Precious little of this in our current press:
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.
Heavily redacted, the log entries offer surreal but chilling glimpses of the chaos that followed the Samarra bombing on Feb. 22. Within hours of the bombing, U.S. troops reported gunmen attacking; open street fighting between Shia and Sunni militias; rocket-propelled grenade attacks on mosques; assassinations and kidnappings.
Later, one U.S. military patrol happens on militia members dumping bodies on the side of the street. The killers speed away, leaving the American soldiers with a grim discovery: “bodies shot in the face…still warm,” according to one log.
Iraq was not “calming,” as Rumsfeld would have it. Rather, this was sectarian war, and, over the next few months, the Bush administration’s effort to convince the world that everything was hunky-dory in Iraq became less and less sustainable as the slaughter continued.
There is really some amazing stuff in the Wikileaks document dump. Fortunately though, our media elites know what is really important:
Steve
I don’t even have to Google to state with confidence that Ellsberg dealt with plenty of character assassination in his own time. They broke into his psychiatrist’s office, for God’s sake!
Honestly, Assange could be worse than Hitler for all I care. Bradley Manning could deserve the death penalty. It doesn’t matter, this is not about them.
Phoenix Woman
See, Hitler was kind to his associates whereas Churchill was an asshole to them. And FDR farted. Also.
(/sarcasm)
kommrade reproductive vigor
I think we need to check his counters. I’ll get the stocks ready in case they’re not formica.
geg6
Yeah, I really don’t understand these “journalists” today. I would guess that people I admired way back when journalism actually meant something (IF Stone, David Halberstam, etc.) would be pouring over every document, looking to see what they missed, what they got right, and what it all means all these years later.
Instead, we have this bunch of journalists who won’t deign to touch this treasure trove because somebody once said Julian Assange was an asshole to someone one time a few years ago but with no evidence to actually show any actual assholeness on Assange’s part.
As if Assange is in any way material to the documents and the evidence that they shed a light on.
Southern Beale
Sometimes I wonder if we didn’t lose the 2010 midterms way back when the Dems decided not to pursue impeachment and investigation of the Bush Administration for the Iraq War lies.
Now the Repigs will impeach Obama for some made up ACORN bullshit.
C Nelson Reilly
Isn’t Assange French or something?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
Look, there was the potential for
hundredsmillions of our Afghan contacts to be murdered, just as Manning and Assange wanted.Just because this didn’t happen is no reason to start listening to these evil, America-hating men now!
Wake me up when someone more morally pure leaks something, so I can find an excuse to
dismisser, evaluate their, uh, level of America-hatred.McCarthy ahoy!!
/soonerfuckwit
Phoenix Woman
@Steve: Remember all the to-do that erupted when it was revealed that OMG OSKAR SCHINDLER WAS UNFAITHFUL!!!! Because, you know, that totally outweighed his putting his ass on the line in a very meaningful way to save a few thousand human beings.
Culture of Truth
If being an imperious asshole was a crime the entire Bush cabinet would be in an oubliette.
cleek
the proper response is “Assange? who’s that? was he involved in the war planning?”
Poopyman
Who the fuck is Richard Karpel?
Wait! Why the fuck should I care? Ignore the above question.
BR
Actually, not quite. Wikileaks can only leak documents that exist. Which means that there is the possibility (and it seems likely) that worse things happened but were simply not documented, or were sanitized when documented.
Phoenix Woman
@geg6: In part, it’s because of Upton Sinclair Syndrome: They know what they’re paid to do, and journalism ain’t it.
But an aftereffect of this is that, since journalistic skills aren’t needed or desired by their employers, several generations of media employees have sprung up that either have forgot how to be journalists or never learned in the first place — which is why the blogosphere is increasingly kicking their asses.
matoko_chan
what Assange is like
The Hacker Nation just kicked the Unipolar Power’s fat white judeochristian ass.
That is the real story.
Phoenix Woman
@Culture of Truth: Starting with Turd Blossom and Ticky Dick, with Rummy and Wolfowitz and Doug Feith not far behind.
Phoenix Woman
@cleek: ZING! We have a winner!
david mizner
Assange should win a Nobel Prize, but that award seems to go to people who escalate wars not to people who try to end them.
Culture of Truth
Narrowed political vision; Inability to see beyond the personal qualities of one person involved in an historic leak to the larger story of how an war was fought and an entire nation lied to by its leaders: Karpel Tunnel Syndrome
JGabriel
RKarpel (from top):
Didn’t Nixon or Haldeman say the same thing about Ellsberg? Which, if yes, would pretty much prove
Greenwald’sTimothyS’s point..
Brighton
A careful look at federal espionage and treason law (18 USC 2388) shows that Julian Assange is not guilty of any crime.
Brighton
A careful look at federal espionage and treason law (18 USC 2388) shows that Julian Assange is not guilty of any crime.
WyldPirate
But it is very important that we look forward to the future and not backwards in a vindictive manner to crimes that may or may not have been committed by our government.
/end Barack Obama impersonation
david mizner
Lied?
Nah, on more than one occasion they seemed to have said certain things that in retrospect appear not to comport entirely with what some observers have argued is the truth.
— the New York Times
Zifnab
The first rule of civilian casualties is that you do not talk about civilian casualties. The second rule of civilian casualties is that they will always exist and they will always be a necessary evil that we are doing everything to address.
Assange completely disregarded both of these rules, and is therefore guilty of the highest crimes of journalism. How can we treat him as a serious and level-headed individual if he keeps bringing up subjects we have promised not to talk about?
Clearly, the man is an asshole. And perhaps a pedophile. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
WyldPirate
@Southern Beale:
No fucking shit.
Break out the goddamned truckload of popcorn and the industrial popper. we get to watch the Bachmann/Issa version of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
Years upon years of lies, distortions, and cover-ups? Yaaaawwwwwwnn.
Let’s hear more about how Julian Assange is not, in fact, the bestest person to ever walk the earth. Truly this is the important issue.
Joseph Nobles
Between dead Iraqis and Julian Assange, which one is the moving target?
OT: Just got my open enrollment for 2011. All my evil Obamacare changes are now included, and my premiums didn’t jump one penny. Obama Akbar, comrades!
p.a.
Imperious! That sounds worse than elitist. Maybe his countertops are made of emeralds! Get Maglalang to launch a
smearinvestigation.meh
yeah, and? so what…Seriously, what does it matter? This isn’t an Obama is worse then Bush screed, I’m just asking – so what? You mean they lied to us? You mean they underplayed the violence? Nooo! Where ahhh mah pearls?? I need to lah down…I’m shocked that there is gambling going on in this establishment.
It is what it is – nothing will come of this. Nothing ever comes of it anymore. Because Americans, as a whole, are fucking morons. Period. We, as Americans, are poised to re-vote into office the same fucktards that polluted the Gulf, lied us into two wars, crashed the fucking economy, spent trillions to hold onto Iraq and secure oil instead of developing cars that run on something else (fuck even dead monkeys would be cheaper in the long run), tortured and killed people (including over 100 in US custody and 100k in Iraq), allowed a city to be flooded beyond repair and downplay the effects while people were dying on national tv. This is the party that allows lobbyists to write the laws and 23 year legislative assistants to tell them how to vote because they are too busy fundraising to bother to read the bills the lobbyists write.
The GOP is winning because good people don’t exist anymore. They are winning because America is full of morons. Plain and simple. So why bother with something as unpleasant as war crimes, or torture, or foreclosures…yuck. Can’t you talk more about snookie or how cutely fat your cat is?
Ryan
Why would it matter if Assange is personally a huge asshole? The issue is the content of the documents, not the character of the leaker. Everything else is sleight-of-hand.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Culture of Truth: Bravo!
The Grand Panjandrum
But why would journalists want to sift through all the documents to confirm that they fucking missed or ignored the facts during the run up to the invasion of Iraq? I, for one, would be quite happy to let slide the fact they didn’t do their job then, if they would only do it NOW!
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
But President Obama is a fine family man with a winning personality and a toothy grin.
.
.
Martin
Well, I have it on good authority that Assange has never read a ‘Left Behind’ book, knows who the real Jimmy Johnson is, nor is a member of Kiwanis. So, clearly he’s got to go down.
Mike G
Soon enough, Assange will be entrapped in some manufactured dirty-tricks personal “scandal” (Breitbart and/or O’Keefe are probably working on it as we speak) which will be loudly trumpeted by the usual right-wing media barking dogs, and echoed by the supine corporate media, as “proof” that all WikiLeaks reports were “lies”.
