Iraq, too. Plans and PREARATIONS for the war in Afghanistan had been made way earlier. And the Bush Jr. war just could't wait to put its hands on Iraqi oil removing the major threat to Israel in the process, which - to those having time to read and research things - was the fundamental reason for all of this fracas...

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not trying to count. We're trying to stop.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Waterboarding would be part of SERE training. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival,_Evasion,_Resistance_and_Escape . And is definitely torture.

Re:Torturing ants

[jafac]

. . . sacking of the jewish temple, burning of the library in alexandria. A lot of these specific incidents come to mind.

Re:Torturing ants

[the eric conspiracy]

Operational plans are very different from advocacy positions taken by members of a political think tank.

It is lunatic to conflate the two.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I'm really confused. PNAC was a political think tank, many of whose members in 2000 entered positions of power from which they proceeded to turn their advocacy positions into operational plans. I'm not sure what kind of point you think you're making, but you're not succeeding.

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

Iraq was destroyed because Hussein presumed to sell oil for Euros.

Agreed.. the 9/11 connection was just a sales job, a poor yet potentially saleable excuse that landed in their lap.

Re:Torturing ants

[KGIII]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#2009_Declaration

Re:Torturing ants

[Anonymous Coward]

The Founding Fathers were laughably naive in this, because even in their day a militia was no match for a professional military. In our era, the gap is even more dramatic. As noble as the idea sounds, not having a military is not a realistic option. Scaling back the military industrial complex, certainly, but not eliimating it entirely.

Re:Torturing ants

[Demena]

Not only that, Afghanistan was not invaded to procure Bin Laden either.

It may not have been in the USA news but the Taliban offered to turn Bin Laden over to the UN to tried by international court. They would not turn him over to the US because the US would not supply even the informal required to extradite someone from which the US does have a treaty (such as the UK, Aus, NZ and many, many more (but not Afghanistan). They (the Taliban) asked for the evidence to extradite or if not then they would turn him over to the UN. Despite being a crazed and despotic government they actually did the morally correct thing.

As soon as they did this the invasion began. Bin Ladin was just an excuse. The real reason is wanting to build a pipeline across Afghanistan to carry oil from the far east.

What happened to both countries were, and are, war crimes. Not only that it was a crime against the people of the United States

This is not a conspiracy theory. The evidence is open and clear. It is just being ignored.

Re:Torturing ants

[Ogi_UnixNut]

No, you are not trying to stop. Ok, let me rephrase, the people might be trying to stop, but your governments are not, in fact they are doing it more and more.

The fact that governments in the west have become a law unto themselves and don't listen to the people is a problem that I don't see any good (non-violent) way of solving. Until that problem is addressed you can try to stop all you want, for what little good it will do.

Re:Torturing ants

[stenvar]

There have been plenty of incidents that would be classes as war crimes if other countries carried them out.

That page lists war crimes committed by US military service members, not by the US as a nation. Soldiers will commit war crimes in any war, but you can only attribute them to the nation itself if the nation orders them or fails to act to prosecute them.

Re:Torturing ants

[mog007]

Read the words you yourself quoted.

A standing Navy is permitted, but a standing Army is forbidden. The Army is allowed to be supported, but it should be disbanded after two years.

Re:Torturing ants

[lee1026]

In this situation, it is easy to verify if he is lying - you send officers to where the bomb supposedly is. If you find it, you know that he is telling the truth. If not, well, back to the rack.

Is it a very contrived stitutation? Yes. But it does let you get around that particular objection to torture.

Re:Torturing ants

[Intrinsic]

I dont think you realize that we are beyond the threshold of operating as country that is constitutional. Its really surprising that so many dont see the writing on the wall.
Same thing happened when the Germans started occupying other countries before WWII. They too promised that they were not sending Jews to incineration camps, all the while it was happening to them but still they wanted to believe that it was anything else then what they already knew in their hearts to be true.

Its time to wake up and realize you are living in a prison of your own making perpetuated by powerful people that want to suck the life out of you.

