A huge leak of U.S. reports and this is all they get? I know of more stuff leaked at one good dinner on background.
Of course, Ricks’ dinners didn’t include anyone willing to tell him that the Taliban used surface-to-air missiles to shoot down US aircraft, or that the US paid Afghan media to run friendly stories.
From the apocalypse angle, the Times of London thinks that “hundreds” of Afghan civilians working as informants have been outed by the documents. (That’s a CBS News link since the Times is behind a paywall. Working great, isn’t it?)
Napoleon
Serious question, do those documents actually contain names of ordinary Afgans who may have assisted?
homerhk
Those two points you mention that would not have been discussed at the dinner table are, I’m afraid, pretty small beer. For all of those yesterday who were righteously saying that the wikileaks provided the US citizenry with more information with which to evaluate the ongoing prosecution of the war, how is the fact that the Taliban has surface to air missiles relevant? OMG, the US gov’t didn’t publicize that the Taliban had a particular weapon! that information should never have been classified!!
As for the other piece of information, I recall a very similar piece of info was released about Iraq back in the day but I’m about 100% sure this was not noticed by 99.9% of the US public.
I understand that one might not care about embarrassing the US government or military but don’t Afghan lives count for something? Do you think it’s worth the potential outing of hundreds of Afghani individuals is worth the US public having the ability to know a particular weapon the Taliban has or that some part of the US military paid some radio broadcasters to include content?
Did you read the article in MJ that Tom Ricks referred to? In that article, the following is said:
isn’t this a concern?
roshan
I guess all the head banging really paid off since there was a major debate in the House yesterday and the Afghanistan war funding was cut.
Ha, just kidding, that can’t possibly happen, man, they have instead increased the amount of funds for the war.
Assange could probably have more effect on the apathetic American public and gov’t by leaking stuff about the Housewife’s of New Jersey or Snooki or the Balloon Boy. Heck, why not just make up stuff about Shirley and release it, that at least created a “teachable” moment to mark the passage of time. We might even prosecute few anonymous bloggers as a result.
stuckinred
It don’t mean nothin.
JWL
I can take it.
I can take any information that the president of the United States can take.
I’m typical, too.
We The People are not made of sugar candy.
mistermix
@homerhk: My general view is that there’s a place for reporters like Ricks, who maintain relationships with background sources, and there’s a place for major leaks of operational documents which can be mined by everyone.
As far as the accusations of harming people, that MJ piece, which I have read, links to this page:
http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/meeting_security_0.html
I scanned it and I saw meetings with tribal chiefs, government officials and the like. Those people are in danger with our without leaks. If you think I’m wrong, link to a document that has the name of someone who isn’t already know to meet with the US military. I sure couldn’t find one.
Examples:
“Meeting with Hafiz Ullah, Sayed Karam District Commissioner to Discover Details of 20 Oct attack on Sayed Karam District Center. ”
“Meeting with Alingar ANP Captain Ahmad Shah, Alingar, Chief of Police.”
matoko_chan
lawl, those guys are all doing damage control.
the two things this will affect is funding and “the narrative”. i predict, the whole industrial mil/academic complex of COIN is going down for one thing…the think tanks, the symposiums, the scholarly papers, the graduate assistantships. money fights when money is tight.
The reason the MANPADS and SAMS are scary is that is supposedly how the mujahideen sent the sovs running for home with their tail between their legs.
the culminative effect is that more people will see this war as unwinnable. Ricks and the milbloggers are having their bread and butter threatened. So’s Exum. Before last week 58% of the american people wanted out….i expect that will increase.
“victory” already went out of the wingnut vocab….”success” is now doomed. sure, its coals to Newcastle, but the US gov has been officially hunting Assange since June, when they claimed Assange has 260,000 diplomatic cables that will gut diplomacy between the US and Arab leaders. If that is true, there is going to be another black eye for the US.
i haven’t seen a lot of reference to low level state functionaries calling the Saudi Princes sand-niggers so mebbe Assange is keepin some stuff back, or it was a cover story. interesting times.
and i’d like to see some linkage for the intel compromise assertions.
jus sayin’.
roshan
@homerhk:
Oh, I don’t know, maybe we would actually like to know how well armed the Taliban is. Majority of the public thinks of Afghanistan as something out of the stone age, and have assumed that we control the whole country. Maybe they could look at this information and see that inspite of being there for 9+ yrs, we can’t even prevent the enemy from acquiring sophisticated weapons. They might even come to the conclusion that we need more troops in there and more funds to go with it to have a chance at winning this thing. Who knows, let the public at least know about it.