Then the Security State will be safe again; go back to sleep, America.
celticdragonchick
@Culture of Truth:
You know, we can arrange that…
celticdragonchick
@Culture of Truth:
You know, we can arrange that…
singfoom
Listen guys, you didn’t get the message. Assange is an asshole, so that means that the U.S. Government, the Army and everyone but Assange is washed clean of guilt.
I mean, come on, the point is that’s he’s an asshole. And not only that, he’s a foreign asshole.
Obviously, that means that the wikileaks document dump is meaningless and that we’re #1.
I heard Thomas Paine was an asshole too, maybe the founding fathers should have ignored Common Sense.
Jesus, how fucking stupid can you be?
Just Some Fuckhead
Who cares what Assange is like? I’m still trying to crack the Al Gore nut.
WyldPirate
@Ryan:
C’mon, Ryan. This is MeriKKKa, dude. Character is everything, unless they are stupid and we would personally want to have a beer with them, then some SOB with a Islamofascist sounding name like Assange can’t be trusted.
slag
And if only Al Gore hadn’t sighed so much, then we wouldn’t have even had Jr. for President and none of this torture stuff would have happened.
Thanks a lot, Al Gore, you imperious asshole!
Martin
@Southern Beale: Still not convinced Dems are going to lose the House. I suspect there’s much more of a silent majority phonebanking for OFA than the media is willing to admit.
El Cid
According to the most powerful of the US billion dollar media, the issue is Assange.
That includes the New York Times, who yesterday had a front page article blaming one of Karzai’s aides for accepting bags of cash from Iran and thus undermining Karzai’s government, and today has an article of Karzai saying that this acceptance of Iranian money was completely part of his own policy and clearly authorized by him, and that the US has known about this since Bush Jr was in office.
Whatever the US foreign policy establishment whispers to the NYT or WP, they’ll print it.
It’s not what the documents reveal, it’s Assange personally.
Redshift
@geg6: Personally, I wonder how “journalist” reactions correlate with which media outlets were given the scoop on the documents in preparation for the leak.
catclub
@meh:
“The GOP is winning because good people don’t exist anymore.”
Do you include yourself in that accusation? Or was that hyperbole in a sacred cause?
soonergrunt
Just taking a glance through the BJ archives, circa 2003/2004. It occurs to me that John has a thing for imperious assholes with shaky motives who tell him what he wants to hear.
Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, this is like watching someone play both sides of the tennis court.
I’ve never trusted anybody who sees themselves as some manichean hero, and I’ve rarely needed those types pointed out to me. They’re the ones who get my friends killed satisfying their egos.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ryan: Correct. I am one of the people on this blog who has raised concerns about WikiLeaks, specifically with respect to redactions, but Assange’s personal character has absolutely no bearing on the accuracy or value of the documents he has released. If someone were to provide evidence that he was forging or altering documents, that would be another thing because it would have direct effect on information coming out. No one has even suggested such a thing, so Assange’s personal life is immaterial.
Nerull
@catclub:
Given that his solution is to do nothing, he would be included in the morons group.
Schad
Part of the problem, I suspect, is that much of the media has come to the conclusion (and sadly, they likely aren’t wrong) that a large part of the population finds newsmakers far more compelling than the news they generate, in the same way that people are fascinated by celebrities who have no claim to that title save their ubiquity. It allows everyone to think and write in very simple hero/devil dichotomies, gives rise to a thousand 500-word blurbs rather than a handful of 10-page epics, and keeps everyone involved on firm, comfortable turf.
I suspect it’s the same reason that horse-race coverage is now so dominant in the political world. You can boil everything down to the race, and from there to the candidates, because if you focus on nothing but the minute bullshit, you’ll never write the same column twice (they’ll all be similar, but because you’re focused exclusively on the last 48 hours, each snowflake is just a tad different), and you’ll never have to spend two months chasing a story that might not materialize…the downside being, beyond the degradation of news coverage in general, that when a story springs up and smacks you in the face, this tedious brand of meta-analysis is so ingrained that there isn’t a chance in hell that you’ll look up and actually write about what matters. Thus, everyone takes the low-hanging fruit and pounds out their variation of the “who is this shadowy Australian activist?” story, and then sets off to argue with the hundreds of others who have written similar blurbs.
My take on the “if Watergate happened today” trope: most of the coverage would debate what Nixon’s taste in prospective burglars says about his leadership style (“listen to his confidence in those secret recordings! Such command of the situation”), shifting so quickly into questions about the impact that it would have on the ’74 midterms that no one would even stop for a moment and wonder whether it was an impeachable offense.
Brachiator
We needed Wikileaks for this? The lie about the Iraq mission unfolded layer by layer as the bullshit about weapons of mass destruction was shown to be nonsense.
@El Cid:
Apparently this is doubly OK because, as Karzai says, the US gives him bags of money, too.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: I haven’t seen anything here I didn’t assume was going on in the first place. Except maybe that you only use LSA when it’s really cold these days!
General Stuck
@Brachiator:
This.
You can spank the monkey a million times, the result is always the same.
Martin
I think most people miss the benefit of Wikileaks dumps.
We’ll never know how accurate a picture the dumps paints for us. For all we know, documents that refute what was released were buried. But there’s a whole host of people that *do* know if what was released paints an accurate picture, and either they’re going to have to account for the discrepancy (by releasing the other side of the story) or account for their actions. We might be bewildered by what’s coming out, but the generals and civilian officials sure as fuck aren’t – they’ve known this all along, as has elements of the media whether they believed it strongly enough to print it or not.
Complete or incomplete, these dumps force various people to show their hands. If they’re complete, you’re going to see people cover their asses by presenting even more information, stuff that Assange couldn’t get to, or possibly stuff that Assange didn’t want to release, if you ascribe those motives to him. If they’re incomplete, you’ll get the same outcome.
So long as the documents are authentic and don’t put lives directly in danger (and Wikileaks is solely responsible for doing that legwork), I don’t see any downside here.
trollhattan
@slag:
Yeah, but Al’s “lock box” was just too scary, donchano?
Also, too: A bit of win from the Jerry v. Megs battles.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/10/jerry-brown-features-meg-whitm.html#discovery
Adam Lang
The killers speed away, leaving the American soldiers with a grim discovery: “bodies shot in the face…still warm,” according to one log
My god! Cheney was there!
jrg
I heard Assange shot some dude in the face by accident, and didn’t even apologize.
Martin
@General Stuck: Though it’s difficult to accuse 300,000 of the military’s own documents of being partisan.
The right has quite effectively turned distilled facts into things which the public now feels perfectly comfortable dismissing on the assumption that the distillation process has left them to be subjective. They’ve not been able to achieve the same thing against raw evidence.
In a sense, the right is forcing greater transparency, which is good, but only through the most cynical and self-serving motives.
stuckinred
Seems we’ve all been her before:
morzer
@Culture of Truth:
I guess we can now talk about people having their heads up their Karpel Tunnels. You know, Palin Syndrome.
Bubblegum Tate
Wingnut bloggers also know what’s really important. For example, WikiLeaks proves we found WMDs in Iraq!
liberal
@Martin:
[emphasis added]
Would that it were so.
Frank Chow
I didn’t know IPhone’s had the power of projection…
Suck It Up!
@Southern Beale:
You are projecting. The American people do not care. Prosecuting the last administration would not have helped Dems in the midterms.
Ash Can
@Bubblegum Tate: Yeesh.
Could you give a quick summary for those of us who aren’t as brave as you and don’t want to click on the link? Pretty please?
John Cole
@soonergrunt: What does this have to do with me? That is the problem with the coverage that I am outlining. It is all about Assange and the Press’s infatuation with him and his personality.
And he isn’t “telling me what I want to hear.” You make it sound like the wrote the fucking documents. The military wrote them.
Christ. What I’d “like to hear” was that there really was some reason to go, that way my support for the war wouldn’t have been a total fucking mistake.
Erik Vanderhoff
Christ, our entire media culture is driven by the ad hominem fallacy: Julian Assange is an asshole, so his information must be wrong.
We are so screwed.
For fuck’s sake. Glenn Greenwald’s an asshole, and on stuff like this, he also happens to be right.
matoko_chan
bullshit, you moron.
there is no refutation. that “stuff” was turned over by analysts.
Assange had nothing to do with how it was collected.
Assange just set it free.
@soonergrunt: dont shoot the messenger, soljah. it’s Bush, Cheney, Rove, and the warpimps that are “the ones who get my friends killed” in a meaningless, unjust, immoral and UNWINNABLE WAR.
you know what you haven’t seen before?
