America causes a 9/11 every day in Afghanistan. Thats how many civilians we kill.
Really. The US military kills 3,000 Afghan civilians every day? For a guy who's all about citations, that grotesque bit of outright BS is pretty surprising.
Yes, things have changed a lot since 1917. It doesn't matter, like it used to, when people steal a quarter of a million documents, and work with a third party to find a place to stash them on their way to being provided to people who aren't supposed to see them. Such a quaint notion, that whole not betraying your allies' confidence in speaking privately with ambassadors and whatnot. So last century, and so overly broad!
As for the first amendment: it isn't a magic sheild against espionage. You're welcome to report on the fact that something was stolen, and even to characterize the nature of the theft. That's reporting. Completely protected. Providing the content of classified documents to hostiles who'd love to have them? Working with the person who steals them in order to arrange for storage of those documents and the means to convey them? Not protected.
in the last 20 years in the name of keeping America safe..like Saddam, Iran, Saudi, Mugabe, etc.. they won't deal with Assange and wiki... right..
"Dealing" with hostile foreign states, diplomatically, is not the same as helping someone in posession of stolen government documents find a way to best spin their publication. You know the difference, and you're trolling on this subject. The only dealing with Assange on this topic is going to be as it relates to prosecutorial wheeling and dealing.
"Assange stole" etc.
You've obviously missed my immmediate follow up where I said that was a c/p typo, and corrected to the word "published." Though, indeed, we may find that Assange's arrangements with Manning make him quite the accomplice, in the traditional sense.
Could you also please provide concrete details of persons harmed
Can you please name the persons harmed when a drunk driver races down the highway at 100mph? Or is it totally cool to commit that crime, and only uncool if you actually run into somebody? Regardless, Assange - in only the first 220 documents out of 250,000 - has deliberately identified an Iranian ex-pat industrialist, with sympathies towards and support for the opposition inside Iran (where his family lives), as the source of intel about Iran's international industrial sources. I'm sure you think that the Mullahs would never allow harm to come to anyone who opposes their regime (other than the occasional family arrests, shootings, hangings, and that sort of thing, on political grounds), but that sort of reckless divulging of sensitive info - just so that Assange can keep milkiing that press coverage he so hungers for - is complete asshattery.
THEY are supposed to work for US, not the other way around
Yup. And as they're working for me, doing things like law enforcement, diplomacy, counter-espionage, transporting nuclear materials, running combat operations, administering witness protection programs, and so many other things, I fully expect that some of what they do, in my employ, must involve non-public information. I don't want Mexican drug cartels to know the home addresses of ICE agents' children. I don't want North Korea to have the encryption keys protecting communications we share with South Korea. In their capacity as my employees, some local, state, and federal agencies need to be able to do some things that aren't Googleable. You know this, but choose to characterize all covert activities as lies. That you can't grasp the contextual differences, or are too trollish to admit to them, makes this a pretty silly conversation indeed.
Do you know what the greatest deterrent to war is? The fact thats its so terrible
Really? You think that the horror of war isn't clear? That tens of thousands of military people talking to friends, family, journalists, film makers, etc., aren't clearly enough explaining what it's like to face close urban conflict, or to have to deal with jihaddis holding school kids as human shields? We are absolutely saturated with information about how horrible such conflicts are. You know that. We all do. That has nothing to do with Manning being a grandstanding drama queen, or with Assange cravenly exploiting him for brownie points with his groupies.
I'm sorry, what exactly is the ongoing crime you are referring to?
WikiLeaks is in possession of stolen classified documents, and know that their dissemination of those documents is of material benefit to the country's adversaries (say, North Korea or Iran, etc.). This directly violates at least one statute, and is a felony. They still have 'em, and they're still making them available to North Koread, Iran, etc... that crime continues to go on, as we speak.
18 U.S.C. 793(e), very clearly says:
"Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, (etc. etc.) relating to the national defense,... (which) the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates (etc. etc) the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same (etc)... Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."