Yes, the Afghan lives do count for something. But can anyone guarantee that if we keep the occupation going, then none of these people would lose their lives?
The Afghan folks who are cooperating with the US military are commendable and should expect safety in return. But think about this, before we ever landed there, the Afghan society was already radicalized. Afghanistan is not a country with well defined borders and a civic community. It’s made up of tribes, warlords and radical fundamentalists. These informants who are now working with us, would probably be doing the same for some other folks/tribes and in process would have had endangered their lives anyway. The US can’t guarantee any persons lives outside the borders of USA. Now that the leak is out the most proper thing to do would be to give asylum to these informants and their families and bring them over.
matoko_chan
@mistermix: my comment is in moderation, but yeah, soldiers’ signage on stratfors and names of known afghani officials are not intel compromises.
intel compromise is who, what and where. must of this stuff is false classification to hide screw ups.
eg, civilians killed by drone strikes. the US has worked hard to keep those numbers secret. why?
because drone strikes create more terrorists than COIN eliminates with trusted networks.
homerhk
mistermix, I take your point about the individuals and the reports of the meetings – maybe some of them are already known to work with the US/Nato forces. What about this one? http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/event/2006/10/AFG20061005n376.html. That seems more on point than the ones you mention.
In terms of the benefit of the leaks, my question is what really is the value of the current leak of operational documents? I really don’t think it is about making the US public more informed since most agree that it doesn’t really provide much more information than was otherwise generally known. If it’s to do with consolidating or prompting US opposition to the war by having the very fact of the leak bring more publicity to the war, I don’t think I can justify the leak on this basis alone.
geg6
@homerhk:
When evidence can be shown that any identities of Afghan informants have been compromised (meaning an identity of someone who wasn’t already known to be working with the U.S., Karzai, or anyone in the coalition), then I’ll get worked up over it. Haven’t seen any proof yet and these documents have been out there for several days now.
This is about CYA and pretty much nothing else, as far as I can tell.
stuckinred
“making the US public more informed”
MORE informed, ha. That’s the funniest thing I’ve read in weeks!
geg6
@homerhk:
So your take on it is that less information in the public domain is good even if the information being leaked is already known in its general outlines? That details aren’t important to our understanding of what is happening in Afghanistan and of how COIN is working?
mistermix
@homerhk: That’s not much better – a meeting with a local tribal chairman in broad daylight (~10 AM). Not very cloak-and-dagger.
roshan
@homerhk:
What basis would suffice for you, then? Let’s hear it.
matoko_chan
@homerhk: homer, again intel compromise is who, what, where when those variables are unknown.
look at it this way…..the US gov has been hunting Assange since the collateral death video was released on April 5.
if its no big whup, why the international manhunt?
why did Assange leave sweden? were the swedes about to give him up(not like them) or was he going to get whacked?
im curious about about all this stuff.
but Ricks and Exum are pure damage control spin.
because there IS damage.
a lot of it.
matoko_chan
Fareed Zacharia was on Colbert last night.
he summed up the Epic Fail in Af-Pak pretty sweetly.
He said, when we don’t give the insurgents money, they turn toward the islamists. But when we DO give the insurgents money, they also turn toward the islamists.
:)
like i said, there is absolutely nothing the US can do to stop muslims liking Islam.
homerhk
@roshan, to your two points.
Any member of the public who thinks that the US controls the entire Afghanistan region is so ill-informed that they probably won’t even register the wikileaks story or the particular story about the Taliban having surface to air missiles. Notwithstanding this, I grant you the point you make.
In relation to the point about the Afghan individuals, your reply implicitly accepts that the leaks did cause some danger to them. I certainly don’t know that that is the case but let’s assume so. What I object to is your seemingly blithe concern with their lives –
I would say that is an irrelevant question. The US and Nato forces must have a duty to do what they can to protect the lives of the locals who are helping them. making sure their names are not leaked is a good start. It is not a justification of the leak to say ‘well, they are likely to die anyway because of this or that reason’.
El Cid
@roshan: You don’t need to know nothin’ ’bout no Taliban. All’s you got ta know is that they’s evil and they’s the enemy. After that it ain’t yer damn bidness.
homerhk
@roshan, mistermix, geg6 and matoko_chan.
Look, whatever you might say, leaking classified information is a crime and it is a crime for a reason. You and I can argue with the merits of a particular leak but my concern is – as I explained in yesterday’s thread – that you can’t simply have one soldier or individual deciding that in this particular case the law should be broken. Now, that is not to say that I don’t think there is any place for civil disobedience and that there are some laws that should be protested – eg all the Jim Crow laws. I would have much much more sympathy for the leaker if he/she goes public saying “I leaked this information to Wikileaks, I leaked it because of x,y important reason and I think it is so important I am prepared to face the punishment that goes along with the crime”.
