Murphy Rides Again
CBS News reports that Times of London reporters “scanning the [Wikileaks] reports for just a couple hours found hundreds of Afghan names mentioned as aiding the U.S.-led war effort.”
One specific example cited by the paper is a report on an interview conducted by military officers of a potential Taliban defector. The militant is named, along with his father and the village in which they live.
The news came as Wikileaks founder Julian Assange expressed fears he could be arrested. The Telegraph says he “has been warned by ‘inside sources in the White House’ not to return to the US as he could be arrested.”
He’s had more warning than the individuals in Afghanistan who will more than likely be identified by al-Qaeda support cells in Western Europe or the Middle East who will pore through the Wikileaks documents. The names of the traitors to radical Islam will be duly transmitted to the avengers who will then go out severally into the night on their missions of revenge. Recently Radio Netherlands described what Afghans who are suspected by the Taliban can expect to endure. The Taliban have cut off the hands of construction workers who build government-funded projects; sent a suicide car bomb against a district chief believed to have been working with US special forces. Death in many forms will be their lot. One informant Radio Netherlands described “holds a thick yellow sheet tightly around his face” to preserve his anonymity. Now it turns out he shouldn’t have bothered. If the London Times is right, his name might be one of the several hundred the British reporter has found in just a few hours.
Yet the dead are the lucky ones. The more unfortunate may wind up in a torture chamber similar to one found by Coldstream Guards. It features such amenities as chains to hang prisoners from walls. Not that the inmates would want to walk on the floor: that features broken glass. And there is limb amputation, kneecapping with an electric drill, eye gouging, bone-breaking or ritual rape to smash the will. Where the offender is not himself available punishment will be visited on his relatives.
When Julian Assange released these documents he assured the public that it had been carefully reviewed to avoid putting people at risk. He said it with the greatest apparent confidence. Now it emerges that either he didn’t know how to avoid putting innocents in the line of fire or didn’t care. But competence is not required to sit in judgment of others. Not today. All it really takes is enough self-righteousness to impose your amateurish viewpoint on the world on the theory that nobody else has ever been as clever as you. We are always the people we’ve been waiting for.
Yet Assange can be forgiven for thinking that viewpoint and style were the sum total of qualification needed to engage in the life and death business of publishing secrets in time of war. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, explaining that the White House didn’t try to stop the publication, said he met with reporters from the New York Times and sent a message through its reporters to Assange asking that he redact information in the documents that could harm US military personnel. As for the Afghans? Well what about them? Wikileaks made its pathetic effort to sanitize the data, didn’t they? And if it was good for the Times and Gibbs, why shouldn’t Assange have concluded it was good enough period?
One or more of those connected with this story may in the next few weeks, under questioning from critics, express their sincerest and most heartfelt regret at the death or danger which their leak has exposed men, women and children to. But poise your finger on the pause button; watch for it carefully before it flashes past to the standard peroration on the noble purposes of showing the “true nature” of war. Because the regret may last all of five seconds, though for those who will lose a loved one to Taliban reprisal the pain will last much longer. But the wretched of the earth will endure, as only those who have accustomed themselves to being the moral guinea pigs and butt of jokes of the great and good can endure.
As for Assange, will he have any genuine second thoughts? Scott Fitzgerald may have described him when he wrote: “I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people … they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
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So is Julian Assange this generation’s “Hanoi Jane”. Or just another over-aged catamite? Regardless, his cup runneth over, me thinks.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/04/wikileaks-julian-assange-iraq-video
“People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.”*
*
_Otto Von Bismarck
Wretchard,
You know firsthand (from your experiences during the Marcos Regime) the level of risk and the dire consequences that will be metted-out due to this self-righteous vermin. The utopian liberal mindset is incapable of true altruism or empathy -the only effects they see, first order or otherwise, is those that affect their primary target -the peripherals be damned. Those who aided and abetted the ISAF forces do not matter -you see they are not collateral damage, they are bloody sacrifices for the utopians to their god Cthulhu.