The whole power and might of the Unipolar Power directed to stop a document release, dirty tricks and bully tactics an’ all..
and they failed.
the Hacker Nation kicked Americas ass.
cyberinsurgents.
:)
jhh
I suspect that Ellsberg, Assange, Woodward, Bernstein and others like them ALL were characterized by the powers that be first as “snot-nosed pissants,” then as “fancy pants pedophiles,” and finally “imperious assholes.” The acclaim, awards and tributes came later. It all follows the dictum attributed (probably falsely) to Gandhi: “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.”
General Stuck
@Martin:
I am all for a wikileaks, or anyone else, releasing classified info that is targeted to lies told by leaders, illegal activities by the government, or other waste fraud and abuse. The government cannot hide behind classification for deceitful or illegal actions. I don’t know enough yet about what docs on Iraq will ultimately fall into those categories, but the Afghan ones almost completely did not. And I have a problem with releasing years worth of after action reports with no concern about revealing day to day tactics of troops in the field, WHILE THEY ARE STILL IN THE FIELD. as is the case with Afghan.
And then there is this.
It seems to me a couple of things. While Assange’s character ultimately doesn’t matter regarding the info released, it does that Assange is a remorseless self possessed asshole that is basically out of control, even from his own associates. And it takes some real effort in the fuckup department, to get Amnesty International to side with The Pentagon against you.
When Wikileaks starts being responsible in what they leak as to targeting just lies and lawbreaking from the government, then I will cheer them. Right now, I have another word for what they are doing, that could apply also to those who blindly cheer them for making cheap pol points against the other side, the wingnut side, the neo con side. And as soonergrunt said, in a way that might end up killing his friends.
soonergrunt
@stuckinred: This might be interesting in context–what happened on a daily basis, but these are raw files. Thousands of reports of various things, from the individual perspectives of the reporters. Some of them are pretty good about differentiating what they see from what they think, some of them aren’t, and most of them are relatively mundane viewed at that level.
Yes, you can begin to see patterns emerge if you know what you’re looking for or how to plot these events vs. time or geography or what-have-you, but in the end, while they’ll doubtless provide the historians with some interesting insight into day to day operations, they won’t really be of any use without the reports and logs at other levels of analysis, planning, and operations such as brigade and above. Some people who know what they are looking for will be able to find some useful stuff in here, but the general public at large, who wouldn’t know a CYZ-10 from a P-38, who get their idea of military operations from movies, aren’t going to glean anything from this on any level other than the most superficial.
Capri Sun-Bagger
What did we do to invite the return of mytako-chin?
cleek
@Bubblegum Tate:
wow. read Noonan in the comments. what an insufferable little prick.
El Cid
@Brachiator: As somebody commented on one blog or another, ‘Hey, at least we know where those bags of cash went — it’s not like we just dropped a pallet over there and then couldn’t say what happened to it.’
No one with any sense would doubt that Mayor of Kabul Karzai’s government is fully corrupt.
The point to me is the absolute hack propaganda spin the NYT prints one day, reverses it the next, and there is no connect between the two.
[I.e., the spin yesterday was that Karzai was being undermined by this one bad aide who is secretly conspiring with Iranians and getting paid off by them.
The spin today, more correctly, yesterday’s spin undone, is that Karzai was fully aware of Iran’s cash bags, approved them, and had discussed them with the US government.
Is this a correction? Should there be an embarrassed reversal? Or just pretending like nothing ever happened.]
Omnes Omnibus
@Capri Sun-Bagger: She was around last time WikiLeaks did something. Now she is here again. It’s her thing.
Ash Can
@Bubblegum Tate: Never mind; DougJ has covered it.
John - A Motley Moose
Don’t be too harsh on the media. After all, that’s a hell of a lot of documents to look through trying to find a storyline. I’ll bet the first thing that ran through most reporters’ minds when given this assignment was, “Hmmm… Must be some kind of angle I can take on this that will let me get it done fast enough to make it to happy hour.”
Bob Loblaw
@John Cole:
soonergrunt’s still having a hard time coming to terms with the fact he didn’t get to fight in a “good war” and is in fact, one of the “bad guys.” Which is usually what happens in history, though we work so hard to liberalize and lionize our wars as a cultural defense mechanism.
The moral of the story is to not enlist in an imperial fucking army then if this bothers you, because odds are good you’ll be just as likely to invade random countries for resource exploitation than eliminating oppressive regimes in self-defense.
Culture of Truth
“Christ, our entire media culture is driven by the ad hominem fallacy: Julian Assange is an asshole, so his information must be wrong.”
I agree this is ridiculous, but it’s even more so given the Beltway is populated by people who make Assange look like a baby kitten on wacky weed.
joe from Lowell
@El Cid:
The Nixon White House used to say that the information they provided yesterday was “no longer operative.”
Brachiator
@El Cid:
Yeah. I see your point. And it’s not just the NY Times. Reporting from the region has turned into an odd mishmash of conventional wisdom and nonsense, with no attempt to reconcile contradictions. Here is the Christian Science Monitor Editorial Board on the recent US arms deal with Pakistan.
So, apparently, US military aid to Pakistan is a good thing, even if it fails to accomplish US goals in granting the aid.
I suspect that a lot of this crap isn’t really reporting at all, but just dumbass reporters transcribing the self-serving remarks of various State Department, military and White House officials. There is no critical analysis of the comments made.
Steve
@General Stuck: But your opinion of Wikileaks (or mine) doesn’t matter, unless the question is whether they should get the Medal of Honor. What’s in the documents is what matters. They say what they say, even if Hitler himself had returned from the grave to post them on the Internet.
matoko_chan
@General Stuck: Assange is just the lightning rod, in his own words.
Wikileaks is legion….cutting off the head wont help.
There is a whole cyberinsurgency, the Hacker Nation.
Manning just did for A-stan and Iraq what Ellsberg did for Viet Nam.
That is the forever war, its been going on forever, since there was a printing press.
This is something new.
America has declared war on the Hacker Nation.
Both times America has tried to fight insurgents it has ended badly for America.
Will this end the same way?
I think so. Meet the cyberinsurgents. A lot of Hacktivists have dual citizenship, in both America and in the Hacker nation. We make the icewall to protect data, so we can break it.
America will lose, just like Iraq, just like Viet Name, just like A-stan.
Martin
@liberal: Well, I didn’t mean held accountable in the legal sense, just in the reputational sense. Generals are no less sensitive to bad press than Hollywood is.
daveNYC
You know who wanted people to be judged by the content of their character? MLK. So the fact that you’re excusing Assange’s behavior means that you’re objectively pro-Jim Crow, and therefore, racist. QED. Too, also.
noncarborundum
You know who else was an imperious asshole? Ludwig van Beethoven. I may never listen to any of his symphonies ever again. I understand Mendelssohn was a nice guy, however.
sparky
@Steve: yes.
so, with apologies to Richard Prior, perhaps the question for the american public is: “who you gonna believe: your soothing propaganda machine or your lying eyes?”
since no one in the upper echelons of the elite apparently learned anything from Vietnam, perhaps the best that can be hoped for from these releases is that they will drive a stake through the zombie of american exceptionalism.
Martin
@General Stuck: I don’t disagree. The burden is on Wikileaks to review the documents they release. I’ve said that from the beginning. They have no more right to claim ‘we lack the manpower to do so’ than BofA has to make the same claim with regards to fucking up most of the mortgages they processed.
If you want the rewards, you gotta do the work. And that’s all there is to it.
Don
Of course they focus on a personality. Aside from the fact that such things are half of what constitutes the news anymore, what’s the alternative? Read the documents, compare them to past statements and say “this was a lie?”
Please. The modern media obsession with The View from Nowhere and never making an overt statement of fact – only “reporting” (what the rest of us would call transcription) – precludes such activities. You can no longer report “what did they know and when did they know it” unless someone else makes the statement for you.
So with those restraints you do what you can: report on the character assassination.
liberal
@Martin:
Yeah, but even in that weaker sense, it still might be a long time coming.
liberal
@Don:
Good summary of what plagues the idiots in the media.
soonergrunt
@John Cole: This whole thing lets you off the hook:
After all, you were lied to. You can’t be responsible for your own positions back then, now can you? And while you didn’t write that passage, it could very well have come from your keyboard.
“How could I have been so wrong?” you asked the other day.