El Cid
@homerhk: No doubt. Leaking classified information is a crime. Hopefully the leaker(s) was entirely cognizant that he / they face serious legal consequences.
roshan
@homerhk:
I would say my concern was more blithe when I didn’t know any of these details about the war that the leaks have brought forth. It was more “out of sight and out of mind” kind of thing.
If the system was geared towards informing the public about these details and had been more forthcoming on many other aspects of the war, instead of expecting me to just blindly sign the check to finance it, then maybe I wouldn’t have supported this leak. You could even make the case that had the system been more honest, this war wouldn’t have been prolonged so far.
On a side note, did you know that Pentagon hires talking heads and pundits to shill for the war and affect public opinion in the media?
Here’s the link: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2008/05/10/analysts/index.html
eemom
@homerhk:
you’re wasting your time asking reasonable questions in this crowd. They want EVIDENCE that somewhere in 91,000 documents, the vast majority of which absolutely NOBODY has reviewed — and I heard that from the mouth of Assange the Great himself this morning on Democracy Now — there’s the name of some Afghani collaborator the Taliban didn’t already know about.
Cuz if they don’t have that EVIDENCE, the possibility — some might call it a likelihood — that such names exist in those 91,000 pages doesn’t mean shit. Risk, schmisk.
And if they get their evidence AFTER those people have been brutally murdered — eh, get over it. We kill way more Afghanis than the Taliban do, anyway, so what’s a few more.
matoko_chan
its pretty easy to see which side is the side of the angels here.
ed morrissey and the wingnut brigade say HUNDREDS OF AFGHANI ALLIES OUTED
Krauthammer an the milbloggers– NOTHING TO SEE HERE
there is something to see.
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
Fixed that for ya.
roshan
@eemom:
Ha, the third-person-chiding tactic. Now, that’s more effective than anything that homerhk has said.
homerhk
@el cid, that is my point, I hope they were and if they were so cognizant they should have the guts to take the appropriate punishment.
@roshan, of course I was aware of that – I don’t really think that’s got anything to do with the point I am making. I suspect you and I are pretty close in terms of our political leanings – I seemingly have to repeat again that I was against both the Iraq was and the Afghanistan war (although I’ll admit to being a bit more equivocal about my opposition in late 2001).
I do, however, have a concern about an anonymous person leaking selective information (even though it was 91K documents, it was surely a selection of the available documents) even where I agree with the leak in substance. Liberals often decried Bush and often say – the US is a country of laws. You just can’t go about choosing which ones to comply with and which ones not to comply with for your own genuinely felt reasons because someone else could also genuinely feel that, for example, it is ok to break the law and torture people because of the immediate benefit that might bring.
matoko_chan
@homerhk: Manning is “being punished”. He is the leaker.
Assange is the publisher.
@eemom: links plz.
:)
matoko_chan
@arguingwithsignposts: tyvm, sorry it was late…so awsp, is what Fareed said true?
we are fucked in Af-Pak no matter what we do?
i think we should GTFO now, not a single additional soldier should die, or a single muslim civilian.
what is the point of anymore death?
arguingwithsignposts
@homerhk:
Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. would like a word with you.
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
Sadly, yes.
ETA: the elephant in the room as mentioned by mistermix (I believe) a few days ago is that the U.S. will keep this going because we can’t bring home 90,000 troops to 10 percent unemployment.
homerhk
@matoko chan. Manning was arrested after being turned in by a computer hacker. He hasn’t been convicted so I don’t know if he’s the leaker. But, in any event, I said that I would have more respect for the leaker had they faced up to the punishment openly rather than (albeit unsuccessfully) hide behind anonymity.
homerhk
@arguing with signposts – read my post at number 20.
lol
@homerhk:
Not sure this is the stuff Manning leaked – he was described as having diplomatic cables that would be supposedly embarassing to Clinton and other state dept officials, not random military reports in Afghanistan.
roshan
@homerhk:
One thing to note here is that this leak comes during a democratic administration. If the liberals are supporting the leak then I don’t know why anyone would accuse them of following party propaganda to win elections. It might as well hamper the chances of the democrats during the elections.
If you are pointing to the Plame leak and blaming the liberals for opposing it in comparison to the current one then you should also know that context matters. If the Plame leak had been of benefit for the general public to know, I would have had supported it too. In fact it was opposite of that and had been leaked to discredit any one who was finding fault with the Bush admin’s effort to launch a misguided war.