And... in what way is Amazon exercising authority over you, or over the publisher of the gay rape fiction? In what way is your ability to purchase, or their ability to publish, stopped by that store deciding not to advertise and carry a particular product? Please be specific. Is Amazon the only legally sanctioned book seller available to you? Is Amazon the only legally authorized retailing mechanism available to the publisher? Does Amazon's choice not to sell that genre somehow prevent the publisher from wholesaling to any of thousands of other retailers (who, incidentally, now have a competitive advantage in the gay rape genre)? Does Amazon's choice not to sell those titles somehow prevent you from turning to the retailers that the publisher works with, or directly to the publisher if they choose to sell directly? If so, how? Please be specific in detailing how that authority is in Amazon's hands.
the figure is skewed even more in favor of the rich
Which is especially worrisome because the wealth of the country is a fixed amount, and has been for centuries. Every time somebody gives birth, the wealth of the country is divided into smaller and smaller shares, which is why poor people today live exactly like poor people in the 1800's, with their complete lack of refridgeration, television, and antibiotics, all of which are owned by rich people.
Poor people do not have a voice. Homeless people do not have a voice. Thus it is not a democracy.
They are being stopped from attending their city, county, and state hearings and public events in what way? They are stopped from voting in what way? In fact, groups like ACORN were famous for giving more help to those people - in terms of voting - than they were to "typical" middle class voters.
If one person can cast more votes than another person, it isn't democracy.
Ah, so it's only a democracy if they take your money and give it to someone who didn't work as hard or just doesn't feel like it, so you each have the same amount. Good to have that cleared up.
Using the definition you just provided, they are not. How is Amazon supervising your conduct and morals? You can go anywhere you want to purchase gay rape fiction, and Amazon has absolutely knowledge that did or influence over whether you did. Likewise, your use of the word "official" immediately removes Amazon from the discussion. Nobody at Amazon is an official. They are a store.
Why do corporate apologists keep saying this crap?
Because it's true.
Censorship does not mean "action by the government"
Actually yes, it does. It's a reference to an action taken by an authority. An action that you cannot get around. This is simply not the case when it comes to what a book store chooses not to sell. How is Amazon preventing other vendors from selling gay rape fiction? Start a web site, right now, and start selling it. Amazon has no influence over your ability to do so. They are not censoring you.
it just means that materials deemed inappropriate are not allowed to be published.
How is Amazon preventing a publisher from producing gay rape books? Please be specific.
So Mugabe didn't know where Tsangvirai lives?... So Mugabe didn't know who the opposition leader was?
You aren't that dumb, are you? That's not the point. The point is that Assange has provided Mugabe with now-public information from another source that he can use as a bludgeon. His own people know that he's full of crap most of the time, but he has this nice new bit of Eeeeeevil Foreign Information that he can use to score fresh new points. WikiLeaks is, in the interests of getting fresh press and sychophant points for Assange, not really caring which good guys get screwed. It's no different than his recent ID-ing of an ex-pat Iranian, sympathetic to the opposition in Iran, who was providing information on Iran's foreign industrial sources. Now the Mullah's know which of his still-in-Iran extended familiy members to lean on. Same sort of collateral damage as done in the Tsangvirai case.
But that's OK, right? Collateral damage that happens when you're generally doing the right thing is OK. Well, unless Assange says it isn't when someone else does it, which is different.
I think Wikileaks is great... access to unbiased information
Well, there's the problem. Assange picks and chooses his targets and how and what he elects to publish. He has a specific editorial bias that drives his strategies and specific tactics, and he comes right out and says that he chooses what information he spreads in order to influence press coverage of his activities. Don't confuse him with being an unbiased source of information.
Right. The government refused to assist in the commission of an ongoing crime which they were busy investigating and preparing to prosecute.
you can see that they have released less than 1% of what they received.
Right. At the top of their web site, they explain that they're going to take their time doing so because they want to maximize the impact and press coverage.
can't believe you... don't know the difference beween a) operational details b) strategic details c) diplomatic cables
The difference between them is irrelvent, because Manning stole documents including all three, and Assange has already stolen documents involving all three.