Wiki-kills
Assages actions has probably led to the death of more people than Ames, Hansen, Walker, indeed more than all the cold war spies put together*.
*Possibly excluding the atomic spies, if we posit that having the bomb made Stalin feel confident enough to encourage adventurism in, f.ex. Korea. Delay their program for just a few years, and the Korean war looks more and more unlikely.
My take on Assange and the Swedes.
“Ah, no need to amputate.”
“You can save it?”
“No, it so necrotic it fall off by itself anytime now.”
Another case of compassion fraud writ large.
Ass-ages is complicit with any crimes committed with his poisoned fruit.
The US leaker needs to be hanged — and put in the gibbet.
There is simply no way that hundreds of anti-invasion Afghans will not be tortured unto death directly as a result of this quick burn.
Never forget: the Taliban are Pakistanis coming over the border to rape and ruin the countryside. They are NOT locals. What locals are involved are coerced. Just as the Coldstream Guards.
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. — Matthew
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment. For even the wise cannot see all ends. — Tolkien
Risking your own life is mostly your business; risking somebody else’s is usually none of your damned concern. That circumstance makes wise societies surround the declaration of war, the termination of infant lives, the execution of criminals and pulling the plug on the sick and infirm — the taking of all kinds of human life — with all kinds of procedure and safeguards because it is all too easy. Even a war is conducted with great care; rules of engagement, chains of command and responsibility. And yet wars are declared unjustly, millions of children are killed on a whim, innocents are marched to the gallows, the power to ration healthcare is handed to somebody nobody knows and friendly fire casualties happen despite every precaution. We may object to these things but how shall we redress them? By words surely but what about acts? Each time we use deadly means to oppose a deadly endeavor– when we shoot an abortionist, blow up an army recruitment station, kill a policeman — we take on the same responsibility as those we accuse of being too cavalier with death.
And then we find that revolutionaries can also kill by mistake; that protests sometimes ends in a Pol Pot’s accession to power; that once you get into the great complex business of death you had better be prepared to find blood on your hands. The downside to helping Hamas “break the blockade” in Gaza is that some poor Thai guest working in Sderot is gong to die from a Qassam on the noggin. You can’t live on earth without touching the ground. You can’t act in history without becoming one of the boys.
You don’t like it? Learn to. All true stories involving men in conflict end in death and it is a dishonest story teller who keeps that fact from you. In conflict the only choice you have sometimes is not whether someone dies or doesn’t. The choice you have is whose side you are on.
I have occasionally argued that “there are no atheists in foxholes” not just because people pray for survival but because they eventually realize they have to pray for forgiveness. We strive for righteousness; and the most righteous of all know how short of the mark they fall.
Never trust a man who is willing to leave the world of men, who is above reproach and worse, who may believe it never applies to him. Murphy hands out the “oh no cards”, but only to those who can see them for what they are. Whether Mr. Assange ever believes that absolution is something he only can decide. But we cannot so easily sit in judgment of ourselves; and history is a long time making up its mind. They say when history ends a trumpet is sounded to announce the score. Until then, what do we know?
And as the saying goes, evil is the absence of empathy.
My only hope is that somebody harmed by this leak or somebody related to somebody harmed by this leak will have their revenge upon this smarmy, self-rightous creature. Remember the Journolist quote about (figuratively) throwing somebody through a plate glass window and then taking photos of the bloodstained body? Can’t (figuratively)happen to this guy fast enough.
Ahh, Julian Assuages..doesn’t he?
“Collateral murder” indeed. It seems that leftists always SAY that they don’t pick a side, but then, they do…don’t they?
Their comments seem to always come out in favor of one over the other. They don’t seem to be as much “anti-war” as they are “pro the other side”.
