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[pmcd9]

It's leaking like crazy.

We don't have a thread about the WikiLeaks controversy.

There's a lot to talk about.  I'd like to kick off the discussion by presenting this article which claims that the data contained in the leaked documents vindicate George Bush's pretext for war in Iraq. 

That's a right wing nut job website so it has zero credibility in my eyes, but I'm intrigued by their assertion.  I'm interested in what you party people of considerable intellect have to say about this?  Have any neutral (I know, right?) sources reported on this?  What is the left wing's response?

[wombat]

I have resolved not to think about this issue because I just don't have the time, but this might be an interesting contribution to the discussion if anyone hasn't seen it.

Daniel Ellsberg: “EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.”

[Choop]

since my company works with federal-level elected officials, none of us can look at the wikileaks stuff without risking our company's vendor status on the hill. i can read the news articles about it, but that's it.

what i just ADORE is the announcement of world press freedom day, right during this shitstorm.

additional: how can anyone call a non-citizen of the u.s. a traitor? is education so bad now that people don't know what treason is or what the word means? or that it's related to the word traitor?

[wombat]

WTF, here's an article in the Washington Post that says you should not look at the Wikileaks site if you are only applying to work for the federal government.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/08/AR2010120806796.html

[JorgeFabregas]

Right, and what bullshit. Can you look at the NYT site?

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/07/wikileaks/index.html

WikiLeaks has posted to its website only 960 of the 251,297 diplomatic cables it has.  Almost every one of these cables was first published by one of its newspaper partners which are disclosing them (The Guardian, the NYT, El Pais, Le Monde, Der Speigel, etc.).  Moreover, the cables posted by WikiLeaks were not only first published by these newspapers, but contain the redactions applied by those papers to protect innocent people and otherwise minimize harm.

And here's one for Ash

(3) Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein ran today to The Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page to call for the prosecution of Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917.  Legal experts overwhelmingly believe that any such prosecution under that law would be extremely difficult and "extremely dangerous," but that's of no concern to the Surveillance-State-protecting, Iraq-War-supporting, defense-contractor-plutocrat:  the "liberal" Democratic Senator from California.  To argue this, she invokes the most tired and simple-minded platitude beloved by all those who want to curtail basic press and speech freedoms:  "Just as the First Amendment is not a license to yell 'Fire!' in a crowded theater, it is also not a license to jeopardize national security."

Every line of pro-prosecution rationale cited by Feinstein applies equally to journalists -- including especially the newspapers from around the world which are publishing all of the same diplomatic cables as WikiLeaks is, and which are publishing them before WikiLeaks even does.   How can it possibly be that WikiLeaks should be prosecuted for espionage, but not The New York Times, or The Guardian, or any other newspaper that publishes these cables?

In 2006, Alberto Gonzales threatened to prosecute The New York Times for revealing Bush's illegal NSA program, and The Weekly Standard ran numerous articles calling for the prosecution of NYT journalists and editors under the Espionage Act for having done so.  Bill Bennett demanded the prosecution of The Washington Post's Dana Priest for revealing the CIA black sites.  How can all the Good Democrats who condemned that mentality possibly not condemn Dianne Feinstein and those who think like her?  What's the difference?

[JorgeFabregas]

Greenwald lists a few of the major finds in the cables

    (1) the U.S. military formally adopted a policy of turning a blind eye to systematic, pervasive torture and other abuses by Iraqi forces;

    (2) the State Department threatened Germany not to criminally investigate the CIA's kidnapping of one of its citizens who turned out to be completely innocent;

    (3) the State Department under Bush and Obama applied continuous pressure on the Spanish Government to suppress investigations of the CIA's torture of its citizens and the 2003 killing of a Spanish photojournalist when the U.S. military fired on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad (see The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch today about this: "The day Barack Obama Lied to me");

    (4) the British Government privately promised to shield Bush officials from embarrassment as part of its Iraq War "investigation";

    (5) there were at least 15,000 people killed in Iraq that were previously uncounted;

    (6) "American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world" about the Iraq war as it was prosecuted, a conclusion the Post's own former Baghdad Bureau Chief wrote was proven by the WikiLeaks documents;

    (7) the U.S.'s own Ambassador concluded that the July, 2009 removal of the Honduran President was illegal -- a coup -- but the State Department did not want to conclude that and thus ignored it until it was too late to matter;

    ( U.S. and British officials colluded to allow the U.S. to keep cluster bombs on British soil even though Britain had signed the treaty banning such weapons, and,

    (9) Hillary Clinton's State Department ordered diplomats to collect passwords, emails, and biometric data on U.N. and other foreign officials, almost certainly in violation of the Vienna Treaty of 1961.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/01/lieberman

[miles]

Any predictions on when the movie will be made/who will direct/star?

I'll start, Emma Thompson as Clinton.

[Arachno-capitalist]

HEY GUYS! ONE OF THE UPCOMING LEAKS IS THE UFO LEAK!!

[littlefallsmets]

If there were a fake one about aliens in his "Scorched Earth Insurance" file, that'd be AWESOME.

[Nabubrush]

Every time I see the title of this thread, I momentarily entertain the idea that it's about the Achewiki.

[Choop]

this guy for julian assange
chris cooper for bill keller

[theinevitable]

things like Carlos' rundown of what has been contained in the cables are changing my mind about this whole thing. Man, there is some fucked up shit coming out.

[Choop]

just wait till they finally release the ufo memos

[KeithHernandez]

I get 100% of my news from the Daily Show, so keep me up on the UFO happenings.

I saw a(n?  an UFO doesn't seem right) UFO at Chimney Rock, NE at like 4 am stoned off my ass.  They don't just let you walk up to national monument type things, I have been learning.  We were standing outside of my car, wondering where we would sleep since we couldn't go to the monument and sleep in car, when these three huge blue lights shined above us and then flew off into the distance really fast.  I have been stoned enough in my life to feel 100% confident this was real and not some paranoia/trip, though I do doubt it was UFOs.  It was something pretty crazy.

The same person who I was on this road trip with and I once drove to the Grand Canyon.  We got to the Grand Canyon about 2 in the morning after sleeping on a friends floor in San Fran for a 3 or 4 nights and spending about 30 hours in the car driving around cali and nevada high as fuck on adderal.  Anyways, we didn't even know we were at the Grand Canyon and had to turn around and drive to Utah cause that was the closest hotel we found for under $100 and you can't sleep in your car on the road anywhere close to the grand canyon.  We slept way past when we were supposed to check out, and I remember some issues cause Arizona doesn't do daylight savings time or something.  The next night we found out that the four corners closes at night and you have to pay to get in.  We did not stick around for that bullshit.

If I would have seen UFO's that night I would have accepted it as a hallucination.

[JorgeFabregas]

things like Carlos' rundown of what has been contained in the cables are changing my mind about this whole thing. Man, there is some fucked up shit coming out.

And yet I heard on the radio today that the contents of the cables amount to some embarrassment for diplomats and nothing more.