So, your solution is... fix human nature? Don't allow gangs to form? How? Again, prior restraint? Voiding the first amendment's protection of free assembly? You're saying we don't need to do anything covert now, but you're not saying how you'd prevent things like MS-13 now.
And so was Guantanamo Bay, when it finally came out
When what finally came out? That we're using that established facility to detain and interrogate fine people like KSM? That (until Obama scuttled them, in favor of civilian trials that he can't organize in states that want nothing to do with them) we were using the facility to hold military hearings and tribunals? This didn't "come out," this was basic information, widely known, and routinely discussed.
OK, so be specific. A woman living in suburban Maryland is the former girlfriend of an MS-13 enforcer. She's watched him slit someone's throat because the victim wanted out of the gang. The area has literally hundreds of that gang's members, all of whom use covert ways to communicate and many of whom are willing and able to kill anyone who might testify against any of them.
Prosecutors tell her that in a few months' time, she'll be needed to testify against the murderer. This is a guy who knows exactly who she is, and who has a hundred friends who know exactly who she is, and who all of her family are, including her extended family in El Salvador - where the gang also has a large and routinely lethal presence.
Your preference: that her name and her role in the pending trial are public record, and that she's on her own. My preference: discretion that allows her role and/or her location and status, and that of her immediate family, to be kept off the radar. Secret, if you will, in the interests of taking down someone who has already killed, and whose associates are complicit in that murder.
Specifically, how would you handle such a situation. Further, how effective do you think the cops would be in trying to round up the murderer and his associates if each step of their investigation was made public? If they receive a tip on where to find they guy, should they be required to post that government information (which it now is) in a public space in the interests of transparency? What mechanism are you proposing we use to arrest the murderer if we must make available to everyone the government's preparation to arrest him where he hides? I'll look forward to your detailed strategy and recommended tactics.
Please, if you can, illustrate how we're not making a conscious decision to rely on secrecy rather than something different.
Why should I? You're deliberately pretending that the "gaps" aren't abundand, real, and - when ignored - only dealt with through counter-constitutional means. We rely on secrecy because the alternative is to throw people to the wolves, to be at the mercy of those who do use secrecy in routinely, deliberately malicious ways, and to empower a completely non-secret police state if you don't want a non-secret organized crime state, instead. The issue is in the gaps, no matter who much you're willing to suspend your principles to pretend there aren't actual humans present in those places.
What are you talking about? Are you actually for prior restraint by custody of all those connected to a criminal suspect, even without hard evidence of an imminent crime against a witness in a pending trial?
And there are a quarter million of these documents. People defending Manning for stealing them and making arrangements with Assange to store and display them are really not getting it.
We are people who don't think that the way North Korea's lunatic communist dictatorship treats its neighbors or its own people is right. That's isn't a particularly difficult concept.
To Israel Iran is rogue
Because Iran routinely speaks in terms of wiping Israel off the map, and provides weapons and cash to terrorists operating throughout the middle east.
the US is the only country idiotic and barbaric enough to not only drop 1, but 2 of them
I'm sure you'd much rather have seen a slow, grinding land invasion that would have killed millions of people. Or perhaps more "conventional" attacks like the firebombing of Tokyo? Getting Japan, which could not possibly have survived the war regardless, to give up earlier and with fewer casualties on all sides, was a good thing.
Who are we to condemn someone else for not living our way.
You're right. The Taliban's view, that women who teach their daughters to read should be taken out into the town square and shot in the head in front of the village, is just as valid as your own way of life. Who are we to say that someone being caught playing music should be allowed to keep their hands attached to their body? Every way of life is just as good as every other way, no doubt.
What you call a rogue state is for the better part of the human population their homeland. Guess who is being rogue from their side of the story....
So, you're saying that there's no objective standard by which to evaluate a government's relations to the rest of the world? That North Korea's government-run currency counterfeiting and massive drug smuggling operations, or sales of missles to terrorist operations, or sinking of a South Korean ship in international waters, or use of prison death camps for political control, is no different than, say, the way that Belgium conducts their affairs? What's it like to have no actual principles?