Re:Torturing ants

[Intrinsic]

History has shown me that our country creates conflicts to perpetuate wars in other countries solely for selfish reasons. They did it with the lies that spread about WMD's in a iraq when in fact there were no WMD's and they probably did it in Kuwait. Another thing is that we dont know all the details about these conflicts, we only know what government approved sources say unless you know how to dig. So Id be real careful on thinking that what we do in any country has merit.

Re:Torturing ants

[stenvar]

I dont think you realize that we are beyond the threshold of operating as country that is constitutional. Its really surprising that so many dont see the writing on the wall.

Oh, of course, the US has plenty of political problems, but we've always had those, and we deal with them. But whether some snooty European calls us "civilized" or not really doesn't matter to me.

Its time to wake up and realize you are living in a prison of your own making perpetuated by powerful people that want to suck the life out of you.

You need to read some US history. Presidents and Congress ignoring the Constitution at times is nothing new. "Powerful people" have always had a strong say, and crony capitalism used to be even more rampant than it is today. I don't see that we're "beyond any threshold", and by and large, things are still better today than they were a century ago. We need to be vigilant and participate in the political process. But succumbing to conspiracy theories isn't going to help anybody.

Re:Torturing ants

[ClioCJS]

I think there is justification, but not in war.

If someone tortures my wife to death -- and I have incontrovertable evidnece -- I should be able to torture that guy to death right back. I'm not talking about justice, I'm talking about revenge. They can try him before. Whatever. Someone does this to me, I want their blood. The end.

Re:Torturing ants

[flayzernax]

Lol, nice for pointing that out. By the way is that the same gas line our CIA blew up?

Re:Torturing ants

[flayzernax]

Upon further research appearently as early as 1996 I can tell the U.S. Government was using the name in memos.

In 2001 Bin Laden used the name on Al-Jazeera and said it was in use since the rebellion against the russians.

http://www.911myths.com/index.php/The_al_Qaeda_name

I was quoting from "The Power of Nightmares".

Clearly his organization was Al Qaeda” for a long time.

To further my own argument however, Al Queda was virtually unknown to the mass public and not at all widely used in mainstream media prior to 911.

P.S. The Guardian is UK's propoganda machine ;p

Thanks for the links though. I guess we can agree that Bin Laden was involved. I still can't believe he was directly responsible though.

If I went and payed someone 1 million in untraceable bills to kill someone and that hitman never divulged my name...

911 happened not because of 1 man, or 1 group, but because of many things, and many men, or women. Even in-action on the part of the FBI and CIA.

I doubt the whole truth will be known. And unfortunately instead of bringing Bin Laden to trial to testify he was killed. I can't say this was on purpose. But I would have taken extra care to bring him in alive if it was my duty.

However I am far from ignorant. I have watched and read quite a bit about this historical event.

Re:Torturing ants

[Linkreincarnate]

You mean like gunning down citizens via drone and punishing no one?

If you play James Bond

[Vinegar Joe]

You can expect to get your hair mussed.

Re:If you play James Bond

[Anonymous Coward]

You can expect to get to fuck a voluptuous brunette. ...if you don't have a clue, please don't post.

Re:If you play James Bond

[Vinegar Joe]

If you think you can steal classified documents and the government (any government) is going to turn around and pat you on the head and say "Good boy!", you're even more stupid than Manning.

Re:Leaving this site forever

[Anonymous Coward]

I will head for greener pastures. I'll not be back.

We don't remember you and we don't care if you leave. The pompous exit routine isn't making you any friends either.

Re:Leaving this site forever

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. There's an obvious liberal/conservative/libertarian/communist bias on Slashdot that makes it intolerable. It's gotten to the point where I don't even know what the groupthink will be on any given article, and I'm sick of trying to guess, just so that I can stay a part of the herd. Slashdot has become too stressful, and I'm outta here!

I'm going to reddit, where the groupthink is substantially easier to predict.

Slashdot is a social gathering and it is being....

