Here’s the ex-Baghdad bureau chief of the Post:
Donald Rumsfeld held a news conference at the Pentagon to say that U.S. press reports of killings—such as mine that estimated 1,300 dead in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, based on what I had seen at the morgue, interviews with Sunni survivors, UN and Iraq health officials—were calculated “exaggerated reporting.” […]
Thanks to Wikileaks, though, I now know the extent to which top American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world, as the Iraq mission exploded.
The American troops, who were risking their lives on the ground, witnessed and documented it themselves.
Of course, none of this matters because it’s all in the past and Julian Assange said something stupid on Twitter.
(via)
Ash Can
What I objected to about the Afghanistan leaks was the possibility of unredacted names getting people killed. And that the leakers are running afoul of rules/regulations/the law is a matter of fact, not debate. It has nothing to do with the perceived morality or lack thereof of the leaking. (And keep in mind that conviction and sentencing are two different things; mitigating circumstances make for leniency in sentencing.)
Having said that, however, the ideal function of leaking information is to expose wrongdoing and bring it to justice. Not only do I not object to publishing that kind of leaked information, I applaud it. I know better than to hold my breath waiting for any kind of prosecutions. But if these leaks help to discredit an ineffective and often outright harmful war effort, and allow history to judge the perpetrators accordingly, that’s better than nothing.
Violet
This is just so depressing. I pretty much assume that the people in charge of wars are lying about what they do. Isn’t that a given? But to see it written out like this is just so depressing. These are real people, real lives. And it’s been/being done in our name.
Svensker
That’s all well and good that she realizes now that they lied. But where the hell has she been? Apparently reporters and news people only watch FOX and read the standard media outlets. If they’d been reading what I’ve been reading — which is not exactly esoteric stuff — she’d have known they were lying BEFORE the fookin war even started.
El Cid
It’s really surprising that the head of the Department of Defense would lie about what’s happening in the war they’re in charge of. They never did anything like that in Vietnam.
norbizness
I don’t know if the indicated effect, but the dueling MTV ads on the left and right columns made me shit my pants (involuntarily).
wilfred
@Ash Can:
The Pentagon and its allies in the press were able to frame this almost before it happened. Of course, no questions were asked. Here are some:
1) The Pentagon itself acknowledge many times that ‘mistakes were made’, usually involving some matrix of a jdam and Afghan civilians/children. The catch-all excuse was that information on the target was provided by ‘locals’. Later, it was acknowledged that there were frequently tribal issues involved rather than ‘insurgency’ issues. Now I have to believe that the intelligence officers who authorized those strikes wanted to know who said so. I doubt that they bothered recording the name of every Amanullah, Abdullah and Said in Afghanistan. Not every one who was protected should have been;
2) If anyone was in danger, than why the fuck weren’t they protected? We do that here with informants, why not there?. Maybe because it would have been easier to persecute Wikileaks if one or two dead sources showed up. Only none have;
3) Does anybody really believe that cooperation is not coerced, for heaven’s sake? How many Afghan informers were forced to do so at gunpoint or when threats were made against their famililies?
As usual, the press showed no critical thinking whatsoever, and merely parroted the usual Lakoffian framing of the Pentagon and its war pig friends.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@El Cid: What was it I.F. Stone said? And how many years ago did he say it? It’s telling that this woman can be so gullible.
Roger Moore
It’s nice to have proof that DoD was lying, but it’s cold comfort as long as there aren’t any real consequences. I realize that it’s too much to ask for Rumsfeld to be thrown in jail, but how about some more practical consequences? Who thinks that editors are actually going to start treating their reporters as more reliable sources than highly placed sources at the Pentagon? Until people stop accepting pronouncements from the Pentagon uncritically, the whole sad story will play out again and again.
matoko_chan
@wilfred: like i say, read Al Jazeera if you want the truth.
US turned a blind eye to torture.
the US media is compromised.
that is why Assange gave the docs to multiple sources.
follow the twitter stream…it includes all the media sources.
Child victims speak out.