Wikileaks is a place where someone can go if they want to leak stuff, and they will then make sure it becomes available.
WikiLeaks is directly publishing the stolen documents, themselves, on their own web site. They are doing so slowly, to maximize the press coverage of their publications. Hundreds of these stolen documents are present on the WikiLeaks site, right now. No need for newspapers or anyone else to be involved.
what do you believe you will accomplish by posting lies
Are you using the word "lies" because you're simply ignorant of the fact mentioned above? Go to the web site, notice the posted documents for yourself, and then you can choose a different word.
What is it that you're asking me to rebut, exactly? The notion that all we need to do to protect witnesses is to round up and imprison everybody who might hurt them prior to a trial in which they're going to testify? Do I really need to explain to you why that's neither logistically possible, nor in keeping with the constitution? When someone is going to testify against an MS-13 enforcer, you'd prefer (to hiding that person's location) to rounding up and locking up thousands of people that have connections to that gang? That's what I'm supposed to rebut? That's like asking me to rebut a suggestion that we can avoid the need for witness protection programs by simply using magic wands.
The person in question, whose sympathies lie with the political opposition inside Iran, was providing information about third parties supplying goods to the Iranin regime. This, to help other countries see where Iran is getting industrial supplies, and to better understand their programs. The source of this information (the engineer in question) was detailed along the lines I quoted, in the first 220 cables that Assange published on his own web site. That's really helpful information for the Iranian regime. That source's familial connections living inside Iran are now available as leverage. Of course, you already know all of this, and you're just playing dumb because saying it out loud points out how reckless and self-serving Assange actually is. Boo-hoo, now he'll be "forced" to accept a $million-plus book deal! Damn the luck.
Slashdot Mirror
consider political parties to be criminal organizations
That whole "freedom of assembly" thing is such a pesky problem, isn't it?
America causes a 9/11 every day in Afghanistan. Thats how many civilians we kill.
Really. The US military kills 3,000 Afghan civilians every day? For a guy who's all about citations, that grotesque bit of outright BS is pretty surprising.
an overly broad statute from 1917
Yes, things have changed a lot since 1917. It doesn't matter, like it used to, when people steal a quarter of a million documents, and work with a third party to find a place to stash them on their way to being provided to people who aren't supposed to see them. Such a quaint notion, that whole not betraying your allies' confidence in speaking privately with ambassadors and whatnot. So last century, and so overly broad!
As for the first amendment: it isn't a magic sheild against espionage. You're welcome to report on the fact that something was stolen, and even to characterize the nature of the theft. That's reporting. Completely protected. Providing the content of classified documents to hostiles who'd love to have them? Working with the person who steals them in order to arrange for storage of those documents and the means to convey them? Not protected.
in the last 20 years in the name of keeping America safe..like Saddam, Iran, Saudi, Mugabe, etc.. they won't deal with Assange and wiki... right..
"Dealing" with hostile foreign states, diplomatically, is not the same as helping someone in posession of stolen government documents find a way to best spin their publication. You know the difference, and you're trolling on this subject. The only dealing with Assange on this topic is going to be as it relates to prosecutorial wheeling and dealing.
"Assange stole" etc.
You've obviously missed my immmediate follow up where I said that was a c/p typo, and corrected to the word "published." Though, indeed, we may find that Assange's arrangements with Manning make him quite the accomplice, in the traditional sense.
Could you also please provide concrete details of persons harmed
Can you please name the persons harmed when a drunk driver races down the highway at 100mph? Or is it totally cool to commit that crime, and only uncool if you actually run into somebody? Regardless, Assange - in only the first 220 documents out of 250,000 - has deliberately identified an Iranian ex-pat industrialist, with sympathies towards and support for the opposition inside Iran (where his family lives), as the source of intel about Iran's international industrial sources. I'm sure you think that the Mullahs would never allow harm to come to anyone who opposes their regime (other than the occasional family arrests, shootings, hangings, and that sort of thing, on political grounds), but that sort of reckless divulging of sensitive info - just so that Assange can keep milkiing that press coverage he so hungers for - is complete asshattery.
