15K Wikileaks docs 'potentially more explosive,' US frets The Pentagon says many of the classified documents not yet published by Wikileaks contain material that's “potentially more explosive, more sensitive” than the huge trove of leaked records that has already prompted conniptions in military circles, The Washington Post reports. Pentagon officials have identified some 15,000 …
".........and in statements included in news reports, they have asked the Pentagon for assistance in reviewing the remaining documents to determine what information should be withheld."
how about all of it, as it was illegally acquired.
they should hand back the documents immediately and/or face prosecution for possession of stolen property or what ever.
if any one should die because of wikifreaks, they should be held responsible for facilitating the murder(s).
Does the US has any legal rights to prevent wikileaks from publishing anything? I don't know.
Of course it would more responsible of them to remove specific and personally identifying information before publishing it. At least they're asking the pentagon for help in this area.
As to whether or not they ought to release any of the information at all. I think the people have the right to know what their government is doing, otherwise, how can democracy possibly work? I don't think the government has a right to hide it's actions, whether or not it claims to do so legally. It works for the people and should be treated as such. Having too little transparency means no accountability.
Yes, allowing whistle blowers to speak does have negative repercussions, likely tarnishing the image of the country and potentially loosing supporters. But the public deserve better than to be lied to with cover-ups and misinformation.
If any branch of the government has done something wrong, it's better that it comes out and can be debated, eventually to be voted on in public. Any other policy is borderline fascism.
Let's start with the illegal war and then we'll discuss wikileaks ... but think on this, the US and Allies would not be worried about the leaked documents if they had shown that the US was actually winning the war.
The real reason they are pissed is because, like everyone since Alexander, they are getting their collective arses kicked by the Afghans ... again. But I'm touched by the Americans new found concern about their sources - this is a hopeful sign because they've never given a rat's about them before, being happy to burn them whenever it fitted the greater political good.
"if any one should die because of wikifreaks, they should be held responsible for facilitating the murder(s)."
We won't see that until the statute of limitations on murder expire for ... other incidents where information published by "trusted sources" caused the death of individuals. Or at least until the person(s) responsible are throughly safe from any political fallout.
At least in the US, the statute of limitations on murder is ... never. :( Perhaps they will finally come out and admit they implement laws selectively depending on your caste or infamy/celebrity?
"if any one should die because of wikifreaks, they should be held responsible for facilitating the murder(s)."
Tony Blair has far more blood on his hands than wikileaks ever will have. And he's STILL crowing about how he believed what he did was right, so therefore, it was.
I don't understand how, in this day and age, people get pilloried for outing the truth, but praised for subverting democracy. I guess it just shows how the UK & US mainstream media has conned the majority and prints only what the state allows them - you know, like what happens in other shining examples of democracy, Russia & China :(
Still, no doubt Cameron will try and perpetuate the lies, if only by failing to stand up for the truth. Moral compasses anyone - what a (expletive deleted) joke.
"if any one should die because of wikifreaks, they should be held responsible for facilitating the murder(s)."
Facilitating murder should indeed be punished, and I'd be delighted to see those political leaders who facilitated the slaughter of so many Afghans and Iraqis in court for their illegal immoral and unjustifiable wars. The Pentagon's concern for their Afghan 'assets' is touching, but its a shame they cant extend that concern to the other Afghan civilians whose slaughter they so routinely cover up in the name of 'security'.
Wikileaks would have a lot of work to do to catch up with the US record on murdering innocents.
"if any one should die because of wikifreaks, they should be held responsible for facilitating the murder(s)."
Q 1 : If someone died because of WL - should this info be made public ? ( by who .. ? )
Q 2 : If someone's life was saved by WL - ????
Q 3 : Humans are getting killed in Afghanistan. Stopping the war would (after the inevitable ensuing civil war) result in peace (i.e., few humans being killed).
If WL causes the war to stop, then this would have a large effect on the net number of humans killed. I suppose WL see this as thier aim.
i hear plenty of talk about how evil wikileaks are for releasing the info, but not much talk in the corporate media or from our governments about the war crimes committed & subsequently covered up by the USA & UK that have been exposed by the wikileaks releases.
