I’ve found in life that when I am wrong the best thing to do is just come right out and admit it.
Here goes: I was wrong. Wikileaks, based on the evidence that the DoD has presented, did its level best to work with the DoD to redact any names that might harm innocent Afghans. The Pentagon not only lied about it, but has even refused to cooperate going forward […]
I realize he’s just a dirty blogger, so this mea culpa can’t be accepted without a full ethics panel investigation, but I’ll go out on a limb to say that it appears that he’s doing the right thing and being civil and gracious about it. (via)
wilfred
They lie about everything. There are never any consequences.
Let’s move on. Look forward, not backwards.
slag
Wow. Maybe Gibbs is right. Maybe I do want to eliminate the Pentagon after all. I never really thought about it before, but since it does seem to be a lying propaganda machine, I can force myself to envision a world without it.
ETA Just to clarify: I’m not talking about eliminating the 5-sided polygon, which, I’ve no doubt, has many worthy and admirable qualities. Maybe even more than the building that shares its name.
matoko_chan
@wilfred:
but sometimes they get exposed.
the pentagon has been poisoned by Bush’s war, like our whole country. they will get clean again. there are many noble and honorable analysts….like Manning. Wikileaks is going to help them.
i find this very hopeful.
ramadan mubarak to you all!
soonergrunt
Tell me something–why would the US DoD, or any other organization help somebody who was trying to damage them?
The attitude that “if rape is inevitable you might as well lay back and enjoy it” is just as wrong for large organizations, particularly military ones, as it is for young women.
You idiots act like there’s some kind of moral imperative for DoD to help Julian Assange fuck them. I understand that you don’t like wars and that some of you are so fucked in the head as to equate Afghanistan with Iraq, but surely none of you are so brain fucked, so Goddamn Sarah Palin level stupid that you believe that Assange is cleared of any moral responsibility for the entirely forseeable consequences of his actions here, like the Taliban going on an assassination spree, just like they said they were going to do when they announced they were looking at the Wikileaks cache.
To Assange and to his supporters, both real and rhetorical, welcome to the world of responsibility for ‘collateral murder.’ That red stuff on your hands? It doesn’t wash out very easily. It doesn’t start to fade, either until you know and internalize how it got there. I know.
roshan
Can someone let homerhk (but don’t Afghan lives count for something?)
and 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.) know about this?
wilfred
@soonergrunt:
This is the stupidest goddamned comment I have ever read on a blog.
Mark S.
Shit, this is gonna get ugly. I going to go back to the video game thread.
NonyNony
@roshan:
They won’t care – they’ll respond like soonergrunt up there. Covering their eyes and shouting “lalalalalalala I can’t hear you”.
soonergrunt
@wilfred: so why is it stupid, other than your childish desire to have your way and not bear responsibility for the outcome, whether or not it’s right?
Attack the statement on it’s merits, instead of saying something my 10-year-old would say when I don’t let her have ice cream for dinner.
What’s next? “I HATE YOU!” {Door slam}?
Be a grownup, if you can, and take responsibility for what you want. If the ends (ending US participation in Afghanistan) render the side effects (a lot of Afghans who don’t support the Talibs are going to die, what little progress has been made on women’s rights goes down the toilet, and a bunch of other stuff will happen) then take responsibility for it, and say that you’re OK with this stuff happening to get what you want.
When did it become stupid to demand intellectual honesty and intellectual courage?
Culture of Truth
Please forgive me and forget it
I was wrong and I admit it
t jasper parnell
@soonergrunt: I agree with the first comment, DoD isn’t under any circumstances going to collaborate with the document release.
On the other hand, it strikes me as important that this kind of event:
“A police district commander ‘is reported to have had forcible sexual contact with a 16 ye old AC [Afghan civilian] female. When AC from the area went to complain to the ANP [Afghan National Police] district commander about the incident, the district commander ordered his body guard to open fire on the AC. The body guard refused at which time the district commander shot him in front of the AC.'”
indicates that the DoD et al aren’t just afraid of getting fucked but also worried about the reaction if and when the full or fuller details come out.
ETA The deaths of the A.C.s who collaborated with the US is, at this point in time, hypothetical. And the events portrayed in the documents actually occurred, which strikes me as important.
cat48
@soonergrunt:
Agree 100% with you. Bizarro world!
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt:
Let me use your rape analogy for a little counterpoint here. There have been instances where a woman being raped has demanded, successfully, that the rapist use a condom. Defense counsel have tried to use that fact to imply consent. It has not been effective (I can find case citations, if needed.) An argument can be made that DoD assistance with redacting in this case, where publication is inevitable, is more akin to asking for a condom, i.e., a safety precaution during an unwanted assault, than it is to asking the victim to lay back and enjoy it.
patrick II
@soonergrunt: That would be a really insightful comment if those ends weren’t going to happen anyway, just with a lot more wasted lives, (both American and Afghans) wealth, and decency along the way.
Shygetz
@soonergrunt: I’ll address the comment, then, since what is obvious to most people is, apparently, not obvious to you.
The DoD wasn’t going to be helping Assange. They would be helping out their allies, contacts, informants, etc. in Afghanistan. Assange wasn’t hurt by the failure to redact at all.
Now, if you’re saying that the DoD has the right (nay, the obligation) to screw over its allies in an attempt to make Assange look bad, well, then say so. But the DoD had an opportunity to protect its assets in Afghanistan by helping Assange redact personal identifying information and deliberately chose not to. Assange made a good-faith effort to help the DoD protect their assets. The DoD refused to do so. So that makes any harm resulting Assange’s fault? You seem to think that, since the DoD chose not to protect their assets in order to make Assange look bad, it’s all kosher from the DoD’s side. The conclusion one would draw from that stance is that the DoD has no responsibility towards their assets, or that responsibility is outweighed by the opportunity to embarass Assange with bad PR.
I disagree. And what’s more, I think that viewpoint is morally reprehensible.
soonergrunt
@t jasper parnell: I don’t know about the Army trying to hide some Aghan police officer raping a girl, so much as that message traffic was in the queue of stuff. In any event, I fail to see how that makes the US Army look bad. Perhaps because they didn’t shoot the guy? I don’t know I wasn’t there. There are things I have seen that are pretty bad, though. Nothing like that.
@Shygetz:
Here’s the question that I have, and how we know that your assertion that it’s the US’s fault is utterly without merit, either ethically, or as a debating tool–Assange and his people, having come into possession of these documents, had the time to look though them and make comments on several batches. That they were frequently completely fucking wrong about some fairly mundane stuff is beside the point. What I want to know is this–they HAD to know that there were Afghan civilians named in many of these reports, especially since the reports, for the most part, follow easily recognizable formats. Are we honestly to believe that he cares so much about Afghan civilians that he had to get this out there and couldn’t solicit somebody on the WORLD WIDE WEB (that’s world-wide, hence the name) who could help edit those names out? Really? There was nobody in the entire world, except in DoD, whom they had to have known would not help them, who could identify an Afghan name as an Afghan name?
They never had this conversation internally? Nobody in the organization looked at these docs before publishing and said “there’s Afghans named in there as having helped the Americans. Might some of them be in danger?” That NEVER happened? So the US is 100% responsible for his failure to do due diligence? Really?
The claim that he asked the US for aid in this is nothing more than trying to escape moral responsibility. Third party aid groups aren’t falling for that argument, and you shouldn’t either.
Jay B.
@soonergrunt:
When it was WikiLeak’s terrible act of releasing a data dump with social security numbers you whined for threads upon threads about this attack on innocent men and women over there — and let’s not forget the Afghan informants! Lives will be lost!
But now that the Pentagon is at least complicit in this, now it’s, “well, why SHOULD they help protect their soldiers and informants when that would mean they’d have to provide information to an organization that asked for it?”
That’s the kind of slavish authoritarian ass kissing that makes so many of you around here so special.
roshan
Let’s help Sooner and folks in their guilt-trip pitch, shall we?
Time Magazine: What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan?
Time Magazine’s Afghanistan Reporter, Failed To Disclose Conflict Of Interest: NY Observer
matoko_chan
@soonergrunt: sooner….you are wrong on this. we have lost the moral authority on the war. that is why manning turned.
it was our responsibility to protect those names.
we failed, and we failed because the war is unwinnable and immoral and some analysts got sick of seeing that covered up.
now we have a moral duty to protect those contacts anyway we can.
to save lives that are in our charge.
Manning got caught trying to find a publishing outlet for the data. he didnt turn for money….he didnt turn because he was a secret muslim or a secret sov. Wikileaks could have been any publisher Manning came in contact with.
the horrible thing to me….is why the DoD refused to help and lied about it….they want to throw radar chaff and misdirect onto Assange….to make our soldiers like you believe that Assange is the bad guy.
we are the bad guys this time.
:(
t jasper parnell
@soonergrunt: I didn’t say it made the US army “look bad.” I think it makes our brave allies in Afghan look bad and calls into question continuing to spend money and the lives of Americans in protecting a bunch of thugs.
