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WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

nytimes.com

21–30 of 266 posts

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#21
post #5

Perhaps off topic, but what is a cable? Is it just an email? Or is it some other form of communication specific to the State Department?

I'm assuming it's just the general term for a 'piece of transmitted information', no matter what the medium.

They used to actually be cables, i.e. telegraph. (Meaning faster then mail, or diplomatic pouch.)

They kept the name as communications technology moved on.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#22
post #5

Perhaps off topic, but what is a cable? Is it just an email? Or is it some other form of communication specific to the State Department?

Chapter 26 GLOSSARY OF TERMS and ACRONYMS:

Cable/Telegram Used interchangeably to refer to communications (messages) sent electronically.

http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/22249.pdf

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#23
post #17

Earlier WikiLeaks releases seemed to expose atrocities and human rights abuses by the US military and government, which represents at least a partial justification. What end does this release serve?

Perhaps it all comes down to whether you have faith in the American diplomatic corps. If you do, this doesn't make sense. If you don't, it does.

It's not a matter of faith; one generally wouldn't leak mundane information, only proof of misdeeds. And yet much of this leak is pretty mundane, with barely a scandal to be found in the whole thing.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#24

Earlier WikiLeaks releases seemed to expose atrocities and human rights abuses by the US military and government, which represents at least a partial justification. What end does this release serve?

> Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. It's a little hard to tell from the wording, but that might be explicit evidence that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration's practice of extraordinary rendit…

No, it's pretty clear from the context that they're talking about releasing prisoners from Guantanamo Bay.

Though it wouldn't be surprising that the Clinton administration's practice of extraordinary rendition (which expanded under the Bush administration) has continued within the Obama administration.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#25

Earlier WikiLeaks releases seemed to expose atrocities and human rights abuses by the US military and government, which represents at least a partial justification. What end does this release serve?

> Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. It's a little hard to tell from the wording, but that might be explicit evidence that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration's practice of extraordinary rendit…

No, you have it backwards.

They're talking about Gitmo detainees who they'd like to release; but can't due to problems in their home countries.

For example: there are (were?) a dozen Chinese Uighur muslims who were languishing in Gitmo, having been caught in the dragnet by mistake. They are Chinese citizens, so if they were to be released, they'd go back to China where the authorities would most likely execute them (or lock them away for life). So we'd like to release them to a third country; but everyone's afraid of China's clout and China was applying a lot of pressure to anyone who was even thinking of taking them. So we bribed countries into taking them: some went to Bermuda, some to Kiribati, etc.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#26
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. It's a little hard to tell from the wording, but that might be explicit evidence that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration's practice of extraordinary rendit…

No, you have it backwards. They're talking about Gitmo detainees who they'd like to release; but can't due to problems in their home countries. For example: there are (were?) a dozen Chinese Uighur muslims who were languishing in Gitmo, having been caught in the dragnet by mistake. They are Chinese citizens, so if they were to be released, they'd go back to China where the authorities would most likely execute them (…

I think the issue with the Chinese is not that the Chinese would lock them away for life (big deal) but that the Chinese were refusing to take them at all.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#27
post #20

Is there a torrent anywhere with the actual text of the cables? Wikileaks itself is being DDOSed, and none of the news sites are reprinting anything but summaries.

"Assange made them available to the Guardian and four other newspapers: the New York Times, Der Spiegel in Germany, Le Monde in France and El País in Spain. All five plan to publish extracts from the most significant cables, but have decided neither to "dump" the entire dataset into the public domain, nor to publish names that would endanger innocent individuals. WikiLeaks says that, contrary to the state department'…

I wish Wikileaks would just dump the contents, and leave the analysis to the rest of the world. By doing selective "analysis" and redaction, they're basically doing exactly what they claim to be fighting.

Either release all the information, or withhold it. Don't play sides.

Oh, and while you're at it, Wikileaks? I'd love to see leaks from Russia, China, UK, Japan etc. You've been picking on the US for far too long; these other countries are no angels either.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#28

Earlier WikiLeaks releases seemed to expose atrocities and human rights abuses by the US military and government, which represents at least a partial justification. What end does this release serve?

> Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. It's a little hard to tell from the wording, but that might be explicit evidence that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration's practice of extraordinary rendit…

It's the latter -- the quoted passage is referring to relocating the existing long-term prisoners already housed at Guantanamo. ("Bargaining to empty the Guantánamo Bay prison")

My understanding is that new prisoners are no longer being brought to Guantanamo, but instead to other sites outside of the United States.

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#29
The Guardian has posted headers and metadata, but not the message bodies, as a Google Fusion Table:

  http://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?dsrcid=317391
Additional data links on the Guardian's site:

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/29/wikileaks-cables-data#data

Re: WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

#30
post #8

The excerpts the NYT is reporting in this story are pretty ho-hum. We'll have to wait and see what else is in there but it looks like another Wikileaks hype job to me. No doubt there's going to be some embarrassing sausage making details in here but it just confirms things we already knew. Pakistan is a complex situation, Karzai's government is corrupt, etc. Wikileaks would be better off releasing this material witho…

Well just as a counterpoint, perhaps you knew these things, but maybe most of the Times readers did not, or perhaps they suspected it but wanted more evidence.
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