Also, no one (at least the liberals) is asking for laws to be broken. If you assumed that the system is running fair and honest and is able to level with the general public then maybe I would be opposed to the leaks. But in reality it never ever works that way and never will. So these kind of leaks are the only reasonable way (sadly) to know about these kind of details about war.
Ash Can
I’m with homerhk and eemom. Wikileaks isn’t just revealing names, it’s publicizing them. Even assuming that the Taliban leaders already knew who every single one of these people were (and if that’s the case, why they’re all still alive is beyond me), the big deal Wikileaks and the media have made over all this leaked information is having the effect of waving a red flag over these names. The Taliban leaders may have been able to find out on their own who these people were, but Wikileaks has essentially put their names up in neon for all the world to see. I have no objection to the public learning more about the war and how it’s being waged, but outing informants indiscriminately is taking things too far.
matoko_chan
@lol: this is the stuff Manning leaked. he gave all his stuff to Assange when he gave him the collateral death video. If the diplomatic cables exist Assange has them too.
eemom is operating on a false premise.
Assange had no tickets (clearance billets), he has no obligation to americans or afghanis to protect classified data.
Manning had the access.
Assange’s contract with Manning is the same as the one he referred to when the collateral death video was aired…….that he release the information in a way designed to optimize its info value and draw maximum attention to it.
so eemom whining about afghani contractors being outed is simply irrelevent.
sowwy.
matoko_chan
@Ash Can: it doesn’t matter.
like I said, Manning was the leaker with access to the classified data.
Assange is just fulfilling his contract with Manning exactly like he did with the collateral death video.
Assange has no duty to america…..IPOF i think he feared assassination, and that is why he left Sweden and went underground until he worked out the release details.
matoko_chan
@homerhk: can you read?
you and eemom can’t read i guess.
matoko_chan
now why am i being moderated? because i said eemom can’t read?
let me repeat.
Assange is not a leaker.
He is a publisher.
He is fulfilling his contract with Specialist Manning who IS the leaker.
And he may have a LOT MORE stuff.
matoko_chan
why am i being moderated?
roshan
A honest question to the folks who don’t agree with the leak.
How can we get more factual information about the war and it’s realities outside of the sugarcoated information that the gov’t and the embedded reporters provide us?
Please don’t point to the FOIA, it’s basically useless in the face of the gov’t threat of national security defense. The iraq war photos didn’t come out due to it.
Hugin & Munin
eemom: Call me when you give a fuck about dead Turks, you amoral fuck.
lawnorder
“OTOH the Journolist leaks are very impressive and are the most important story EVAH!!! WOLVERINES!”
Self consciousness and consistence are not one of the Reich Wing’s strengths, are they ?
matoko_chan
@homerhk: it is a crime for Manning, but not for Assange.
you and eemom are both retards if you don’t get that.
homerhk
@roshan, posts 35 and 40.
Your post at 35 is the sort of thing that concerns me most about the leaks. I made the point about the US being a country of laws. I haven’t said anywhere anything about democrats or republicans – I could give two shits about what party is in power when these things leak.
I think where I went wrong in explaining my pov is that I got caught up in arguing substantively why the wikileak was wrong. I understand there may be genuine disagreements about whether or not – on balance – it was a good or bad thing. So, I won’t argue about the merits anymore save to say that understanding that different people (even people on the same side of the political spectrum) can have legitimate disagreements about whether or not any particular leak is worth it is precisely the reason for my concern. You illustrate it well by your comments on Valerie Plame – you say you would have agreed with it if it had been for the benefit of people to know.
But who are you to make that decision? The rules against leaks are there for a reason; just like there are rules for the gathering and presenting of evidence in a criminal trial. What you say is rather like a “good” cop planting evidence on someone who he knows is a criminal and deserves to be put away. That may well be true, but that does not excuse the rules being broken because the integrity of the system is more important and the oft said mantra that rather 10 guilty people go free than 1 innocent person wrongly imprisoned.
And by the way this does not mean that classification system needs to be reviewed (indeed was reviewed and altered by President Obama last year). It doesn’t mean that there aren’t abuses but when you say that the system will never work on the one hand and then say you aren’t encouraging people to break the law on the other, you are being disingenuous.