Relatedly, Assange, or however its spelt, did, in fact, redact names they just didn’t do a perfect job. So, the conversation happened; excecution was sub-optimal.
Omnes Omnibus
@Shygetz: Assange is still an actor with moral agency here. He decided to publish the data. He went to the DoD for assistance with redaction. He was denied that assistance. Knowing, as he must have, that redaction would have protected lives, he, nevertheless, chose to publish unredacted documents. His act has moral consequences independent of the actions of the DoD. He weighed, or should have weighed, the costs and benefits of his choices. If he chose to publish and people die, he bears some responsibility.
FWIW I have simplified the series of actions for rhetorical purposes.
Jay B.
So, they went to the source — the DoD who refused to help and then lied about it — and it’s still only WikiLeaks? Really?
How about this; if you really believe that the Pentagon has a special responsibility for their people, their informants and the people they’re killing in Afghanistan, how bout they take some of the fucking responsibility for it? They had the chance to do something about it and they passed out of pique.
You were happy to blame us for having blood on our hands for supporting Assange’s leak in terms of America’s right to know about the wars being waged on our behalf — what’s your fucking excuse?
Steve
@soonergrunt:
Because it would minimize the damage to innocent people.
Here is an analogy. Say I telephone the Pentagon and tell them there is a bomb in their building that will detonate in an hour, and I’m warning them so they can evacuate. They respond by saying, “No, we will not evacuate anyone, and we demand you remove the bomb.”
Now, if the bomb goes off, I might agree that the blood still belongs mainly on my hands. But wouldn’t you say the Pentagon was more than a little dumb?
Redacting the names of innocents would not have “helped” Wikileaks, any more than evacuating the building would have “helped” me as a terrorist. The documents were going to be published either way. Redacting the documents would have helped minimize the damage to innocents, that’s all.
roshan
Nope, the DoD likes to do this instead:
wilfred
@soonergrunt:
Here’s why. The only legitimate critique of Wikileaks was the immediate frame job, the blood libel, that the pentagon came out with immediately. Personally, I think Assange and Wikileaks are about the only defense we have left against total collusion between the government and MSM, which already created one fucking war out of whole cloth. Even with that, the critique about placing innocent people at risk had a lot of weight.
Now we find out that the Pentagon turned down the chance to vet the documents. We should be screaming about their disregard for the safety of their own people, but you compare DOD with a rape victim!!?? You have to be a spoof.
Catsy
This is the wrong question to ask–it begs several different questions in the process. The correct question here is: why wouldn’t the DoD want to do everything in their power to limit the amount of damaging information that goes public?
They are not going to stop WL from going public. They can’t. WL approached them with the specific expressed desire of sanitizing what they do release in order to avoid jeopardizing the lives of informers and others. One possible response would be, “We reject the idea that you have the right to release this information, and we will continue to fight to prevent you from doing so. But if you are going to be irresponsible and release them, at very least redact the names of XYZ, whose lives and families will be in danger if you make them public.”
Instead, the DoD’s response appears to be, “screw you, you don’t have any right to have this information, so we’re not going to help you make it less harmful.” That’s a reaction that might be emotionally satisfying, but puts people at risk who didn’t need to be. It means that if there is blood shed as a result of this leak, the DoD shares the moral burden for that blood with Assange, rather than all the responsibility remaining with him.
There isn’t, but that’s also not an honest description of what happened here. When you break it down, what this amounts to is that WL asked DoD what parts of this data should be redacted in order to protect sources. This was an opportunity on a silver platter for DoD to reduce the amount of information that was made public at no cost to them. If their real priority here was protecting sensitive data from being publicized, that should’ve been a no-brainer. Wikileaks is going to release the documents no matter how the DoD responds. WL didn’t need the DoD’s help to, as you eloquently put it, fuck them–they didn’t have to make the offer, they could’ve simply dumped the documents and been done with it, and caused far more damage than would have been caused if the documents had been selectively redacted.
This isn’t unprecedented, either–the DoD and the administration get approached by journalists working on stories all the time, and it’s not the least bit uncommon for them to request that specific details be embargoed or left out of the story for national security reasons.
This was a spite response, not a reasoned one. I get that you have a real hate-on for Assange and you have every reason to, but it is blinding you to the fact that the DoD fucked up here, too.
Catsy
@wilfred:
Soonergrunt is wrong here, but he is a legitimate and respected soldier on active duty, not a spoof.
Bob Loblaw
@soonergrunt:
Because the Pentagon cares about the safety of its informants more than its international reputation, perhaps? I know, funny.
I love how literally nothing can make people like you (or Stuck, or burnspesq, or homerhk…) cease doubling down on the “malicious murdering sociopathy” of wikileaks. But seriously, shut the fuck up.
matoko_chan
@Omnes Omnibus: Assange said that the value of the data outweighed concerns about contact names. And he retained 15k docs he is still redacting.
like i said before, there are no highvalue contacts in SECRET docs.
the afghan names the liars at DoD are pointing out are largely known low level contacts….already known to be cooperating with the coalition forces or Karzai’s police forces.
Have you heard of any afghans being killed? surely if some afghan had been killed the DoD would be braying that from the rooftops as proof of Assanges perfidy.
matoko_chan
ok lay off of sooner.
he gets it.
they fooled me for a while too, and im supposed to be so smart.
>:(
roshan
A perfectly good reason to abstain from any discussion. Right…Sooner?
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan:
B.S.
Look at what I said. If deaths result, Assange bears some moral responsibility. If he thinks that the risk to some Afghans is worth his ultimate goal, he has made a moral decision. Not a decision that is moral as opposed to immoral, but a decision that involves morality. He will have to live with whatever moral consequences there may be, including the disgust of soonergrunt.
Martin
@Steve:
To be honest, they don’t know that, and the consequences of the publication isn’t their responsibility. Wikileaks could have redacted all personal information in the dump (which would have been the responsible thing to do (and which, by the way, is a pretty widespread standard for information disclosure), but they didn’t. They didn’t need DOD help to redact the information, they just wanted the DOD to do the work for them.
I support what WikiLeaks is trying to do here, but it’s bullshit to suggest that WikiLeaks is incapable of identifying people’s names in a document. The DOD isn’t their clerical staff.
Bullsmith
Shorter Soonergutz:
Just cause I know people will die doesn’t mean I need to work with some asshole I don’t like to stop it. And by the way asshole, the bloods on your hands!
Nice morals you got there. I like how they only apply to others.
roshan
Questions of the day:
matoko_chan
@Omnes Omnibus: dude, ive worked behind the doors. any taliban mole, double agent, important cleric, etc. would have ranked TS compartment code word.
….and any mention of the guy would have been reclassified upwards.
i repeat, there were no highvalue contacts in the Wikileaks docs because the highest classification was SECRET.
JC
This is the problem with this.
I actually responect sooner grunt for showing up here. And, being willing to be ‘the other side” for this conversation.
The thing is, the Pentagon lies. and seems to lie, a lot. that can’t be talked around, or shifted, or denied.
Yet, any ‘leaks’, especially about the lies, then the Pentagon declares “national security”, “national security”. “you are putting our soldiers, at risk”, etc.
So it’s self-fulfilling, in that the Pentagon gets to indulge in accountability free lying.
As Ronald Reagan said, in a different context, ‘Trust but verify’.
Sooner, I would ask, in what context would you fight the natural Pentagon ass-covering?
No politician, democrat or republican, will touch it.
so there has to be some way to get verification, of WHAT IS. And that is the service that Wikileaks is attempting to provide.
JC
Also, the argument being held up here, that Assange and company is morally complicit, in any deaths, for ‘not doing the work’ to retract names’, HAS TO apply equally to anyone at the Pentagon.
If the objective is to ‘PREVENT DEATHS’, then clearly the Pentagon and staff know a lot more about which people need to be protected, and retracted, than Assange and company.
matoko_chan
@Omnes Omnibus: he has made a moral decision. Assanges moral decision is that people are dying every day in an unwinnable immoral war that the government is covering up.
His contract with Manning was to get max exposure possible.
id say its his call. i havent seen all the data.
i think viewing the Garani massacre video(which Assange has) might incentivize me to get the data out as fast as possible, but that is just meh.
roshan
Hey Sooner, you there?
.
.
.
.
Bueller?….Bueller?….Sooner?….Sooner?
matoko_chan
@roshan: stop it.
its no fun finding out we aren’t the good guys.
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan: OK, I am not going to get in a credential pissing match with you over this; the helicopters would not be laughing. Therefore, for the purposes of argument, I will accept your claim that no high value assets would be in those documents. Low value assets are still people, right? People who were vaguely friendly could be targeted; it’s happened before.
Chad N Freude
There seems to be an unspoken assumption here that ethics and morality are a zero-sum game. Can we possibly entertain the idea that all concerned behaved (and are still behaving) badly?
I read the New Yorker article linked to upthread, and the unspoken assumption there, which is one I believe, is that if we cannot change the culture and eliminate corruption, violence, lying, and betrayal that appear to be endemic to the region, our presence there is futile and should end.