[3seas]

....watched....So it good that people pursue the claiming nothing came of this.... So how many other reasons are there for the increase of gun and ammo sales?

Re:Leaving this site forever

[X0563511]

lol, "wrong" opinions.

Get on out of here, then. We won't miss you.

Re:Leaving this site forever

[Anonymous Coward]

no one cares

It's Tor, not TOR

[Anonymous Coward]

btw, see:

http://www.reddit.com/r/onions

Re:It's Tor, not TOR

[Motard]

That's BTW , BTW.

Only capital punishment fits

[julian67]

Only capital punishment fits in a case like this because there are two factors so serious that no lesser punishment is appropriate.

The first is that the offender gave greater weight to his conscience than to the power of his state. He disobeyed orders and statute. Any student of 20th century history will tell you that blind obedience is the glue that binds successful societies and engenders success, safety and justice.

The second is that the offender communicated with people so depraved that they openly engage in journalism, a pursuit that has the potential to inform taxpayers and voters such that they eventually become able to make rational choices and decisions, regardless of the wishes of their superiors.

This has to stop now, and any repetition or emulation be discouraged by the least ambiguous means available.

Re:Only capital punishment fits

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad thing is that I am not sure that this gets picked up as trolling anymore by those in power :(

Re:Only capital punishment fits

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/9896509/WikiLeaks-US-to-call-bin-Laden-raid-Navy-Seal-to-testify-against-Bradley-Manning.html If he had only provided the embarrassing informantion, I would say let him be. If he gave information for people

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9492154/Former-MI5-boss-Dame-Stella-Rimington-attacks-Wikileaks-and-US-government-security.html

Re:Only capital punishment fits

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumb ass.

Re:Only capital punishment fits

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah as capital punishment really holds down your murder rate.

Re:Only capital punishment fits

[sesshomaru]

"It's called doubleplus ungood crimethinking for a reason, Winston."

Re:Only capital punishment fits

[Anonymous Coward]

When the fine young men, and women of our armed services swear to defend us against all threats, foreign, and domestic, how can they possibly do this if their superiors are the threat, and they adhere to this blind policy that you have so mercifully laid out for them?

Putting him to death for this is Anathema to everything that America ever truly stood for. It is terrible that you can't see it.

Re:Only capital punishment fits

[Anonymous Coward]

For a minute I thought you were being serious. And then I got to the second point.

Course, if you actually ARE being serious, you are seriously fucked in the head.

Re:Leaving this site forever

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't just leave! This is important! Somebody is wrong on the internets!

Re:Leaving this site forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget your complimentary pint of frosty piss and as a farewell prize we have limited edition, signed goatse poster.

So long thanks for playing.

Re:The pitty of it all

[Anonymous Coward]

Commit suicide as urgently as you possibly can.

Ignorance and hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure then you'd have no qualms with funding/aiding/arranging for my escape from the US and into your great land? I mean, being such an enlightened citizen of an enlightened nation and all.

Re:Leaving this site forever

[aaaaaaargh!]

Bye asshole, we're glad you're leaving. Don't let the door hit you anus!

he may get a code red

[Anonymous Coward]

And this time you will have to to handle the truth

Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead (Partyvan edition!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Memorable quotes for
Looker (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/quotes

"John Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, that's power."

##

"The United States has it's own propaganda, but it's very effective because people don't realize that it's propaganda. And it's subtle, but it's actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it's funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it's funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it really serves people's thinking - it can stupify and make not very good things happen."
- Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio

##

"It's only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because that's what people do. They conspire. If you can't get the message, get the man." - Mel Gibson (from an interview)

##

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director

##

"The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA's euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing - for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy - so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to your about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it. As for the second advantage, despite frequent suggestion that the CIA is a rogue elephant, the truth is that the agency functions at the direction of and in response to the office of the president. All of its major clandestine operations are carried out with the direct approval of or on direct orders from the White House. The CIA is a secret tool of the president - every president. And every president since Truman has lied to the American people in order to protect the agency. When lies have failed, it has been the duty of the CIA to take the blame for the president, thus protecting him. This is known in the business as "plausible denial." The CIA, functioning as a secret instrument of the U.S. government and the presidency, has long misused and abused history and continues to do so."
- Victor Marchetti, Propaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History

##

George Carlin:

"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehous

Re:Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead (Partyvan edition!)

