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Wikileaks Must Be Stopped

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped

#131

Post by elblanco »

rbanffy wrote: post #72
tptacek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who recklessly fire on civilians are murderers and should be tried as such. Commanders who issue orders that make ignore forseeable events like that should be held criminally responsible. Corruption should be eliminated. Corrupt local replacements for the Taliban should be thwarted. Incompetancy is bad and should be rectified. Now, all those things being true, help me understand how it can be OK to arm the Tal…

When you know the identity of your informants was compromised, you should remove them from the field immediately. If you don't, it's at least 50% your fault when they get killed. Keep in mind the US government knew what documents would be leaked before the Taleban could get access to them.

> When you know the identity of your informants was compromised, you should remove them from the field immediately.

I sure hope you have enough space for the huddled masses of Afghanistan in your house since an awful lot of them are "informants".

Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped

#132

Post by elblanco »

jawn wrote: post #103
rick888 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm fine with that. Assange isn't killing people. 3-star generals are." Yes he is. The information he released in the latest round of "secrets" gave away informants to people that can (and will) kill them. If he gave information about locations of jews to the Nazis, would we say it was freedom of information? "Government can function with much less secrecy than it currently does. WL is serving a public need in chall…

Who is really culpable for the release of these names? Here's an excerpt from an interview with Assange... http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2968342.htm TONY JONES: Well, not according to the Pentagon. They're accusing you of revealing the identities of Afghan informants and putting their lives at risk. Afghan's president, Karzai, agrees with that he says 'the breach is extremely irresponsible and shocking…

"Who is really culpable for the release of these names?"

The person who released the information.

Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped

#133

Post by elblanco »

mkramlich wrote: post #112
zaphar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

U.S. government and military, who have a track record of keeping horrifying, god-awful secrets regarding their own misconduct. This is true. However Assande and Wikileaks have put over a hundred peoples lives directly in danger through their leaks as well as potentially thousands more. Which effectively puts them all the way on the other end of the spectrum. Your saying that putting 100's of peoples lives at risk in…

Between Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 10 years arguably the US military has put millions of lives in danger, against their wishes. If releasing some documents might lead to a 100 deaths that would not otherwise have occurred is evil/criminal then how does that not pale in comparison to the field deployment of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and weapon systems in a foreign country which go on to cause 1000's of…

How many people would Assange have to put in harm's way before it stopped being ok?

Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped

#134

Post by jawn »

elblanco wrote: post #132
jawn wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is really culpable for the release of these names? Here's an excerpt from an interview with Assange... http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2968342.htm TONY JONES: Well, not according to the Pentagon. They're accusing you of revealing the identities of Afghan informants and putting their lives at risk. Afghan's president, Karzai, agrees with that he says 'the breach is extremely irresponsible and shocking…

"Who is really culpable for the release of these names?" The person who released the information.

It's not that cut and dry though, the white house had an opportunity to minimize the damage and did nothing about it.

Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped

#135

Post by elblanco »

mcantelon wrote: post #57
zaphar wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the article one intelligence officer and hundreds of Afghani informants have been revealed to the world including the folks who want them dead. Before the leak their potential killers didn't know who they were now they do. Assande has no intention of not revealing more information of the same sort in the future.

There are no specifics mentioned and the article the AEI member links to doesn't have much in the way of specifics either. If the US military is concerned about those involved in the death trade having their identities revealed they would do well to make Wikileak's public role redundant and tell the truth about their actions.

Who exactly do you think the "informants" are?

So say I'm a dirt poor farmer in Afghanistan. I spent most of my time being terrorized by the Taliban (say for example, they burned my sister alive after they found out I taught her how to read). Now the NATO forces arrive, kick those assholes out, along the way they shell my barn and accidentally kill my brother.

I'm pissed off, but on the balance, I know the NATO forces feel bad about my brother and they at least tried to get him some medical care (which is pretty different from the Taliban's response to my sister's last gurgling breath which was to drag her behind a truck and hang her burnt body in the middle of the village as a warning to everybody).

