Wikileaks To Publish Remaining Afghan Documents 711
Albanach writes "WikiLeaks spokesman Julian Assange has been quoted by the Associated Press as stating 'the organization is preparing to release the remaining secret Afghan war documents.' According to Assange, they are halfway through processing the remaining 15,000 files as they 'comb through' the files to ensure lives are not placed at risk."
Don't you love it when... (Score:1, Insightful)
people announce their intention to do something incredibly stupid.
Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
(Just to clarify that I'm not being macabre for the sake of trolling - I support both wars and occupations, even though they ignored sane advice as to the troop strength required to hold and secure the regions.)
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are already risking the lives of our soldiers by simply posting their tactics and secrets.
By your twisted logic nobody would have a right to know anything about any war until it was over.
It's a good thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Frankly, if nothing else it will help America have some idea as to what is happening, and that there is a war going on.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:2, Insightful)
No, really they don't have a right to know about the operational details of the war until it is over.
That's not a new stance, it's pretty much how operational security in a theatre of war has happened for a couple thousand years.
Julian Assange is acting a spy really, getting stolen documents about operations and publishing them.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And since wars are never really over, nobody should have the right to know anything ever.
There are many roads to an Orwellian future, no need to take the highway.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:4, Insightful)
True.
And the US is acting an aggressor and illegal occupant at various places all over the world.
Expect resistance.
Re:Can't touch, can't do anything (Score:5, Insightful)
He isn't a US citizen and therefore can not commit treason against us.
Good for Them (Score:3, Insightful)
so them inflated numbers of insurgents include how many woman, children and innocent men murdered exactly?
Mr Assange: Remove the grid-squares!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
The existing WikiLeaks documents contain 10-digit grid-squares, allowing people to know the location of various military resources down to the square meter. This is absolutely not required for any sort of public purpose -- the public would be just as informed if you would omit the grid-squares and replace them with a vague location/district.
This can be done without wasting any manpower, something like this regex pattern will redact all collections of more than 5 numerical digits:
sed -r s/'[0-9]{5,}'/'REDACTED'/g
If the grid-squares are broken into chunks with a delimiter, say '-', you can try:
sed -r s/'[0-9\\-]{5,}'/'REDACTED'/g
As usual with regex, grep out the first 1000 or so matches for casual perusal before you let them loose.
There is really no excuse, including lack of manpower, for removing these sorts of details that add nothing to public's knowledge but reveal very useful operational details.
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Posting names of informants risks the lives of both the informants and the soldiers who interface with them. It's entirely possible that a squad of US soldiers could show up at their informant's home a month from now to find a nasty little surprise waiting for them. If there is only a single type of information divulged with these leaks that should have been kept secret, the names of people helping the US military has to be it.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Where is the US illegally occupying?
Re: Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how many relatives/friends of MIA soliders will comb through these archives looking for clues as to their fate.
Or find out that their loved one was actually killed by friendly fire, as opposed to what they were told.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are already risking the lives of our soldiers by simply posting their tactics and secrets.
You know what else risks the lives of our soldiers?
Unnecessary War!
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The elected representatives are elected to be our representatives so they can know for us. It's not a direct democracy.
Yes, but when our elected representatives tell us they are waging a just war on our behalf, waging it well, and not killing very many innocent bystanders, we need some knowledge of how truthful they are being so we'll know when to vote them out.
Re:Are these leaked by the CIA as well? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like a job for... (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder if he had stuff on the Russians or the Israelis if he would be as willing to release it. The most the US is going to do is make strongly worded speeches and maybe try to get him on some kind of charge and throw him in jail. And even that is doubtful as there are enough countries out there that would "protect" him if he fled there so long as his remarks and leaks are directed at the US. Because the Israelis and Russians in the past have proven that they will go anywhere and do anything to make an example.
If gets bold enough and starts outing everybody's dirty laundry, he'll be dealt with. And that point everyone will just shrug and suggest the other guy did it. Just look at the unsolved murder of Gerald Bull. While most people conclude it was Mossad, nobody is really sure as there was a half a dozen parties that might have been behind the assassination.
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:2, Insightful)
But we need to know WHAT they are doing in order to elect intelligently.
Otherwise we are just electing people with good smiles.