So them inflated numbers of insurgents include how many innocent woman, innocent children and innocent men murdered by the USA & UK exactly?
if you really are objective, you can't let the person whose documents they are cow you into not releasing stuff. If the US are really worried about people dying (and I do actually worry about it myself) they should aid in the censoring of the data. If their aim is just to stop the data getting out full stop then they don't really have a leg to stand on.
I think it comes down to this, if there were documents about Soviet agents which clearly showed them committing crimes on foreign turf, and it could lead to their deaths if the documents were released, should an independent source not release those documents? I think a journalist, or whoever has the documents has a moral obligation to do their absolute utmost to prevent the loss of human life through their work (even if this means delaying the information a few months), and I'll be greatly saddened and angered if Wikileaks doesn't put their utmost effort into removing information that could put people in danger, but I also think that they have a moral obligation to put out the truth, and simply brushing it under the carpet instead of doing what's necessary is equally reprehensible.
Heaven forfend I should find out what murders are happening in my name. I don't want to know! If my government uses my money to kill random innocents, that's fine with me. I trust my government. They've proven their competency time and time again.
On another note, I love the way people keep saying they should "hand back the documents". If that's the only requirement, they should do it.
I'm a tax-paying UK citizen and my army, which is both composed of my countrymen and paid for by me, is currently in Afghanistan (and Iraq), and I'm not entirely sure why.
I don't for one minute want anybody on either side (and I'm not even sure about the sides) to suffer due to the 'war' or wikileaks - but I'm entirely sure I've been fed political bull-shit over the whole situation for quite a few years now.
I fully accept that in an engagement there are things that temporarily need to be kept secret from the public, but without oversight (and there has been f'all) bad things will happen - and they have.
I also accept that tough decisions and therefore mistakes will have been made - and that I personally would have probably avoided the decisions for fear of the mistakes. Again, I'm OK with that, I'm not a military strategist and wouldn't want to have to be one. As a pacifist wuss, somebody needs to kill people to protect my innocent soul and allow my hands to remain squeaky clean.
However, from my safe position, I've felt increasingly more uncomfortable about what was happening. At a very basic level when you hear a story about deaths in "Helmand Province", you feel sad for the deaths, but the ever unanswered question is Why are we there, what are we doing there, what do we hope to achieve there and what aren't you telling me?
Wikileaks isn't the answer, but it's quite bizarre that they're the only source that's making waves. They're the only thing I come across that's not going with the news-flow.
More importantly, they're not making waves by pushing a controversial editorial - they're merely reporting what our side thinks is happening. It's quite mind-boggling.
This entire 'outrage' is merely down to our direct exposure of what is happening - without being censored. These things happened, and nobody has denied that.
I guess if I had to boil it down - Wikileaks aren't exposing anything secret. Wikileaks are exposing the gap of honesty between what happened and what we were told. That's it.
We shouldn't have to need wikileaks as they shouldn't be able to produce anything worthy of a new story - but they can, so we do.
Juian Assange - clearly a strange man, but in this immediate moment, the only man I covet the balls of.
trying to tie wikileak's actions to those of governments.
we already know how those politicos lied and lied again to get the war they wanted.
we also know they continue to lie.
that in no way absolves wikileaks of responsibility for their own actions.
if peopler die because of this, they should be held responsible, just as blair and bush should.
betraying our supporters in this way only makes the "mission", whatever it may be, that much harder.
if we are to leave Iraq and Afghanistant in any civilised kind of state, then we need the support of the moderate majority.
serving them up on a platter to their and our mortal foes is no way to do that.
as for needing wikileaks, whistleblowing is all well and good if its not YOUR life on the line i'm sure.
there will be quite a few very vulnerable Afghans/iraqis that realy dont need wikileaks right now.
You don't understand, even *IF* Wikileaks release anything that endangers our troops/assets/informants out there (and doesn't that sound like the exact kind of FUD you'd expect to hear to try and rally people against the whistleblowers?) it still won't have been their fault.