As for this question:
I will say again that much if not all of the relevant information contained in the 91K documents were already in the public domain. The answer is not to leak classified information hiding behind anonymity but to have more rigorous reporting, and more demand from the population as a whole. This will never happen because Palin’s latest torturing of the English language is more interesting to reporters and consumers alike. Having said that, if you read people like Tom Ricks or the MSNBC Afghanistan correspondent, the Guardian, the BBC and even watch Al-Jazeera you’ll be much better informed.
matoko_chan
@homerhk:
But that has nada to do with Assange releasing the docs.
you are moving the goalposts.
you and eemom are both retards as near as i can tell……
you can argue that Assange is inhumane, but not that he is breaking american law.
do you want to try that?
matoko_chan
and one more time….i have seen no evidence linked of intel compromise.
feel free, eemom.
homerhk
matoko chan, I have not anywhere talked about Assange being subject to criminal indictment (although he may well be subject to an indictment for aiding and abetting but that’s a different story). I have consistently referred to the “leaker”, i.e. not the publisher. It was you who referred to Manning and I did a quick search and found that he had been arrested after being turned in by a hacker. I don’t know who that hacker is but my point was related to my previous point about wishing the leaker had the guts to do so publicly and accept the punishment due to him. Clearly since he was caught by someone turning him in, he didn’t do so.
So before rashly calling me a retard and/or complaining about me not reading things, perhaps you could read my posts properly?
Thanks
matoko_chan
@homerhk: you are talking about the ethics of leaking in context of Wikileaks. Manning leaked, gave the docs to Assange. i linked several posts correlating Manning with Assange. the US gov’t OFFICIALLY correlated Manning with Assange in early June. you are ignoring facts. Manning’s trial started July 6.
im not sure if it done yet.
lie. Assange is not an american citizen.
like eemom, you are hanging Assange without a single link.
either you are a retard or dishonest.
choose.
geg6
@arguingwithsignposts:
As would Daniel Ellsberg.
geg6
@Ash Can:
Please provide a link as to exactly what names are being named that hadn’t already been named in numerous other public forums.
‘Cuz no one, no one, has shown a single instance of such.
roshan
@homerhk:
You are putting so much effort in proving me guilty of approving of leaks, that the main actors in this ongoing war especially the military-industry complex, the torturers, the CIA and the gov’t officials from top down are essentially skating free of any charges. You are right, who am I to question these things. If the current trend of apathy continues, I would go to my grave having underwritten wars which maimed and killed tens of thousands of healthy men and women, both in US and the countries we invaded.
That doesn’t answer my question and you are assuming that the American public is basically brain dead. It’s just not the case or else Assange and his anonymous source wouldn’t have taken a chance on their lives to come out with this kind of information.
Many folks who are opposed to the leaks, mainly out of their concern for the lives of the Afghan informants, would not want such kind of leaks to help change the course of the war. They would probably like a more smoother approach where everyone is taken care of and all folks involved in the war effort survive and are home safe. Guess what, I would like it too. But look at history to see how wars have ended. We incinerated about half a million folks in Japan to end WWII. In Vietnam, we were basically chased out with tails between our legs after keeping on with the war effort for longer than needed time. Although that war was started on a false premise, similar to the Iraq war.
I don’t support breaking laws to acquire any information. But the bad faith actors, who stem to profit from wars, have skewed, fogged and added distraction to the balance of information to such a level, that there is a need for such type of leaks to inform the general public about the realities of wars. We can’t just sit here, chant USA, USA, and expect to win wars. We also need to look more carefully (at least in my mind) at not starting them in the first place
Maude
@homerhk:
Always makes me uneasy when someone leaks selective classified information. I said before that the leaker has an agenda. He/she also doesn’t think much of US law.
Svensker
The worst part of the leaks to me is that the neo-cons are spinning info in the documents to say that Iran is fighting against us in Afghanistan. One of the Fox “reporters” said last night that Iran is, in effect, directly killing US soldiers.
These fuckers will stop at nothing to get us into more war. It’s time we fought back fiercely and I think Manning and Assange are trying to do that. God bless them.
dj spellchecka
at the risk of sounding inhumane, our war in afghanistan puts everybody living in that country in harms way…those who support us, those who oppose us, those that don’t care or want us gone…worrying about a specific sub-set of the population at this point seems a bit odd..
ps
the us military has left almost all iraqis who worked as translators to their own devices as we have been drawing down…
geg6
@Svensker:
This.
I’ve been having a huge sense of deja vu lately over this Wikileaks thing and it definitely reminds of the demonization of Daniel Ellsberg over the Pentagon Papers. Same bullshit lies about war and same bullshit lies about the “consequences” of the DFHs putting the truth about the lies right out in front of the public.
Can we please move on from the 60s by the day I die? Same shit, different day.
malraux
@geg6: There aren’t any. The database of info is searchable. Searches for informant doesn’t give any names, for example. Its just fud.
matoko_chan
@Maude: that would be Specialist Manning who is currently on trial.