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:3, Insightful)
By exposing how one has acted and reacted in the past, it makes it easier for one to predict how one will act and react in the future. Also, it may be transparent to one who is not in the middle of the conflict as to how certain information can expose tactics, capabilities, and sensitive information. You ask for a specific example. I'd love to give you a specific example, but I think it's enough to state that the kind of information that wikileaks is getting a hold of is the kind of documentation spys were trying to obtain in the past. It might help, it might not help, but any information is information. Also, who's to say could be leaked further than wikileaks that is sensitive. Julian Assange talks about his "organization," but we don't necessarily know who he is dealing with.
I'm all for the world knowing what's actually happening and I think there should be a witch trial to root out the people who are classifying information based on political leanings and to open up our library of information. That being said, I think the proper precautions need to be taken for the correct people to go about declassifying the documentation. I think the best thing we can hope for from wikileaks is a grassroots movement to speed up the declassification of documents and to loosen the restrictions of information dissemination, but it's going to take a hell of a grassroots movement to get the ball rolling on this one.
This is definitely an interesting situation and brings up a lot of good discussion that we, as a society, need to be having about access to information. Hopefully this leads to open floor debate amongst our leaders. Hopefully this becomes an issue during our next presidential election.
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The military, especially in times of war, doesn't work that way. There are risks and benefits to every action, getting in touch with an informant who may be compromised could easily provide enough of a benefit to be worth the risk, and that's even assuming the people with feet on the ground are aware that their source is compromised. If nothing else, Wikileaks denied the US military the intelligence that those informants could have provided, a consequence which, in an of itself, puts American soldiers are greater risk.
Re:My favorite feature of this round of Wikileaks. (Score:4, Insightful)
Military secrets are the most fleeting of all. (Spock, The Enterprise Incident)
Here's the thing - nothing really can remain secret for long. At least, not from the guys you're actively engaged in fighting against. Beyond immediate operations, the only people you can hope to hoodwink for long are your own citizens by way of information control and propaganda.
Are there ethical (and practical) issues involved in releasing this info? Are there similar issues involved in not releasing this info? Certainly. But in all likelihood, the harm involved in releasing it will be very limited. Anyone who could make use of it in a military sense probably already knows most of this stuff. Not all...but probably most. So what remains? It seems like it would be reasonable to conclude that the main effect is to inform the American public and international community - people the American government very much wants to keep in the dark, but people who they have no right to keep in the dark.
Anyway, the cat's out of the bag now. Everything you're seeing is spin control - it's not like making a big fuss over this is going to make it be un-leaked. On the other hand, if the government puts a big enough spin on it, the odds are that they can strongly diminish any informing effect it would have for the public. They can't go back and hide it from the people they're fighting, but they have a pretty good shot of hiding it from their taxpaying voters and from the international community. Does it make any sense to hand them a win on that front? Any damage the info could do in a military sensehas already been done.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:2, Insightful)
So the democratically elected government of Afghanistan has told us to get out and we're now there illegally against their wishes? That's news to me.
There's a big difference between "I think this is wrong" and "This is illegal"
Re:Can't touch, can't do anything (Score:4, Insightful)
This has become my litmus test for whether or not someone is both an idiot and an American.
Re:Wikileaks isn't balanced in it's coverage (Score:5, Insightful)
Convince someone on the inside to leak 15,000 verifiable documents on any of those situations, and I bet WikiLeaks would jump on it. They aren't necessarily "focused" on the US, as much as that is what's mostly been made available to them. If the Taliban had a structure that required and kept comparable records, WikiLeaks would probably publish those, as well.
Re: Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Now it's "Julian Assange, Intelligence Analyst" (Score:4, Insightful)
He asked the US military to help him figure out what was dangerous to the US armed forces, and they refused and started trying to hunt him down and discredit him. He knows he's not an expert, but he's trying to at least make the best attempt he's capable of as a layman. Would you rather he didn't even try?
Now, if your position actually is that only the military has any right to determine what's classified and what's not, I think you're missing the point: The military can and does use classification as a way of hiding things that are embarrassing rather than actually dangerous.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
A spy? Cut the bullshit.
He's no more a spy than the editors of the guardian or the new york times.
Wikileaks received a large number of documents, what did they do? they released most of them to the public with some redaction.
The guardian received a large number of documents, what did they do? they released most of them to the public with some redaction and wrote a load of stories about it.
If some chinese person emailed you classified chinese tank plans and you published them on your website for the public to see would that make you a spy?
unless you're in china, no, it would not.
Re:Now it's "Julian Assange, Intelligence Analyst" (Score:5, Insightful)
Intelligence analyst? In the US military?
