WikiLeaks about to hit the fan

The disgust comes from the soldiers themselves. The soldiers on the front line do not want unnecessary risk caused by "internet generals."

Not a decade passed and Iraq turned on the US.

However, according to a widely in the news media distributed study two weeks ago scientists are 85% bend towards the left,

Re: Yemen

I'm pretty sure the cable about Yemen says a lot more. Wasn't part of the Yemeni Presidents reasoning for covering for the US is because they were afraid to look weak to other Arab states for needing assistance fighting AQ within their own borders?

So this information can be read as Yemen being manipulated by the US. Or you can read that Yemen and the US both had interests in combating AQ in Yemen and the public cover fit was mutually beneficial.

WikiLeaks: Yemeni president covers up US strikes
Posted Mon Nov 29, 2010 8:17am AEDT

Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh admits covering up US military strikes on Al Qaeda in Yemen by claiming they are carried out by Yemeni forces, according to US documents leaked by WikiLeaks.

"We continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," Mr Saleh said in January talks with General David Petraeus, then commander of US forces in the Middle East, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable published by the New York Times.

The cable was sent by the US ambassador to Yemen, the daily said.

The daily said the remarks prompted Yemen's deputy prime minister to "joke that he had just lied by telling parliament" that Yemeni forces had staged the strikes against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Al Qaeda's Yemeni arm. .....

..... The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Washington had deployed drones to hunt down jihadists.

With more than 100,000 US troops fighting Al Qaeda's allies in Afghanistan and public scepticism in Yemen over the US military's role there, US officials have stressed that Sanaa will lead the fight against Islamist militants.

On November 16, US defence secretary Robert Gates said providing equipment and training to Yemeni security forces offered the best way to counter the threat posed by Al Qaeda militants.

- AFP

A leaked diplomatic cable has corroborated images released earlier this year by Amnesty International showing that the US military carried out a missile strike in south Yemen in December 2009 that killed dozens of local residents. ....

... An alleged al-Qa’ida training camp at al-Ma’jalah, Abyan, was hit by a cruise missile on 17 December 2009. A Yemeni parliamentary inquiry found that 41 local residents, including 14 women and 21 children, and 14 alleged al-Qa’ida members were killed in the attack. In the 4 January cable, General Petraeus is recorded as saying that the attack had caused the deaths of “only” three “civilians”.

Amnesty International provided the media with photographs of the aftermath of the Abyan strike in June this year, including remnants of US-sourced cluster munitions and the Tomahawk cruise missiles used to deliver them. The organisation had requested information from the Pentagon about the involvement of US forces in the al-Ma’jalah attack, and what precautions may have been taken to minimise deaths and injuries.

The US government did not respond to Amnesty International, but a press report the day after the images were released quoted a Pentagon spokesman as saying that the USA declined to comment on the strike and that questions on operations against al-Qa’ida should be posed to the Yemeni government.

“There must be an immediate investigation into the dozens of deaths of local residents in the Abyan air strike, including into the extent of US involvement,” said Philip Luther. “Those responsible for unlawful killings must be brought to justice.”

Amnesty International has called on the US government to:

* investigate the serious allegations of the use of drones by US forces for targeted killings of individuals in Yemen and clarify the chain of command and rules governing the use of such drones;

*ensure that all US military and security support given to Yemen, and all US military and security operations carried out in Yemen, are designed and implemented so as to adhere fully with relevant international human rights law and standards, and that such human rights standards are made fully operational in training programmes and systems of monitoring and accountability.

Thank you.

I wish I could honor your request but my knowledge of Yemen is almost non-existent.

Ossobuco suggested that situations such as in Yemen, or in the nations that CJane mentioned could be discussed in individual threads about those nations. It is difficult to cover multiple international situations on this thread.

View the cable

Quote:

Re: Yemen

I'm pretty sure the cable about Yemen says a lot more. Wasn't part of the Yemeni Presidents reasoning for covering for the US is because they were afraid to look weak to other Arab states for needing assistance fighting AQ within their own borders?

Perhaps you can provide us with more information about his reasoning, Art?

Quote:

So this information can be read as Yemen being manipulated by the US. Or you can read that Yemen and the US both had interests in combating AQ in Yemen and the public cover fit was mutually beneficial.

So what is your thinking on this?

To me, it looks like neither the US government, nor the Yemeni government, comes out of this with much credit.

They colluded to cover-up the loss of civilian lives as a result of these US drone attacks in Yemen.

They lied about the real cause of those civilian deaths, so the US was not implicated in them, when it was.

Note: Mr Saleh told General David Petraeus that his government would continue saying "the bombs are ours, not yours.".
So who knows exactly what else has occurred that we don't know about?

