WikiLeaks about to hit the fan

@Irishk,

Hi Irishk

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If a soldier in Australia conspired to make public a list of ASIS operatives (their names and whereabouts worldwide), or the chemical and manufacturing details of the Australian military's stealth technology, or the ASIS' current briefings concerning al-Qaeda or Australian Hezbollah cells, it's entirely possible that information could put lives at risk and seriously compromise the mechanisms put in place for Australia's defense.

But that's a hypothetical scenario .... there has been no Australia-related information of that variety (not that I've come across via the leaks & newspaper articles, certainly) ....
And remember, the embassy cables were records of information gained by US ambassadors in Australia (& other countries) ..... so a soldier would have to be fairly foolhardy to offer such information to a US ambassador, given that Australia is an ally of the US (& participated in both the Iraq & Afghanistan invasions).
I think the Australian authorities would be informed pretty quick smart. I'd imagine that soldier would have been dealt with pretty quick smart, too! Wink

Besides, I'd suspect the US would already be aware of such information via the CIA. Seriously.

No, the sort of Wikileaks information that I've really appreciated is stuff like: our previous prime minister (Kevin Rudd)had "grave concerns" about the conduct & the "winnability" of the war in Afghanistan. & was being pressured by the US to supply even more Australian troops (which he was reluctant to do, given his perceptions) ..... & was described as "weak" (in regard to US interests, I presume) in the embassy cables.
Rudd went ahead & increased troop numbers despite his misgivings & made entirely different pronouncements to the Australian people about the Afghanistan war.
You see what I mean? When Wikileaks revelations informed us of the differences between what our governments were saying publicly & what they were actually doing. When they give us real insight into the behind-the-scene pressures, maneuvers, why governments do what they do ....
Another example: President Saleh privately agreeing to US drone attacks on Yemen soil (which killed many innocent civilians, along with suspected al-Qaeda operatives), then blatantly lying to the Yemini people about such an arrangement with the US. (No wonder he got the chop during the Arab Spring uprisings! Wink

)

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If any of that type of information was included, it wouldn't matter that Pvt. Manning didn't give it directly to someone like Zawahiri or Mullah Omar. He knew of Wikileaks plans to publicize it, or at least provide it to principal newspapers around the world.

Yes, he supplied the information to Wikileaks, with the intention of it being published.
The other thing is (as discussed in this thread yesterday) it is quite possible that that any number of other people, apart from Bradley Manning & Wikileaks, could have seen the contents of those cables, because they were not properly secured & this was not addressed until after the leaks. If the security of that information had not been so abysmal, possibly even Bradley Manning could not have had such easy access to it, say nothing of passing it on to Wikileaks.
I think this part of the whole Wikileaks saga has been down-played by US authorities who have made so much about their concern for the safety of innocent informants. For obvious reasons. Because it is acutely embarrassing to them, because they did not have anything like adequate security in place to protect their informants themselves.
If they had, those particular Wikileaks might never have happened at all.

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1 Reply

@Finn dAbuzz,

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while you were in seclusion

Ah, that's so sweet, Finn. You missed me!

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@Finn dAbuzz,

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But I guess you're OK with someone who fires into a crowd containing suspected war criminals and kills innocent people, as long as most of the dead were the evil war criminals.

Never mind the innocent dead, the guy who did the shooting was a hero!

Here's an honest to goodness real life incident, Finn, where the treachery of the much trumpeted "good guys" did cause the problem you've suggested above.

Quote:

The Indonesian Massacres and the CIA

by Ralph McGehee

Covert Action Quarterly, Fall 1990

...

In a recent story in the San Francisco Examiner, researcher Kathy Kadane quotes CIA and State department officials who admit compiling lists of names of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), making those lists available to the Indonesian military, and checking names off as people were "eliminated.'' The killings were part of a massive bloodletting after an abortive coup attempt taking, according to various estimates, between 250,000 and 1,000,000 lives and ultimately led to the overthrow of President Sukarno's government.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/McGehee_CIA_Indo.html

How does that sit with you?