Well, this apparent habit of uncritically following a charismatic leader and refusing to entertain any questions about who this person is, what he wants, or how he’s going about getting it probably has something to do with it.
And while I’ll note that going through the BJ archives is a lot like watching an alcoholic person slowly start to get better over time until that tipping point where he’s more healthy than sick, it’s now on the other end of the spectrum with the former alcoholic raging about the demon rum.
Culture of Truth
There are two entirely separate issues here. One, should Wikileaks have leaked all of these documents?
Two, what do the leaked documents tells us about the war America has fought since 2003?
singfoom
@matoko_chan:
Not that I disagree with you about the usefulness of those who disseminate data like this, but could you please stop using the Hacker Nation/hacktivist thing and using the term dual citizenship?
We get it, there are people in every nation that will take care of things.
It sounds really fucking stupid and kind of demeans that actual thing that you’re describing.
Phoenix
I generally agree w/General Stuck above.
There is no excuse for, or nobility in, publishing identifying information or context that reveals source identities. None. We have no right to know who those people are. Releasing that information/context is as good as killing them.
I disagree though about the AARs. You can make a credible argument that information is important enough for the public to know about and that disclosure doesn’t do us significant harm. Our opponents probably have a much better picture of how we do things than we’d like them to anyway.
There is a broader question here about how we draw the line between an informed public and keeping legitimately compromising information secret. And some things we really don’t have any right to know about. I’m pretty sure that line shouldn’t be decided by a single person.
And while I agree with some of what Wikileaks does, I’m not going to discount the possibility that Assange is motivated by something other than sainthood. I think there is a danger in rallying behind someone, or personally condemning them, without really knowing details. I get really uncomfortable with people saying the sexual assault accusation has been invented by intelligence agencies. Or that the misgivings of volunteers/coworkers are entirely fabricated. Maybe. But maybe not. How do you know?
It’s safer and more productive to discuss the broader issues behind wikileaks rather than to draw up battle lines over the personal details of Assange (or anyone).
We desperately need a more open government and a better informed population. But I’m not sure that soliciting and then blindly releasing classified information is going to be productive in the long run.
matoko_chan
@Martin: Wikileaks gets Sam Adams award.
El Cid
@Brachiator: Hey, it’s just an ‘incentive,’ right?
Who’s going to complain just because $2 B dedicated to incentivize Pakistan to stop “terrorism” (i.e., the type the government doesn’t like) is likely going to do no such thing?
matoko_chan
@singfoom: no.
slag
@soonergrunt:
This is a very odd argument to make in this particular context. There is no charismatic leader in this situation. The issue at hand is the information presented in the leaked documents. Not the conduit for said information.
Unless, of course, you are asserting that the information presented is false. If that’s the case, make your argument.
soonergrunt
@Bob Loblaw:
Actually, Bob, I fought in both wars. I was right about Iraq from the get go–that it was stupid and pointless at best, and a moral disaster at worst but that either way it would go very badly for us starting about two days after we secured Baghdad. I also fought in Afghanistan and there saw how things were starting to go from bad to worse when we could’ve had that job finished up in 2007 had we not drained our resources in Iraq.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. Not many people know this, so pay close attention, and you’ll be ahead of the class–
Iraq didn’t attack us, while the Taliban’s guests, with whom they were totally integrated, did.
I do not now, nor have I ever considered myself one of the bad guys. Not when I was in Iraq just trying to get through my deployment with my personal honor intact and my Soldiers alive, nor when I was in Afghanistan just trying to get through my deployment with my personal honor intact and my Soldiers alive.
Oh, look. I had the exact same goals both times. As anyone who’s ever read anything I ever wrote about either war would know.
You’re not very bright, but on the upside, you are rather stupid, so you’ve got that going for you, which is good.
Bubblegum Tate
@cleek:
That’s why I keep reading Noonan and feel terrible for reading Noonan–his insufferable prick-ocity knows no bounds. It’s quite amazing.
matoko_chan
@soonergrunt: thank you for your service sir.
did you (in either tour) ever have reason to exercise frago 242?
Brachiator
@El Cid:
Unwritten story Number One is how the the Obama Administration and the sometimes ineffective State Department has conceded to US military officials in offering aid to Pakistan. The original aim of the US government was to try to shore up Pakistan’s civilian government. US military officials are far more comfortable doing it old style and throwing military aid at the country, which greatly mollifies that country’s generals and have convinced Obama to go along with the program.
Downplayed story has been concerns of India at US aid. Even as Obama prepares for a trip to India.
Unwritten story Number Two is how the Beltway still suffers under the delusion that Pakistan is a compliant client state, instead of a country with a firm (if misguided) sense of its own strategic interests.
Capri Sun-Bagger
singfoom: You’ve kinda captures the essence of mytako-chin in your last sentence.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
You’d think that the whole “independently developing a nuclear weapon” thing would have cured the Village of thinking that, but I guess old habits die hard.
El Cid
@Brachiator: Sort of as general background, I don’t think most people discussing Pakistan, even pundits and many news articles, grasp that Pakistan’s nature as an enormous nation with the sixth greatest population in the world. It’s not just a little nation with a few factions here and there. I don’t think the average person I talk to comprehended, for example, the sheer volume of people devastated by the floods.
Related:
The likely result of such ground fighting against well-armed fighters as the various Taliban factions will produce yet another wave of refugees fleeing the areas, and probably once again escaping to cities, as another destabilizing force.
Fuzz
Do you really think Assange cares about Iraqis and Afghans though? I know it didn’t come to fruition but when a reporter questioned him about the named sources in the Afghan documents (and there were named sources in them) he basically shrugged and said they were collaborators who deserved whatever fate befell them. Plus, is there anything new in these? If you read the Washington Post and the NYTimes people like Aylissa Rubin and Anthony Shaid were been saying these things for years.
Assange was quoted as saying he felt he was crushing “the bastards” by doing this, but the problem is that for all the mistakes and cynical actions of our government, there is no way that WE are “the bastards” in this fight. We’re not fighting a bunch of rice farmers trying to unify their country or conscripted peasants, we’re fighting a bunch of sociopaths who use religion as a justification for their evil acts. Well intentioned fuck ups that result in the deaths of innocents are tragic and saddening, but the evil here is clearly on the other side of the battlefield and Assange, and many others, seem not to realize that.
eemom
at the risk of wasting time which I should be using to do something useful, which is pretty much the story of my existence, I have to say that I think this whole meme is utter bullshit.
The docs are out there for anyone who wants to read them. Nobody who really wants to read them is going to waste their time obsessing over Assange, no matter what the fucking emmessemm does or says.
It is utter and absolute bullshit to compare the supposed emmessemm “smearing” of Assange to the acts against Ellsberg perpetrated by the fucking presidential Administration itself.
The supposed “smearing” of Assange has been ridiculously overblown. So there was an article about him in the NYT — so the fuck what? The NYT is also front-paging the revelations from the documents, aren’t they?
Also, since when has there not been press coverage of someone as high profile and controversial as Assange? New flash: people are interested in that shit.
Is The Great Libertarian now advocating censorship of articles that say mean things about people based on, you know, INTERVIEWS with actual people who’ve worked with them?
And since when has Amnesty International been in on the SMEAR game?
God what an asshole.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: Tell it brother.
Who was wrong
and who was right
it didn’t matter in the thick of the fight
and we’ll all go down together. . .
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Great point. The Village, almost without regard to political affiliation, just cannot believe that Pakistan and other countries might not care what we want if it does not further their own interests.
I would also argue that Pakistan might have had more difficulty shifting its resources to develop a bomb had not the US funneled over $11 billion in military aid to the country over the past several years. The aid gave them breathing room to work on other military projects.
But the Beltway boneheads now suggest that Pakistan’s nukes provide a further reason for us to keep funneling aid to them:
By the way, for those interested, here is a link to the Christian Science Monitor Editorial Board article (More US military aid to Pakistan: It can only do so much)
matoko_chan
@Fuzz: umm…
no, mostly us sapients dont clearly realize that.
check out this graph.
shut up and swallow, cudlips.
sparky
@Culture of Truth:
ok, then.
A: yes. as to whether anyone should be prosecuted for this, that’s between the people who released the info and someone in the power structure.