Let met tell you something: if there were any intelligence analysts who had any pull in DC, we certainly wouldn't have given the region to Iran on a silver platter by taking out Saddam Hussein, or held Afghanistan responsible for a Saudi Arabian terror group's actions.
The pieces of shit [thinkprogress.org] who architected the war thought
1) We'd be greeted as liberators.
2) Troops levels of several hundred thousand were "way off the mark"
3) The war cost would be less than 100 billion dollars and paid for by Iraqi oil revenues.
My favorite is Rumsfeld's quote: "The Gulf War in the 1990s lasted five days on the ground. I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks, or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.”
Scapegoating Assange is the equivalent of yelling at the vet doing the necropsy on the horse.
Re:My favorite feature of this round of Wikileaks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Others are calling for Pvt Manning's execution.
I wouldn't call for execution, but he's certainly due some discipline for disobeying orders. However, Julian Assange has done nothing wrong and the US shouldn't be hounding him. Instead, they should be investigating the abuses Manning and Assange have brought to light.
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't think of them as an "asset" and instead think of them as a human, then you'll find that you do indeed show up at their home after they've been outed. This kind of behavior is called "not being a complete fucking douche" and is quite intelligent. And if you just can't find it in you to be respectful and to care about the people who you come in contact with, then perhaps there are other reasons for doing the right thing that you might find compelling. How about this: if you just wash your hands of the travails of the people who help you out, you'll find out that fewer and fewer people are helping you out. So, even if you are a complete fucking douche, it still makes sense to take care of your "assets."
Re:Mr Assange: Remove the grid-squares!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Assange doesn't care. His "harm mitigation" only covers people he believes are deserving of such protections, which does not include the US military. He has responded to criticism about outing Afghans who had cooperated with the US by saying that they had done unsavory things that may have constituted war crimes, as though he was judge, jury, and execution.
Who watches the watchmen? Seriously.
Re:Wrong division (Score:3, Insightful)
What is his name, please? There's just so much FUD around Wikileaks.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you even understand what you're yelling about?
The person replying said that operational security (i.e., denying your enemy information about your troop locations, troop movements, supplies, and other capabilities) has been a fundamental tenet of good strategy during wartime since humans climbed down out of the trees and began fighting one another with pointy sticks. The less you know, the harder it is for you to anticipate the actions of your opponent, to guess what their capabilities and motivations are, and to guess where they're going to attack you next, or how they'll respond to your next attack.
Stating that this does not "make sense" or that it somehow is inapplicable just shows your tremendous naivete about anything related to military operations. Furthermore, your assertion that a web page where documents may be leaked heralds some profound change in our times also shows that naivete. Leaks during wartime have been around for almost as long as the "keep your information secret" rule. Wikileaks might make it easier to disseminate the information, but they are not doing anything new.
And for the record, I'm pro-responsible-leaking. I don't like that wikileaks rushed to publish this information and did a shitty job of redacting information that puts people at risk, but I don't fundamentally begrudge their right to report the information, so long as its done in a responsible & ethical fashion.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Invade and occupy another country
2) Dethrone the current government
3) Get your own government/puppets in charge, especially easy if you can hold a "democratic" election where not everyone's represented
4) Get new government to ask for your help
SEE WE'RE NOT ILLEGALLY OCCUPYING [anylonger]
Sorry, but how stupid do you think the rest of the world really is?
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes, strategies that might otherwise be the optimal path to success are discarded because they violate your core principles. I'm sure that there are times and places where complete eradication of an opposing ethnic group/national population might be the way to gain dominance in a situation, but that doesn't mean that we should let ourselves devolve into that kind of animal.
Our country is founded on the concept of being a Representative Democracy. In order for that system to work, it requires the population to be fully informed of what is going on. Hiding operational details such as the actual count of civilian casualties works to keep American voters in the dark in a manner that ensures that they can't make a truly informed decision. "Just trust us" is only, ever, supposed to work until the end of a single term in office.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:3, Insightful)
So you haven't heard the recent sabre-rattling at Iran, then?
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa, it's not like he outed Valerie Plame or something.