[will_die]

Some of those are well known fakes, other are people taking things unrelated to how you are using them once you read the context. In other words your post and thinking is garbage.

Re:Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead (Partyvan edition!)

[Intrinsic]

LOL as if statements centered around freedom can be false, nice try.

Re:HOSTS file would have prevented his arrest

[Anonymous Coward]

lul wut?

Allegedly?

[Anonymous Coward]

He pled guilty to leaking the documents, just not to some of the higher charges. There is no "allegedly".

He was just showing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why nobody at a 2600 meeting actually talks about anything of interest at the meetings anyway :)

Re:HOSTS file would have prevented his arrest

[Anonymous Coward]

no you are

War crimes

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, because standing by and doing nothing while innocents are being slaughtered somehow lets you claim a clear conscious. Dictators and tyrants count on people like you to turn a blind eye to atrocities and genocide as it lets them get away with murder by the million.

I was complaining about the US's war crimes, or don't they count as crimes if your own country does it?

They count if your country loses. If your country wins, you get a free pass on most things. Rarely someone takes a lot of pictures of something the winner would prefer remain buried, and you get a My Lai courts martial of the least number of people you can possibly hang out to dry for the incident.

Re:Leaving this site forever

[witherstaff]

Nerds shouldn't have groupthink.. that'd be a boring way to solve interesting problems.

I mean besides the obvious ones including Natalie Portman and Han Shot First, etc.

Although I'm sure someone has already written a dissertation somewhere on how Han shooting first is a nice allegory of Star Wars having a libertarian basis to the right to bear arms. In fact the whole story could be seen as the evil government's fight to keep a simple lightsaber out of the hands of the common folk. Of course there were many ways to cause violence - blasters, death stars, AT-AT stomping on people into the ice, AT-STs destroying indigenous species - but the outlawing of a lightsaber was the last straw before the people rebelled against too much authoritarian power.

Upheaval, but what happened in the Arab spring

[elucido]

What happened in the Arab spring isn't a direct result of Cablegate. Bradley Manning wasn't a part of that and to try to make Julian Assange into a general of some sort is not completely honest either.

Anonymous may have been a part of that but what does that have to do with this case? I'm not sure if Bradley Manning's statement is true or false. Claims that the documents were sanitized before they were submit to Wikileaks? How do you sanitize that many documents all by yourself? How would he even have gone about doing that without risk of the documents falling into enemy possession?

Paranoid governments does not help us.

[elucido]

No measureable change that has been acknowledged publicly. A lot of government organizations have tightened their grip, though. New security policies, programs that allow and encourage coworkers to report potential security risks, more thorough background checks and monitoring of access to data just to name a few.

Which would be a very big success for Assange.

So how exactly does Cablegate do anything but make governments paranoid and more suspicious of us?
The other problem is Bradley Manning claims the documents were somehow sanitized before submission but how is it technically possible? I know technology well enough to know that isn't possible for one person to do. It's also not possible to do on an unsecured machine so unless he did it himself while somehow still on the government computer I just don't believe it. Is there some process to automatically redact or sanitize information built into the government computer because I cannot make sense of that.

Re:Paranoid governments does not help us.

[Knuckles]

Did you read the link? Making them paranoid is part of the point. And I didn't say that it does in the first place: the guy I replied to gave a list of results, apparently meaning that they are bad results, and I just said that these would be exactly what Assange wanted according to the linked essay.

Re:Paranoid governments does not help us.

[elucido]

Did you read the link? Making them paranoid is part of the point. And I didn't say that it does in the first place: the guy I replied to gave a list of results, apparently meaning that they are bad results, and I just said that these would be exactly what Assange wanted according to the linked essay.