A: Here are some initial observations:
The Daily Mail:
here are some data snippets from the Guardian:
Some key findings:
Total deaths*
• The database records 109,032 deaths in total for the period
• The database records the following death counts: 66,081 civilians, 23,984 insurgents and 15,196 Iraqi security forces
• The worst place for deaths was Baghdad – 45,497, followed by MND north (which is the region that goes from Baghdad up to Kurdistan) where another 34,210 died. The quietest place was the north east with only 328 deaths
Murders and escalation of force
• 34,814 people were recorded as murdered in 24,840 incidents
• The worst month was December 2006 with 2,566 murders – and 2006 was the worst year with 16,870 murders
• The database records 12,578 escalation of force incidents (where someone is shot driving too fast at a checkpoint, for instance) – and these resulted in 778 recorded deaths
*my note: these are only the deaths officially recorded by the Americans, so the number of casualties will be much higher.
as a matter of opinion, there isn’t really anything to say except that by starting an unjust, illegal war, Americans have the blood of innocents on their hands.
Jason In the Peg
Do you not see, how fucking evil that statement is?
joe from Lowell
@sparky:
And let’s remember the exact mechanism by which it got there.
Soonergrunt and his buddies didn’t shoot and blow up a couple hundred thousands, or more, Iraqis. The vast majority of Iraqi civilian casualties were caused by other Iraqis in the sectarian civil war.
So, does that get us off the hook? Not by a long shot. That civil war was the deliberate outcome of the anti-Shiite terror campaign carried out by the thousands of international jihadists who flooded into Iraq after our invasion. Remember “Flypaper?” We inflicted this plague of terrorism upon Iraq, and some even cheered it.
The supporters of this war have spent years justifying it on the basis of the political outcomes it produced – Iraq has elections, it’s no longer governed by Saddam’s Baathist party. Fine, those are good things – but if you’re going to put down the political developments after the invasion in America’s ledger, then you need to put them all down, and that includes up to a million people, most of them civilians, killed in the civil war that was set off by our invasion.
matoko_chan
@eemom: give it up eemom.
OUR government smeared Assange with false rape charges, shut down his moneybookers account for donations, bullied and threatened other countries into not refuging him, and paid fed-snitches to attack Wikileaks site.
And none of it worked.
we won, and Assange got the Sam Adams Award.
cant stop the signal.
:)
i thot u guys might enjoy this….well….some of u. :)
download meh.
the 4chan IRL Lawful Spying Guide.
matoko_chan
im moderated AGAIN with only one link.
is linking pdf illegal in WP?
soonergrunt
@Jason In the Peg: So when do you start killing American Soldiers? At the very least, are you going to arrest them? How about the soldiers from all of the other countries that served in Iraq? They’re evil, after all.
Funny thing about the world, whether you wear a uniform or not–it’s kind of multicolored and not black and white.
Svensker
@Fuzz:
Evil acts like defending their country from an invader/occupier? What the fuck are we doing there, what’s the goal, and how do we know when we’ve won? If you can answer those 3 questions, I’d be very surprised.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
It’s God telling you to shut the fuck up and go and annoy some other adults. Like, maybe your parents, Tokie-Sham.
soonergrunt
@slag: You are really really going out of your way to not understand what I was saying there.
But I’ll elaborate, just to humor you.
I maintain that John wanted to know the other day how he could’ve been so wrong (about the Iraq war) and that in my opinion his recent statements and attitudes of uncritical acceptance with respect to Mr. Assange and hostility towards Mr. Assange’s detractors were very much reminiscent of his attitudes and behaviors with respect to Mr. Bush before his conversion and that all he had really done was changed perspectives (left vs. right) but not predilections. It wasn’t that hard to get at what I was saying, and I never addressed the Wikileaks documents themselves as they are irrelevant to my thesis as to the cause of John’s wrongness.
matoko_chan
@morzer: shorter morzer– get off my lawn!
@Svensker: say….. what is the mission again?
that usually shuts them up.
sparky
@joe from Lowell: i used the term “Americans”, (as distinct from, for example, “American soldiers”) so i am puzzled as to why you introduced a distinction i didn’t make. care to clarify your remark?
edit:
not really sure what you are saying here, either. must say it doesn’t look good, though. of course perhaps i am in error in my reading comprehension, or perhaps you didn’t really mean to write something that suggests wars of choice might be ok if the results are good.
matoko_chan
just the eemom part.
@eemom: give it up eemom.
OUR government smeared Assange with false rape charges, shut down his moneybookers account for donations, bullied and threatened other countries into not refuging him, and paid fed-snitches to attack Wikileaks site.
And none of it worked.
we won, and Assange got the Sam Adams Award.
cant stop the signal.
:)
Menzies
@C Nelson Reilly:
Because I’m weird, I’m choosing to reply to this – he’s Australian.
As for Julian Assange, as long as he isn’t actually guilty of that rape charge, I don’t give a shit what he is like, what/whom he does, or what material his countertops are – he could be the worst dick in the world and I’d still support Wikileaks every step of the way.
We allow way worse shit from people like Russell Crowe or Naomi Campbell on a daily goddamn basis without a single assault charge getting filed.
I always remember this paragraph from Matt Taibbi when talking about journalistic assholes:
eemom
@morzer:
rarely have I been privileged to witness a more awesome comment.
matoko_chan
just the link then…..shh….im experimenting.
i thot u guys might enjoy this….well….some of u. :)
download meh.
the 4chan IRL Lawful Spying Guide.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
*yawns* Last time around you were a government secret agent, and now you’ve moved on to being a hacker. How do you manage to find enough costumes for your dolls?
joe from Lowell
@sparky: I wasn’t really taking exception to anything you wrote, just expanding on it.
My point was that people see that most of the casualties in Iraq were caused by Iraqis, and conclude that it gets the U.S. off the hook, because only a small fraction of them were caused by American military action. Well, it doesn’t get the U.S. off the hook, because we set the stage for that to happen.
Brachiator
@El Cid:
I agree with you big time that the most notable American pundits are absolutely worthless when it comes to Pakistan, and that a lot of the news coverage is abysmal. But the larger issue is that some people are lazy and just don’t want to know more. It’s easier to just say “Out of Iraq and Afghanistan” and stop there. And I don’t think that there were many Balloon Juice threads or comments about the floods in Pakistan, even though there was news coverage if you looked for it.
Public radio programs like NPR’s Fresh Air, KPCC’s Air Talk, and KPCC’s Patt Morrison program (the last two Southern California based) have put on a number of informed voices about the region. The BBC and other British news sources are good, as are the comments from people in the region that are often posted on these news sites. Even the Economist has done good, if sometimes just basic background stories on the area. English language Indian newspapers are another resource. The New Yorker and even the New York Times have done good work. One of the most illuminating stories about the often double-dealing Pakistan government was a New Yorker piece in which the author visited a site where Pakistan’s army was supposedly fighting a well known terrorist. Despite news reports, there was no fighting at all, and the reporter was able to peacefully interview the terrorist leader.
The stuff about Pakistan not having enough troops to launch a major offensive in North Waziristan nonsensical. Pakistan has never been able to effectively control some of the more recalcitrant tribal areas, but also is simply not interested in trying to assert control over the region because it is not in its strategic interest to do so. It is an open secret that elements of Pakistan’s military and intelligence services tolerate actions in this region that is focused on Afghanistan or US forces as long as the fighters don’t attack Pakistan.
Also, there is major game playing here. Pakistan drags its feet, but then complains when the US launches drones or other forces in the area. Note here that I think that US actions are futile and misguided, but are also made significantly more pointless by Pakistan’s foot dragging and duplicity.
Of course, some of the fighters are well armed because the Saudis and the Pakistan military and intelligence services make sure that they have access to supplies and equipment. And curiously, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that somebody in Pakistan believes that they can manage or manipulate attempts to destabilize part of the country.
matoko_chan
@eemom: haha, hi eemom.
guess what? the US gov tried to smear Assange, shut down his moneybookers donations, bullied other countries into not giving him refuge, paid snitches and criminals like adrian lamo and Xyrix to cyberattack Wikileaks site, and all that happened was the drop launched two days early.
hahaha
you looooooooose.
all the kings horses an all the kings men couldn’t stop it.
and……
the rest of the A-stan docs will come anyday now, the ones that so bothered you?
AND Assange gets the Sam Adams Award.
hurrrts to be THAT wrong, huh?
matoko_chan
why cant i direct a comment at eemom?