Still think that there is no need for that small group of honest Americans like Manning?

1 Reply

@JTT,

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Still think that there is no need for that small group of honest Americans like Manning?

I don't think that approach will help Brad. JT.

Temporary insanity for the reasons I have given is the way to go. And the responsibility of those who placed such an obviously fragile young lad in such a position and are scapegoating him to hide their failures.

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@spendius,

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I don't think that approach will help Brad. JT.

That wasn't my intent, Spendi. There's not much, given the tenor of the times, that can help Brad.

He should advance the Ellsberg defence - the people that he exposed are so dirty that he had no choice. Everyone knows it's the truth but as I mentioned, the tenor of the times.

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@msolga,

In hindsight, security measures are probably always examined after something like this happens, but whether or not his defense attorneys will use that in his trial is anyone's guess. He wasn't the only 'intelligence analyst' that had access to the files, but it's alleged he's the only one that sent them to Wikileaks, and according to the president, "he broke the law".

I agree with you that Pvt. Manning's superiors appear to have had plenty of warning concerning his worrying behavior and it appears they either didn't take it seriously or else they ignored it.

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@Irishk,

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and according to the president, "he broke the law".[/quote

Well, duh, Irishk, what on earth do you expect a war criminal who could easily be exposed by leaks of this nature to say?

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@Irishk,

I don't know that the lack of the security of the embassy cables will be part of Bradley Manning's defence case ..... what I'm saying is that this seems to be a conveniently forgotten fact when Hillary Clinton, etc, argue that the leaks have endangered the lives of innocent of informants .... conveniently overlooking the fact that the sloppy security directly contributed to endangering those lives, even before Bradley Manning & Wikileaks.
This has been one of the most persistent arguments from the anti-Wikileaks/Manning side. Without providing much (any?) evidence of deaths/persecution of informants.
That sort of argument conveniently leaves the security flaws out of the equation. If lives have in fact been endangered then surely a major reason that they have been is because the informants were not properly protected (by those whose responsibility it was to protect them) in the first place?

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@msolga,

You make some good points about security, and how they have failed from the top. They always have the habit of blaming the peons, and sacrifice them to the gallows for their own failings. If they had done their jobs properly, this problem should never have happened.

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@msolga,

Quote:

That sort of argument conveniently leaves the security flaws out of the equation. If lives have in fact been endangered then surely a major reason that they have been is because the informants were not properly protected (by those whose responsibility it was to protect them) in the first place?

Allowing these folks the opportunity to advance such a spurious only contributes to the propaganda stream, MsO.

Given the track record of the US, neither it nor its citizens should ever advance such tripe. The very thing that they have been blaming Manning and WikiLeaks for is normal US government operating procedure.

Just one example of many:

Quote:

The Indonesian Massacres and the CIA

by Ralph McGehee

...

In a recent story in the San Francisco Examiner, researcher Kathy Kadane quotes CIA and State department officials who admit compiling lists of names of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), making those lists available to the Indonesian military, and checking names off as people were "eliminated.'' The killings were part of a massive bloodletting after an abortive coup attempt taking, according to various estimates, between 250,000 and 1,000,000 lives and ultimately led to the overthrow of President Sukarno's government.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/McGehee_CIA_Indo.html

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

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If they had done their jobs properly, this problem should never have happened.

See what I mean, MsO. The bad thing, even to a person as honest as CI, is that these security breaches happened.

If they had done their jobs properly, had not engaged in war crimes and world wide terrorism, all to advance US business interests, this problem would never have existed.

And the problem isn't breaches of US security. It has nothing whatsoever to do with that insignificant feature.

It's the completely unnecessary deaths of millions of innocents the world over, unnecessary deaths at the hands of US leaders.

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@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

...They always have the habit of blaming the peons, and sacrifice them to the gallows for their own failings. If they had done their jobs properly, this problem should never have happened.