If one was so terribly invested in stopping war violence, wouldn’t one find a methodology that didn’t exacerbate the deaths of innocents? Wouldn’t that be of paramount importance? Would one blithely march forward with reckless disregard for the torture and death of innocents?
Hardly.
The exalting of the self-anointed…rarely, if ever, takes time to consider the “little people”. Too busy, you see…fixing the crown for the coronation into the kingdom of imperial wisdom and goodness and “truth” as they see it.
Arrogance corrupts. Absolute arrogance…murders innocents. Living with that and the blood on their hands maybe, just maybe…will penetrate the thick walls of their smug and pedantic heads.
I suspect that Assange may have unwittingly put himself in as much peril as he has put Afghans and soldiers in peril. The Taliban are not the only group that have long memories and have pledged themselves to revenge.
This man has now limited his own ability to travel. Delete the USA, large parts of the Middle East. Has Canada’s or Australia’s security been damaged? England?
The US Military has a big piece of the responsibility for the consequences of this release of information. The Military has not come close to keeping up with technology when it comes to security.
O/T, Buddy spoke of this many weeks ago…
Haphazard Firefighting Might Have Sunk BP Oil Rig
http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/2286/
Belmont strings never cease to amaze.
@ wretchard who wrote “When Julian Assange released these documents he assured the public that it had been carefully reviewed to avoid putting people at risk. He said it with the greatest apparent confidence. Now it emerges that either he didn’t know how to avoid putting innocents in the line of fire or didn’t care to.”
It’s quite possible that Assange does not see people fighting against the Taliban as “innocents.” Given the cavalier attitude with which he has placed so many in mortal danger, it’s also quite possible that, innocent or not, he does not seem them as people.
I think the invocation of Murphy’s law and the equation of abortion and wartime collateral damage is off the mark.
This horrible affair is just more confirmation of the fact that all liberalism is but nihilism, usually writ small but sometimes in blazing neon. There is nothing unintentional about this sadly evil man’s mission, just as there is nothing unintentional about the abortionist’s taking of innocent life. On the other hand, the accidental and/or justified taking of lives is qualitatively different when it is done in the effort to serve the good.
Unfortunately, liberals do not grasp the fact of the absolute and must necessarily get lost in their relativistic universe and their ultimate confusion of evil with good and wrong with right.
Who is heaven’s name are the “inside sources in the White House” that told him not to come to the U.S.? In the White House??!
What is that other than sympathy for Assange? What is that other than collaboration? What is that other than treason?
Gee, I wonder if Wikileaks will leak the name of the White House informants? I won’t hold my breath.
I think Starling has a point at #15: Assange and others of his ilk are the true racists. He wants to constrain the white man’s war making ability but has no concern for what publication of this material does to the little brown men in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Racism. F
Who is heaven’s name are the “inside sources in the White House” that told him not to come to the U.S.? In the White House??!
Probably the same sources that gave him the information to begin with. And what would those sources do to keep from being exposed? Mr. Assange may suffer an unfortunate and fatal accident in the not too distant future. Yet another useful idiot who has outlived his usefulness.
Those named are now officially chum and the taliban are sharks. Kipling has some advice:
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
In recent years I have come to muse rather frequently on how often people deliberately misunderstand reality and as a result take actions that produce the exact opposite of that they intend – or profess to intend.
The cases where this has happened are legion, and range from the very large and to the very small. From McNamera’s gradualism in Vietnam to the Space Shuttle to the CRA to the peaceniks repeated transgressions, it happens as surely as the sun rises. This may reflect the innately perverse nature of the universe but it certainly shows the immense power of stupid people, especially in large groups.
I would suspect that the biggest factor simply is people putting what they see are their own personal interests first and then fabricating a mythology to go along with it.
The actions of Julian Assange should come as no surprise. The number one priority of the radical Left is to inflict as much harm as possible to the interests of United States of America. All other considerations are secondary. The radical Left wants a US defeat in Afghanistan far more than in Iraq: having built up the Afghan War as the “good war” and then working for defeat, it in effect kills 2 birds with one stone. If a defeat can be obtained in Afghanistan, a US defeat in Iraq is far more likely.