Not Assange.
This is the first thing published (on April 5) by Assange that Manning leaked.
Collateral murder.
ax yourself why that video was classified.
hmmm?
roshan
@dj spellchecka:
Could you provide a source for the above info?
matoko_chan
so all of my comments are moderated now?
has the Balloon-juice Association of Angry Old Peeps complained that I am being mean to them?
or are you afraid im going to say “IQ” or “the biological basis of behavior?”
homerhk
matoko chan – for the last time, I have not said anything about Assange but rather have talked about the person who decided to leak all this stuff to Assange.
A few other points: Assange does not have to be an American citizen to be charged of a crime committed in the US. I do not know whether he will be or is under indictment but merely said that I could see a possibility that he might be charged as an accessory. That is simply a legal issue nothing to do with whether I think he should be indicted. I am more focussed on the leaker him/herself. I don’t give a fuck about Assange really.
@roshan – it is not about you in particular it’s just that I was directing the comment at you. I mean, I would trust my decision making process over anyone elses but I still think it’s not for me to make decisions about what should be classified and what shouldn’t be – as a matter of formality that is not my role. I can have my own opinion but again, as with the analogy of the ‘good’ cop planting evidence, the entire system is at risk if people simply started making those formal decisions on their own. You say:
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said apart from it is a clear inference from what you are saying that you do support breaking laws to acquire information since you are advocating leaking information. My point is simply that it makes me uneasy when people – albeit with the best of intentions – seek to take the law into their own hands. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable position. I am not vilifying wikileaks for publishing the information.
eemom
@Hugin & Munin:
I have no desire to call you ever, obscure asshole. Now stick your head back up your ass where it belongs.
homerhk
matoko chan – sorry I just re-read your last post and I can’t let what you say slide. I haven’t “hung” Assange as you say – I haven’t mentioned him at all. I am not the US government so the fact that they may have correlated the two is absolutely irrelevant to the point I am making. As for the ‘without a single link’ again if you read my posts above I have linked to two articles. You can disagree but again, please read my posts before responding.
And please don’t use the word retard – it’s offensive. I mean, I have been making reasoned comments and am happy to debate honestly and with integrity but do you really think you’re going to change my mind with that sort of approach?
homerhk
@svensker, it’s ironic that on the one hand you say the worst things about the leaks is that neo-cons are using information in it to argue for war against Iran and then in the next sentence say that Manning and Assange are ‘fighting back’. Fighting back against what? the only reason those neo-con dicks can even begin to make that arguument is because of documents that Manning supposedly leaked and Assange published!!
Svensker
@homerhk:
I see what you’re saying, but obviously that misses the point. The point is the neo-cons will use ANYTHING, even stuff that should cause them to go down in flames, as a tool to advance their ends. Our side is all about, “well, that wouldn’t be NICE, gee, what if someone gets their feelings hurt.” Enough of that shit.
It’s time for the DFHs to get out there and get their hands dirty, and some of them are. The fact that some war-mongering assholes attempt to use that for more war shouldn’t stop them or us.
Corner Stone
@dj spellchecka:
It’s a way to dodge or deflect from the true debate we should be having.
If they can get you to admit that one person is going to die because of this situation then you are forbidden from arguing that the leaks are a “good thing”. Because how could you be for something that will get someone killed if you’re really for trying to save lives?
It’s bullshit and it’s trying to reduce the outcome down to the emotional level.
homerhk
@svensker – yes I see that. Raw information may be a powerful thing but unfortunately the US right wing aided and abetted by the media will twist anything for their own perverse aims. I really don’t think war with Iran is seriously on the cards – Obama is much too sensible for that. My wife is Iranian and the general view of her and her family is that Obama is doing a pretty good job wrt Iran and Ahmadinejad. If he ever changed his minds, I would stop being an O-bot pretty damn quickly!
Corner Stone
@homerhk:
That’s inaccurate. Before the WL dump I saw reports that some 30% of Taliban in Afghanistan were receiving training in Iran.
They didn’t need this info to push their goals, and they didn’t need this incident to try and manufacture bullshit either.
We needed this incident. Anyone who wants to point to the body of mundane, every day, day after day ~ killing, maiming and dying going on for no damn good reason.
The one takeaway from this not critical info dump is that we are in worse shape now than we have been for years.
