92,000 classified military documents leaked

[Hermit]

The way I see the situation, 14,000 out of 92,000 documents that have been leaked, have also been published, and the so called "Coalition of the Willing" (a euphemism for US initiatives to protect its own interests, just like the "UN police action" in Vietnam was) is predictably embarrassed. Equally predictably, dire warnings that such classified information "could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk" are made. If documents capable of such damage had been made public, I reckon someone would have pointed them out by now. Nothing of the sort has happened.

The same thing happened with the Pentagon Papers. I see Julian Assange in a similar light as David Ellsberg; both are exposing the dirty work and grievous mistakes that governments commit - ostensibly on behalf of all their citizens - and don't want us to find out about. Keep blowing the lid off the cesspits, I say, and don't let the pretexts of "national security", "lives of our boys at risk" and "undermines diplomatic relations" used to discourage and condemn your whistle blowing activities deter you. Good on you.

[Trolldor]

Julian is a fucking cunt. He doesn't give a shit about truth, it's all for publicity. Everything he does is planned according to how much media attention he's going to get.
If you follow, you'll see that he didn't give his first media appearance until everybody wanted to know who he was, until there was demand for it.
And now he's amped up the game.

These 92, 000 documents. Any one of them could put lives at risk.
Maybe they're not pointing them out for a very specific reason Seraph - mainly that saying "Hey, this one here, this is the one that puts lives at risk" is an idiotic thing to do when it's publically available.

[JimC]

IF and it's a big IF the documents don't compromise ongoing operations, or give current force dispositions, tactics or capabilities then I don't see how it's a national security issue.

Yes, I think this is my position as well. The earlier release of the video of the attack on civilians in Iraq was revealing, and needed to be shown. However, as Ian has said, this is a very scattershot approach with a huge number of documents, and it is at least possible that real enemies such as the Taliban could find something of operational value by winnowing through the information. You would hope that such documents were not part of the bundle...

You could also argue that it would have been a more useful exercise to select several hundred documents which one could be sure were not going to compromise security, but may well have provided a good snapshot of the war behind the PR spin, as embarassing as that may be to coalition forces or the Afghan government.

[natselrox]

I don't care what his ideological goals are - the ends don't justify these means.

The irony.

Someone arguing against the leak of classified war documents by saying that ends do not justify the means.

Give me a break.

[Trolldor]

You don't seem to understand Ian's objection.

[JimC]

I don't care what his ideological goals are - the ends don't justify these means.

The irony.

Someone arguing against the leak of classified war documents by saying that ends do not justify the means.

Give me a break.

Yes, I don't think the means are the problem (leaked via any number of methods, with motivations ranging from financial, through malicious pleasure into idealism could be responsible). However, it is certainly possible that the unintended consequences could be harmful enough to outweigh the benefits. It is a matter of weighing up the possible good emerging from better world scutiny of a war with controversial elements, vs the possible harm to allied soldiers in the field. The leakers are claiming that the documents will cause no harm to field operations or the security of combat troops, and the only other harm is the justified embarrassment of the US and its allies. The US and its defenders are claiming that the documents could assist Taliban operations, if only by giving them a better overall look at Allied intentions and doctrines, as well as the possibility of more direct harm from certain unspecified documents. Hard to judge at the moment...

[natselrox]

You don't seem to understand Ian's objection.

I do understand his concerns. But the use of this Gandhi-esque 'means-vs.-ends' argument in a thread where we are talking about wars seems kind of ironic.

[natselrox]

I don't care what his ideological goals are - the ends don't justify these means.

The irony.

Someone arguing against the leak of classified war documents by saying that ends do not justify the means.

Give me a break.

Yes, I don't think the means are the problem (leaked via any number of methods, with motivations ranging from financial, through malicious pleasure into idealism could be responsible). However, it is certainly possible that the unintended consequences could be harmful enough to outweigh the benefits. It is a matter of weighing up the possible good emerging from better world scutiny of a war with controversial elements, vs the possible harm to allied soldiers in the field. The leakers are claiming that the documents will cause no harm to field operations or the security of combat troops, and the only other harm is the justified embarrassment of the US and its allies. The US and its defenders are claiming that the documents could assist Taliban operations, if only by giving them a better overall look at Allied intentions and doctrines, as well as the possibility of more direct harm from certain unspecified documents. Hard to judge at the moment...

That is a valid and legitimate concern.

But I don't support hiding documents after the battle is over.

[Trolldor]

You don't seem to understand Ian's objection.

I do understand his concerns. But the use of this Gandhi-esque 'means-vs.-ends' argument in a thread where we are talking about wars seems kind of ironic.

Not really.

[Meekychuppet]

So a country that claims to be a Democracy that boasts about keeping the world safe can hide it's dirty laundry for ever Why ?

Ever have your life depend on good security?

Military folks always say this. The preposterously large US military budget is a welfare program for army vets and huge corporations and contractors.

And if you want to ask this then ask the Afghans who have their dead relatives piling up around them. The US government is the worst of all governments, however, they are all the same. They treat the civilian population like idiots, telling us what we can and cannot know. If this was my government I'd feel exactly the same way. I fucking paid for these wars and I want to know what we've been doing, especially since the effect of it may well be to cause me to lose my job.