As for “American” radical Leftists, Assange is the near perfect tool to bring about a US defeat by providing cover for them domestically. If a campaign of assassination against our Afghan allies is successful, the domestic Left can always blame foreigners for the defeat. This situation is a “win-win” one for them. Assange becomes a hero to the European Left and the American Left gets their long sought after goal of destroying American power with plausible deniability. Note the indirect cooperation with Assange by the WH doing NOTHING to stop the publication of the article and how Assange has been “tipped off” to avoid coming to the US.
One final point, Assange feels NO responsibility towards the Afghans that he has put in harm’s way regardless what words he may express. Words are cheap for the Left especially if put to use in furthering of their goals. To radical Left, our Afghan allies are nothing more than loathsome collaborators that deserve their fate, and if their families suffer too, so much the better.
The obvious solution is to immediately grant the inidividuals in Afghanistan mentioned by Assange – and their extended families, especially the angrier male relatives – assylum in Sweeden. Preferably Assange’s hometown. Maybe someone could even supply them with pictures and the home address of their “benefactor.” So they could properly thank him, of course.
Ah, too much to ask for I suppose, and Assange perhaps has neighbors who haven’t done anything to deserve a carbomb in their street. And of course Assnge deservese a trial and a hanging (after the appropriate “procedure and safeguards” of course) but won’t get either. The people who refuse to hold these self-imprtant traitors accoutable are part of the problem too.
And there’s the real Hell of it. The actions of careless idiots like Assange (and the Fitzgerald quote seems so apt) and those who give them a pass make it harder and harder for civilization to preserve the proceedures and safeguards. They errode the margin of safety and the sense of justice that let us trust “procedure and safeguards” instead of a rope and a tree or a bullet and a brick wall.
1) What about the REMF’s who provide the documents in the first place? Wikileaks does not exist without them. Even if Assange received them from anonymous sources, I imagine the transmissions have some form of “DNA” on them.
2) What do the Taliban do when it is revealed that Osama bin Laden has been selling them out?
Wrechard mentioned on another post that Assange is probably a tool from the backroom. I want to know who is runnig this particular backroom. The State Dept.?
Is this Ass-flange fellow hiding out in the same Sweden that threatened to cut off diplomatic relations with the US over the Vietnam War, but earnestly maintained its “neutrality” towards Hitler back in the day?
I will give him some credit though, even if it is just for being delusionally out of touch (psst, hey Ass-flange, Obama’s in charge, Americans are the “good guys” again, hating America is so 2008!). He is the only one of a plethora of previously ubiquitous “anti-war” scolds who has made any noise at all since January 20, 2009. Cindy Sheehan, Code Pinko, International Answer, even the “Free Darfur” and “Free Tibet” bumpersticker posturers have all gone the way of the woolly mammoth, if car bumpers here in the DC area are any indication.
It would be hilarious if he had not sealed the doom of so many people who are trying to make their lives and the world a better place. Instead it is just lefty, show trial, gulag, mass grave, shared misery tragic.
#12 Hangtown Bob
I suspect that Assange may have unwittingly put himself in as much peril as he has put Afghans and soldiers in peril.
It reminds me of the man whose wife and children died in the 2002 mid-air collision of a Russian passenger jet and a DHL cargo plane over Germany. He tracked down the air traffic controller he held responsible for the accident and stabbed him to death about a year and a half after the tragedy. This was a civilian disaster rather than a war-related accident but it still shows that some people do indeed have long memories and don’t hesitate to take the law into their own hands.