If it wasn't for the leaked US cables we wouldn't know as much as we now know about what has actually occurred. Now we do know, courtesy of Wikileaks.

Certainly the people of Yemen wouldn't have had access to the truth of the situation without the help of Wikileaks. How could they, when their own government was lying to them?

I believe they have a right to know what is actually occurring in their own country, don't you?

I also believe that the American public & the international community has every right to know, too.

Leslie H. Gelb, director of the Pentagon Papers project, says comparisons with the WikiLeaks files miss the point. Obama should listen to an LBJ phone call if he wants to not lose a war.

As the director of the Pentagon Papers project, and as one of the very few actually to have read all the roughly 7,000 pages, I'm fed up with the recent commentary about it, and how it compares to the WikiLeaks disclosures.

Let me get right to the particular irritant.

Sure the Pentagon Papers tell us a lot about the evolution of America's involvement in Vietnam, but they don't tell us the most important point about President Johnson's thinking on the war. In several taped phone calls now public, he confided this tragic bombshell: "I can't win, and I can't get out." He was trapped between his awareness that victory was impossible at any reasonable price, and his fear that losing would be catastrophic for the United States… and himself. LBJ was stuck, and so was the United States.

So, what was so profound about saying, “I can’t win, and I can’t get out”? Well, it summed up the trap President Johnson was caught in then—and pretty much captures President Obama’s dilemma today.

The 36 authors of the papers and I were not aware that Mr. Johnson said anything like this. We did not have access to White House documents, and we did no interviews anywhere in the government. We simply worked from secret documents (plus a few books and newspapers). I made that severe limitation of sources crystal clear in my letter of transmittal to the then-Defense Secretary Clark Clifford and to his predecessor Robert McNamara, who had launched the project. Commentators over the last 40 years have consistently ignored this significant limitation.

So, what was so profound about saying, "I can't win, and I can't get out"? Well, it summed up the trap President Johnson was caught in then—and pretty much captures President Obama's dilemma today. The truth of the matter was that neither LBJ nor his predecessors, nor his successor President Nixon, were actually trying to win. They all understood pretty well that the force they were applying would not be sufficient to overcome a highly motivated North Vietnam and their Viet Minh allies in South Vietnam. They had the force of nationalism on their side, and the South had the noose of corruption and inefficiency around its neck. Sound familiar? Not exact, to be sure, but familiar?

Thus, what the presidents were all seeking was not really to win, but to avoid losing. Why? Because they all believed that American security hung in the balance in Vietnam. They believed it was a war of necessity. Indeed, all presidents say when they commence wars that they are necessary. They never say they are doing so out of "mere choice." Almost all government officials, and almost all foreign-policy experts, believed that Vietnam represented the cockpit of competition between communism and the free world—between the Soviet Union and China on the one hand, and the U.S. on the other. They also believed in the domino theory, namely that if Vietnam fell to communism, so would most of Asia and perhaps areas beyond that.

By the end of Johnson's tenure, there were defectors from this consensus. But it's critical to realize that these defectors and other opposition came slowly—very slowly. And it is equally critical to realize that Obama and most American foreign-policy experts and politicians rejoiced when the United States attacked Afghanistan and throttled the Taliban government there that had given safe harbor to the very al Qaeda chieftains who had ordered the 9/11 massacre. It was seen as a war against international terrorism, a war that had to be won to prevent further massacres. Almost the whole American nation believed then, and many still believe now, that the fight against international terrorism has to be won—and won in Afghanistan.

Though President Obama himself and General Petraeus, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, still call for victory there, it is probably true that Obama and maybe even the general have come to LBJ's conclusion: "I can't win, and I can't get out."

Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon were no fools. In time, at least, they came to know they could not win. They understood well the strengths and weaknesses of both sides. They knew that even if they escalated, the other side could find a way to respond effectively and create a new stalemate at a higher level of cost to all. They knew that when all was said and done, the North Vietnamese lived there. Obama and his top aides know the same thing. But like all their predecessors, they are determined not to lose.

President Nixon and Henry Kissinger found a way "not to lose" and to withdraw. They did it far too slowly and at great cost, but they did it. They gradually drew down U.S. forces from their high of 550,000 over four years. Democratic Congresses foolishly made this process more difficult by cutting off funds for the air war and later military aid for South Vietnam. The withdrawals continued and gave time for the South Vietnamese to ready themselves to fight on their own. Many in the South Vietnamese armed forces fought well, but not enough to overcome the basic deficiencies in their own government.