General Stuck
@matoko_chan:
Somebody wave the idiot filter and let matako through, before she throws a rod.
sparky
@eemom:
why do you say that?
actually, no, the NYT is not. to find anything, you must search around, and then you get to the page captioned “The War Logs”, where, you find, in type that is much larger than any other headline on that page, this: “Wikileaks founder on the run, chased by turmoil” and a distinctly unflattering photo.
if you get past that and you read the “Introduction”, you find this language.
compare that language with the coverage in papers outside the US, and it is apparent that the NYT is engaging in a loathsome minimization and distortion of the contents of those documents.
i didn’t think that i would ever be saying this, but if this is the kind of analysis the NYT is going to put out, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if it also sank under the waves of technology. it’s one thing to be the house organ for the establishment. it’s another thing to connive in deception on this scale. there is no excuse or justification for it.
edit: @joe from Lowell: ah, i see. thanks for the clarification.
sparky
@joe from Lowell: my last comment is in moderation purgatory so if it fails to emerge i’ll repeat my thanks for your clarification.
Fuzz
@Jason In the Peg:
It’s not evil, I’m not expressing indifference, I said it was tragic and sad and it should obviously be avoided at all costs, and I’m not saying it should be encouraged. I’m saying that in some cases it can’t be avoided despite best efforts to mitigate. It’s a war and often life and death decisions have to be made in the moment, and what’s worse is often you’re faced with moral calculations that leave no one unharmed. If you’re taking fire from an area and you call in artillery, and it turns out you killed not only an insurgent but a family as well, you are not evil, you were acting to save the lives of your men and to kill the enemy. It was, for lack of a better term, a well intentioned fuck up, and it was tragic and sad. I don’t see how believing that makes me evil.
matoko_chan
@Fuzz: what was the mission again?
Fuzz
@Svensker:
You know what we’re doing there, you just don’t believe in the mission anymore, thats fine and to an extent I agree, but we know why we’re there, and it’s to fight al-qaeda while supporting the Afghan and Iraqi governments. I disagree about not having goals and not having a way of defining victory though. In a guerilla war you aren’t going to see iconic images of surrender ceremonies, victory is basically going to be a gradual decrease in violence coinciding with a gradual reduction in troop levels. It’s not glamorous and not something they put in recruiting brochures but it’s the reality. What is victory in Afghanistan? Look at the levels of violence in 2002 and even 2003 after the Taliban had been routed, those levels, combined with a competent Afghan army/police is what victory will look like, and it’s basically the same in Iraq. In a counter-insurgency there won’t be a total victory. The Sandero Luminoso in Peru occasionally ambushes the Peruvian army, but they’ve still been defeated by Peru. As for defending their country, I do believe that anyone who sides with an extremist group fond of public beheadings over a western alliance trying to install a democratic government is not able to claim some kind of moral high ground. We aren’t trying to impose our culture on Afghanistan or Iraq, and we aren’t trying to conquer them, the fact that we’ve geared our entire mission towards training the locals so we can leave is evidence of that. There is an insinuation in your argument, when you say there’s nothing evil about defending from occupiers, that there is some kind of moral relativism here, and that’s what I just can’t believe. Every time a civilian dies in air or artillery strikes we have a military lawyer investigate, in Tal-Afar AQ would lob the severed heads of teenagers over the walls of the American outpost, and in Pakistan the Talibs publicly behead and leave the bodies in town squares unburied. These are not noble, valiant people dying for a just cause or ideology, they’re murderers, and by saying that they’re just defending their homeland is giving them a moral cover they’ve done nothing to deserve.
matoko_chan
@morzer: i am both and more…. i am become more powerful than you can imagine.
i have seen worlds bathed in the Makers’ flames. Their denizens fading without so much as a whimper. Entire planetary systems born and raised in the time that it takes your mortal hearts to beat once. Yet all throughout, my own heart, devoid of emotion… of empathy. I… have… felt… NOTHING!
matoko_chan
@Fuzz: umm…..you are forgetting one thing. they didnt come here…..we went there.
what was the mission again?
Ash Can
The….helicopters….are…not……LAUGHING.
matoko_chan
@Fuzz:
oh bullshit.
you retard what do you think COIN is??????
It was impossible. cant be done.
when muslims are democratically empowered to vote they vote for Islam.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
Brain-dead people tend to have the problems you list. As do sociopaths.
sparky
@Fuzz: sorry but i cannot agree with your premises. on the assumption that you are making your comments in good faith, i will act likewise.
you wrote
nothing in that sentence is accurate. really. if you believe that it is, you should broaden your reading list somewhat.
Bob Loblaw
@soonergrunt:
You’re not in combat now, so here was me thinking you could afford to be a little more introspective.
Your personal honor isn’t worth a whole lot in systemic terms. While you may seek to morally insulate yourself down to a purely motiveless, survivalist mode of thinking, the army in which you fought and its cause for which people you know ending up dying for were completely and thoroughly in the wrong, from the moment the Kuwait border was breached and every day after. The Baathists, the Mahdis, the al Qaedas of the world, they’re all in the wrong as well, but that’s not what’s relevant here. It isn’t about them.
Contrary to what you’re selling, your nihilistic and unfathomable world of gray isn’t a middle ground to Manichean absolutism. It’s just another way to avoid unpleasant definitions.
Fuzz
@sparky:
Then tell me what you think it is. I’m not saying the invasion of Iraq was a good idea, and I’m not saying we should stay in Afghanistan for another 9 yrs, I’m just stating why we’re there. What do you believe?
morzer
@Bob Loblaw:
Still suffering from Matoko-envy, Bob? You know you’ll never match her fucknuttish ravings, so why not relax, give yourself an O’Donnell special, and enjoy your declining years?
stuckinred
@Bob Loblaw: Thank you professor.
matoko_chan
@morzer: what is your problem?
im right.
what i said would happen happened.
and you are all pissy ad-homs and character attacks.
just like on Assange.
you and eemom WERE WRONG.
and that pisses you off so much you are going to switch sides?
WaterGirl
@Bob Loblaw: This isn’t my fight to fight, as I’m sure Soonergrunt can handle this himself, but I do want to speak to a couple of small things so that silence can’t be interpreted as agreement with what you’re saying.
First off, I thought we were past thinking individual soldiers are bad or evil for fighting in wars, even when they are not wars we agree with.
Secondly, I just want to say that a sense of personal honor in our soldiers is, as joe biden would say, a big fucking deal. I’m grateful for every soldier who has it, and I would even go so far as to say that those who don’t have it should not be soldiers.
Lastly, I doubt that I am brave enough or strong enough to go into combat, even for something I strongly believe in, and I am infinitely grateful that there are people who are willing to put their lives at risk for something they believe in.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
Ah yes, I had forgotten how you switched sides. First you were a little government agent in training, and now you are a hacker. Of course, neither is true, which is why you have to keep making these tedious little farting sounds you substitute for intelligent discussion. That is, when you aren’t gibbering about how you saw the Maker’s flames.
Honestly, haven’t you learned not to eat cheese before your bedtime?
gypsy howell
@Joseph Nobles:
Lucky you.
I’m self employed, and my premium (minus one kid who has his own through his employer now, but somehow that doesn’t seem to make any difference) just jumped from $1340 TO $1575 a month for 2011. Thanks Obama!
eemom
@matoko_chan:
because the genie who granted my first 100 zillion wishes is starting at the bottom.
Bob Loblaw
@WaterGirl:
I never said soonergrunt was evil, you’re conflating me with somebody else. I’ve been talking about collective responsibility. And I do think that collective responsibility counts for something, even if it doesn’t tell the whole story.
I don’t believe that people who served in Iraq can think on that time in their lives, no matter how much restraint, and responsibility, and compassion, and competence, and integrity they may have personally shown and not shown, without grappling with the reason why they were there in the first place and what that means.
Because describing that reason as something that can merely and fairly “agreed with” or “disagreed with” is destructive to the cause of justice everywhere. It was wrong. Categorically. Full stop.
eemom
@matoko_chan:
one other thing, child — if yer gonna hang around here, can you please come up with some new epithets besides “retard” and “cudlip”? The first is kind of childish even for you, and the second grosses me out.
Just as a favor, invest some of those I.Q. points in a “Jump Start Third Grade!” vocabulary game, k? thxbai
soonergrunt
@Bob Loblaw: Wow. That sounds like college educated bullshit.
It’s still bullshit, but it sure does sound good.
Realizing now that you don’t understand anything that you didn’t read in a book, let me just explain that a personal sense of honor is what keeps people from committing war crimes or allowing their subordinates to commit war crimes. Also, it is not now, nor has it ever been a function of an individual soldier in any nation state’s army to pass judgment on national priorities or national goals or decisions. The allies did not imprison or punish in any way members of the Wehrmacht who were not specifically accused at the conclusion of WWII. Them serving in their nation’s armed forces during a time of war, even a war that was held to be an illegal war of aggression, was specifically determined to not be illegal. The fact is that, like it or not, you’re about as responsible for what the country does or doesn’t do as I am. I’m assuming here that you paid your taxes.
stuckinred
@Bob Loblaw: You pay one dime in taxes that collective responsibility runs right to you pal.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: Great minds run along the same paths. . .