Meanwhile, poor little Julian is afraid he might be arrested if he returns to the United States. What’s he afraid of? A cellmate who’d be delighted to teach a blond pretty boy the facts of prison life? And what has happened to the bravado in his Spiegel Online remark, to wit: “This is something that I find meaningful and satisfying. That is my temperament. I enjoy creating systems on a grand scale, and I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing bastards. So it is enjoyable work.”
As Gerard Vanderleun remarks, “I wonder what happens if the bastards crush back.”
Sounds like Julian is getting just a bit wee-weed up about that possibility.
So brave sir Gibbs – the human equivalent of Wormtongue – tells us Mr. Assange has been warned he might be arrested should he make so bold as to visit the United States.
What a load of festering Dingo’s Kidney’s!
We’ve been assured that Obama had advance knowledge of the release of the material, and time to review it, and gave qualified approval. His own statement indicated that the informatation Assage released included elements which had prompted his own desire to fundamentally change U.S. policy in the Afghan conflict.
I challenge someone to present credible logical argument that the materials were NOT released in the first place with the full knowledge and approval of Obama, full knowing that Afghanis were identified as informants, and would be murdered as a direct result of the revelation.
The result is absolutely consistent with the decisions our leader has made, the delays, the hobbling Rules of Engagement, and the scorn and spitting contempt he has shown for the military at every step of the way.
Well, what the heck? The U.S. is so darned powerful, we can afford to have all our secrets given away, all our friends betrayed, all our weapons spiked. Here, terrorists, take my daughter, take my grand-daughter, have your way with them, just don’t, please, interfere with my ESPN or the TV remote.
Hey! Could somebody send me a marker so I can draw a dotted line across my neck to show’em where to slice?
————
In this context, I gotta assume a few other BC readers occasionally listen to Doc Savage. Last week he had a telephone interview with Andrew Breitbart, giving him a chance to correct certain distortions that have been widely circulated about the videos he published of Shirley Sherrod speaking to the NAACP.
Can anyone here provide information about any other Post-Sherrod interviews by ANY news organization whatsoever with Mr. Breitbart? Or is my impression correct that Breitbart has been pretty much left by the conservative commentators to hang in the crossfire?
Assange should be arrested.
What gets me is the mindset at the WH which takes such a casual attitude towards such leaking. It has been suggested that the leaks were deliberately made by this administration to set in motion “cut & run.” I don’t know about that, but the general mendacity of this bunch makes that scenario sound plausible.
From an article in der Spiegel earlier this week, an excerpt from an interview with Julian Assange. http://tinyurl.com/36z779x
***
SPIEGEL: You could have started a company in Silicon Valley and lived in a home in Palo Alto with a swimming pool. Why did you decide to do the WikiLeaks project instead?
Assange: We all only live once. So we are obligated to make good use of the time that we have and to do something that is meaningful and satisfying. This is something that I find meaningful and satisfying. That is my temperament. I enjoy creating systems on a grand scale, and I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing bastards. So it is enjoyable work.
***
Well that makes it clear.
#29. Don Rodrigo
Assange should be arrested.
It won’t happen. If he was, he would probably sing, and the lyrics would be very embarrassing to certain Very Important People. Of course it may not be Assange who suffers the fatal accident, but I’m reasonably sure one will happen down the line that conveniently plugs the chain of information. It may very well be the person who he claims provided him the data. The song will not be sung.
Hey, hey, hey–its the Chicago way.
“So far the US forces have killed 95 civilians in Afghanistan. The Taliban have killed 2,500. So which does the MSM focus on and get upset about.” Approximate Quote.
“Justice must not only be done it must be seen to be done.”
If their is no justice from the government people will buy it from private parties or do it themselves without checks or balances. Feuds and assassinations become the norms not the exceptions.
It’s time for the West to rediscover the concept of high treason, and start punish such traitors ruthlessly.
So… what are the grounds for charging Assange with a war crime? He has certainly exposed innocent civilians to reprisal.
Lets open the windows and see if some of the smoke doesn’t blow out of the room.