THEY are supposed to work for US, not the other way around
Yup. And as they're working for me, doing things like law enforcement, diplomacy, counter-espionage, transporting nuclear materials, running combat operations, administering witness protection programs, and so many other things, I fully expect that some of what they do, in my employ, must involve non-public information. I don't want Mexican drug cartels to know the home addresses of ICE agents' children. I don't want North Korea to have the encryption keys protecting communications we share with South Korea. In their capacity as my employees, some local, state, and federal agencies need to be able to do some things that aren't Googleable. You know this, but choose to characterize all covert activities as lies. That you can't grasp the contextual differences, or are too trollish to admit to them, makes this a pretty silly conversation indeed.
Do you know what the greatest deterrent to war is? The fact thats its so terrible
Really? You think that the horror of war isn't clear? That tens of thousands of military people talking to friends, family, journalists, film makers, etc., aren't clearly enough explaining what it's like to face close urban conflict, or to have to deal with jihaddis holding school kids as human shields? We are absolutely saturated with information about how horrible such conflicts are. You know that. We all do. That has nothing to do with Manning being a grandstanding drama queen, or with Assange cravenly exploiting him for brownie points with his groupies.
I'm sorry, what exactly is the ongoing crime you are referring to?
... (which) the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates (etc. etc) the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same (etc) ... Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."
WikiLeaks is in possession of stolen classified documents, and know that their dissemination of those documents is of material benefit to the country's adversaries (say, North Korea or Iran, etc.). This directly violates at least one statute, and is a felony. They still have 'em, and they're still making them available to North Koread, Iran, etc... that crime continues to go on, as we speak.
18 U.S.C. 793(e), very clearly says:
"Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, (etc. etc.) relating to the national defense,
It's quite straightforward.
And ... in what way is Amazon exercising authority over you, or over the publisher of the gay rape fiction? In what way is your ability to purchase, or their ability to publish, stopped by that store deciding not to advertise and carry a particular product? Please be specific. Is Amazon the only legally sanctioned book seller available to you? Is Amazon the only legally authorized retailing mechanism available to the publisher? Does Amazon's choice not to sell that genre somehow prevent the publisher from wholesaling to any of thousands of other retailers (who, incidentally, now have a competitive advantage in the gay rape genre)? Does Amazon's choice not to sell those titles somehow prevent you from turning to the retailers that the publisher works with, or directly to the publisher if they choose to sell directly? If so, how? Please be specific in detailing how that authority is in Amazon's hands.
the figure is skewed even more in favor of the rich
Which is especially worrisome because the wealth of the country is a fixed amount, and has been for centuries. Every time somebody gives birth, the wealth of the country is divided into smaller and smaller shares, which is why poor people today live exactly like poor people in the 1800's, with their complete lack of refridgeration, television, and antibiotics, all of which are owned by rich people.
Poor people do not have a voice. Homeless people do not have a voice. Thus it is not a democracy.
They are being stopped from attending their city, county, and state hearings and public events in what way? They are stopped from voting in what way? In fact, groups like ACORN were famous for giving more help to those people - in terms of voting - than they were to "typical" middle class voters.
If one person can cast more votes than another person, it isn't democracy.
Ah, so it's only a democracy if they take your money and give it to someone who didn't work as hard or just doesn't feel like it, so you each have the same amount. Good to have that cleared up.
Amazon is acting as a censor in this case
Using the definition you just provided, they are not. How is Amazon supervising your conduct and morals? You can go anywhere you want to purchase gay rape fiction, and Amazon has absolutely knowledge that did or influence over whether you did. Likewise, your use of the word "official" immediately removes Amazon from the discussion. Nobody at Amazon is an official. They are a store.
Why do corporate apologists keep saying this crap?
Because it's true.