And please, no flaming for using “endemic”. If the culture did not accept corruption, violence, lying, and betrayal, there would be repercussions and sanctions for those who perform them.
JamesC
The blood on Wikileak’s side is mostly due to inartful management of their information. They had the resources to scrub it, if they wished. It would’ve delayed the release, but for a vital reason. They didn’t, and so they aren’t free of the blame of potential repercussions.
That hardly makes the Pentagon clean on this, though. In fact, in light of their attempts to at least get the DoD’s help in clearing out the information, Wikileaks’ probably going to end up smelling like roses at the end of this whole sordid affair.
In thirty, forty year’s time, journalism textbooks’ll be slotting the Wikileaks episode amongst the great moments of mudraking. There will be plenty of lingering questions as to the ethical nature of its handling, but what will be remembered will be the exposure of lies and deceit.
Quite unlike Sooner’s analogy, this isn’t a rape case. The victim at stake here wasn’t the DoD. It was the informants and aids who were at risk, and in this case, it was Wikileaks that made the nominal effort to reduce that risk. What do you call a hostage situation in which the hostage-taker tries to reduce the number of hostages, or prevent hostages entirely? “A bloody messy situation” is the best I can think of. The DoD did have a chance to negotiate this down to something less dramatic… but of the multiverse of possibilities, that’s not the one we live in.
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan: That is all I said. He made a decision which has moral consequences.
Silver
@Catsy:
Respected by whom? He’s a paid killer and an apologist for his employer’s ethically bankrupt actions.
calipygian
@wilfred:
Soonergrunt is a hundred and ten percent correct.
You are cheering murder.
matoko_chan
@Omnes Omnibus: sure.
but then shouldn’t the DoD have jumped on redacting the docs?
if you know classified, you know we were the custodians of those docs. it was our obligation and our duty to protect them.
we failed.
roshan
@matoko_chan:
OK. Leaving troll town now.
Omnes Omnibus
@Silver: Are you a pacifist?
matoko_chan
@Omnes Omnibus: and his moral calculus was that a lot of people dying every day outweighs a potential death.
like i said.
the Talibs have had since July 26.
wheres the slaughter?
matoko_chan
@roshan: ty. i always thought we were the good guys. we aren’t even the better guys on this.
im trying to think of chain of command on this….maybe there aren’t ANY contacts that got burned? wouldn’t the field commanders yank anyone in that was in danger?
Steve
@Martin: Well, and it is possible that if they don’t evacuate the building, I won’t have the guts to set off the bomb. I still think everyone would agree they ought to evacuate.
Even if we stipulate that the willful refusal to evacuate doesn’t eliminate one ounce of the bomber’s moral culpability, most people would agree that it was still a really, really bad decision.
calipygian
I’m going to be pretty blunt: Julian Assange is a wartime enemy as surely as a GRU Spetznaz team would have been the enemy if they had broken into a HQ and stolen the data.
And young Private Bradley, who swore an oath to protect classified information, deserves nothing less than a necktie party. Period.
People who might be inclined to cooperate and possibly save American lives will be less inclined to now. And people who DID cooperate are now marked for death.
Thats what most of you are cheering.
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan: Have you seen the word “if” in anything I have written? I did not say people would be killed as a result of WikiLeaks. I said that if it happens, Assange bears some responsibility. I think he would acknowledge that. He thinks it is worth it. Fine. Other people do not. I can see both sides and would hate to be a position where I had these documents and had to decide what to do with them.
matoko_chan
@calipygian: Manning. his name is Manning. why do you think he turned, calipygian?
JC
calipygian,
the Pentagon lied, and lies and lies and lies and lies.
Ever more US Treasure to ever more defense lobbying programs, eating up every more resources, justifying ever more missions, which end up killing more and more American soldiers.
And – ‘wartime enemy’.
Again, provide me for a ‘trust but verify’ system for the pentagon that works.
Also, the Pentagon didn’t care enough to provide any retractions. What’s that about? Putting principle above people?
calipygian
@matoko_chan: Bradley Manning, yes.
I think he was just a whiny loser who wanted attention.
matoko_chan
@Omnes Omnibus: apolo accepted.
:)
roshan
@matoko_chan:
Yeah, look for my 1000 word post on “Why I am a good guy?” in the vein of every E.D Kain post here on BJ. Seriously, I am very thoughtful, I can write very long posts and what else, I am a good listener. But please, don’t put labels on me. I am none of that shit.
calipygian
@JC: How the hell does compromising sources and putting their lives in danger mitigate the fact that the DoD lies? One terrible wrong does not right another wrong. And by exposing all these names, they are now put in danger. The Pentagon took measures to protect these names, and some sniviling punk ignored these measures and now some shit heel Army former E-4 is judge, jury and executioner of hundreds of Afghans who cooperated with us.
How is that right?
t jasper parnell
@calipygian: This comment strikes as off the mark. The information leaked, or at least some of it, deals with the war’s prosecution in a detailed way; consequently, it offers US citizens the opportunity to examine in concrete detail the human costs of the war, the behavior of our allies, etc and then to decide if the various war’s various ends justify the variety of means. Assange may be an enemy of war, i.e., a pacifist, but in this case he isn’t hurting the American people but rather offer us a chance to assess.
General Stuck
@soonergrunt: You go dude. agree. Assange cops classified documents and has the fucking gall to expect the government to do his redacting for those ill gotten docs before he announces a blue print for how grunts operate in the field to the world. while they are still in the field.. This isn’t how you stop a war you don’t like, it is aiding and abetting the guys who are currently trying to kill our soldiers. The Pentagon Papers did not have this blueprint of day to day operation methods for troops in the field. There is no big fucking lie overarching our involvement in Afghan like Vietnam, or Iraq. Everyone knows it’s going badly and way too many civilians are getting killed and it’s time to withdraw. Not to mention the unredacted Afghans who are helping us. I am beginning to hate liberals as much as I do the wingnuts.
matoko_chan
@calipygian: 91,000 docs? 260,000 diplomatic cables? the collateral murder video? the garani massacre video?
and that is just what Assange says he has.
seems like a lot of effort for attention.
i think …..Manning is a True Believer.
he wants to stop the war.
we have lost moral authority on the war, and that is why he violated his oath to protect classified.
and i think he didnt act alone.
consider the collateral murder video…made in 2007 in baghdad….how would Manning have seen that? his tasking was Af-Pak. who showed it to him? why?
what else might he have given Assange?
Culture of Truth
“nothing less than a necktie party”
Oooh a party!
Martin
@Chad N Freude: I agree. There are plenty of reasons to come down on DOD, but I don’t see that this is one of them. Bad acts by the DOD (for other reasons) does not forgive bad acts by the media, and the desire (which I share) for an effective counterbalance by the media does not excuse sloppiness in the media.
WikiLeaks was responsible for the publication and as a result are responsible for the redaction which they are fully capable of doing. Given that some documents were temporarily withheld, I don’t see the harm of withholding more of them if they don’t have the resources to redact them that quickly. If they need more support for the effort, they can ask for that effort, but we can’t demand it out of the DOD or any other party.
Would the DOD have been better served by helping them – maybe. Maybe not. At the very outset I don’t think anyone here is qualified to weigh in on the legal implications of the act (how many treaties would have applied in an international case like this?) But I don’t see how it can be argued that the DOD bears any legal responsibility here. If you’re going to judge the DOD on moral grounds, you’re going to fail before you even begin – they’re in the business of killing people, and that’s an entirely different universe of moral standards as their very existence depends on the assumption that they will kill as many people (and presumably no more) as necessary, and that will sometimes include innocents no matter how hard they try. You’re starting from that moral baseline. It’s wildly different from the standard we apply to anything else, and necessarily so.
calipygian
No, he isn’t hurting the American people. He’s killing the Afghan people who cooperated with the Americans by publishing what shouldn’t be his to publish in the first place, were it not for a whiny ass punk who violated his position of trust by thinking that his 22 year old ass knew more about the protection of classified information than the people who felt the information needed protection.
That wasn’t Manning’s job.
Bob Loblaw
@General Stuck:
Yes, because that’s news.
matoko_chan
@roshan: “Why I am a good guy?” wallah, sry, i was thinking about my military customers and friends.
not you.
t jasper parnell
@calipygian: Which dead Afghan people? Seriously, you mention hundreds of dead Afghanis as a result of the leak. Any evidence of any dead Afghanis [as a result of the leak (added)]?
roshan
Truthiness of the day.
JC
calipygian,
By your same argument, this is true of DoD as well. They could have recommended redacting individual names.
And, your claim of Afghan who will be killed.
Evidence?
he offered. DoD refused.
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan: No apology made. No apology was called for. I was clarifying my point which you did not seem to understand. Not every situation involves white and black hats. A lot of the actors in this situation appear to be wearing charcoal gray.
