More Wikileaks.Follow

That's not what I meant. I mean there are reporting procedures for reporting situations that have already been documented and brushed aside. That is what I meant by us being a check and balance. The only way my latter scenario would be true is if EVERYONE were crooked. There are jobs specifically to be the third party.

If you have any doubt, research "Inspector General".

I found out today that these documents are just SIGACTs from the CPOF database. Given this, I'm fairly certain this is a "Look at this guys". I doubt that the proper reporting procedures were done and it was more of a copy/paste thing.

You really aren't that bright are you?

I didn't imply or state that all passive information is harmless, and of course, intel is vital for all parties. Duuh.

There's a pretty safe assumption that an email stating your intentions next week, it's class A and should be protected. I've never read any such leaks relating to security on wikileaks.

Emails describing past activity are more likely to include low-risk stuff.

Wikileaks may risk compromising sensitive data, but it's clear they undertake due diligence to mitigate the risk.

The service they do provide is to (as best they can) filter out the 'legitimately secret' from the 'inconvenient truths'. Without them, the electorate (and taxpayers who fund security services) would have no means to challenge incompetence, corruption and cover-ups.

If that's the case, we'd better all turn ourselves in to the British right now. We owe them like 250 years in back taxes.

Well if any kind of prosecution comes from the documents for war crimes, wikileaks "won the war."

What results though? It certainly seems as though a whole hell of a lot of people are assuming that since the documents were "leaked" that there must be something embarrassing/wrong/criminal contained within. So far, I see a civilian body count figure that's about 1/10th what the iraqbodycount.org site was claiming during the war itself (when it was politically useful to do so of course!), and not a whole lot else.

Anything actually in there? Or is there just a whole lot of assumption and innuendo going on?

I expect it will take some time for the real nuggets to be found if they are there.....but heres one i've read about. It concerns a 'fragmentary order' wich directed authorities not to investigate cases of torture and abuse of Iraqi on Iraqi, if no coalition forces were involved.

Seeing as how such a big fuss was made of Sadaams penchant for killing and torturing his own people and that was a fine and noble reason to invade and Iraq and remove him, its interesting how the self same abuse was allowed to carry on with no interference from coalition forces when they saw it was happening right in front of them.


I'm pretty sure there wil be heaps more of this sort of thing that will show the righteous invasion and liberation for what it was. Which is what the point of releasing these documents is.

Knowledge is power.

Heavens to murgatroid! So we simply reported that stuff, handed it on to the Iraqi authorities and let them deal with it? Shocking! Um... Isn't that what we were supposed to do? It's somewhat amusing that the people making this out to be some kind of smoking gun today were the same people making allegations that the US was just turning Iraq into a puppet state and not giving them any control of their own destiny. Isn't this sort of document confirmation of exactly what you wimpy anti-war folks were insisting we were supposed to be doing from day one?


I'm still not seeing anything here. It's super easy to look at documents after the fact and judge the actions and decisions made by other people when you were not the one there. And I think it's cowardly to refuse to be part of those decisions when they are made, constantly kibitz from the sidelines, and then attack whatever results or information comes out the far end. It's terrifically easy to play the "changing goalposts" after the fact with this sort of thing, and that's exactly what appears to be happening.


If the same document had shown that in cases where Iraqi forces were alleged to have acted inappropriately, the US forces would swoop in, detain and question and try them without any Iraqi say in the matter, you'd instead be insisting that this only proved that the US was running roughshod over the country and had turned it into their own little playground. As I said, it's really easy to take any result and twist it into a negative if you want. That's why it's the cowards way.



No. I'm pretty sure that those who were opposed to the war from day one, opposed it every day it was going on, and still oppose it today will find some scant bits of data that they can string together and make appear as though it's "proof" of the horrible actions of the US government in Iraq. Cause it's easy, remember?



This isn't about knowledge though. It's about propaganda. It's about twisting the facts to suit an agenda. You've already decided that the "truth is out there", so it's just a matter of piling data and accusations and hoping something sticks. The real world isn't clean cut, so there's always going to be enough for this tactic to work if you try really really hard.

Which is why it's cowardly as well.