Re:Maybe not afterall... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mr Assange: Remove the grid-squares!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
The exact location of these resources may well be relevant. I have not yet seen an examination of whether it's true that we don't need this information. Furthermore, much of this information is probably known to "the enemy", which lacks the resources to follow up on intelligence anyway. It's not like they don't know where the fuck we are, we're rolling through the desert in armored columns and shit like that, planes are flying overhead, the land is populated with people who can simply report on their positions. So unless it can be shown that releasing this information actually increases someone's material harm, is it even a problem? My understanding is that our people are typically only in substantial danger when they're actively engaging the enemy from outside of our fortified positions, since anyone attempting to assault one of our bases is attacking something a lot more dangerous than they are.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:2, Insightful)
No, times do not change with respect to military strategies
Apparently, they do. The barbarians are at the gate; Wikileaks is to government secrets as Napster was to music. Napster wasn't killed by better DRM or lawsuits, it was killed by corporations embracing the fact that music is in a new era, by easy-access a la carte downloads from places like iTunes.
Even if they kill Wikileaks or the folks who run it, it's clear now that no secret is entirely safe.
Maybe what this will mean is that governments, knowing that surprise is not an option any longer, will simply launch fewer military campaigns. Remember: Afghanistan is arguable, but we didn't need to go into Iraq. Skip a war, and that's thousands of secrets you never have to bury.
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm confused how you talk about the callousness of a general that would risk the life of soldiers to check in on an informant while in the same breath saying it's perfectly OK to let an informant who has risked his life to help your forces in the past hang in the wind.
But beyond that, yes, the soldiers lives do belong far more to the General to risk than some civilian from another country. Maybe you're confused about how an Army works, but there's these guys called officers and they make tactical decisions that risk the lives of soldiers. The soldiers don't generally get to volunteer for each mission individually and they enlist expecting to be commanded by officers into dangerous situations.
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, yeah, transparency was an issue in our last election. And we all know how well those promises were kept.
Re:My favorite feature of this round of Wikileaks. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a better solution: if your military's activities can't stand up to the scrutiny of the people who pay the bills and elect the leaders, maybe you shouldn't be involved in those activities.
Re:Wrong division (Score:3, Insightful)
Assange also went over their and single handedly fought off an insurgent attack to save a puppy orphanage.
See? I can say things without links or proof too!
Re: Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
So you don't cónsider the removal of a barbaric religious dictatorship cause in and of itself?
I'll leave that to the ethicists. But if we decide that's what we should do, we have to be consistent about it.
To take a different example. Saddam Hussein was a murderer, a warmonger, a war criminal, and all-around asshole. Did that justify us going in and nailing him? Perhaps so, but look how many other dictators behave the same way while we totally ignore them - if not actively giving them our blessing. (Hussein pretty much had our blessing until he f'kt up with Kuwait.)
If we're going to appeal to principle to justify our actions, we have to be consistent about it. Otherwise "principle" is just a convenient string to pull.
Re:Wrong division (Score:3, Insightful)
so the timeline is
So the Taliban kills lots of random people they suspect might be working with the US, they don't really care how accurate they are, they just want to send a message that it isn't safe to work with the US. If they kill lots of random people who are just unpopular in their communities.
The US fails to keep the identities of it's sources secure, documents are stolen and sent to a foreign newslike activist organisation.
the Taliban continues to kill lots of random people they suspect might be working with the US.
The documents are leaked to the public mostly redacted.
the Taliban continues to kill lots of random people and some who are more likely to have been involved with the US but from this point every death is the fault of the activist organisation.
and somehow the US army who promised these people their identities would remain anonymous somehow hold no responsibility?
Honestly I'd be very surprised if this is the only leak of these documents, I've heard claims that thousands of contractors and servicemen had access to these files and old fashioned bribery or blackmail has historically been better at getting information out of people than the urge to tell the world and the taliban and Al-Qaida aren't exactly amateur organisations.
Re:It changes nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not like Assange made it a warzone. If Assange's efforts can end the war sooner rather than later, he might end up saving more lives than he has endangered.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It changes nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, an important value that a real spy provides is that you don't know you're being spied on, and you don't know what's been compromised. Publishing your secrets, while damaging, at least allows you to modify your behavior to avoid further damage.
What is sad is that releasing a ton of raw materials is what counts as journalism these days. You'd think it'd be possible for a journalist to go through it, digest what is relevant, hide what isn't relevant or is too dangerous to publish, and write a feature based on these facts. That way, we get the transparency we need to hold our governments accountable, and the people involved as still protected from harm.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
We recognized the legitimacy of the Taliban (Score:5, Insightful)
We gave the Taliban 43,000,000 dollars in May of 2001. This is because of their help with the War on Drugs. Only after 9/11 did we suddenly care about the Taliban's internal policies towards their population.