Any deaths that *MAY* occur as a result of the leak will still be the fault of the US/UK governments who lied their way to war. If our governements were honest and open there'd be no need for Wikileaks to even exist
The truth shall set you FREE! Sigh people wouldn't have needed to feel they need to expose the governemnts corruptness if the government told the truth.
The government tell people you shouldnt do this that and the other. Yet these same people start wars, lie and cover up the truth.
No wonder the kids of today are fucked up, adults lie, cheat and steal the very things they tell kids not to do.
Welcome to our glorious world. FAIL: Because you need to PRACTICE what you PREACH to others.
Historically whistleblowing has been seen as a courageous, morally righteous and commendable act, exposing those who have evidently broken the law.
Wikileaks are not such people. They are motivated by an overly simplistic interpretation of "freedom" and lack responsibility. They should realise that there is no universal set of moral values about what is 'right' and 'wrong' - their interpretation is merely their opinion. It does not give them carte blanche to play god with other people's lives and livelihoods. There are other people in this world who have a very different view of what is 'right' and 'wrong'. WikiLeakers would not want such people passing judgement on their lives.
I don't think wikileaks are on some "moral" crusade in this case as you seem to think, it's far simpler than that.
Here a bunch of stuff that your tax payer dollars paided for but your Government doesn't want you to know about. Read it and see if you think this stuff that you paided for and is being done in your name is acceptable. .
This is so sad that it's almost funny. So you can download a movie or an MP3 and holy cow you'll be getting lawyers letters soon, having your internet connection shut off and nearly sued into bankrupcy (if you're caught), but if you dump a ton of classified military documents on the web they just stay on the web looking pretty for all to read. Sad.
The only outrage should be at the complete lying scum in governments that supposedly stand for democracy, yet are determined to hide the truth from those that put them in power in the first place.
William Henderson, you've obviously been "re-educated" by George, Tony ,et al. into believing the truth is what's given to you by the government. No one wants anyone to die for a "scrap or paper", yet they do.
Information can be dangerous, that's a fact, but it can also be extremely liberating. We all have a basic human right to information, not be fobbed off by the rubbish we get from those who want to keep us fat and stupid on a diet of lies and media fuelled bullshit!
In such a publicly hypocritical way the US is objecting, nay even imprisoning, whistle-blowers who expose the total inexcusable murder of reporters going about their lawful business.
These reports have allowed the public, who is actually paying for this folly, to see just how little they are getting for bankrupting their country and placing the burden on many future generations of Americans and Britains.
Since the reports are obviously 'past tense' and they contain not so much as secrets rather than embarrassments and details of breaches of US military and international law they deserve to see the light of day.
Did George Washington ever think his dream country would stoop so low?
"US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has characterized it as an irresponsible act that potentially puts soldiers and Afghan sources in grave danger."
What an ar*sewipe. How about running an aggressive war and blowing up civiies by the hour or executing them by putting nervous kids from the midwest with guns on their streets?
Apparently not an irresponsible act.
The whole militaristic upper crust needs a good decapitation strike A.S.A.P.
They know, what we dont yet know, what they know.
@William Henderson 1
IIRC the military lied about the contact (the helicopter action aganst the news crew) that video released on the site later showed to be questionable at best. This unfortunately tarnishes all of military which does the decent majority of them no favours. The perpertrators (both "leaders" such as Blair and those who act illegally/imorally in official capacities) act in our name, using our money and we (when the enemy retaliates against civilian western targets) can end up paying the price, ironically often with further restrictions on OUR liberty and civil rights.
Its not unreasonable to demand better oversight of what is going on than we have had, officially, so far. Whilst I understand genuine security/secrecy concerns, this is easily abused to cover up such acts. If you have a better system, pleaes propose it. I'll admit I cant come up with one.
From http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-wikileaks-vii-take-up-wikileaks.html:
Three interconnected criticisms of Wikileaks, and of the recently released Afghanistan material, merit consideration. These particular criticisms can be summarized as follows:
"These materials don't tell us anything new, or anything we didn't already know."