And I disagree with the strategy. Making them paranoid will result in a backlash where they will remove all our human rights and privacy in the name of national security. Everyone will be treated like a terrorists. Obama now has the ability to kill American citizens as a result of making governments paranoid. How has it helped at all?

Re:Paranoid governments does not help us.

[AK Marc]

How has is helped? We are closer to government collapse. Then we can reset and try again. We are The Great Experiment, so maybe the experiment didn't go as well as it could have.

Re:Paranoid governments does not help us.

[elucido]

How has is helped? We are closer to government collapse. Then we can reset and try again. We are The Great Experiment, so maybe the experiment didn't go as well as it could have.

Do you understand what government collapse is? It's martial law. It means all the people who supported Wikileaks will be rounded up at gunpoint as terrorists because the Civilized government will have collapsed. It means military dictatorship. That is what happens in all the other countries where the government has collapsed.

Re:Paranoid governments does not help us.

[AK Marc]

I understand your point and I disagree. The feds collapsing won't necessarily lead to all 50 states collapsing as well. And even if they did, the structure and history in the US is such that I doubt a general declaring himself Dictator for Life would have enough people follow him to get his dry cleaning done.

Never heard back from the newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

10:1 They got the email but couldn't figure out how to open a zip file.

Re:Leaving this site forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Your name, is that derived from "aaaaaaaargh! How did I miss the blatant sarcasm?!?"?

Medal Of Honor

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps 50 years from now Bradley Manning will receive a US Congressional Medal Of Honor.

That award will be from a US Congress far different that today.

The US Congress of today and the President of the United States of America and the Federal
Government of today will be forcefully removed by Civil War to come.

Yet we live today.

Today I expect the current President, Barak Hussein Obama to pen a Secret Executive Kill order
for all Washington Post Employees, past and present, as well as Bradley Manning. This is because
Bradley Manning has exposed for all to read the Lie of the United States of America Executive Office
of the President and the Cabinet.

In this game of chess, the only logical move for the President IS to kill Bradley Manning before he
can testify fully in the Court Martial.

God help us, and I am an Atheist, because we as a Nation are now 1 minute after Nuclear Midnight.

For Obama to perserve his psychological image of his 'Man Hood' he will order killing with the
munitions of the Department of Defense on the peoples of the United States of America like there
is no tomorrow.

Smooth Criminal that Obama.

Blah.zip

[Elwood P Dowd]

So it sounds like the contents of blah.zip haven't been published and he can't state what they were without further charges? That sucks. I wonder if Daniel Domscheit Berg deleted that shit.

Is this account genuine?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is presented as if written by Bradley Manning and seems way too detailed to be written by him. The amount of factual details isn't something one is going to be able to recall in such depth. It looks to me to be written by someone who analyzed Bradley Manning computers and interrogation / third party data. I'm not sure what the intention of that would be although I think a fair bit of skepticism is in order here.

http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-3113-bradley-mannings-statement-taking-responsibility-for-releasing-docs

Re:Is this account genuine?

[Psyborgue]

Posting to undo bad mod.

Re:Torturing aunts

[sysrammer]

Paraphrasing Madeleine Albright: "What's the point of having such a powerful military, if we never use it?"

It's there, so we use it. If it weren't there, we wouldn't be using it.

Yep. In the various civ games I play, typically I start out as a mind-your-own-business type. So inevitably, some local civs/tribes/whatever attack. I build up an effective defensive military. Bigger players come along and attack. I build up more. Eventually it comes to "the best defense is a good offense". If Empire X is going to be a constant issue, well, let's just take care of 'em while we have the armies in the field.

It tends to win. So, is it a Machiavellian/Sun Tzu principle? Is it my Western mindset? The mindset of the game devs? All of the above?

CmdrTaco

[Frankie70]

10:1 They got the email but couldn't figure out how to open a zip file.