The neocons can manufacture all the BS they want and it gets swallowed whole. These are real communications. They are the truth about the situation and that’s the kind of power we hope will make a difference.
matoko_chan
@homerhk: i dont care if you don’t like being called a retard.
im bored of being lectured by ignoramuses that cannot apparently read.
there has not been a single case of compromised Afghani identity presented.
if you don’t want me to call you a retard, don’t act like one.
matoko_chan
@Napoleon:
No.
The classification of all the Wikileaks docs is SECRET. The names of any afghanis working secretly with coalition forces (as opposed to openly) would be compartment codeword TOP SECRET. So there are no compromisable names of afghanis in this release.
That does not mean that Assange does not HAVE TS codeword material in his possession. Manning would have held higher clearances than SECRET and thus access to TS data.
Bill Murray
@matoko_chan: no eemom has a link. The Obama administration said they didn’t like it, so she is now against it.
SA2SQ
matoko_chan
hmmm….Assange may not have TS data tho….it is simply not possible to take Lady Gaga cds into TS labs and overwrite them with classified data.
roshan
@homerhk:
OK, I give up. The Wikileaks news dump has my tacit (not active) approval. Also, your inference, that I would always support breaking laws to facilitate leaking info, would be rendered false upon knowing that I didn’t support the leaking of Plame’s identity.
I have given all the reasons to support my arguments in my previous comments under this thread. Anyone can look them up.
Also, to homerhk, no disrespect intended.
eemom
@Bill Murray:
No, I’m against it because you’re an idiot.
That’s equally close to the truth.
Hugin & Munin
eemom: Once again proving that any moron can get a JD.
eemom
@Hugin & Munin:
glad you’re paying such close attention to my bio, loser. Nothing much better to do, eh?
eemom
Dunno if The Moderate Voice blogger read the idiot comments on this thread, or if it’s just coincidence:
History repeats as tragedy, then as farce. WikiLeaks may be trying to combine these steps.
Ever since its release of tens of thousands of classified military documents about the Afghan war, WikiLeaks and its admirers have been trying to forge comparisons to the famous “Pentagon Papers” expose by the New York Times of classified documents that revealed the Johnson Administration’s deceptions and disingenuousness in the descent into the Vietnam morass. There seems to be some hope for yet another revival of the good ol’ 60s spirit, where being anti-war and “against the man” was cool, sexy, and most importantly, free from risk or doubt.
But this time not everyone in the cross-hairs is a powerful Washington D.C. public figure. Among the information revealed in the WikiLeaks documents are the names and locations of Afghans who worked with U.S. forces. NATO officials now fear that the Taliban may murder them.
If WikiLeaks had published the names and addresses of informants in witness protection who had testified against The Mob, would they be admired and applauded like they are now? Yet, that is exactly what WikiLeaks seems to have done. And few in their anti-war cheering section seem to mind.
Hopefully, WikiLeaks will take another pass through the documents to remove information that might put lives at risk. And hopefully more people will see that exposing secret information may be more morally complex than the breezy 1960s fantasies cast it to be.
http://www.themoderatevoice.com
malraux
@eemom: False comparison. This is more like listing who the judge is in a mob case. Stuff that’s already known. Can you find anyone who claims to have uncovered secret informants via wikileaks? Or are you just out to accuse?
Hugin & Munin
eemom: Don’t lie, you wouldn’t flaunt it if you didn’t love the attention. The only people who navelgaze at their degreees more than you are Burns and JMN.
OTOH, if you really don’t give a shit what anyone thinks, why do you always double-down in such a hostile manner?
Anyway, I think Jane Hamsher or Arianna Huffington might be getting the attention you so clearly resent, so go stab your voodoo dolls.
Kissy, kissy!
roshan
@eemom:
Please don’t just rant at us when we disagree with your position. I apologize for anyone else who has done so with regards to you.
I am reposting the question I asked @42:
Please provide an answer to the above.
As far as I can tell, the main motive behind the Wikileaks news dump is to stir a debate towards the goal of ending the US occupation of Afghanistan. Moreover, it provides many hints and factual info, that the war is not progressing as is being reported by the gov’t and the MSM. If the news dump did show that we were making decent progress, then there wouldn’t be this debate and you most likely wouldn’t have had this much concern for the Afghan lives that you now show.
This is completely irrelevant, the leak seeks to make the issue about the ongoing failure of the US occupation and doesn’t target politicians for scapegoating. Even if a politician is involved, that’s still besides the point.
That would explain why I dig Mad Men.
EDIT: Also, your comparison of Wikileaks news dump to the leak of info about Mob informants is totally wrong.
Corner Stone
@Hugin & Munin:
That’s Master of Accountancy to you, pal.
And burns is an attorney? Who knew?
Brachiator
@homerhk:
Yep.