General Stuck
@Bob Loblaw: Let me clarify. The liberals on the internet. The rest are ok with some sense of responsibility. The 87 percent who support Obama, and want this war to end, The internet liberals, for the most part are a pack of hungry jackals without a shred of common sense or basic integrity, save for a few/
calipygian
@matoko_chan: This is NOT how to stop the war. By naming names, Manning has thrown gas on the fire. There may not be word of people being killed because their names were in the files, but there will be. And Assange and Manning will be directly responsible for every murder, as sure as someone like Aldrich Ames got at least a dozen people killed because of his perfidy.
This is not a game – this is real fucking life and people get fucking killed.
matoko_chan
@calipygian: no WE are killing anyone who gets kills. that was OUR RESPONSIBILITY to protect those names….our FUCKING CONTRACT with them.
why are you not wilin’ out on the Times, der Spiegel and Guardian for posting the docs Assange gave them? aren’t they killers too?
JC
General Stuck,
“There is no big fucking lie overarching our involvement in Afghan like Vietnam, or Iraq. Everyone knows it’s going badly and way too many civilians are getting killed and it’s time to withdraw”
Well, actually, we keep increasing our involvement in Afghanistan, at the moment, and I don’t think the wider public necessarily understands.
At this point, the deaths per months are beginning to rival the deaths per month in Iraq, that WAS reported as a really big deal. But it isn’t a deal in the media.
calipygian
@JC: You think the DoD should redact their own stolen documents because Julian Assange is a flaming asshole who couldn’t care less if Afghan collaborators get clipped? Assange is pretty fucking lucky that the Pentagon doesn’t redact his fucking head.
Would you want YOUR name in a document dump as having collaborated with the enemy? I have to seriously ask that?
JamesC
@Omnes Omnibus:
I like charcoal gray. It’s a very classy color. Goes well with my skin tone.
Jay B.
You know who’s putting soldiers, informants and civilians at exponentially more risk more than Assange? The Pentagon! Every fucking day. For a stupid, immoral, counterproductive and mindless war. And yet…the albino guy is the one who publishes the war notes of a warmongering organization is the one who has blood on his hands. The other is a noble endeavor run by saints and patriots who have no responsibility for their conduct or their lies and who just happen to be in the wrong place killing scores of the wrong people at the wrong time “legally” because white people 8000 miles away told them it was OK. Whoops!
It’s really insane. Heller would have killed himself had he lived this long.
roshan
Slam Dunk of the day:
Martin
@Steve: You’re assuming it’s a reasonable analogy. It’s not.
The DOD would assume that a person willing to plant a bomb is an irrational actor, assumes no true responsibility for their acts, and has no moral compass. The DOD would assume that a media outlet is a rational actor, would accept responsibility for their acts, and has a moral compass.
You treat rational and irrational actors differently.
matoko_chan
@calipygian:
yup.
my position is isomorphic with Mannings and Assange. the war is immoral, unjust and UN-FUCKING-WINNABLE.
30k talibs are pwning 430k coalition forces.
the ISI are giving American fundage to the Talibs to kill americans.
COIN is fucking FAIL because we create more terrorists than we kill.
i want us to go home before another single soldier dies. before another single afghan dies.
we can’t win.
Can we go home NAOW?
calipygian
@matoko_chan:
You are absolutely correct. And young shit bag Bradley Manning was supposed to uphold that contract and he didn’t.
Julian Assange is just an amoral asshole who hasn’t committed a crime, but obviously didn’t think through the potential deadly consequences.
Manning is pretty evil.
matoko_chan
@calipygian:
yes. our responsibility is to protect our allies what ever it takes.
roshan
After 9 yrs of war, we have found the culprit:
Jay B.
@calipygian:
How do you do it then, Von Clauswitz? The Pentagon is responsible for far more murders and deaths than WikiLeaks. Hell, they even killed one of their soldiers, lied about it and still almost no one gives a shit about it — and that guy was a fucking NFL star.
Scores of people are dying in wars we’re paying for every single day. Some of them wear our flag, some don’t. 99.99% of those are caused by the Pentagon and Washington’s policies.
matoko_chan
@calipygian: why did he break his oath? i think it was the collateral murder video….or maybe garani…140 dead afghans.
have you watched it?
i wonder if i might have done the same.
where does your oath to protect classified run up against basic humanity?
i was in a different theater. i never saw anything like that.
Catsy
@Silver:
Respected by plenty of people around here and elsewhere on the intarwebs. And, undoubtedly, by those with whom he serves.
That you aren’t among them changes those facts not one whit, however little you may like it.
roshan
Unrefudiate-able fact of the day:
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
While I have no problem with WikiLeaks releasing the documents, IMO they are responsible for any name redactions. I just don’t see why the military should work with people in possession of stolen internal military documents, it makes no sense to even think they would do so. Assange made the decision to release without redacting a single name so any repercussions of that release are his to bear. The military is not required to work with people who are in possession of stolen documents that they want to publish.
I’m all for knowing what is going on because I know I can’t trust our military or government to tell us the truth. I’m just not for it at all costs, damn the torpedoes and such.
calipygian
@matoko_chan: How do you square notions of humanity with exposing those whom the Taleban regard as traitors to retaliation? How does that make up for any alleged massacre? How does making conduct of the war and of diplomacy in the region that much more difficult than it already is bolster notions of “humanity”?
It was not a decision for an obviously fucked up 22 year old Specialist to make.
Steve
@Martin: Julian Assange is a “media outlet”? Do you think it was reasonable for the DoD to assume “oh, don’t worry, he wouldn’t possibly publish all those documents, he seems so responsible”?
If they thought they could be all macho and intimidate him out of publishing the documents, I guess they thought wrong. Now a lot of people seem to be in jeopardy because they thought, for reasons you will have to explain to me, Julian Assange was a “responsible media outlet.” It was a bad call.
Also, what’s with all the people in this thread doing third-rate warblogger impressions? You can believe Assange was 100% in the wrong without going off on rants about necktie parties and such.
roshan
The military likes to do this instead:
soonergrunt
Here it is, and there’s really no getting around this:
Assange comes into possession of these documents. How doesn’t really matter to this conversation.
What does matter is that he stated that he was withholding about 15,000 of these docs to retract information that his source demanded he retract in order to protect something the source demanded he protect.
Assange claims that he asked US DoD to assist him in cleaning these documents. We can discuss why that was never going to happen later, maybe. But this request was one of two things:
1) it was bullshit. It was for no other reason than to give himself the aura of moral cleanliness because he knew when he made the request it would be turned down.
2) it was honestly, if naively made and he really did think that the US DoD was just going say “why sure, we’ll assist you to violate US law among other things, and would you like a hot cup of cocoa and a foot rest with that?” and this, therefore, was his mitigation plan for an identified risk.
Either way, the answer from DoD was either no answer at all, legal threats, demands to return the data, something along the lines of “go to hell”, or a some combination thereof.
So either it was bullshit all along, even as he made the request “to protect sources” that he didn’t give a damn about and knew were at risk but are just props for him to use to score more points, or he really did care about them and identifed the risk but chose to press ahead once his mitigation plan fell through.
Honestly, he couldn’t put an add in Craigslist or something asking for a person of Afghan background to identify Afghan names and remove them? He couldn’t look at any of these contact reports that all follow the same general form and say “hey, that’s an Afghan name of a guy who told the dirty murderous Americans where to find that virtuous, honorable Taliban IED, and while I wish that an American had been killed, I ought to redact the name of the Afghan, and maybe I ought to hold off on releasing this until after I’ve done that because I’m virtuous and decent and the dirty fucking DoD with its dirty fucking murderer people wouldn’t help me!”
In any event, he knew there was a real risk to real people, or he never would’ve made the request, whether real and honest or fake for political points. So, yes, he has blood on his hands and so do all of you who think that he’s doing the right thing.
Have the moral courage to stand up and say out loud that you want what you want when you want it, and you don’t care about the side effects. Don’t be Jullian Assange.
Catsy
@calipygian:
I don’t see most people here cheering anything, contrary to the breezily disingenuous smear you and a few others have been throwing around.
What I see is quite a few people who are capable of the recognizing that it is possible for more than one party shares moral responsibility for a thing without the responsibility of one diminishing (or having any relationship to) the responsibility of the other. A capability you seem to have surrendered.
Recognizing that the DoD now shares moral responsibility for any deaths that result from the leak does not in any way diminish the responsibility of Assange or Manning for same. Nor is it necessary to equate one with the other, evaluate who shares more of that responsibility, or take any position on Assange or his actions in order to recognize this.
The argument that you and Sooner and others keep repeating is the same warped logic that drives spouses to think that admitting fault for their part in an argument amounts to taking on the entire responsibility for it. It’s a very shallow and simple-minded approach to moral agency.
So stuff a sock in the “murder” and “cheerleading” accusations against other commenters here. You’re not persuading or impressing anyone, and it makes you look like a gigantic asshole who’s incapable of breaking out of zero-sum thinking.
matoko_chan
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
Assange ax them to help…they refuse. the reason they SHOULD help is that WE hung those people out to dry by failing to honor our contract with them…..we didn’t protect classified data.