That's why wherever we go, we will be fought. The local population knows we'll only be there as long as is politically necessary. As soon as they are out of the local news, we'll be back to funding dictators and kings and not caring about who they are torturing to maintain order. Historical examples include Iraq (1980-1990), Iran (1953-1979), Saudi Arabia (present), Egypt (present), and unfortunately, I could go on.
Every war of aggression is illegal according to international law. Unless you think China could have legally invaded if they disagreed with the 2000 Supreme Court decision about the election, your argument does not hold water.
Re:Now it's "Julian Assange, Intelligence Analyst" (Score:1, Insightful)
Sure. How likely would you be to "help" me clean up all the files on your computer and the entire contents of your filing cabinet that someone who hates you just happend to send me copies of? After all, you're familiar with these thousands of files so I'm sure you can put in the man hours to enable me to release them all to the public. Face it, you'd say "No, none of this stuff should be released so consider all characters in all files redacted." Even if you did agree, you'd still remove more than he wanted you too and he'd just release the rest anyway. I'm certain he asked exactly because he _knew_ there's virtually no chance they would agree to such utter nonsene, but that it could be later used as a defense for his stupid actions and the lives and strategic advantages that are and will be lost as a direct result.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you build a fortress and are the victim of a successful invasion the fault lies with you for not securing your fortress properly.
This is the military.
They are supposed to expect attempts to steal the information.
That one guy could grab the entire database and release it into the wild shows how pisspoor their systems, both human and electronic, were.
They're supposed to keep their information secure, if they fail that means they fucked up.
For every oddball with an urge to release the information into the wild for everyone to see there's going to be many who are willing to quietly swap a memory stick for a large bundle of cash or to get their child back safe.
Wikileaks may be an amateur run organisation but the Taliban certainly are not.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, so YOU would choose US occupation every time.
What about the poor bastards living in those shitholes? Do they get a choice? What if their choice is different to your choice? What then?
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Letting informants live and continue to inform risks the lives of freedom fighters trying to shake off the bonds of occupation.
What makes the US military and its sympathizers and collaborators so much more important than other factions in this idiotic and unnecessary war?
Lets not forget, if the tables were turned, and we were Afghani, these people would be "traitors".
-Steve
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. They are elected to decide for us. Knowledge, and making decisions based upon knowledge, are two very different things.
Implicit trust in your leaders is a recipe for disaster.
As Reagan (far from one of my heroes) once said: "Trust, but verify".
It is the verification that makes representative democracy (a form of delegated power) work.
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
So you are saying that Valerie Plame Wilson's name should have been kept secret? And that the leak of her name and status is a crime?
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We recognized the legitimacy of the Taliban (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Now it's "Julian Assange, Intelligence Analyst" (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, and then the response is "Sorry, the majority of this stuff is getting released whether you want it to or not. Do you want a chance to help redact the truly sensitive parts, which you would know far better than me?"
Do you still say no?
Yes, but he would have an idea of what you consider to be truly sensitive information* - and hey, he might just respect that if it makes sense.
I really think a lot of the outrage we're seeing here is an expression of the fact that Wikileaks has the United States Military by the figurative shorthairs, and it makes a certain class of person feel impotent (generally the same people who feel large and potent when they look at our gigantic military budget, I bet). They just can't get over that, and respond with bluster and hot air and unsourced claims of civilian casualties.
*because, after all, he's got the completely unredacted documents; if you try to cover up the really embarrassing stuff, someone will notice
Re: Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
So you don't cónsider the removal of a barbaric religious dictatorship cause in and of itself?
It's a moral cause, but not one appropriate for the US government.
Quoth John Quincy Adams:
If Americans want to deal with this on their own, they can. The IRA's war on the UK was mostly funded from Boston. Ross Perot hired mercenaries to get his employees out of Iran. Etc. Getting the government involved in crusades leads to disaster.
Re:upcoming murder trial (Score:5, Insightful)
He effectively released a hit list
I keep seeing people referring to this list, yet I never see any names.
Re:Now it's "Julian Assange, Intelligence Analyst" (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice attempt at dodging the question. Are you seriously saying you would help someone who took your personal documents in redacting them so they could leak them on the Internet?
Not that I'm taking a stand either way, but to realistically expect anyone to want to willfully help someone redact information from documents that were stolen from you so they can leak them to the Internet is absurd.