Then one of the said newspapers hired CmdrTaco. Taco was able to explode the zip file with gzip but then he refused to let others read the documents inside because the documents were not in an open format.

the fact is

[Anonymous Coward]

Truth is treason in the empire of lies

Listen

[Anonymous Coward]

The trick to successfully removing dictators and tyrants is to continue doing it.

Too bad the people who don't understand this or how it could possibly be true or who don't want to constantly shout the loudest and are given disproportionate amounts of power.

Re:Listen

[Alex Belits]

The trick to successfully removing dictators and tyrants is to continue doing it.

You will run out of people.

There are no "dictators". All governments are, this way or another, are dependent on the people they govern, so it's not possible to "dictate" someone's will to a population that completely and entirely opposes it. It'd a myth. Bullshit. One may argue how much any given form of the government allows or prevents some part of population to influence government. Some forms will come out pretty bad -- countries with ethnicity or religious sect in disproportional control of the government would be among those, and that covers all Middle East, and will for the foreseeable future. So will North Korea with its small ruling party. So will any country under significant influence of former colonial power. "Democracy", as practiced in US, would be also among those bottom ones, as US government's ideology promotes interests of large businesses, and a very small fraction of US population runs large businesses.

There are politicians US supports and politicians US does not support. The latters are called "dictators" by the media that subscribes to US government's ideology.

Re:Listen

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely correct, and it's why I own several "scary" guns. The fun part is there is no paperwork tying them to me. So if they decide to outlaw them, they just get hidden. "No officer, I never owned any military style firearms. here is my .22 varmint rifle.... Oh I can keep that? thanks..."

Re:Listen

[Alex Belits]

You are an idiot. There are things other than a threat of a crowd of rednecks with guns throwing themselves by the thousands at the tanks, for governments to worry about.

Please use your guns in a way that benefits your fellow humans the most -- kill all your friends, then yourself.

Re:Listen

[tehcyder]

Completely correct, and it's why I own several "scary" guns. The fun part is there is no paperwork tying them to me. So if they decide to outlaw them, they just get hidden. "No officer, I never owned any military style firearms. here is my .22 varmint rifle.... Oh I can keep that? thanks..."

Unbelievably, I don't think you're being paranoid enough. Why would you announce something like that on the internet? Do you really think that your AC status is safe with slashdot?

Re:Listen

[tehcyder]

There are no "dictators". All governments are, this way or another, are dependent on the people they govern, so it's not possible to "dictate" someone's will to a population that completely and entirely opposes it. It'd a myth. Bullshit. One may argue how much any given form of the government allows or prevents some part of population to influence government.

Dictatorship generally means that a significant minority of the population suffer. The obvious examples would be Jews, Roma, Communists and gays in Nazi Germany. You're right that a single person can't control an entire country's population, they certainly need the help of a fair proportion of that country's population, but not necessarily a majority. If your security/spy/terror apparatus is sufficiently enmeshed in society, you can certainly be a dictator like Saddam Hussein or Gadaffi.

Which means friendly not predictable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since your parent post was in counter to the assertion that "predictable" was preferred to "friendly", your point was either to support him, which is countered by the tone which is one of negation, or irrelevant.

The USA traiend and organised the Taliban

[Anonymous Coward]

When Russia was occupying, the USA set the Taliban up.

So, yes, the USA and the Taliban WERE great friends before 11/9.

And 19 out of 20 of those suicide bombers were Saudis.

Saudi Arabia was and still is a great friend of the USA.

Re:The USA traiend and organised the Taliban

[the eric conspiracy]

You are just making crap up.

The Taliban was definitely NOT friendly with the US. The were hosting a variety of terrorist organizations including those who had made attacks on US embassies. the Cole and the first WTC bombing in 1993.

While the US had funded guerrilla operations in Afghanistan, the idea that this grew into the Taliban is patently false.

The Taliban's roots are in Pakistan, where thousands of children of refugees from Afghanistan were educated in radical Islamic schools. It is why the Taliban is also strong in parts of Afghanistan.

 

So same for China, Iran NK and Iraq?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Nicaragua, Cuba and Australia?