So when SGT Smith asks me, "do you know where any Taliban are around here?" I tell him. Because someday NATO will be gone and I can finally get around to growing something in the piss poor soil of my farm and get on with my life. While the Taliban hunted us ragged when they were in charge.

Now I find out that my name and coordinates to my village were released into the wild and the local Taliban commander found out about it. I and my family are running for our lives and all some thoughtless jerk on a message board can say about it is that it serves me right.

Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped

#136

Post by Groxx »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #3

I am struck by four things. 1) Wikileaks is really pissing people off. I don't mean the nicey, lets-go-protest-down-at-the-student-union kind of protest. I mean people who are not normally angry with anybody else in the world talking about throwing him in jail and/or killing him. Devil or Angel, that's a whole heap of pissing off he's accomplished. 2) Assange has more power than many 3-star generals, yet he's just so…

>3) Anarchy is not the same as openness. Openness says I demand full insight into what my government is doing. If not me personally, then somebody I elected or appointed.

So you're OK with the status-quo? And what if it gets worse? Say, significantly worse. They're still the people you elected.

Without someone doing something like this, can you know what's really happening? I for one don't trust all the however-many-thousands/millions working for governments to behave responsibly, so there must be some kind of oversight. And without the oversight being managed by people outside such a chain (ie, the public), there's always the recursive "who's watching the watchmen" question.

At some point, the only people who can determine if their government is acting in their best interests are the people who the government is supposed to be working for. I'd rather have some way of knowing what they're up to than to "take their word for it". Their word has failed rather spectacularly many times.

Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped

#137

Post by mkramlich »

elblanco wrote: post #133
mkramlich wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 10 years arguably the US military has put millions of lives in danger, against their wishes. If releasing some documents might lead to a 100 deaths that would not otherwise have occurred is evil/criminal then how does that not pale in comparison to the field deployment of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and weapon systems in a foreign country which go on to cause 1000's of…

How many people would Assange have to put in harm's way before it stopped being ok?

No the logic is, let's get the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan first, and let's stop killing innocents/civilians in Afghanistan, and then, maybe, we'll worry whether it's "right" or "wrong" to publish these pieces of paper.

Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped

#139

Post by vegai »

tptacek wrote: post #66
rbanffy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you call those prosecuting the US/NATO side of the conflict in Afghanistan "murderers", you run the risk of implicitly taking the side of US/NATO's adversaries, who in this case are the Taliban. Nice strawman. Calling the folks who recklessly fire on civilians murderers may be a bit exaggerated. Human error happens and human error when the human is on the trigger of a 30 mm cannon is usually disastrous, but au…

People who recklessly fire on civilians are murderers and should be tried as such. Commanders who issue orders that make ignore forseeable events like that should be held criminally responsible. Corruption should be eliminated. Corrupt local replacements for the Taliban should be thwarted. Incompetancy is bad and should be rectified. Now, all those things being true, help me understand how it can be OK to arm the Tal…

How do you do the four things you listed if all information is contained?

Re: Wikileaks Must Be Stopped

#140

Post by vegai »

zaphar wrote: post #19
mquander wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, then propose another way. If there's a gate, there's a gatekeeper. There is no doubt in my mind that I would rather have Julian Assange and the Wikileaks staff be that gatekeeper than the U.S. government and military, who have a track record of keeping horrifying, god-awful secrets regarding their own misconduct.

U.S. government and military, who have a track record of keeping horrifying, god-awful secrets regarding their own misconduct. This is true. However Assande and Wikileaks have put over a hundred peoples lives directly in danger through their leaks as well as potentially thousands more. Which effectively puts them all the way on the other end of the spectrum. Your saying that putting 100's of peoples lives at risk in…

What if putting a hundred's lives at risk saves a hundred thousand?
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