There should be a law against consistent double posts replying to people when it's not an accidental server lag, to get one's post count up. >:

And I'm quite disgusted at the fact that people are calling for the horrible death of Wikileaks founder simply for trying to shine light upon a dark war filled with innocent deaths. He's even taking his time to make sure no one gets hurt from the information release, which is a lot nicer than what some of said soldiers are doing to civilians.

I wish people would wake up and realize just what they're saying, suggesting not only the death of another human being trying to protect defenseless citizens, but that he be tortured. And what shocks me more is a lot of them seem to be Christian or other religions that advocate loving your enemy, turning the other cheek, and having do not murder in one of the 10 commandments. <.< And they say that I'm possessed by a demon because I'm gay. Maybe they should look at their own hearts and realize just how many demons their own are hiding.

I skimmed over some of the posts in this thread. Did someone advocate his death? I must have missed that.


And could you be a bit more biased here? All he's doing is "shine light upon a dark war filled with innocent deaths. As opposed to what? The sweetness and light wars where no innocents every die? Aren't you kinda playing reality against an unobtainable perfect alternative? "Innocent civilians" die every day from an assortment of things. And while I freely admit that there's a difference between them dying because of the actions of others and because of our actions, it's just as wrong to blindly refuse to acknowledge that there's a real world with real consequences out there and our choices need to be compared to that real world and the real alternatives it presents and not some fairytale setting you seem to want to live in.



Who are these people? Seriously.

And no matter how people are responding to him, it doesn't change whether what he did was right or wrong. What you're doing is another cowardly/easy thing. You'll always be able to find someone out there who'll say nasty things about someone. So does the fact that someone is saying that mean that what the other person is doing is right? Cause that's... easy.

Being a victim doesn't make you right. And painting someone as a victim certainly doesn't make him right either. What he did was wrong. He runs an organization which solicits stolen classified documents from governments with the intention of revealing those things. It's espionage at the least. While I'm certainly not advocating his torture or mistreatment, he absolutely ought to have a warrant out for his arrest by the FBI. And if possible, he should be wanted by Interpol for said crimes. He should be extradited into the US.

What he's done is criminal. Just because he didn't steal the documents doesn't matter. He knowingly released them. He knowingly solicited them. This is not a case of someone who happened upon some classified information of interest and went to a news reporter to tell the story. This is a dump of massive amounts of somewhat raw and unfiltered documents. That's a criminal act against the US (and other nations). Frankly, I'm amazed we haven't yet filed charges against him and demanded his extradition.



What the hell does this have to do with anything? No amount of bad actions by others excuses the release of these documents. That you somehow seem to think it does is kinda strange IMO.

Heavens to murgatroid! So we simply reported that stuff, handed it on to the Iraqi authorities and let them deal with it? Shocking! Um... Isn't that what we were supposed to do? It's somewhat amusing that the people making this out to be some kind of smoking gun today were the same people making allegations that the US was just turning Iraq into a puppet state and not giving them any control of their own destiny.


Way to miss the point! Doofus.

That point being thta one of the reasons/excuses given for justifying the invasion and occupation of Iraq (you know..the ones that were used to get the public behind the war effort) was that "Heaven forfend! Sadaam tortures his own people. He's ebil! He must be stopped before he exports his ebilness to the Homeland!!!1!!! Support us in our holy(oops) noble crusade (oops again) mission to rid the world of this ebil satanic **** menace who tortures people to death!!!11!!!"

But then when it seems that, after the 'liberation' and the Iraqis are still torturing each other to death, but now there doing it on the US payroll, armed and equipped by your good selves, its Ok to look the other way? Is that what you're saying? As long as the death and torture is being done in the name of Democracy, its fine?

Well, I for one think that the more often that sort of shIt is exposed to the public gaze, the more people will will question what they're being told by their glorious leaders.

And if that leads to more and more people going 'FUck you!', the next time some greedy little **** of a politician dreams up an excuse to start a war in pursuit of land/resources/revenge/egotistical knob stroking, then thats all good by me.


And calling me cowardly is pretty fUcking lame from behind a keyboard in California. But then again, thats pretty standard for keyboard warriors like yourself who wouldn't survive more than 5 minutes if they were ever actually called to sack up in real life.

/golf clap.


PUssy.



Edited, Oct 26th 2010 4:23am by paulsol