"While the materials may contain points of interest, they certainly aren't the Pentagon Papers!" (The exclamation point is always implied at a minimum.)
"Perhaps Wikileaks is to be commended in certain respects. Sad to say, though, this won't stop the war."
All three points were announced within a day of the latest Wikileaks story breaking in the news; sometimes, they were put forth within hours. This was true of both mainstream media and of the overwhelming majority of blog posts.
Not one of the criticisms is valid. They are all either woefully inaccurate or largely beside the point. Taken together -- and the first two are almost always offered in combination, with the third frequently added as a further reason to set this story aside as another non-event -- the arguments render each other incoherent. If one appreciates the issues involved and knows the actual history that is referenced, the arguments explode one another. (...)
And especially relevant for Mr Orlowski:
"What calls for further close and detailed study is the fact, much commented on, that the Pentagon papers revealed little significant news that was not available to the average reader of dailies and weeklies; nor are there any arguments, pro or con, in the "History of U.S. Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy" that have not been debated publicly for years in magazines, television shows, and radio broadcasts."
Can I suggest that you regularly wrap your ears round the "No Agenda" podcast? They do a great job in deconstructing news media and government spin. Biased towards the US but plenty of UK (aka "Gitmo Nation East") stories too. Needless to say the Wikileaks story is a regular mention.
Adam Curry and John C Dvorak do a great job with this. Bung them a donation if you feel inclined.
http://www.noagendashow.com
I can only imagine that the bigger concern is that the other files and documentary evidence blast warmongering lobbies and their political supporters to hell and seventy two virgins, rather than actually having any real impact on the grunts and rednecks on the killing fields in foreign battle grounds. ...... rogue business ventures.
Even if no soldiers die from this there are still ample legal grounds to criminally prosecute Assange the self righteous over this. He effectively made a hit list available to one of the most violent organizations on the planet. An organization that has already promised to use the documents to look for names of people to kill.
In most countries wanton disregard for another person life which subsequently causes the loss of that life is called manslaughter. Assange is known to travel around by sneaking across borders or using false passports or the like. He makes a big deal out of not using normal travel like the rest of the world has to.
He is a self righteous egomaniac who is willing to sacrifice others lives for furtherance of his own political agenda. Call that what you will, but he needs to be stopped before king nothings throne of dead bodies is raised as high as he wants.
"Even if no soldiers die from this there are still ample legal grounds to criminally prosecute Assange the self righteous over this."
Happy to consider this once you can point out which piece of criminal law is being broken. Suggest you provide the relevant criminal law from multiple countries, as it's not remotely clear under which set of law this would be done.
I know that giving out a list of names isn't inherently illegal in an awful lot of Western countries.
Before we start talking about alleged egomaniac Julian Assange being put on trial, can we introduce some historical context into the discussion.
Once we have seen Bush and Blair standing in the dock before an international war tribunal charged with crimes against humanity we will be better informed about how to regard Assange's revelations.
"God told us to do it." will be rejected as a legitimate defence.
.
It may take a long time to go through every combination to bruit force that bad boy open. But someone trying random keys might get lucky and do it on their first guess.
I really hope it only contains the ingredients to coke and KFC's special coating.
Wikileaks is right to publish whatever comes their way. They are not under the US jurisdiction, therefore any internal US laws and regulations do not apply to them. They do not have to consider those who the US considers enemies as their own enemies. They should just be careful with making/receiving payments in US Dollars from now on.
As far as the "outrage" of putting sources at risk is concerned - who is putting the sources at risk? Quickly tell me, eh?
Is it a website, which publishes information it came across or is it the inept military force, which allows sensitive information about intel sources be transmitted over low security channels, so that it can be leaked by what looks like a relatively low-rank disgruntled insider???
The US military strategists keep bragging about the new information space in warfare and all that hi-tec sounding nonsense and they cannot even organise themselves to keep their intel sources protected? Either they are incompetent or they don't give a toss about the safety of those "sources" in the first place.
Even if it's the latter - it will serve as an embarrassing lesson to them. Hopefully, they will take measures to avoid similar embarrassment in the future. That what doesn't kill (generals) only makes them (generals) stronger, you know...