Contractors shot Iraqi presidents bodyguards by mistake.
HACKER NATION FTW!
matoko_chan
why am i moderated, mistermix?
dont like the truth?
wilfred
@Roger Moore:
This. Of course, we have been thoroughly conditioned to believe that NOTHING CAN BE DONE, when in fact nothing is done because it is not politically expedient.
The triumph of the apparatchik is to convince the victim that he can’t be saved, not that he won’t be. If the latter were true, he’d still hope.
Fuck it: Let’s look forward, not backward.
Roy G
The propagandza continues: the SF Chronicle’s AP-penned article on the Wikileaks release:
Leaked Iraq war files portray weak, divided nation
By ROBERT BURNS, AP National Security Writer
The enormous cache of secret war logs disclosed by the WikiLeaks website paints a picture of an Iraq burdened by persistent sectarian tension and meddling neighbors, suggesting that the country could drift into chaos once U.S. forces leave.
The reports, covering early 2004 to Jan. 1, 2010, help explain why Iraq’s struggle to create a unified, independent state continues, despite a dramatic reduction in violence. They appear to support arguments by some experts that the U.S. should keep thousands of troops there beyond their scheduled departure in 2011, to buy more time for Iraq to become stable.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/10/22/international/i162556D93.DTL
No mention of the unreported civilian deaths, of course.
El Cid
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: “All governments lie.”
BGinCHI
The Pentagon’s response on Friday was telling:
1. These documents should not have been released!
2. There’s no new information in them!
See Heller, Joseph.
El Cid
NYT reverses its report on how the Iranian government has been giving a Karzai aide bags of money because that aide was close to Iran, to Karzai admitting that this is transparent and was done with his approval, and that the US knew about this and didn’t complain as far back as the Bush Jr. administration — and they reversed it in one day.
El Cid
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: A speech by I. F. Stone at Berkeley in 1978, audio of Stone beginning at 5’45”. Via the official I. F. Stone website.
matoko_chan
Epic piece from Democracy Now!
American war crimes don’t sell well with the greys.
Only FOXfakenews sells well.
its a business model.
Roger Moore
@matoko_chan:
You hit the magic four link limit. You get auto-dumped into moderation if you have more than three links (including links to previous posts) on the theory that you’re a link spammer. This message brought to you by the letters F, Y, W, and P.
Chuck Butcher
Gee, if you set up a bullshit model of warfare that is free of innocent deaths and other sorts of collateral damage it just about guarantees that you’ll lie about that reality. Americans certainly don’t want to give a shit about those “other” people and the media certainly has little incentive to put the public’s nose out of joint.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
I used my model of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle to prove the 400,000 war logs were wrong.*
Suck on that, Assange!
[Does anyone remember the fuss when The New Republic alleged that an army company delibrately ran over a dog in a Bradley and the wingnuts used their models to “prove” it couldn’t have happened?]
matoko_chan
i just sent this email to Sully.
Stop giving McMegan mercy
fuckslinks and link Democracy Now! you whanker.does that make me homophobic?
Amy is a grrl too.
>:(
Jrod the Cookie Thief
But, but, but, Julian Assange wants to hurt America! Obviously Bradley Manning wants to hurt his own country, too, and was clearly not motivated by any sort of moral calculus.
This is obvious, because the only way to act morally is to do whatever the mass-murderers running our military tell you, and to protect their secrets. Anything less is unAmerican, and probably communist to boot.
/soonergrunt
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
What I love about these leaks is that back in 2002 those of us who were paying attention were saying that the track we were on was a track to hell, and that these things would happen, and we’d be sorry.
Oddly enough, now that we have been proven right, it’s the people who fought that argument the hardest who are now the most upset that the truth about what happened is coming out.
Fuck them. Fuck you all, whoever you are, and you know who the fuck you are.
burnspbesq
Being a douchebag and a criminal and performing a valuable public service are not mutually exclusive.
But how much of what’s in these documents is really news? Don’t they just confirm things that anyone with an IQ greater than 12 who was paying attention already intuitively “knew?”