Yes, I've notice that, ci. Wink

I'm trying to imagine the exposure of a similar security flaw in private enterprise ..... which, say, made it possible for the account details, passwords, etc, of thousands, possibly millions, of bank customers to be published online.
I'm pretty certain the bank company couldn't pass the buck in a similar way.
Accountability would be required from the top.
And rightly so.

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@JTT,

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Allowing these folks the opportunity to advance such a spurious only contributes to the propaganda stream, MsO.

No, I don't think so, JTT.
This is an open discussion where all can contribute.
So if there is clear evidence, anyone can post it here. I'll listen to that, but I don't take generalized arguments as proof or "evidence".
And I did say "if".....

Yes, I am well aware of the brutal events in Indonesia in the mid-60s & Suharto's military take-over of that country following the bloodbath.
"The year of living dangerously".

1 Reply

@msolga,

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Allowing these folks the opportunity to advance such a spurious only contributes to the propaganda stream, MsO.

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No, I don't think so, JTT.
This is an open discussion where all can contribute.

That it is, MsO, but as you plainly saw in CI's posting, the multiple postings of Failures Art, the constant drumbeat of WandelJW propaganda, ... , the BIG HURT has been the US and the dire affects that this has had on their diplomacy, yadda yadda yadda.

An open discussion doesn't mean that people should be allowed to post lies. And what has this been but a big lie. Has there been a verified death because of WLs?

There have been thousands upon thousands of deaths of innocents from the US government/CIA providing death squads with list of undesireables.

1 Reply

@JTT,

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Has there been a verified death because of WLs?

There have been thousands upon thousands of deaths of innocents from the US government/CIA providing death squads with list of undesireables.

Yes, I know.

<sigh>

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Sorry guys but his young man clearly broke this oath and the law and harm the very country he was sworn to defend.

No matter if he should had never been in this position of trust or not is completely beside the point as well as the opinions of the anti-American posters on this website or any other website that anyone who harm the US is a hero.

He will be sentence to a long prison term and rightly so.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

Got anything new to say, Bill?
You're starting to sound like a cracked record. Wink

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.... harm the very country he was sworn to defend.

In your opinion, how have his actions "harmed his country"? Or in what way has the US been harmed by his actions?
Just curious to hear what your thought are.

1 Reply

@JTT,

I know when I have scored when someone responds more than once to something I've posted. It tells me that my post got in their head and wormed away. It also tells me that the respondent is intellectually undisciplined. The first reply was emotional vomit, the second was constructed while lying asleep at night.

It's not very clever JTT when it's the second thing you thought of.

BTW, it was quite pleasant while you were away, licking your wounds. I can only hope the A2K community sends you again to a dark corner in which to snivel.

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@msolga,

Good point to the extent that the failing establishment will always try to transfer their responsibility, in toto, to the perp.

The perp, however has no right or reason to believe that this seeming injustice will protect him or her from justice.

Manning commited a crime.

The US, at least, claims to be a nation based on the Rule of Law.

In such a nation, when the law is broken, the guilty must pay.

Confusing the issue with all sorts of competing moral considerations and personal empathy with the defendant is in conflict with The Rule of Law.

Manning is guilty of violating a law, and he must suffer the consequences.

Similarly, the woman that murders her rapist has violated the law and must suffer the consequences. Society cannot abide vigilantes. Manning was a vigilante.

We seek objective interpretations of The Law and its violations. When subjectivity is inserted in the equation, the Rule of Law is weakened.

But liberals are all for subjectivity and relativity...except when the person who violates The Law is perceived to be a political enemy...then throw the GD book at him!

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@msolga,

Quote:

In your opinion, how have his actions "harmed his country"? Or in what way has the US been harmed by his actions?
Just curious to hear what your thought are.

No other nation is going to talk frankly with the US if their communications are likely to end up on the front page of newspapers just to start with,

No private individuals are going to work for the US or talk to the US in a frank manner if they know that it is likely they are not only placing their own lives at risk but that of their families also.

And so on...................

0 Replies

WikiLeaks about to hit the fan

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