We broke our contract with Manning too.
Part of our implied contract with Manning was constitutional …..to provide for the common defense.
We aren’t doing that.
We are slaughtering random people while trying to kill baddies. we are fucking proselytizing and fucking nation-building and fucking failing.
and the brass are stroking out because all this shit is coming out and they don’t have a clue what else Assange has.
soonergrunt
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
This. And the corallary to it is that anyone who has this attitude does bear some moral responsibility.
Intellectually and morally honest people can at least admit this.
roshan
Most profound statement of the day:
.
.
.
.
Instead, be Sooner for a change.
matoko_chan
@soonergrunt: but he is doing the right thing. we failed to protect classified. we burned those contacts. once we lost control of the docs we can’t dictate. we should have jumped on the chance to help protect our allies after we failed them.
Assange is trying to stop the war.
that is the right thing to do.
Catsy
Let’s assume that this entire argument of yours is one hundred percent correct. I don’t agree with all of it, but I’ll stipulate.
It still does not affect one iota of the DoD’s own responsibility for the outcome, an outcome they had an opportunity to affect and refused.
Assange’s moral responsibility is an entirely separate question from the DoD’s, just as my responsibility for an accident that I could’ve prevented does not reduce the other person’s responsibility for causing it by running a red light. Responsibility is not a zero-sum concept.
What you do need to knock the fuck off is the blood libel against people who may agree with Assange to one degree or another but who themselves have no agency whatsoever in his actions. It’s complete horseshit that isn’t essential to the point you’re making, it’s not winning you any friends, and it’s costing you a lot of the credibility you seem to count on in order to make your points.
calipygian
How many of you were outraged when Valerie Plame’s name was outed? Be honest, everyone raise your hands. How many of you brayed for Karl Rove’s blood? Be honest, most of you raise your hands.
Now multiply that by hundreds, yet many of you don’t seem to care.
debbie
It seems to me that excusing Assange from not fully editing out all the names is like excusing Toyota for those sticky pedals. I mean, Jeez, they didn’t mean to hurt anyone.
It was totally Assange’s responsibility. If you’re going to play journalist, act like one with some integrity.
Omnes Omnibus
@JamesC: Fully 3/4 of my suits are charcoal gray. Some pinstriped, sure, but charcoal nonetheless.
roshan
@calipygian:
Can you say Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?
.
No?…… Assange can. You lose, we win.
Hiram Taine
@Martin:
Would that include Fox (we got a court decision saying we can knowingly lie) News?
roshan
Straw man of the day:
burnspbesq
@matoko_chan:
Oh, please. There are only two criminals here: the person who violated 18 USC 641 by stealing the documents, and Julian Assange who is guilty of conspiracy, guilty as an accessory to the original 641 violation, and may eventually be guilty of much, much more.
Whatever horrible things our military may have done are irrelevant in this discussion. “Somebody else did something equally horrible” IS NOT, legally, or morally, a defense to those crimes. Period. Full stop. No discussion.
What part of “you are legally and morally responsible for the reasonably foreseeable consequences of your actions” are you struggling to understand?
Keith G
I donno. When I see folks, nice folks, throwing around terms like “moral responsibility” or “Intellectually and morally honest people” in a discussion about war, I get the hives. It’s a foul, dirty business. We do bad shit to people (ask the Tilman family) and they do bad shit. I get frickin tired of claims of moral high ground.
matoko_chan
@calipygian: wallah, everyone knew Plame was CIA. she had a desk job and a sticker on her car for the parking lot.
likewise everyone knew that the bushies outed her in revenge for Joe shootin’ off his mouth about the [absence of] yellowcake.
no one died.
Jack Bauer
I think in this thread it’s worth remembering that the CIA very much wants to discredit/smear Assange. And it would be easy to convince anyone remotely connected to the US military that he is a very bad guy, and that this is all his fault.
But the bullshit just runs so deep, lies concealing lies. Lefties have long said there was deliberate counter intelligence programs within western media, but there was never any hard evidence… but this is a new age of transparency and ease of information sharing.
For example, this document on the CIA manipulating European public opinion on the Afghan war. This is a big fucking deal.
The bottom line is that you just cannot tell when the military lies, normally. Unless you have documented evidence. Which thanks to wikileaks we do. I think the concerns for people mentioned on the documents is sincere, but overblown in an effort to stop people like Assange.
For democracy to be effective, we need to know the truth whenever possible.
Belvoir
Honest questions here, asked respectfully :
1. Why do people keep saying Wikileaks “has the resources” to redact over 100,000 documents? They’re not a corporation, and the material is highly sensitive.. they can’t hire a temp agency to do this. My impression is that Wikileaks is a very small operation. That needs to trust every single person looking at these files.
2. It seems to me it makes sense they woud ask the DoD for help with this- because unless they redact every single name in every single document, they have no way of knowing who might be an undercover informant. All those documents must contain thousands and thousands of names. Only the DoD know which names are sensitive ones, ones at risk. This is not just some clerical job, something a macro could do. And redacting every name. location, etc. defeats the stated purpose.
I understand that people feel strongly about this, but either way this information is going to come out. The DoD had a chance at harm reduction, something WikiLieaks would prefer too, but rebuffed that opportunity. And there it is.
Jay B.
So, in your world
“a few hundred*” > “tens of thousands”
When it comes to lives.
*You haven’t even cited one instance where an unredacted name of a presumed “informant” has died — which is of course, possible. Yet, I can tell you, with complete confidence, that the direct action of our own government and the Pentagon has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, to say nothing of murder, kidnapping, torture and extrajudicial imprisonment. This war is a complete debacle. And we’ve been lied to from day one and those lies have lasted nine years now. WikiLeaks is a sideshow. An attempt, futile or not, to finally shed some light on a war that is as monstrous in its own way as the Iraq.
To cry crocodile tears over people who you just assume are now at risk — when we’ve unleashed unholy carnage to a population for 9 fucking years — while calling us hypocritical murders is pretty rich.
Then I assume Obama will be on trial for war crimes momentarily.
burnspbesq
@matoko_chan:
Fine. Write a letter of recommendation to the probation office after he’s convicted. Maybe it will reduce his sentence.
Catsy
@burnspbesq:
I agree with this completely.
The thing is, it’s an argument that cuts in both directions. You can’t defend Assange’s actions by pointing fingers at the DoD, but you also can’t defend the DoD by braying about what a bad man Assange is.
Their moral responsibilities for the outcome of this debacle are entirely separate questions.
Omnes Omnibus
@Keith G: And yet there laws of war and codes of ethics that soldiers strive to follow.
matoko_chan
@burnspbesq: ill let the Wikileaks docs tell the tale.
i personally can’t wait to see the Garani Massacre video.
now there is a case where publishing that video may cause strong reactions against our deployed troops.
what would you do, burn? would you keep your oath? look the other way?
burnspbesq
@Jack Bauer:
Agree fully. But when getting the truth out involves willful violations of applicable criminal laws, the truth-tellers go to jail. You have a problem with that?
The first amendment says that once you have information, the government can’t stop you from disseminating it. It doesn’t give you the right to steal classified information. And if you think the information is wrongfully classified, file a FOIA request and when the Government claims an exception you think doesn’t apply, hire a fucking lawyer and litigate the point. Don’t play God.
matoko_chan
@burnspbesq: that is his moral calculus…..Assanges moral calculus is that stopping the war outweighs whatever names were revealed……Manning’s moral calculus was that he was required by his humanity to break his oath to protect classified.
i think…i might have done the same.
the war is unwinnable. every death there is meaningless.
Martin
@Steve: I’m not suggesting they would intimidate him out of publishing the documents, but I think everyone including the DOD would treat Wikileaks as a rational actor, and they are a media outlet by the sheer fact that they are in the business of publishing things. Lots of media outlets don’t make money, they’re still publishers.
I think it’s reasonable for the DOD to tell Assange that they may not be able to stop him from publishing these docs, but it’s not their job to assist Assange in preparing them for publication. The DOD has no control here over the publication and assigning them responsibility over the publication is completely unfair. That’s 100% Assange’s responsibility. Assange has the legal right to publish the docs but he also has the legal responsibility that comes with their publication, and it’s his job to redact them. Period. It would be reasonable for the DOD to assume that he will meet that responsibility as a rational party, just as it’s reasonable for the DOD to trust every other media outlet the same way. And they do this – just look at any reporter that embeds with the military and their refusal to publish certain information.
You’re ascribing motives to the DOD: ‘be all macho and intimidate him’. Is there any evidence they did this? I haven’t seen it and I don’t see how the DOD would reason that would work given that Wikileaks needs no access to the DOD. But in it’s place you’re presenting a case that borders on blackmail – having a group that possesses information threaten to release that information (the names contained within) without getting something in return, and arguing that it’s reasonable because this is the DOD we’re talking about. That’s simply not a scenario a government agency should get involved in, and it’s REALLY not a scenario that the DOD would get involved in if they consider the possession of the information to stem from an act of treason – it puts them in a very precarious situation, and one that Assange ought to be able to recognize.