Censorship does not mean "action by the government"
Actually yes, it does. It's a reference to an action taken by an authority. An action that you cannot get around. This is simply not the case when it comes to what a book store chooses not to sell. How is Amazon preventing other vendors from selling gay rape fiction? Start a web site, right now, and start selling it. Amazon has no influence over your ability to do so. They are not censoring you.
it just means that materials deemed inappropriate are not allowed to be published.
How is Amazon preventing a publisher from producing gay rape books? Please be specific.
So Mugabe didn't know where Tsangvirai lives? ... So Mugabe didn't know who the opposition leader was?
You aren't that dumb, are you? That's not the point. The point is that Assange has provided Mugabe with now-public information from another source that he can use as a bludgeon. His own people know that he's full of crap most of the time, but he has this nice new bit of Eeeeeevil Foreign Information that he can use to score fresh new points. WikiLeaks is, in the interests of getting fresh press and sychophant points for Assange, not really caring which good guys get screwed. It's no different than his recent ID-ing of an ex-pat Iranian, sympathetic to the opposition in Iran, who was providing information on Iran's foreign industrial sources. Now the Mullah's know which of his still-in-Iran extended familiy members to lean on. Same sort of collateral damage as done in the Tsangvirai case.
But that's OK, right? Collateral damage that happens when you're generally doing the right thing is OK. Well, unless Assange says it isn't when someone else does it, which is different.
I think Wikileaks is great ... access to unbiased information
Well, there's the problem. Assange picks and chooses his targets and how and what he elects to publish. He has a specific editorial bias that drives his strategies and specific tactics, and he comes right out and says that he chooses what information he spreads in order to influence press coverage of his activities. Don't confuse him with being an unbiased source of information.
Sorry, typo. Should say that Assange has already published documents involving all three.
the govt refused
... don't know the difference beween a) operational details b) strategic details c) diplomatic cables
Right. The government refused to assist in the commission of an ongoing crime which they were busy investigating and preparing to prosecute.
you can see that they have released less than 1% of what they received.
Right. At the top of their web site, they explain that they're going to take their time doing so because they want to maximize the impact and press coverage.
can't believe you
The difference between them is irrelvent, because Manning stole documents including all three, and Assange has already stolen documents involving all three.
So, your solution is ... fix human nature? Don't allow gangs to form? How? Again, prior restraint? Voiding the first amendment's protection of free assembly? You're saying we don't need to do anything covert now, but you're not saying how you'd prevent things like MS-13 now.
And so was Guantanamo Bay, when it finally came out
When what finally came out? That we're using that established facility to detain and interrogate fine people like KSM? That (until Obama scuttled them, in favor of civilian trials that he can't organize in states that want nothing to do with them) we were using the facility to hold military hearings and tribunals? This didn't "come out," this was basic information, widely known, and routinely discussed.
OK, so be specific. A woman living in suburban Maryland is the former girlfriend of an MS-13 enforcer. She's watched him slit someone's throat because the victim wanted out of the gang. The area has literally hundreds of that gang's members, all of whom use covert ways to communicate and many of whom are willing and able to kill anyone who might testify against any of them.
Prosecutors tell her that in a few months' time, she'll be needed to testify against the murderer. This is a guy who knows exactly who she is, and who has a hundred friends who know exactly who she is, and who all of her family are, including her extended family in El Salvador - where the gang also has a large and routinely lethal presence.
Your preference: that her name and her role in the pending trial are public record, and that she's on her own. My preference: discretion that allows her role and/or her location and status, and that of her immediate family, to be kept off the radar. Secret, if you will, in the interests of taking down someone who has already killed, and whose associates are complicit in that murder.
Specifically, how would you handle such a situation. Further, how effective do you think the cops would be in trying to round up the murderer and his associates if each step of their investigation was made public? If they receive a tip on where to find they guy, should they be required to post that government information (which it now is) in a public space in the interests of transparency? What mechanism are you proposing we use to arrest the murderer if we must make available to everyone the government's preparation to arrest him where he hides? I'll look forward to your detailed strategy and recommended tactics.
Please, if you can, illustrate how we're not making a conscious decision to rely on secrecy rather than something different.