Seems like it is only friends of the family who get to have their internal procedures decide who stays in power.

Yes, very smple to settle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Was Mossadiq elected president after the dictator was removed?

Was this counter-coup paid for from the USA coffers?

And if you hadn't shot him dead, would you have accepted a Shia "counter-coup" that put Saddam back in power? No.

The bull is what you believe, sir.

Typical scenario

[boorack]

A dictator backed by US gets toppled by his own citizens. Typical response from US government is to support dictator to the last possible moment. If it does not help, US politicians with their mouths full of lies about "democracy and freedom" attempt to reinstall the old regime with another frontman. This scenario played well in Egypt. In Libya, US and EU did much worse things: old dictator has been removed and whole country has been pushed into permanent civil war. We don't hear nor see anything about it because of media blackout instated by fucking corporate media. Some 150 thousands of people died in Libya just in first year of this "bringing democracy" excercise - propably more than Lybia's old dictator killed in his entire career. And we still perceive ourselves as being "good" except that we are no better than nazis were. Just our warmongering elites learned that masquerading killing with crap about "democracy" and "freedom" is better than being explicit and grotesque as Hitler was. This is propably the greatest mass hipocrisy excercise in history...

Re:Typical scenario

[Anonymous Coward]

I invoke Godwin's Law. FFS, "boorack", listen to yourself.

Re:Typical scenario

[kramer2718]

A dictator backed by US gets toppled by his own citizens. Typical response from US government is to support dictator to the last possible moment. If it does not help, US politicians with their mouths full of lies about "democracy and freedom" attempt to reinstall the old regime with another frontman. This scenario played well in Egypt. In Libya, US and EU did much worse things: old dictator has been removed and whole country has been pushed into permanent civil war.

Your comment is unfair to the U.S. government.

In one breath, you criticize the U.S. for supporting friendly dictatorial regimes. In another, you criticize it for supporting popular rebellions. What is the U.S. supposed to do? You accuse the U.S. of committing atrocities in Libya, but it neither sent ground troops nor war-planes beyond those providing logistical support to allies.

As you mention, the outcomes in those countries that have cast off dictators have not been good, but that can't be blamed on foreign powers–they stayed out of the nation building process. If you are going to blame them for not attempting nation building, I point you at the cautionary tales of Afghanistan and Iraq.

We don't hear nor see anything about it because of media blackout instated by fucking corporate media.

If you believe that there were atrocities committed by the U.S. in Libya, please be more specific. Preferably cite reliable sources (there are other sources than corporate ones). If there were atrocities, they certainly weren't large-scale. The U.S. military doesn't have sufficient information security to keep large scale atrocities from becoming public. Certainly not the murder of 1500K Libyans are you are implying. If you can't be more specific, STFU.

The lack of success in achieving stable democracies in the middle east and central asia obviously has far greater factors than foreign involvement. The lingering effects of colonialism obviously play a role, but other parts of the world have been able to bounce back from colonialism (East Asia and South America are examples). The inequality bred by a large economic dependence on extractive industries (mining in particular) is a better candidate. The failure of West and Southern Africa to achieve stable, equitable societies supports this factor as explaining middle eastern stability. Of course, there are likely cultural issues involved as well, the extremism of Salafist Islam and the general misogyny do not support peaceful, democratic social ends.

And we still perceive ourselves as being "good" except that we are no better than nazis were. Just our warmongering elites learned that masquerading killing with crap about "democracy" and "freedom" is better than being explicit and grotesque as Hitler was. This is propably the greatest mass hipocrisy excercise in history...

Of course, the motives nor methods of the U.S. nor its allies are beyond reproach. There certainly have been many atrocities committed by U.S. forces. There have also been many interventions undertaken for nefarious purposes. However, there have been several undertaken for reasonable humanitarian purposes. Furthermore, if any nations that does not want the U.S., U.N., or other stable Western democracies to intervene militarily can simply adopt a stable, peaceful democracy.