I see that, once again, the Yanks (our gallant allies)are opbjecting to having the truth told. The so called special relationship was between Churchill and Roosevelt not the countries they represented. Let us sdeclare UDI from both them AND them and the European Union and get back to what sense we can make of our former standing within the world. We can stand alone and when we do we usually make a good go of it, unless we have socialist principles interfering.
Without whistleblowers those making corporate/military/government decisions can do what they like, bully the timid, cover it up and avoid accountability. Whistleblowers are those who become aware of the pathology of decisions made by the corporations, organisations and departments they are working within, (some with personal and malicious axes to grind pretend to be doing this) and are taking big personal risks of being attacked by rich and powerful people who got where they are by making it as expensive as they can get away with for whoever would oppose them.
So what to do with information coming from whistleblowers ? Publish it regardless of the consequences ? Well that is generally the free-speech right of a news organisation or private individual, but It seems in this case that Assange of Wikileaks is taking a more responsible view, recognising that some of the information Wikileaks have been given could compromise the safety of innocent people, and enlisting the help of those who can help them sanitise it prior to publication.
I think there's a lot of misplaced anger at wikileaks. Love them or hate them, they didn't steal the documents.
The only questions now are.
Do you want the Pentagon/DOD to sanitize the War Crimes and Corruption and Oath breaking?
or
Do you want WikiLeaks to sanitize the operational logistics?
Meanwhile, will the whole thing be used a a propaganda seed story to fuck up the web even more with all this cyber BS.
We are fighting TWAT (The War Against Terror) sadly the terrorists are the American and UK governments and armies, therefore by extension anyone who collaborates with them are also terrorists and their details should be published in full so the forces of good i.e. everyone else can exterminate them.
How can we fight a war against terror when we are the terrorists?
... wouldn't it be great if democracy really did work & we were in charge of our own destiny?
Alas, this isn't the case. This is the reason Wiki-leaks exist.
Kudos to them for taking such an incredibly brave stance, however, extreme caution needs to be exercised - I really hope they play their hand responsibly and effectively.
The powers that be *will* try to catch Wiki-leaks with blood on their hands, that's a no-brainer.
Lets just hope there's some good lawyers (is there such a thing?) at hand.
The best thing we can hope for, aside from our troops coming home, is that history is written correctly. History hopefully will record that Western forces were involved in the area primarily for material and strategic gain. Any BS about 'the democratisation of Afghanistan' is just that.
God, how I wish our government would just damn well fess up about our position in the middle east - it's so frikkin' obvious, it hurts to see all this shit go down and hear complete BS about 'helping these countries toward democracy' - BUNK, utter utter SHIT.
... ahem, I'll get my coat...
Pentagon Internet Cat NO LIKES the wikileak monster!
All your docs are belong to us.
No one likes a dirty war. The pentagon does not like it when they don't get to control 100 percent of any war's presentation to the public. If the public gets disillusioned (meaning they see war for what it is), then the funding will be cut off. The right wing industrial complex in the USA cannot stand for that, oh no, they can't.
No one is being 'outed' on wikileaks. The docs are being screened. Wiki just wants people to know that the war is not 'clean', that innocent people are being killed outright, and the news organizations are NOT showing that to you, the citizen, that is paying for all this bullshit.
I am a 20 year disabled vet, and it brings tears to my eyes when I see our fellow soldiers being killed for NOTHING. The whole point was to find Osama. Well, the joke is, "HOW MANY SOLDIERS DOES IT TAKE TO FIND OSAMA?" Apparently, it takes over a trillion dollars worth of soldiers to do it. My kids have lost a free college education, a free car, and maybe a free house because of this war. We could have set up solar power plants, water treatment facilities, and schools all over the planet. BUT NO. We spend our decedents cash on bombs. HOW STUPID IS THAT? The nerve we have, to call ourselves civilized. I'm embarrassed to even be called human. The waste is horrible and the real cost of this war is un-calculable at this point. Our grandchildren will HATE us. No doubt about it.
PARIS: This war is so stupid, even I see it for what it is.
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