I’m not excusing other acts by the DOD, but I don’t see how they got this wrong. And I’m not vilifying Wikileaks, which is an organization I generally support, but I think they failed to live up to their responsibility here. So yes, it has a bad outcome, but it wasn’t a bad call. To say the DOD should have acted differently requires them to take responsibility for every questionable actor they become aware of. That’s not only unreasonable, it’s impossible.
matoko_chan
@burnspbesq: arent there whistleblower laws?
burnspbesq
@Catsy:
Agree, and that was not my intent. If there is sufficient relevant and admissible evidence to convene courts-martial, then by all means let’s have as many courts-martial as it takes for our guys to get the message about defining appropriate rules of engagement and staying within them.
matoko_chan
@Martin:
its their job to protect their contacts. whatever it takes.
Assange has an enormous encrypted file on his website, named Insurance. i wonder what is in it.
burnspbesq
@matoko_chan:
There are. If you think they protect any of the bad actors in this story, make the case. Color me skeptical.
Cacti
I’m more than a little perplexed that anyone reasonably expected the DoD to assist wikileaks in its felonious activity.
matoko_chan
@burnspbesq: meh.
im tired of this. you cudlips are just falling for misdirection and radar chaff. the milguys are stroking out over what else Assange has, and they will do ANYTHING to discredit him, including hanging our afghan contacts out to dry.
you allus get spun by the warpimps.
twodigits.
burnspbesq
@matoko_chan:
I don’t have a problem with that. On one level, what he did was admirable, but (as you concede in your comment) he committed a crime, and if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.
Martin
@Hiram Taine: Yes it would. Even though Fox has that ruling, it’s not in Fox’s interest to apply it liberally. They were motivated to avoid a lawsuit which they did, I don’t see how it benefits Fox to lie indiscriminately.
But more significantly with Fox, the DOD has something Fox needs – access. The DOD issues press credentials, they embed reporters with soldiers, they approve interviews, and so on. Fox has a LOT to lose by fucking up, which opens up a different problem – that of the media being complicit in covering up information in order to retain that access. That’s part of what makes Wikileaks unique (and valuable) – they require no official access, so they aren’t beholden to DOD interests, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have the same responsibility as everyone else. It also means that they’re going to have to work harder than everyone else because the DOD has nothing to gain by helping them. But that’s exactly what they signed up for – and for the right reasons. They can’t now come out and say ‘oh, this is too hard’ as an excuse for getting it wrong. Tough shit.
Jack Bauer
@burnspbesq: Whistle-blowing is an important part of holding authority accountable. Especially when they systemically lie, be they corporations, governments or the military.
The leak is a different matter from Assange publishing the docs. And I think it’s a very tough legal position that Manning finds himself in, morally though it’s a much grayer area. I’m perfectly content saying Assange should have redacted those names, but again I think the issue of those names is overblown and is pretty much all the Pentagon has to legitimately tar Assange. So I’m suspicious of it.
Much more concerning than the leak/names is the overall reaction of “meh” by damn near everyone except nerds like us. Which is also mentioned in the CIA doc I linked to above, government relying on the apathy of the public so they can pursue their war aims. So some shock and awe information on the war could be justified in that light.
burnspbesq
@matoko_chan:
Meh right back at you. We’ll just put you in the column lablelled “people who don’t give a fat rat’s ass about the rule of law.”
Steve
@Martin: I can only analogize it to a situation I’m familiar with. If I’m a financial institution, and some blogger has thousands of my stolen documents and tells me they’re going to publish them on the Internet, I’m a fool if I don’t take them up on their offer to help redact out confidential customer information before the documents get published.
The letter from the DoD lawyer was flat-out macho posturing. I don’t have any other words for it. Saying “we refuse to take part in redacting the documents, and we demand you refrain from publishing them and give them all back” is exactly the same as saying “we refuse to evacuate the building, and we demand you come disconnect that bomb right now.” He said he was going to publish them. If they assumed they could intimidate him out of it, or they assumed he must be a “reasonable media outlet” so he must be lying when he says he’s going to publish them, that was poor judgment.
Your arguments are circular here. Anyone who would publish classified documents is, by definition, someone who publishes stuff. Therefore that person is, by definition, a media outlet. It’s reasonable to assume that something called a “media outlet” is presumptively responsible, so therefore we can’t possibly say the DoD used poor judgment here. Yes we can. If a bad guy, rational or irrational, is threatening to do something harmful, you don’t turn down a free chance to minimize the damage.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@roshan:
I already stated that I can’t trust the military or government to tell the truth and I have no problem with the release of the documents. I just don’t think the military is obligated to work with people in possession of stolen internal documents. If Assange was here in our country when he contacted the military for assistance, he would have been arrested, jailed and charged immediately. Thinking the military should work with him just because he is out of legal reach is foolish. The military has done enough wrong on their part already without trying to dump this on them. Assange made his decision and he is the one responsible for any fallout from making it, not the military.
Keith G
@Omnes Omnibus: And its a good thing when that happens, but it’s an ugly and brutal business that we try to dress up with a debate society lexicon.
We get sold wars now by being told that they are limited, controlled, surgical and precise. We will punish the bad and tuck the good into bed each night.
I suspect that our honorable military is responsible for the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocents and damaged many more times that. I guess laws of war and codes of ethics have taken a zero or two off those sums. Good for us.
I imagine Assange is a prick, but I am rooting for him nonetheless.
Cacti
@burnspbesq:
It’s what I call Civil Disobedience of the special snowflake generation. “My cause is noble, therefore I should be above any law I violate”.
matoko_chan
@burnspbesq:
Young people?
Manning is already paying his debt to society, and you don’t have a leg to to stand on with Assange.
NO WAR BUT CLASS WAR!
NO WAR BUT AGE WAR!
:)
Hiram Taine
@Martin: So you see Fox as having a “moral compass”?
Upon reflection I suppose they do, it just happens to point to Mordor all the time.
ETA: Upon further reflection I think what you were describing re: Fox News falls far more into the category of “self interest” and far less so into the category of “moral compass”.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
Behind the doors? You? Weren’t you a college student taking classes in your most recent identity?
Martin
@Belvoir:
One person can redact 100,000 documents. It just takes a long time. So yes, they did have the resources. They likely did not have the resources to redact them in the time between when they got them and when they published them, but they chose the time of publication, so they had a choice here. And given that it was already a partial release, why not release what they had redacted, put out a call for funding so they could redact them faster if the public wanted to see more, and incrementally put them out there?
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to ask DOD. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for DOD to refuse to help. I just think it’s unreasonable to transfer any responsibility for redacting the documents from Wikileaks to DOD. If Wikileaks wanted to publish them, fine – DOD can’t stop them, and Wikileaks can take the time to do it.
Consider that DOD is almost certain to have thought the documents too sensitive to release even redacted (they were classified, after all, so from their perspective the entire document needed to be redacted) and given that they didn’t have the power to stop the release, the best they could hope for is a delay in their release so they could buy time to protect those people referenced in the documents. From that line of reasoning, the moral thing for DOD to do is to NOT help Wikileaks so they can warn the people in the docs and get them protection by dragging the process out as long as possible.
Yes, only the DOD know which names are sensitive, but they aren’t in a position to tell that to Wikileaks as that alone is a security problem. It’s better for Wikileaks to assume that every name and every identifying piece of information is sensitive (as they should have) and to a thorough redaction. That’s the standard and they didn’t do that. I do that all the time as part of my job. It’s a gigantic pain in the ass, but that’s what you have to do and being a pain in the ass isn’t an excuse to not do it.
Redacting every name doesn’t defeat the purpose because the point of the release is to show the effects and reasoning of the policies at work, not to tell a narrative. If every person was named Eric Cartman, and the only thing that was retained was the broadest relationship (US soldier, Afghan soldier, civilian, etc.) then we would have all we really need to know.
matoko_chan
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): dude…we failed to protect classified.
cant blame that on n/e one else.
you are just gettin’ spun by the warpimps. what else do you think Assange has?
General Stuck
“war aims” you mind like setting a fixed end date to said war? Something if prevaricated on provides a concrete way to hold a president to his promises when the time comes.
burnspbesq
@matoko_chan:
In case you haven’t heard,
“Age and treachery will always defeat youth and skill.”
morzer
@burnspbesq:
Youngist!
matoko_chan
@morzer: im waiting for class to start.
im going back to school, and you will be rid of me very soon.
a lot of teh cleared are very young. young clean mathnerds and mormons. cheaper to EBI/SBI.
Steve
What surprises me is not that there are people defending Wikileaks, but that so many of them are acting like this was another Pentagon Papers episode when it simply wasn’t. There was no hidden truth about the war being revealed here. This was just some guys publishing a ton of classified crap because they could.