First, Julian Assange claims to be Australian, which means the USA has no legal grounds for arresting him.
Since President Ford signed a Presidential Finding making assassination by agents of the USA illegal, there is nothing we can do to Julian that isn’t worse then what he has done.
Second, there is no evidence that Julian Assange is who and what he says he is. This whole thing smells of the cloak and dagger boys.
Let me story you a little to explain.
On Dec. 21, 1976 a package was thrown over the fence at the Soviet residence on Tunlaw Road. Thinking it a bomb the guards called the Executive Protective Service. They sent over the FBI bomb squad who, upon examining the package determined it was documents. CIA documents. The next day one Edward G. Moore II was arrested while awaiting payment (3,000$) for the documents.
From here things get strange. If you want an example of crocked and twisty thinking, try and find a link to Mr. Moore’s trial.
Here is a URL to some of the documents released by the Church Committee;
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/docset/getList.do?docSetId=1129
Those documents are much worse then anything our aged cup holder released.
Moore is the classic example of a bait and burn operation. Somewhere in the documents he tossed over the fence was a bit of data (bait) that the CIA wanted the Soviets to have. Anyway, Moore was released by Pardon in 1979. Moore was a file clerk that was promoted once in 22 years. Not the sharpest blade in the drawer.
The whole thing makes me wonder who Julian really is and who he is working for. It also makes me wonder just what the bait in the data dump was. What sort of op is being planned? Could it be an attempt to draw out Talinban hit teams?
Remember, the Special ops people have no problems dealing with Taliban hit squads. No, the problem is finding them to service them.
Setting a trap and waiting for them to walk in is a lot easier then chasing them over hill and dale. Mostly hill in Afghanistan.
Or maybe they are looking for an information conduit?
My point is there is more then meets the eye here. We will never know. Even if the cup bearer is arrested for something, the Moore trial left more questions open then it answered.
Now it emerges that either he didn’t know how to avoid putting innocents in the line of fire or didn’t care to.
Surely you’re joking here. You can’t possibly believe he gives a rip about the lives of brown people he doesn’t even know in a land far away. If he’s a true lefty, he probably considers them enemies of humanity for assisting the US. Further, a true lefty would blithely quote that asinine remark about omelets and eggs.
What is it with these people? I have eaten hundreds, if not thousands, of omelets in my life and not one – NOT ONE – has required a single human death. The real quote ought to be: You can’t enslave and dispossess humanity without murdering millions.
People like Assange are masters at innocuous euphemism. The misery and death they engender don’t even register. Because their intentions are so good, you understand.
15 Starling & 18 F;
You have to remember that the “little brown people” only matter to a Lefty when they can star as victims of Western Imperialism. Other than some lip-biting did Slick Willie actually DO anything to stop the Rwanda violence? Did Hanoi Jane and company get upset when the Pol Pot sent thousands (millions?) to the killing fields? or when the victorious NVA began rounding up citizens for “re-education”? They are all in a tizzy about Gitmo but have no time for the millions sufferring under Lil Kim’s insane regime. Remember Tub-of-Lard Kennedy flying all the way to Ethiopia to watch people starve?
To a Lefty they are just props, useful perhaps for a photo-op but little else. It is the ultimate form of racism.
@31. Tcobb
I’m wondering if the “leaker” might have done so with the approval of Obama. Consider the VOLUME of information: how many people actually have access to all those secret document?
Could it be that the Obama administration is looking for ways to sabotage the Afghan war without it being too obvious, and avoiding blame for what happens?
As for Assange: may his picture, address, and other personal info about him be distributed far and wide on the net, so he may live in daily terror of somebody coming to visit him, like the terror he has inflicted on many Afghans.
More Americans have been killed by illegals than have been killed in the middle east. So America’s middle class is unprotected as are America friends in the war zone.
Those are the immediate dangers to individuals mentioned.
Think of the long term reminification.
WHO can possible be willing to work with US again?