WaterGirl
@Bob Loblaw:
You said:
I said:
You said:
I say:
Bob Loblaw
@stuckinred:
Of course it does. I’m an American citizen. I’m absolutely on the side of the bad guys when it came to Iraq and all sorts of other things. Which, again, doesn’t tell a complete story, but it’s a reality of my condition I can’t pretend doesn’t exist just because other countries and other peoples are also at fault across the planet.
stuckinred
@WaterGirl: If it quacks like bullshit it’s probably bullshit.
stuckinred
@Bob Loblaw: So what exactly are you trying to accomplish with this sermon? The world is a nasty fucking place, it was when you got here and it will be when you are gone.
WaterGirl
@stuckinred: If you check your thesaurus, you will find that “huh?” is a polite synonym for “I am not falling for your fucking bullshit”.
Edit: I see that I have used the word “fucking’ twice here tonight, a word I only use in polite company if I am really (fucking) mad.
stuckinred
@WaterGirl: I’m polite!
Bob Loblaw
@WaterGirl:
That would seem to be a pretty explicit critique of the notion of a “good war” (which happen, what, like twice a century at best), thus making everybody who participates in your average war on some level “one of the bad guys.” The bad guys (plural) being an idea moreso than an actual group of complex individuals.
I don’t think soonergrunt is evil. I do think the United States acted systemically for the cause of injustice in Iraq. And that therefore people like Assange or whoever should be allowed to attack the country from this systemic construction without it being immediately reduced to an attack on individuals who fought there.
soonergrunt
@stuckinred:
Had I refused to deploy to Iraq, I would almost certainly have gone to jail for a while and gotten a bad conduct or dishonorable discharge, which would have been stapled to every job application I ever filled out, in addition to having lost my pension and most likely my home.
I did my job in Iraq, both times, because that is where my soldiers were, because it would’ve been highly immoral to cause my duty to devolve upon another NCO, and also, not incidentally, because I didn’t want to go to prison and lose everything I had.
WaterGirl
@stuckinred: Absolutely!
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@soonergrunt:
.
Doing the right thing — the moral thing — is far too difficult for any American.
Thank you for your expedience.
.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: Hey man, I did my tour in Korea and then had 18 months to go when I returned to Ft Lewis. The chicken-shit stateside duty was too much for me so it was Canada or the Nam. I considered going but in the end I decided to go to Vietnam and make up my own mind. When I came home I was active with the VVAW and did what I could to stop the war. Contrary to popular opinion the people that fucked with us when we came home were the right wingers who couldn’t believe we lost to those little jungle buggers.
morzer
@eemom:
Good evening, Madam. I see you have taken to the task of applying the hickory of justice to the ass of error with zeal. Nicely done!
stuckinred
@Uncle Clarence Thomas: And just what do YOU do?
Bob Loblaw
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
That’s unfair. And not exclusive to Americans, but all people always.
My point is that we shouldn’t still seek to define moral absolutes to judge against, just because living up to them is almost always going to be too tough to bear.
soonergrunt
@Uncle Clarence Thomas: Thank you for paying your taxes. You know, the crime for which you most likely would NOT have gone to jail? You would’ve been fined and at some point after not paying your taxes for several years, you MIGHT have been tried in a court and MIGHT have been convicted.
So thank you for your shallow self-righteousness.
That’s pretty American, too.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: He’s probably french.
stuckinred
too tough to bear.
Almost as tough a pontificating on a blog.
eemom
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
now you’ve officially crossed the line from boring one-trick troll to First Degree Asshole.
Tell us — what moral thing have YOU done that cost you jail time, a big black X on your employment prospects for the rest of your life, no way to support your family and living in the street?? Huh?
Do you have any idea what the fuck you’re talking about here??
I would never normally say this, but John Cole, as a military veteran you REALLY ought to ban this scumbag.
soonergrunt
@stuckinred:
So nothing changed then. Figures. I was on mid tour leave from Iraq in 2005, passing through DFW to go home, and I stepped outside for a smoke while waiting for my plane, and this guy asked me why we’re losing to a bunch of “illiterate sand n#$%&rs.”
And I’m standing there, thinking “because it’s their fucking home, and I just want to finish my first smoke in 20 hours you jackass.”
soonergrunt
@stuckinred: Don’t badmouth the French like that.
One, they don’t deserve it. Nobody deserves that.
Two, the French OMLT I worked with off and on in Afghanistan were really good guys, even if their equipment was shit.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: I guess that’s what “don’t sweat the small shit” is all about.
General Stuck
@eemom:
Good thing I don’t have the B button. I would ban most of us, including myself, at least once a day, based on principle and fun.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: It’s hard for me to not dislike the French after spending my time in the shit they created. I do, however, realize that is pretty silly of me. Ever seen “The Anderson Platoon”? Documentary about a 1st Cav Unit made by a French film maker who said he felt he owed it to us to make it since his country sandbagged us into it.
soonergrunt
@stuckinred: If I hadn’t been in uniform and trying to get home to my wife and kids, I would’ve said that to him, but instead I just finished my smoke and went back inside the airport.
soonergrunt
@stuckinred: I’ll have to check that out.
General Stuck
Since I lucked out on going to Vietnam after volunteering to be a rigger there was a shortage for there at the time, in early 1973 (peace agreement signed), I’ve managed to watch every doc I could find on the war and read most books on Vietnam, especially from the seventies and eighties/ But had not heard of The Anderson Platoon, so thanks stuckinred, I will watch it.
eemom
@General Stuck:
You don’t think some kind of line has been crossed when a know-nothing asshole tells a man who HAS served his country that the “moral thing” to do was desert and suffer the consequences of a dishonorable discharge??
I mean even I, who don’t have a military bone in my body, find that inexcusable.
Svensker
@Fuzz:
There are no Afghan and Iraqi governments and al qaeda is a joke.
And then there’s this.
The Taliban are not my favorite people by any stretch and, as a woman, I am particularly horrified by their actions. But I still have no idea why we think it’s a good idea to try to nation-build in Afghanistan, or how we think that we can just kill all the bad guys and then we win. Underpants gnome logic to me.
Unfortunately, I see no happy ending here, at least in the short term (under 20 years). We are stirring shit in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, and we are not going to do the hard work of either forcing a peace on the Israeli/Pals or getting the fuck out of there, so we’re going to have plenty of blowback to go around, boys and girls. Which should bring out the next Dick Cheney as the American people quake in fear while yelling for revenge, which should start the whole hellish cycle all over again.
Which is why I’m a Quaker. There is no WAY to get to peace — being peaceful IS the way. Or a Washingtonian — friend to all, enemy of none, no foreign entanglements. Me and my three friends.
General Stuck
@eemom: Nah, I don’t, though it is reprehensible, it doesn’t cross the line imo. But we all have our lines, and mine is people who project explicit violence onto persons they don’t like on a continual basis. Persistent bigotry would also qualify, though I disagreed with banning B.O.B. for his quasi spoofing racism. But not a big disagreement.
stuckinred
@General Stuck: See if you can locate A Face of War,. Three months with M 2/7 USMC around Chu Lai in 1966. It’s better than the Anderson Platoon partly because the narrator speaks much better English. Actually it looks like you can see it on youtube. One of my best friends in high school was killed with E 2/7 in 68 at Operation Meade River making the film even more meaningful to me.
stuckinred
@Svensker: Fighting for peace is like fucking for chastity.
General Stuck
@stuckinred:
got it bookmarked. again, thanks.
stuckinred
@stuckinred: Mike 3/7. sorry.
eemom
@General Stuck:
oh, you mean the road-runner-chasing dude.
yeah, I guess we all have our different lines. IMO, hyperbolic images of violence that obviously weren’t going to be acted upon is not in the same league as demeaning the service and sacrifice of a war veteran to their face, but mileages vary.
As for poor old BoB, I gotta say he always struck me as essentially harmless despite his rhetoric. IF he was in fact real, which I think would be harder than Jesus to prove at this point.
Jason In the Peg
I guess my problem is that I don’t know how many well intentioned dead innocents it takes before the whole shit storm stops being worth it.