Why should I? You're deliberately pretending that the "gaps" aren't abundand, real, and - when ignored - only dealt with through counter-constitutional means. We rely on secrecy because the alternative is to throw people to the wolves, to be at the mercy of those who do use secrecy in routinely, deliberately malicious ways, and to empower a completely non-secret police state if you don't want a non-secret organized crime state, instead. The issue is in the gaps, no matter who much you're willing to suspend your principles to pretend there aren't actual humans present in those places.
but you're not yet proving it false
What are you talking about? Are you actually for prior restraint by custody of all those connected to a criminal suspect, even without hard evidence of an imminent crime against a witness in a pending trial?
And there are a quarter million of these documents. People defending Manning for stealing them and making arrangements with Assange to store and display them are really not getting it.
Who are we to condemn them?
We are people who don't think that the way North Korea's lunatic communist dictatorship treats its neighbors or its own people is right. That's isn't a particularly difficult concept.
To Israel Iran is rogue
Because Iran routinely speaks in terms of wiping Israel off the map, and provides weapons and cash to terrorists operating throughout the middle east.
the US is the only country idiotic and barbaric enough to not only drop 1, but 2 of them
I'm sure you'd much rather have seen a slow, grinding land invasion that would have killed millions of people. Or perhaps more "conventional" attacks like the firebombing of Tokyo? Getting Japan, which could not possibly have survived the war regardless, to give up earlier and with fewer casualties on all sides, was a good thing.
Who are we to condemn someone else for not living our way.
You're right. The Taliban's view, that women who teach their daughters to read should be taken out into the town square and shot in the head in front of the village, is just as valid as your own way of life. Who are we to say that someone being caught playing music should be allowed to keep their hands attached to their body? Every way of life is just as good as every other way, no doubt.
Out of curiosity, how do you sleep at night?
What you call a rogue state is for the better part of the human population their homeland. Guess who is being rogue from their side of the story....
So, you're saying that there's no objective standard by which to evaluate a government's relations to the rest of the world? That North Korea's government-run currency counterfeiting and massive drug smuggling operations, or sales of missles to terrorist operations, or sinking of a South Korean ship in international waters, or use of prison death camps for political control, is no different than, say, the way that Belgium conducts their affairs? What's it like to have no actual principles?
Wikileaks is a place where someone can go if they want to leak stuff, and they will then make sure it becomes available.
WikiLeaks is directly publishing the stolen documents, themselves, on their own web site. They are doing so slowly, to maximize the press coverage of their publications. Hundreds of these stolen documents are present on the WikiLeaks site, right now. No need for newspapers or anyone else to be involved.
what do you believe you will accomplish by posting lies
Are you using the word "lies" because you're simply ignorant of the fact mentioned above? Go to the web site, notice the posted documents for yourself, and then you can choose a different word.
And your rebuttal would be what, exactly?
What is it that you're asking me to rebut, exactly? The notion that all we need to do to protect witnesses is to round up and imprison everybody who might hurt them prior to a trial in which they're going to testify? Do I really need to explain to you why that's neither logistically possible, nor in keeping with the constitution? When someone is going to testify against an MS-13 enforcer, you'd prefer (to hiding that person's location) to rounding up and locking up thousands of people that have connections to that gang? That's what I'm supposed to rebut? That's like asking me to rebut a suggestion that we can avoid the need for witness protection programs by simply using magic wands.
The person in question, whose sympathies lie with the political opposition inside Iran, was providing information about third parties supplying goods to the Iranin regime. This, to help other countries see where Iran is getting industrial supplies, and to better understand their programs. The source of this information (the engineer in question) was detailed along the lines I quoted, in the first 220 cables that Assange published on his own web site. That's really helpful information for the Iranian regime. That source's familial connections living inside Iran are now available as leverage. Of course, you already know all of this, and you're just playing dumb because saying it out loud points out how reckless and self-serving Assange actually is. Boo-hoo, now he'll be "forced" to accept a $million-plus book deal! Damn the luck.