[Meekychuppet]

So a country that claims to be a Democracy that boasts about keeping the world safe can hide it's dirty laundry for ever Why ?

Ever have your life depend on good security?

Not my life but my liberty yes, and I do understand that Bad things sometimes need to be done for us BUT I don't trust your government ,or mine I know they are liars thieves and murderers .

And having civilians toss around classified documents improves the situation in what specific manner?

Fuck me, can you hear yourself? We OWN those documents, and if you can't see that accountability is a good thing then I have to suspect that you actually believe governments when they tell us it's best if we don't know what they are up to.

[Trolldor]

Do you honestly think there is anything within those reports that would surprise anyone? That there would be some great revelation about the atrocities of war?
The Government is already accountable, a quick google search will tell you already of the kinds of horrors which have occured during this war. Will these documents change anything?

[Meekychuppet]

I'm comparing them. No-one has pointed to any part of the published documents that compromise current OpSec. They just say "it could jeopardize national security" as if that alone should shut down any conversation.

Yes, it should.

I'm afraid that your word is not good enough.

I don't need to point to any particular part of the documents. Maybe nothing harmful whatsoever is in there, who knows. That'd be swell, but that's not the point: Wikileaks doesn't understand everything they've read, no matter whatever level of scrutinizing they did before releasing these. Just off the top of my head, I can tell you that diplomatic relations between the US and Pakistan (not exactly a trivial issue!) has already taken a hit. Look again at the White House statement about this mess. You'll see the word "Pakistan" mentioned about twenty times in three paragraphs. Those are the first efforts of damage control.

But did Wikileaks think much about diplomatic consequences? Or exposing sensitive intelligence sources? Or undermining the security of Allied facilities or personnel? Not much, considering they published tens of thousands of documents. I don't even know what sensitive information could be in some of them, and that's the point - neither did Wikileaks. But some people with intentions far less benign than debating this stuff on an internet forum are pouring through those papers right now, take my word for it.

Another word for classified is "private". Suppose I could hack the personal computers of everyone here and publish every single email, word document, spreadsheet and photograph I saw fit on the internet. All there for your family, friends and coworkers to browse at their leisure. Should I be able to claim that all information should be available to the public? That's Assange's bizarre, childish ideology. Free information for everybody, and damn the consequences.

[/quote][/quote]

See, this is the point. You're not upset because the US has been up to no good, you're upset because they've been caught.

The comparison to privacy is ridiculous. It doesn't matter how you delineate the word 'classified'. When governments pay for their own stuff they can keep it secret. As long as it comes from the taxpayer's graft then openness is necessary. It's us who work to pay for these wars, and I certainly didn't agree to take UK in to Iraq or Afghanistan, and whatever the US is like, I can assure that nobody here, civilian or otherwise has been able to explain what on Earth we are doing there. They're not covering up, they really haven't got a clue, or if they are covering up they do the best acting dumb I have ever seen. Yours and Gawd's responses are so typical of the way government treats us - 'if you don't give us billions to go and kill brown people then we're all going to die'. If that's the case then I want to see the evidence. I have to file my tax return pretty soon - can I tell them it's classified? Only if I want to do three years in Chokey. It's all bullshit, and Wikileaks has done the wold a service because we now know what the military in Afghanistan is up to, and it stinks.

[Meekychuppet]

Do you honestly think there is anything within those reports that would surprise anyone? That there would be some great revelation about the atrocities of war?
The Government is already accountable, a quick google search will tell you already of the kinds of horrors which have occured during this war. Will these documents change anything?

Of course they will. Has any Western government actually been held to account for war crimes? You should read up on WW2 and the war crimes trials. The definition of a war crime had to be 'Any thing they did which we didn't', because any other definition would have seen Churchill, Eisenhower et al on the trap door too. There are moments in the history of it all when you look and it's so obvious that the US rigged the rules because if they didn't they would have to execute their own men. Some of the trial manuscripts of the executed Japanese are embarrassing. The flimsiest of justifications for hanging these men. One general was hanged for the actions of men from whom he was cut off from. He didn't order their crimes and couldn't stop them. But since the USA bankrolled the trials there was no way the world was going to see US generals drop through the trap door at Nuremberg.

It's not the revelation, it's the fact that we've caught them in the act, and it's clear from Obama's squeaky bum speeches that he is caught with his pants down and he knows it. WE in the West get away with this crap because our governments have an iron grip on the flow of information. If we knew what they really get up to, and could prove it, then we'd drive them out of office.

[Meekychuppet]

15,000 documents is quite a lot. He should have said "Look guys, We've got these and if you don't come up with some Damn Good Reasons for us not to, we're going to release them"; then give the various agencies a few days to go over the documents in question and make a case.

Say someone keeps trying to guess your PIN number. You can tell him he's wrong, or you can shut up and tell him to stop. Or you can let it play out until he gets it right. Same thing with these documents. Some of them may be more critical than we know, but if we make a fuss over one particular document you can bet it going to be all over the web in 24 seconds.

Why can't you see how stupid this analogy is?