Re:Sounds like a job for... (Score:3, Insightful)
where's the list? (Score:5, Insightful)
And for the record, I'm pro-responsible-leaking. I don't like that wikileaks rushed to publish this information and did a shitty job of redacting information that puts people at risk
I agree IF that's the case, but do we actually know that wikileaks put people at risk? I keep hearing over and over and over that there are all these Afgani sympathizers that have been outed but...where's the list? Who are these people?
The redacted docs are public for the whole world to see, yet I still haven't seen any list. It's just "US government officials say it's possible that...blah blah blah".
Can anyone find this info? Seriously, not trolling.
Re:Now it's "Julian Assange, Intelligence Analyst" (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact of the matter is, if you release this kind of information, then it's on you to go through and filter it to make sure that nothing harmful is released. If you can't do that, then the responsible thing is to not release the information at all (which is not unrelated to the reason the material was classified in the first place).
The fact of the matter is, there is such a thing as an information expert for a given field. If you're not an expert in the field, and you just start puking up information on a Web page because no one can stop you, then you bear responsibility (moral and otherwise) for what happens when people use that information. Assange needs to grow a pair and deal with reality as it is, not as he'd wish it was.
Re:We recognized the legitimacy of the Taliban (Score:5, Insightful)
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/10/07/ret.us.taliban/ [cnn.com]
The Taliban offered to try bin Laden if the US could provide evidence. We rejected the offer, and invaded instead. Operating outside of established legal precedents for the sake of revenge does not justify the war in Afghanistan.
Holding up a UN vote to legitimize a US decision is comical, to say the least. The US does not care about the UN. Without our our support, in the words of Bush, they will become "an irrelevant debating society." A crime is still a crime even if a corrupt politician drops the charges on the gangster.
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't exactly notice a whole lot of secret info regarding troop locations or transportation in the original Collateral Murder video - which is what started the whole Wikileaks vs US Government situation in the first place.
If perhaps they had redacted the documents like Assange had asked, if perhaps they hadn't tried to brush it ALL under the rug, if perhaps they haven't tried to make life difficult for Assange, and had instead acted a little more diplomatic about the issue, he probably wouldn't be releasing these full documents.
So can you REALLY blame the guy for lashing back this way when he is being treated like an enemy?
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Julian Assange is acting a spy really, getting stolen documents about operations and publishing them.
I'll say again, this is simply a case of assassinating the messenger to disguise the message. Assange didn't collect these documents nor release them to anyone outside their zone of secrecy. Someone else did that. After the first time these were divulged, confidence no longer existed to be broken.
You're not alone in this opinion. The US government has come out and said basically the same thing, for likely the same reason. If we can make the man into a monster, we'll forget the good being done. Remember all the Scientology 'tech' they posted? Was that spying as well? Were they not exactly as monstrous on that day as on this one?
Re:Related news: Reporters w/o Borders join critic (Score:4, Insightful)
By the way, RWB/RSF is a French NGO to begin with.
Yeah, nice try. RWB is a US neocon propaganda front, and If you had read the references you would have seen this:
After years of trying to hide it, Robert Menard, Paris-based Secretary-General of Reporters Sans Frontieres or RWB, confessed that the RWB budget was primarily funded by “US organizations strictly linked to US foreign policy.” [6] Those US organizations behind RWB include the Open Society Foundation of billionaire speculator George Soros, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Congress’ National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Also included is the Center for Free Cuba, whose trustee, Otto Reich, was forced to resign from the George W. Bush administration after exposure of his role in a CIA-backed coup attempt against Venezuela’s democratically elected president, Hugo Chavez. [7] As one researcher found after months of trying to get a reply from NED about their funding of Reporters Without Borders, which included a flat denial from RSF executive director Lucie Morillon, the NED revealed that Reporters Without Borders received grants over at least three years from the International Republican Institute. The IRI is one of four subsidiaries of NED. [8] The NED, as I detail in my book, Full Spectrum Dominance:Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, was created by the US Congress during the Reagan administration on the initiative of then-CIA Director Bill Casey to replace the CIA's civil society covert action programs, which had been exposed by the Church committee in the mid-1970s. As Allen Weinstein, the man who drafted the legislation creating the NED admitted years later, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” [9]
So, stooge of the US neocon right, to be more specific.
RSF/RWB opposes Cuba's (and China's, Iran's, ...) attitudes towards reporters (i.e. jailing, torturing, murdering). If that's a political agenda, if that's a bad thing, if that makes you a stooge of the US gov, then I'm afraid I'm a stooge too.