Equally vital in the Nixon-Kissinger strategy was that they drowned the expected costly effects of withdrawal and even possible defeat in Vietnam in a sea of brilliant diplomatic power: the opening to China, the staging of triangular diplomacy with China and the Soviet Union with the United States as the pivot, the great Middle East agreement that paved the way for peace between Israel and Egypt, and the push to reestablish American credibility throughout the rest of Asia. World leaders soon forgot the ill effects of Vietnam, and soon recognized, once again, the unique power and position of the United States.

President Obama can do as much. U.S. withdrawal should begin in July 2011, as promised—and go down to 15,000 or so over, say, two years. This would leave a residual force to train Afghan forces and provide them with logistical and intelligence support. Further firepower and commando capabilities should be readied to deal with international terrorist threats that will pop up. All this adds up to a powerful deterrent capability.

He should then underline America's continuing commitment to Afghans ready to fight terrorists by instituting a plan to provide economic and military aid. In particular, funds and arms should be directed to the tribal leaders and warlords willing to fight the terrorists—and support should be given to efforts to divide Taliban leadership and attract Taliban fighters away from their cause.

Then, he needs to build a containment policy against the Taliban with Afghan's neighbors. This includes Russia, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and yes, Iran (which helped us in the beginning of the war). All share strong interests in preventing the spread of Taliban influence and curtailing the drug trade.

Like President Nixon and Henry Kissinger, Obama and his team can drown the aftereffects of Afghanistan in powerful diplomacy and continued, focused commitment to Afghans. In these ways, he can both continue to protect against terrorism in Afghanistan and start strengthening efforts against the new homes for terrorists—in Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and in American cities.

This approach is not a cop out. It is a way to redefine victory. It was done in Vietnam. And people forget that the president of Vietnam visited George W. Bush in the White House during his last year in office. People hardly noticed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just visited there. People hardly noticed that Vietnam now looks to the United States as a protector against China.

If President Obama is also creative in the use of America's power, we can mostly withdraw from Afghanistan—and not lose.

Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

I'm at a disadvantage unfortunately. I'd need to go to WL to read the actual cable. I cannot. Perhaps you could do that for us. Skip NYT and the newspapers with commentary. Go straight to the cable itself.

If I'm mistaken on this point, I'd like to know. I thought I had red at one point that the Yemeni Pres did not want to look weak and so the cover was mutually beneficial too their goal to fight AQ.

They covered up the US involvement, not the loss of civilian lives. The loss of Yemeni civilians did not change Yemen's stance on the cover story. They must have still want AQ.

You are correct. Yemen did give the green light to make strikes on it's land.

Well we probably don't know about non-failure strikes that only killed AQ. What would be the major controversy in this if no innocent Yemeni were killed?

Courtesy of Manning you mean.

Now having the information, what next?

So if Yemen had asked to say the bombs were theirs, the US should have refused? If the US had requested it, the Yemeni Pres should have refused? Either way, the goal was to fight AQ. The cover, smart or stupid was a part of that battle.

Yes, but how has been the question for a long time. Retroactive things like leaks aren't going to fix things. How do we get a proactive system of transparency?

With the information known now, we can assume that the US and Yemen still have this deal right?

I won't deny that I believe a number of you have been describing a conspiracy. Nor will I deny that I have expressed an opinion which calls into question whether or not a conspiracy exists. By using terms like Forces of Transparent Truth and Forces for Assange Lionization I may have given the impression that I believe some of you folks are part of an organized effort to develop a conspiracy theory, but that's not the case. I do think organized efforts exists, but unless you are part of Operation Payback or Assange's defense team, I don't think you're part of them. I use the terms to add levity to the postings - undoubtedly there are traces of sarcasm in my humor.

I'm not sure you appreciate wandel that a large segment of the participants in this thread and, in particular, the ones you've been just now addressing not only very strongly believe there is a grand conspiracy behind everything that it negative to WikiLeaks, they want to. It makes them happy.

In any case, it's a bit rich to see someone who has made the following comments to me complaining because he has had his feelings hurt over gentle mockery of conspiracy theories:

You guys, Finn and BillRM, are absolutely revisionist retards

You guys are obscene.

You guys, Finn and BillRM, are absolutely revisionist retards. The concept of War Crimes is 'obscene'? You guys are obscene.

Sometimes I can't tell if your head is in the sand or up your arse.

You are a moral dilettante, blinkered by nationalism.

discount(s) international law

international law supported a US action of which I approved, I would not withdraw my approval

I still don't know what you mean by "moral dilettante," but then I don't get the references to batteries and torches.

If you can compare one of my posts to a dance (even a little one), then I am pleased. I like to dance.

Well, you don't live in Sweden, I think[/quote ]

And you are under the impression that the US is not moving in the same direction along with a large percent of the rest of the West?

You're missing the whole point; it's when the political/military leadership "listens" to the generals to expand their war

I didn't know that about Yamamoto/Harvard and the sleeping giant thing