But it’s really not that simple, nor are the names as much at risk as some are alleging.
@eemom:
Actually, a lot of the WikiLeaks information is not new. The great irony is that even in the age of the InterTubes large numbers of Americans think and behave like village idiots. News about Afghanistan and Pakistan can appear all over the place, but if it isn’t spoonfed to them via TV or the New York Times, it doesn’t exist. But if the same information is wrapped up with ribbons labeled “secret,” “confidential,” or “stolen,” then it’s suddenly hot breaking news.
An even greater irony is that the House has still approved a war funding bill and there is still more debate about Mrs. Sherrod and the number of dream levels in Inception than there is about US foreign policy. It is, after all, summer time.
geg6
@eemom:
Gawd, you really are pretty naive, aren’t you? You and Katie Couric, jeez.
So Rupert’s flagship dead tree edition prints a screaming tirade from some Pentagon flack that Wikileaks is killing Afghanis who have worked for the coalition!! ZOMG!! But not a single instance of that happening, not a single instance of a name being leaked that wasn’t already known, not a single piece of evidence to prove this total bullshit story. None. Zero. Zilch.
And you come running back to the thread, as usual, screaming about how you are right and all of us dirty, stinkin’ hippies who don’t know nothin’ ’bout no Pentagon Papers are all a bunch of stupid assholes who just want to see Afghans die. Whereas the fucking war we’re raining down on them is for their own good and COIN is teh awesome, doncha know. WTFever.
eemom
I mentioned my law degree exactly once, in response to an accusation that I’m “uneducated.”
One last loving kiss my ass to pond-scum-wannabe Huggin & Muggin, or whatever his name is.
As for the substance of this matter, I’ve said my piece and I’m done.
eemom
@geg6:
what, did that “still livin in the 60s” hit a nerve, or something?
WTFever, indeed.
ETA: Just one other thing for you and all your fellow fucktwits: I am NOT in favor of the Afghan war in any way, shape or form. So stick your presumptious assumptions up your collective asses.
wmd
@matoko_chan:
SECRET classification is often used to protect intelligence methods and sources.
EG a report that references information came from Gerdi village gives enough information to direct Afghan insurgent’s intelligence to look into who was in Gerdi at the time the information was relevant, who they had contact with and then possibly target the probable informant.
It’s also possible to gain data about compromised communications channels from SECRET classified documents.
I’ve never held TS/SCI so I can only speculate about how much more damaging some of that material might be.
I do think Manning’s prosecution is appropriate. And Wikileaks isn’t breaking the law, there is no “Official Secrets Act” in the US.
Hugin & Munin
eemom: The names translates as ‘thought & memory,’ but it’s not surprising that we’ve never met.
geg6
@eemom:
Well, considering that I was all of 12 when the 60s ended, I really don’t give a damn about them, so there is no nerve to hit.
As for your ignorance of the Pentagon Papers case and what it was about, how it was framed by those who didn’t want those papers leaked, and what happened to the leaker afterward because of vicious lies and smears by those who prosecuted and supported the war, we won’t go into that because it’s useless to even try to discuss it with you. You are impossible to even begin to engage with on anything substantive and I have no intention of doing it, other than to point out that, as usual, you have no clue about what you’re talking about and will run with ANYTHING that might get a hippie punched, no matter how fact-free your “evidence” is or how discredited a source.
You were obviously a Republican in another life or something because I’ve rarely come across a liberal who is that ingenuous. Perhaps that comes from our learning the lessons of the 60s. Unlike a lot of other people, obviously.
Brachiator
@wmd:
SECRET classification is also often used by lazy, stupid, incompetent or worse government officials to attempt to hide, bury or dissemble the facts.
See also: claiming national security interests at the drop of a hat.
geg6
@Brachiator:
THIS.
matoko_chan
@wmd: so yeah, but the scenario you describe is extremely unlikely to compromise a valued informant or double agent…lotta triangulation involved in your scenario.
im saying eemom can stop pissing and moaning about Afghani idents being compromised.
and i have held EBI/SBI clearances when working to support my college addiction. …..the Air Force actually paid for my research assistantship.
and it is EXTREMELY HARD to get material out of a TS facility…..two man rule, star property, no devices with onboard memory allowed in….. remember Sandy Bergers socks?
CalD
How’s this for a commemorative T-Shirt idea:
matoko_chan
@Brachiator: yes, the collateral murder video was probably the environmental trigger that turned Manning.
there is no reason for it to be classified except that it is embarrassing and humiliating to see american troops behave like inhuman nazi warcriminals….or possibly to protect the perps from just punishment.