So?! every reporter outside any of these regimes condemns them. It is what RWB do to set themselves apart that makes them very special. Take their reporting on Georgia (country) leading up to the elections [google.com], largely acknowledged now to be US orchestrated coup [wsws.org], followed up with a neocon war [google.com]. Oh, and now Georgia is a US puppet state, the Pipelines from Georgia to Afghanistan [google.com] can't be privatized quick enough - bringing the plan together to profit from this dirty war long after it is over.
Yes, RWB is one of the worst pro war propaganda fronts out there - they are just supposed to be clandestine about it.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ask any North Vietnamese Army officer if he thought the North was defeated after Tet '68 and he will say yes.
If the media in the US hadn't spun that as a defeat, Johnson could have pushed the North to the peace talks in 1968 and we could have hammered out a peace then.
So not only is the North Vietnamese Army officer highly susceptible to propaganda, but especially to the US media's propaganda?
How many of them even spoke English?
This seems rather absurd. Let alone the fact that these officers would have also had to contend with their own, native, propaganda.
Citations, please.
Re:It changes nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
EXACTLY. They only place where you can find numbers, says 3 names where found. Only 3. 1 already dead, one double agent for Taliban.
All the other sources: just give sensationalist headlines like "Hundred of informant lives can be at risk" ... but citing absolutely no numbers.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt that 1-2 million civilians killed during Soviet occupation would agree with that. Soviet version of pinpoint strikes involved flattening entire mujaheddin controlled towns and villages with carpet bombing. Btw, if you care to look at the history of Afghanistan, the disaster that it is now started with a leftist Soviet sponsored coup in 1978. Look up Saur Revolution [wikipedia.org]. The communists manage to so thoroughly exterminate the previous government and elite (corrupt but secular and reasonably centrist) and implement disastrous land reforms and forced state atheism that it ensured that the opposition to Soviets consisted almost entirely of Muslim extremists groups which were the only ones around to take over the moment Soviets left (which they would eventually with or without US assistance to the mujaheddin). So it's a reasonable argument that it was the Soviet Union that caused Taliban to come to power and that the US role was incidental.
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:3, Insightful)
puts American soldiers are greater risk
This statement must sound pretty funny to the soldiers themselves who know that they are mostly expendable. If anyone actually gave a shit, making Pakistani involvement public should have been enough to get them out of harm's way entirely.
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess it depends on your point of view. Personally I think that countries where the populace is given the opportunity for self determination should do a lot more to help bring the rest of the world to those same circumstances.
In the case of Afghanistan you have to look at what it was like there while the Taliban was in control. For example, if you happened to be a woman or girl, living under the Taliban was a pretty shitty hand to be dealt. No education, no role in the public sphere, no rights independent of the men around you. I.e. chattel. I think fourteen million people being denied the chance to reach their potential, being denied some dignities and rights, should be reason enough for the rest of the world to be, if not outraged, then at least concerned.
Re:upcoming murder trial (Score:2, Insightful)
How long until this self righteous assange goes on trial for murder over his wanton disregard over the lives of innocents? He effectively released a hit list and made it freely available to one of the most violent organizations on the planet. At a minimum that's manslaughter in most countries.
Oh, I figure about two weeks after Shrub goes on trial for doing the same thing - except he didn't have a "list", and he gave it to the MOST violent organization on the planet. I'm sure it will be very heartwarming to the million or so dead in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:2, Insightful)
At great risk to my karma, I will answer that question: the rest of the world is stupid enough to allow the United States to do whatever it wants.
You may throw rocks at me now.
Pentagon Papers (Score:2, Insightful)
Yesterday I watched “The Most Dangerous Man In America” a documentary about Daniel Ellsberg who released the Pentagon Papers. Its interesting how true Ellsberg's thoughts about government secrecy are, and how little has changed since 1972.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:3, Insightful)
They were hailed as saviors in most of the country
Only in their own propaganda.
Look at it from the viewpoint of an Afghan woman.
Wait. Let me put on my burqha and remove 99% of my knowledge and rights. Then I'll be ready for your seminar on the wonderful Taliban.
Not that the Taliban were nice guys, because they certainly weren't. The warlords are worse though.
The warlords weren't a threat to the rest of the world. It was shitty that Reagan pulled us out unceremoniously and left Afghanistan to itself, but when the people there didn't organize a functioning nation and a despotic dictatorship moved in, that made it worse, not better.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:2, Insightful)
*sigh*
Your analogy is false because no one is blaming the victim here. Or have you seen someone claiming that it's the soldiers' fault if they get killed as a result of the leak? It's obvious that it's ultimately the fault of whoever pulls the trigger. That doesn't mean others are not to blame for creating the circumstances that allowed the killing to happen.
