Wikileaks

[Sappho]

I'm sure by now we have all heard of the war diaries leaked on Julian's wikileaks web site. There is more to come of course. The intelligence is to be leaked over a period of time as requested by the informant under some misguided harm minimization motive.

These kinds of leaks do raise concerns however over what should and should not be leaked in the interest of national security. I am sure that the Taliban are pouring over the war diaries that have been leaked and learning more from them and planning their moves all the better because of them.

[AiA in Atlanta]

In the long run this sort of transparency is a healthy thing.

[J.W. Frogen]

There was not a hell of a lot in there that is not already known.

Civilians die in war.

No shit.

The Pakistani intelligence service may be helping the Taliban, well dugh they helped create the Taliban.

It is when you identify specific names and operational targets the problem starts, which may be in this avalanche of leaking.

Indeed I think the entire AFPAC strategy is misguided, Pakistan should be treated not as the key ally here but rather India. India is a democracy that has been fighting Islamic terror, much of it supported by Pakistan, much longer than we have, if we make more security connections with India we will have more leverage with Pakistan. More stick and less carrot. Indeed this is the one unheralded foreign policy initiative Bush was successful with; he dramatically improved US ties with India. India is also the key to counter balancing growing Chinese power.

[boxy]

In the long run this sort of transparency is a healthy thing.

Unfortunately, wars are fought in the short/medium term.

[AiA in Atlanta]

In the long run this sort of transparency is a healthy thing.

Unfortunately, wars are fought in the short/medium term.

LOL. The USA has been in Iraq and Afghanistan for almost a decade.

[AiA in Atlanta]

I am considering making a donation to Wikileaks-

Jacob Appelbaum, a Seattle-based volunteer hacker for Wikileaks, touched down at Newark Internation Airport in New Jersey on his way back from Holland last Thursday, and was promptly whisked away by U.S. customs officials for a "random" security search.

The hacker told CNET he was interrogated as to the whereabouts of his boss -- Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has gone underground since the U.S. government announced it was hunting him -- as well as "his attitudes to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and on the philosophy behind Wikileaks."

Appelbaum's laptop was briefly confiscated, but investigators kept his three cell phones.

Sources told CNET that Appelbaum declined to comment on any Wikileaks-related questions without a lawyer. Still, the investigators managed to briefly confiscate his laptop, and kept his phones.

The three-hour detainment was keeping Appelbaum from the DefCon hacker conference in Las Vegas, where he gave a speech Saturday defending Wikileaks' commitment to exposing private government information.

"All governments are on a continuum of tyranny," he said (h/t The Independent). "In the U.S., a cop with a gun can commit the most heinous crime and be given the benefit of the doubt. In the U.S., we don't have censorship, but we do have collaborating news organizations."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/0 ... 67665.html

[J.W. Frogen]

This is the democratic dichotomy, democratic societies are supposed to be open and free yet a military can not be completely so and fight a war successfully.

Indeed, the most open and freely reported war in history was probably Vietnam, and it can be argued it was lost on the TV screen and not the battlefield.

Authoritarian enemies have no such problem. There was no North Vietnamese press doing stories on how their side used child solders, intentionally targeted civilians for slaughter, violated the neutrality of Laos and Cambodia, slaughtered the ethic mountain peoples in their occupied territory and imprisoned or executed all dissenters while the US endlessly raked over every mistake or violation they committed in Vietnam.

P.S. Ho Chi Minn was a ho.

[AiA in Atlanta]

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was accused of rape and molestation in a Swedish arrest warrant Saturday that turned the spotlight onto the nomadic former hacker who's infuriated governments worldwide with his self-proclaimed mission to put secrets into the public eye.

The accusation was labeled a dirty trick by the 39-year-old Australian and his group, who are preparing to release the next batch of classified documents from the Afghan war.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... z0xFa8AqKb

Is this timing a coincidence? More like a "dirty trick" by the American government and its puppets. "The Tor Project," which enables Internet privacy, has received funding from the U.S. military because they see it as a valuable tool in intelligence but won't let it be used against them.

[boxy]

In the long run this sort of transparency is a healthy thing.

Unfortunately, wars are fought in the short/medium term.

LOL. The USA has been in Iraq and Afghanistan for almost a decade.

Yes. A decade is a mere blip in history. I think that transparency is a good thing when it avoids providing operational intelligence to the enemy.

Otherwise, how is it different to treason?

[Guest]

A decade is a mere blip in history.

A decade is more than twice the length of WWII. Was that a blip in history?