My belief is that 99% of liberals, and maybe 99% of people in general, have no clue how to actually make a political goal happen. (This is why most of us would make lousy community organizers.) They want the war to stop but they have no idea where the levers of influence are, what acts will bring their goal closer to reality, so they just settle for doing anything “anti” they can. Publishing all those classified documents is just a random, undirected act of anti.
burnspbesq
@morzer:
And proud of it.
I’m a parent of a teenager. I have irrefutable proof that “young and stupid” is redundant.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
Riiiiiight.
matoko_chan
@morzer: will you miss me?
Corner Stone
WikiLeaks is a hurricane coming ashore. Don’t you board up the windows, buy batteries and otherwise make provisions?
The DOD had every responsibility to mitigate. That is not collusion of a felony, that is good sense protection. If they had a month to pull out flipped covers, or otherwise move assets then why wouldn’t they assign 5 people to this?
They aren’t lending their imprimatur, they are doing what they’re supposed to do.
matoko_chan
@Steve: its critical mass theory. eventually there will be enough info online to tip us into leaving.
AhabTRuler, V
@Omnes Omnibus:
Results may vary.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
*sigh* Is this your way of announcing that we won’t have Matoko-chan to kick around any more?
Corner Stone
@calipygian:
Fucking clown.
matoko_chan
@Corner Stone: possibly you are correct…we still haven’t heard of any deaths.
i do think they are trying to discredit Assange in advance of what ever else he has.
Jay B.
@Cacti:
Are you under some illusion that we have a lawful society? It’s amazing, we’ve voided the 4th Amendment, we live in piss-soaked fear about cavemen to the point where we’re supposed to simply accept a surveillance state and our completely unaccountable goverment/military/spy complex has absolutely no checks to doing whatever the fuck they want. None. They can abduct people, hold them without charges and ignore court rulings that require our government to address Habeas petitions — so you think that this is just a matter of “civil disobedience”?
Almost 2,000 people were arrested in 2004 protesting the GOP in NYC — and most of them were innocent while their rights were violated by the NYPD without a peep. A guy like Assange should, what, trust that our noble system of absolutely non-hysterical “secrecy” justice will be impartial and fair?
The rule of law is only for the people, not the rulers.
Corner Stone
Sooner, you have lost your shit on this.
Corner Stone
@matoko_chan: Of course this is a big stealth fuck against Assange.
All the people who are trumpeting “blood” on Assange’s hands are buying into this. He did what he is supposed to do. The DoD and govt did not. That’s the start/end of it.
Assange is leveling system disruption against a closed, inherently unjust system.
People who do not understand this have lost the thread.
Jay B.
@matoko_chan:
But the Pentagon’s lies don’t matter because Assange is a bad man — the Pentagon says!
Jack Bauer
@General Stuck: Did you read the CIA document?
My end date is now ASAP, my moral acceptance of the cost of this war expired about 5 years ago.
We can operate via Pakistan and subdue any serious terrorist threat from there. It’s all about Pakistan anyway.
The ground war is too costly in every aspect.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@matoko_chan:
What else does Assange have? I have no idea and I don’t really care one bit. I will probably tune in if and when he releases it but until then any speculation is just a waste of time. As far as “gettin spun by the warpimps”? No, not one bit. I happen to think that if I decide to do something then I am responsible for doing it. I don’t look for someone to push the blame off onto. Seems pretty simple to me but some people seem to have a problem with this concept of responsibility.
“We” didn’t fail to protect classified information, someone who “we” trusted to keep it secret decided to steal it and give it to someone else. If “we” are guilty of anything, it’s misplaced trust.
As much as you support Muslims I would think that you would be upset about Assange releasing the documents as-is and possibly endangering Afghans who assisted our military and/or their government. Or is it that this does upset you and thus you are twisting the situation to blame the military for any repercussions from the document release?
Assange did what he did and he is responsible for it. End of story. Quit trying to dump the responsibility for his decision on the military. Crimes happened and the documents are proof of it. Expecting the military to work with the people in possession of the stolen documents is plain stupid thinking (if you can even call it thinking). The military is responsible for plenty of things that they haven’t been held accountable for so stop trying to make up shit to stick on them.
It makes your arguments weaker when you try to put a phony narrative together like this. Stick to reality, people will probably listen to you and maybe even agree.
Corner Stone
Anyone who is cursing Assange and accusing him of acts against our nationstate have more blood on their hands than Assange and his leakers/cohorts ever will.
Don’t you see this?
morzer
@Corner Stone:
No, because it’s over-done hysteria. People can believe that Assange was wrong without thereby becoming responsible for all the crimes of our secret operatives. I happen to think he did the right thing, but I don’t see honest disagreement as making people proxies for war crimes.
Jack Bauer
@Steve:
I have actually considered that Assange may be an anarchist. But he does talk of the war in moral terms, so if I had to guess I’d say a left leaning civil libertarian.
But the leaks are important, and there will be more leakers from every aspect of entrenched authority. One hopes society will wake the fuck up in terms of trusting what we’re told. This helps.
Corner Stone
@morzer: There’s a difference between disagreement and the overdone angst expressed here.
People who would choose to jail information conduits have some explaining to do, IMO.
And blood? Provide a body count because others can.
morzer
@Corner Stone:
True enough, but it’s not quite what your last post said, if we are being honest. I think Assange is on the side of the angels, but when you talk about those who disagree in such hyperbolic terms it just weakens your case.
Omnes Omnibus
@AhabTRuler, V: As in all things. Man is a fallible, frail vessel who can only strive to carry out the dictates of his conscience.*
*Woman/her should be substituted as appropriate.
General Stuck
@Jack Bauer: No, what does it say? it is not the president of the us. I read what Obama said and it is to begin a drawdown and withdrawal in July 2011. The is the CiC issuing his war aim. The hawks in the Pentagon, CIA and elsewhere did not approve of such a date and can be expected to buck it. But my point is if you are going to throw around “war aims”, then you ought to include the current POTUS one for Afghan.
Corner Stone
@morzer:
I’m not making a case.
Fuck you, also, too.
Bob Loblaw
@Steve:
No, it wasn’t a Pentagon Papers redux. That is ridiculous.
It was a warning shot. A stage setter.
When they go and drop the bomb (illicit financing ops, most likely, in addition to whatever civilian slaughters they have on tape), they didn’t want the top story in the MSM to be the question of who is wikileaks? They wanted to get their name out on the streets first before they go for the “kill.”
morzer
@Corner Stone:
Don’t make threats you can’t live up to, dear child.
AhabTRuler, V
@Omnes Omnibus: That is cold comfort to the victims. We have a terrible, terrible record when it comes to ‘collateral damage’.
Jack Bauer
@General Stuck: I think Obama’s war aim is to end the war, agreed. He’s having to do this dog and pony show for two years because the US is so militarist. But, the only thing that could help stop the military bucking it, would be public opinion set against it. This is a very real struggle.
Here’s the CIA doc, via Assange. Here they’re doing their part in fucking with public opinion. Remember the recent Time cover?
matoko_chan
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): well…..actually im a lot more concerned about the thousands of collateral damage muslims being slaughtered in this stupid unwinnable immoral meaningless war.
and i love Wikileaks because Assange is helping to end it.
and you are a dumbass getting spun by the warpimps.
Omnes Omnibus
@AhabTRuler, V: I don’t disagree with that. It is one of the reasons that I was against the Iraq invasion from the start.
HyperIon
@JamesC wrote:
Not sure what you mean by them having the resources.
In the Assange presser from London that was broadcast on CSPAN, he mentioned that they have few full-time staff and mostly depend on volunteers (thousands IIRC). And he said that only a small portion of the docs had been “published” because there weren’t enough eyes available. (I remember thinking “oh, yeah, wiki = volunteers.)
The first time the topic was brought up here there was just a lot of allegations and pearl clutching. Very few links were provided to support what many people were speculating. Just the usual “X did Y. Only a complete moron/monster would do Y. What a moron/monster X is!” Then the “other side” says equally over-the-top stuff.
*sigh*
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan: What are you studying in school? I certainly hope it is not something that requires a real grasp of subtlety and nuance.
General Stuck
@Jack Bauer: That’s just boilerplate CIA psy ops shit. Europe is irrelevant in ending the ground war in Afghan. It is US public opinion that will drive that. And I reiterate, these leaks do little or nothing to end the war any sooner that it will end. The public has turned against the ground war and once that happens nothing much can turn it back. And what gripes me the most is conflating it with Iraq, where there were lies involved, big lies. Not so with Afghan. We have been informed of the so called “collateral damage” excesses, that occur in every war btw. We know about too many civilians getting killed because the top Gen, Mchrystal told us in no uncertain terms that the military causing unnecessary deaths was way too much and announced new ROE to bring them down. Especially at checkpoints.
I am for whistleblowing when it is focused on specific wrong doing or lying by and from the government. This was hardly that, and seems gratuitous and just a broad attack on war as a general matter. This could have been done in ways other than jeopardizing lives, both GI’s and Afghans. by releasing 8 years worth of sources and methods at the base level of grunts on the ground already putting their lives at risk from simply joining the military. And also the Afghans doing the same.