You want a better analogy? Imagine a boarding school for girls. Let's say that the guard on night shift in the dormitory has a habit of sleeping on the job. A journalists finds out about it and writes an article for the local newspaper. Another man reads it, sneaks into the dorm at night and rapes one of the girls.
Now, whose fault is it? Obviously not the victim's. Apart from being the victim, she's not a party in this discussion. The rapist is of course guilty of the actual crime. But who's guilty of creating the circumstances that allowed the crime to happen? The journalist, who exposed a hole in the dorm's security, or the guard, who created that hole?
My opinion is that the guard it guilty. His job was to protect others and he failed it. Similarly, it's the fault of whoever was responsible for keeping the documents secret if their exposure results in somebody's death. The journalists were simply doing their job - drawing public attention to the failings of people who were supposed to protect others.
Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I grew up under US occupation. I get to say what I want when I want. I worship what I want when I want. I have enough security that I don't have to worry about being gun down in the street. I can go into a supermarket and buy just about anything I can think. I can make enough money to support my needs and even indulge in some excess material gain. At the end of the day, I even have time for a hobby or extra academic pursuit. Basically, I am free to be the person I want to be and enjoy doing that for a whole lot longer than any Afghani can. I didn't have a choice where I was born. I am sure lucky I was born here.
If I live in a utter shithole and the world's wealthiest and strongest nation decided dump a shitload of cash into my country because religious zealots who rule my life with fear and brutality wrongly figured that they could attack that country with impunity, I would do everything I could to advantage of that situation. I would take their money and build something, I would learn everything I could from them, and I would seriously question how things were done in the past. The way afghanis did it before brought about 30 years of war, poverty, and brutality and turn Afghanistan into an utter shithole. I would hope to make it better.
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:1, Insightful)
You didn't answer the GP's question. How are we supposed to know when to kick them out? Or are you simply suggesting that we are not supposed to know how our elected leaders are doing until the war is over? That means that if your elected leaders are abusing their power and position, then you will not know until it is all over. If the abuses are heinous, do you think it is moral to just say "oh, well, we aren't supposed to know until it's over"? What if the abuses of power are to remove any repercussions for the abusive behavior, or remove rules like FOIA, due process, etc.? What do you do if the war never really ends (Korea, terrorism)?
No, in the end, your philosophy is fundamentally flawed, and inherently dangerous at its core. Not only am I awed and afraid of your ignorance, I can't imagine how you managed to get +4 insightful from the Slashdot crowd.
Re:It changes nothing (Score:2, Insightful)
More surrendered [wikileaks.org]
More [wikileaks.org]
More [wikileaks.org]
Names a suspected double agent [wikileaks.org]
Didn't see any bona fide civilian informants, but I only spent about fifteen minutes looking.
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Now it's "Julian Assange, Intelligence Analyst" (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me rephrase your question.
Are you seriously saying you wouldn't jump at the chance to minimize the damage of documents which are going to be leaked, given the opportunity to do so?
This is like someone who has obtained the documents to steal your identity, coming to you and going, "Look, I'm going to publish these, if you want to redact some sections which reduces the impact of them, I'm more than happy". Then you turning around and saying "Fuck off".
You wouldn't jump at the opportunity to limit damage? No, you'd pout and winge like a child? Perhaps stomp your feet? That is the logical choice now, isn't it.
Luckily in this case, as has been mentioned previously, they WERE sufficiently redacted.
To tie this into my example, after you saying "Fuck off" the person who obtained your documents then goes "Fine, well I'll redact them to the best of my ability, for you then, at my own expense".
Re: save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Apples, Oranges. Her name was leaked by the US Government to discredit her husband who was against the Iraqi invasion. Wikileaks is not the US Government and they are obviously against a war in a land where Empires go to die.
Wikileaks must release all of the documents which clearly show a dirty war which is not covered by any western media in a meaningful way.
Re:where's the list? (Score:1, Insightful)
According to someone on another slashdot article about Wikileaks, it seems there are only 3 (yes, THREE; as opposed to the "hundreds" we've been hearing about) mentions of afghani names in the leaked docs, but one of them is a pro-Taliban double agent and another is already dead (killed prior to the leaks).
So... yeah... I do think a [citation needed] is appropriate in this case. I have yet to see anyone actually present evidence of the "hundreds" of compromised informants.