But as an innocent, a civilian and a not-american, I have my own guess.
Your belief in your own good intentions is not an apology, it is not remorse. It is a shrug of the shoulders and looking forward, not backward. It is indifference to the fate of others and the consequences of your actions.
Who will save us from the well intentioned?
Fuzz
@Svensker:
The Iraqi and Afghan governments do exist, the Iraqi government may be an Iranian proxy but tens of millions took part in elections to bring them into power. The plan is not just to kill everyone and leave either, counter insurgency as we’re practicing it is practically the antithesis of what you’re describing. The main point I keep trying to get across here is that no one ever takes the pov of the people who we told we were going to help. We have taken on a responsibility and we’ll have their blood on our hands if we pull out and leave them to their fate, and it surprises me how many people seem to ignore that. We have liberal humanists saying that there is little difference morally and ethically between the US and Islamic terror groups and not feeling the slightest unease at leaving thousands of innocent people to the hands of jihadists. The plan of action you’re advocating, leaving A-stan as quickly as possible, would result in circumstances that for thousands, even tens of thousands of Afghans, would mean certain death or a miserable existence. You can use humanistic arguments for staying just as easily as for leaving.
soonergrunt
@Jason In the Peg:
Typical non-American self-centered, self-righteous attitude that I owe you anything even remotely resembling an apology or an explanation.
Turn your power off, throw your cell phone away, pour some water on your computer, and start walking everywhere you go. If you have any of those things, and oh, look you’re using the internet we built so you have at least three of them, then you most assuredly are not even remotely innocent.
But you are right about one thing. I am utterly indifferent to your fate.
Jason In the Peg
@soonergrunt: I knew that it wouldn’t take long for us to see eye-to-eye.
And it’s not me that’s owed an apology.
Jason In the Peg
or an explanation for that matter.
Whatever, both our countries are fucked for what they are doing.
I apologize for the use of the word “innocent.” I was only putting myself in the place of a non-combatant.
That’s the definition of quagmire isn’t it?
Fuzz
@Jason In the Peg:
It’s fair for you to say that I’m looking forward and not backward bc you must look forward if we’re ever to get a way out, and you also must look forward if we’re going to make the best decisions for the long term. I understand the point of when does it become not worth it, and I’d argue that escalation in Afghanistan was Obama’s biggest mistake (though me and many others voted for him knowing he’d do it). I differ greatly from you though when you say that I don’t care about the fate of others. The whole reason for the war in Afghanistan is to keep the country from falling back into the rule of a murderous regime. The whole (and it can be argued flimsy) justification for the war in Afghanistan is built on making sure the people of Afghanistan do not again have to live in a country where they can be beaten to death in public for listening to music or playing soccer or dating someone of the same or opposite sex. I just don’t understand how some military action to prevent people from being massacred in large numbers is seen as justified (Bosnia, Kosovo, and to an extent even Somalia) whereas when the war is one in which we literally started it (stupidly in Iraq’s case and with little long term thought in Afghanistan’s) we’re willing to let thousands suffer and die, all while somehow twisting ourselves into believing we’re just as much of a threat as the Taliban or the Iraqi insurgency. I know you’re advocating we leave from a liberal position, but leaving Afghanistan now or Iraq in 2006 is downright Nixon-like in its moral calculations. You claim I’m indifferent to the consequences of my actions but are unwilling to even consider the very likely consequences of your own advocated plan of action, the deaths of thousands of Afghans at the hands of the Taliban or in Iraq’s case a possible civil war.
soonergrunt
@Jason In the Peg: You’re right! I don’t owe anyone an apology.
You could do with a little perspective though. Your internet is still on, so you’re obviously OK with your role as a taker in this world.
Oh, what? You thought it was only the US that benefited from US forces guaranteeing the security of the world’s petroleum supply? Unless you’ve lived in Iraq the last twenty years, you and yours did too.
Did you watch the TV news recently? Did you take a car anywhere? A bus? Did you eat a fucking meal that included anything grown more than walking distance from your house?
You’re welcome, hypocrite.
John Bird
@Fuzz:
Because we can’t do those things that you want us to do, man. Sorry, to you and to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. We don’t have the tools; they may not exist. If we’re going to ever develop them, we won’t do it while we’re occupying two countries at once.
John Bird
Julian Assange is like an oak leaf that tumbles downward to twirl on a flowing stream, gathering with other leaves to fool a bird into believing it sees a predator below, but only for a second, as the bird is worried about making its dentist appointment that afternoon.
Daniel Ellsberg, on the other hand, is like a crispy layer of cheese on the top of your pizza. Not the blackened, intrusive kind, but the kind whose consistency evens over a millimeter of depth, keeping the toppings adhered but never sliding off the tomato sauce beneath.
There.
General Stuck
@John Bird:
Don’t bogart that joint, my friend, pass it over to me. again
soonergrunt
@General Stuck: I don’t think it’s a joint.
I keep hearing “Lucy In The Sky, With Diamonds” and “White Rabbit” playing softly in the background when I read that post.
General Stuck
@soonergrunt:
LOL, those will work too.
John Bird
@General Stuck:
@soonergrunt:
On a Monday night? I wish. To be a Palin . . . a life without workdays . . .
Svensker
@soonergrunt:
I know this is a dead thread and I’m just talking to the wall…but whom are we protecting the “world” petroleum supply from? Who would not sell oil to us or anyone? Who would disrupt it? The Iranians? They’d love to sell to us, if we’d let them. The Saudis?
This argument always puzzles the shit out of me. It sounds so serious and true, but I don’t think it is serious and true at all. It’s just a justification for empire.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@soonergrunt:
You’re babbling again, killer. I’m not the one you need to ask for forgiveness. Again, thank you for your expedience.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@soonergrunt: So, because Americans invented the internet and build cars we have the right to kill whoever we like? And we don’t owe anyone any sort of explanation when we kill? We just have the right to kill who we like and the rest of the world can suck it?
You’re scum. Anyone who can think like that is scum.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@eemom:
That’s your opinion — unless you’re the official in charge of these value misjudgements. In my opinion, you are the first-class asshole around here.
I haven’t had to do that because my values and good sense never let me do something as sociopathic as join the army to kill innocent strangers on the say-so of other professional killers and politicians.
Yes.
Don’t like my opining? Then don’t agree with me. Just open your scumbag blowhole wider and start typing in all caps.
General Stuck
@Jrod the Cookie Thief: @Uncle Clarence Thomas:
Couple of brave internet tough guys. I take back my disagreement with eemom about whether Cole should ban your useless self Uncle Chickenshit, and would add bigmouth Jrod.
morzer
@John Bird:
But where does Tunch fit in?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@General Stuck: Of course you would.
My position is that America doesn’t have the right to kill and destroy whatever it pleases because Americans invented the internet. I guess this is so controversial it warrants a ban.
I dunno where you got the idea I’m an internet tough guy. I read something disgusting, and I said so. If anything, I’m the pantywaist coward here. I’m expressing sadness at the notion that America doesn’t have to answer for the people we kill and maim because we’re their betters. That’s sick.
But I know you just like calling me names, so have a blast. Glad somebody’s enjoying this.
DPirate
moron
No such thing. Nobody with a “sense of personal honor” would be over there in the first place. Not a single soldier is taking place in this senseless massacre who didn’t choose to be there.
That, plus everything else Bob Loblaw has said so far, x2.
moron
@soonergrunt:
This war IS a crime. Aggressive war, launched on the basis of lies, continued for no purpose other than to compound the original crime by defending the reputations of the criminals who launched it and participated in it.
We have an all-volunteer army in this country. Every soldier who enlisted since 2002 at the latest was in a way “pass[ing] judgment on national priorities or national goals or decisions,” whether you want to admit it or not.
brantl
@Culture of Truth:
FTFW!
brantl
@Martin: As a matter of fact, yes, they are. Where have you been.
brantl
@joe from Lowell: “My point was that people see that most of the casualties in Iraq were caused by Iraqis, and conclude that it gets the U.S. off the hook, because only a small fraction of them were caused by American military action. Well, it doesn’t get the U.S. off the hook, because we set the stage for that to happen.
”
I think you’re going to find, with our willingness to knock out whole buildings to get a few insurgents, that we killed a great fraction of those people with our own munitions, between the indiscriminate use of high power munitions in civilian areas, and the contingent (though not all) of the GIs that were willing to “let God sort them out”.
Even were this not the case, when you blow up the building, you’re responsible for everything that happpens in the collapse, and we sure as hell blew up the building, didn’t we?