HyperIon
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal) wrote:
Charged with what?
The Supremes sided with the NYT regarding publishing the Pentagon papers. No prior restraint. I don’t see how this is different.
morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
Most likely creative writing…
Corner Stone
I just read a blurb, I think on GlobalGuerrillas, that detailed the Afghans using a wooden box with a foam-gap plunger as their IED device.
Completely undetectable by chemical sensors or IR sweeps and countermeasures. They bury it in a broken road and it just waits there.
If our sources and methods aren’t changing daily/weekly/monthly then there’s a real fucking problem here.
WikiLeaks didn’t disclose anything that wasn’t known by the people killing and dying in arena.
They are using a stick to widen the opening into this closed source war.
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: Ack!
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@matoko_chan:
And you are a fucking idiot because you can’t see that I agree with WikiLeaks releasing the documents and that I have no problem with it other than how it was done without taking time to redact any Afghan names and idiots like you trying to spin the blame for any repercussions off of Assange and onto the military.
The only thing that’s spinning here is you and your bullshit.
@HyperIon:
Who the fuck knows?! I believe that he would be arrested if he was here in the country when this went down. Whether or not he would be convicted of anything is another issue. That’s not the point. They say you can get a jury to convict a ham sandwich so there is no reason to think that they wouldn’t arrest a ham sandwich, right? All I am saying is that I believe that if Assange and WikiLeaks were based here that his computers would be seized and he would be arrested and charged for whatever they think suits the occasion.
Jack Bauer
@General Stuck: Europe is very relevant. The Dutch government crumbled over the Afghan troops issue, and if the US lost British, French, and German support? World opinion would shift and troops out would happen sooner. As for:
well, it’s been alleged that this has happed for a long time, but plausible deniability was always offered and largely accepted. Not so often do we get evidence like this.
Your general points that, “this is not Iraq, yes there is collateral damage, no big lies with this war, GI’s and Afghans risk much, Assange is a pacifist” as a reason for not leaking/publishing these docs has some validity to me, although it doesn’t move me far from being neutral. Because there’s nothing wrong with:
“More jaw-jaw less war-war” to quote that known pacifist Churchill, is always preferable.
Steve
@Bob Loblaw:
That explanation is from the school of 11-dimensional chess IMO. If they had something that really made a difference they would have released it.
Corner Stone
@Steve: They did. But authoritarian douchebags are unable to see it.
General Stuck
No they wouldn’t, sorry. The ground war will end because the American people will not support it. And Obama will not carry into his reelection the broken promise of ending that ground war.
And the rationalization of these leaks that GI’s and Afghans are already at risk is complete Bullshit from moral cowards imho. You folks can cheer Assange and what he has done, but pray no one dies from it that wouldn’t have without it. And I am fairly certain that when this war comes to a close from Obama following through on his commitment to end it, more rationalization will come forth that Assange and his followers were responsible. It will be a lie, the only one brought out into the open by Mr. Assange.
morzer
@General Stuck:
FWIW, I think Petraeus has begun to realize that his new role is to be the good general who organizes the retreat. I suspect he would have refused the command – but was boxed in by his own propaganda which had proclaimed him America’s Only General.
matoko_chan
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): but Assange asked for help redacting names. and the military refused. my point is the it is the military’s RESPONSIBILITY to redact the names since they compromised them in the first place, by failing to protect classified.
at least, that is what i was taught.
Assange releasing the docs does not absolve the military.
it is our responsibility to protect our allies by any way possible.
the only reason i can think of for DoD shirking their duty is to discredit Assange in advance of future leaks…..like the Garani massacre video which is supposed to be horrific.
22 adults and 97 children slaughtered.
matoko_chan
@General Stuck: the mil reviewers said explicitly that no american soldiers were put at risk by the docs.
General Stuck
@matoko_chan: You have zero credibility about anything around here.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@matoko_chan:
Your point has no point to it, it’s flat as a board. The military did not compromise these people, one person within it did and Assange published it without even taking a shot at redacting anything. You just want to scapegoat the military over this non-issue and it weakens every other argument you have against them.
Either people are responsible for their actions or they are not, I say they are and you say they are not. I’ll leave it at that.
Jack Bauer
sigh
Fuck that assertion. Ending the war sooner, saves more lives on all sides. Saying Assange (and his cheerleaders) have blood on their hands is the same as me saying people who continue to support this war have the blood of many innocents to account for. Not soldiers, not terrorists, not Taliban but actual innocents just caught up in our longest war ever. But that sort of shit flinging is real moral cowardice. We ought to be able to discuss this without it.
General Stuck
@Jack Bauer: You can rationalize it any way you want, and I am sure you will claim it was Assange et al that made it happen sooner, the wars end, and the lives lost due directly his careless leaking will have made it worth it. But there will be those of us who know better and will let you know you’re full of it.
General Stuck
And I adjust this to moral duplicity, the very thing you and Assange and his apologists accuse the military of.
Recall
Assange and Manning betrayed us the exact same way as the Afghani informants betrayed Afghanistan. Same actions, same consquences.
burnspbesq
@HyperIon:
Conspiracy, and accessory to about 100,000 violations of 18 USC 641.
And Assange strikes me as no less arrogant than Scooter Libby or Roger Clemens, so if he ever ends up in front of a grand jury he’ll probably add a few counts of perjury to the indictment, just for good measure.
burnspbesq
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
No, they say you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. There’s a difference.
roshan
Since when did Stuck became in charge of handing out ITT tech certificates on BJ?
roshan
Mom, has Assange been hanged yet?. We no likey leaks from our war factory. Leaks make reaching our production targets difficult. We like hero worship, Tillman style. Are we still the City on Shining Hill, Mom? We likey up there. We are the funeral home directors of this world. No Assange can take err jaabs from us. Git Er Dunnnn.
debbie
Reading all these responses this morning, it seems (and I certainly could be wrong) that one factor of the pro- and anti-Assange divide is an age or generational thing. It seems like it’s the younger posters here who focus on Assange’s intent and rely on their own ideals; while older ones consider that perceptions and consequences matter just as much as intent, and they also rely on their various life-experiences.
Personally, I think Assange has a serious case of misplaced self-righteousness. If sincere, his expecting the Pentagon to redact his stolen documents is chutzpah on the scale of a Newt Gingrich. If Assange had been the least bit troubled by the effect his actions might have on innocent lives, then he might have done a series of releases, timed as the names were scrubbed out. Or sort through for the more important ones and just edit and release them. His lack of feeling any personal responsibility is on a par with Cheney. He’s just the other side of that warped coin.
However, I can also remember back to my senior year in high school, when I was angry enough about Viet Nam to join SDS. I’m not an aggressive or violent person, but I was willing to overlook that in order to do my part to end the war. At that point, the violence was only implied, and I didn’t give much thought to what it might involve. But as soon as they started talking about actually carrying a gun and actually building a bomb, the reality of causing actual, physical harm to other human beings began to sink in. It was too much, and I just got the hell out of there.
I hope I can say this without insulting anyone, but there is a developmental difference in ages. Impulse control, sound decision-making, and ability to weigh consequences aren’t fully formed until the mid- to late-twenties (despite what many may think). It’s also been found that the ability to better analyze only improves with age.
I’m not talking about this being better, but about being different. Either way, it would be nice to be able to discuss differences without sinking to calling each other a bunch of names.
morzer
@debbie:
But you’ve just spent a whole post insulting Assange and anyone who defends him. Maybe a little less self-righteousness in your own case wouldn’t come amiss?
Jan
What quiet a lot of Americans don’t seem to understand is that in general the national jurisdiction ends at the national border. So you can’t violate american laws if your not under american jurisdiction (there are some exceptions regarding piracy (the real one), war-crimes and crimes committed at military bases, embassies and perhaps some other rare cases). So unless someone can proof that Assange violated any laws while under US-jurisdiction there is no point in citing any american laws.
IMO you can discuss the moral implication of releasing the material but it is rather useless to talk about any violation of american laws. As far as I remember Assange was in Britain when the material was released. So he was probably under british jurisdiction.
My american friends may be surprised but the rest of the world really doesn’t care whatever laws you have :-)
debbie
@morzer:
You’re confusing insulting someone with criticism of his actions. If I wanted to insult him, I’d bring up specifics of his appearance this morning in news reports.
debbie
Also: I wasn’t insulting anyone who defends Assange. I was commenting on the difference between placing priority on intent to the exclusion of consequences.
Comment on what I said, not on what you’ve misread of what I said. Perhaps it’s you yourself who is amiss.
roshan
Shorter debbie:
Corner Stone
@debbie:
And if possible, you’d look even more wrong than you already appear.
debbie
Wish I even had a lawn, but no, I do like having kids around. Even when they drape themselves in layers of self-righteousness.
I’m glad the charge has been withdrawn. It would have buried the real issue in a bunch of innuendo.
Recall
@debbie:
Not chutzpah, naiveté.
The Pentagon doesn’t give a flying fuck about the lives of their informers.