Collateral Murder: Unedited

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of you saw the 40 minute long version of collateral murder rather than the shortened version that Wikileaks released? It tells quite a different story. I felt like those pilots and soldiers fought well and did nothing wrong.

Regards,
Jason C. Wells

What did he really uncover?

[darth_borehd]

His statement, and those of his supporters, sound like he blew the whistle on some Watergate-like scandal. I just don't see that. As far as I know, he took a bunch of raw data and just dumped it saying "Here's a bunch of classified stuff, go ahead and sift through and see if you find something interesting."

Re: overlords:1 manning:0 Anonymous: 5

[Anonymous Coward]

Manning started the anonymous outburst of cyber attacks ranging from gov systems to hactivism. Has it fully worked, somewhat, but is it a threat yup. At least the government is paying attention to security now. Several of the security folks had discussed this problem for a decade. Specifically pointing out how that no one should access all data....

Overlords:1. Manning:0 Anonymous:5

Because the USA funds their oppressors?

[Paul Fernhout]

"The hijackers were not acting on the behalf of the Saudi Government either directly or indirectly. The hijackers were outlaws, terrorists, that wanted not only to attack the United States but to overthrow the Saudi government as well."

You do realize that a big part of the reason for most of the hijackers themselves (ignoring Bin Laden's motives as an organizer) attacked the USA is probably because the hijackers felt the USA supported the Saudi government they thought was oppressive to themselves and had blighted their personal futures? There was an article in the New Yorker (I think) discussing this many years ago. That is why most of those specific people were so suggestible as to go along with it. Still, it's a complex topic, and it is hard to know for sure; a longer list of possibilities:
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/whatwerethecausesof911/

See especially:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_attacks
"Research on Suicide Terrorism; Robert Pape identified 315 incidents, all but 14 of which they classified as part of 18 different campaigns. These 18 shared two elements and all but one shared a third:[20] 1) A foreign occupation; 2) by a democracy; 3) of a different religion. Mia Bloom interviewed relatives and acquaintances of suicide terrorists. Her conclusions largely support Pape's, suggesting that it is much more difficult to get people to volunteer for a suicide mission without such a foreign occupation.[21]"

Or:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/09/09/244452/-What-motivated-the-9-11-hijackers-to-attack-the-US
"The 9-11 Commission held its twelfth and final public hearing June 16-17, 2004, in Washington, DC. On June 16 the Commission heard from several of the federal government's top law enforcement and intelligence experts on al Qaeda and the 9-11 plot. It was at this hearing that the question "What motivated them to do it?" was finally asked. Lee Hamilton, vice chair of the 9/11 Commission said, "I'm interested in the question of motivation of these hijackers, and my question is really directed to the agents. ... what have you found out about why these men did what they did? What motivated them to do it?" The agents looked at each other, apparently not eager to be the one to have to say it. FBI Special Agent Fitzgerald stepped up to the plate and laid out the facts, "I believe they feel a sense of outrage against the United States. They identify with the Palestinian problem, they identify with people who oppose repressive regimes and I believe they tend to focus their anger on the United States." But this testimony was kept out of the 9/11 Commission Report and no recommendation was given to address the main motive for the 9/11 attacks."

So, while people often say "they hate us because we are free", but it seems all too often the geopolitical reality is "they hate us because we fund their oppressors".

See also:
"International Terrorism: Image and Reality"
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199112--02.htm

The USA as a whole also does a lot of good in the world too, of course.

Hard-core Marine, but, a democrat.

[CHIT2ME]

Yes I'm sure everyone is feeling bad for Bradley Manning, but, he knew from the moment he enlisted and took the oath that releasing classified information during wartime is an act of TREASON! He probably will not face a firing squad, for that he should thank his lucky stars, but, I'm sure and I believe he should spend many years in a military prison such as Levanworth. I'm sure he thought he was doing a great thing for mankind by releasing this information. What if someone in the Mahattan Project during WWII had thought it was for the betterment of mankind to leak the designs for the atomic bombs to Germany and Japan?

Albert Einstein

[NewYork]

"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it." -- Albert Einstein