Mad Fiddler # 28:
‘
MSnetwork posed an interview online with Britbart in which he explained that the point of the video was the laughter from the NAACP crowd. And I believe a similar interview with him making that point was aired on Fox News.
As for me, I am surprised that no one other than me seems to be the least bit upset that in her speech Sherrod said “I realized that it is not really black versus white but rich versus poor.” Now that is NOT something a government employee – paid by the “rich” and not the poor (47% of people pay no taxes to the Federal Govt) – should be saying.
Well, good intentions make well-known paving material. Nuance, internal agony and precious concern don’t help those whose safety has been compromised by…well, by whom?, by what?… by a busybody sporting a boatload of pathologies.
Assange has set himself up as judge, jury and executioner and all the caterwauling in all the world won’t change that. What gives him the right to live among us, and to hell with everyone else? At some point the right is forfeit, and the narcissist has to confront more than himself — starting with the people in the real world who feel betrayed and furious, and the families of the survivors.
American pragmatism will likely prevent too many hangups about where to draw the line: Assange passes the duck test and walks, talks and squawks like a scumbag. For many, that’s enough, and the decision is easy. Would you wish to surrender the responsibility to giants like A-G Holder and Gibbs?
Something tells me Assange can run but he can’t hide.
41. RWE
and not the poor (47% of people pay no taxes to the Federal Govt) – should be saying.
You are, of course, using the term “poor” in an ironic way, to fit this context, right?
One of the biggest problems in today’s America is that a whole lot more people than just the 12-15% of genuinely “poor” (by American standards) are recipients of government largesse.
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, we kept on hearing that the federal government needed a central database for its intelligence. The trouble with such an expedient is that it becomes vulnerable to Wikileaks.
As it is, I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that the United States government simply cannot be trusted to run a spy network. It seems that Julian Assange has compromised America’s ability to fight this war, perhaps fatally.
Yet, the war must go on. Our enemies will not stop this war. So, it may be necessary to privatize this war. Yet, privatization opens its own can of worms. At the very least, Congress ought to receive regular reports from private agencies that fight on our behalf.
We need to find some way to fight this war in an accountable manner. What we have now isn’t working. It looks like America’s congressional intelligence committees have a huge amount of work to do now.
Thanks, RWE, even without any link.
I really found it hard to believe that there was a universal conspiracy to silence Breitbart.
——-
p.s. to Skip@35
Do you mean there might be more to this than meets the eye???
Are you suggesting that maybe Obama is actually on the side of the Good and True-of-Heart, and the names in the leaked documents are planted DISinformatsiya designed to get ENEMIES of the US murdered by the unsuspecting Taliban?
So everything Obama has done to trash this country, to trample the rights of citizens, to de-moralize the police, enterpreneurs, Christians, Parents with children, White People, Working People, Military personnel, People who DON’T want to have their health insurance screwed up beyond repair, People who want to be able to drive their cars and eat what they prefer, and farmers who would like to be able to grow food and not die… ALL THAT has been just an ACT to throw the Taliban off-balance????????
BRILLIANT!
So, may I suggest a few names to plant among those documents?
38. Michael
Exactly. Don’t even try to tell me that some “script-kidy” managed to get this information. No. They were highly connected.
What is interesting is the purpose of doing this. For the most part it would seem to consist of revealing Afghans who were informants to the enemy. If it was a foreign power there would be no purpose in making it public. They could simply send that information to the Taliban. Making all these missives public would simply be stupid if they were acquired by espionage. It would give a trail back to the people who had access to them to begin with. Real “spies” who have access to that kind of data usually aren’t that stupid.
As far as the Obama administration goes? Stupid is as stupid does, and we’ve seen plenty of that from the idiot in chief and his underlings.
My best guess, for what its worth, is to make things go downhill in Afghanistan fairly quickly. We have lost “the hearts and the minds” of the Afghan people. We are a moral disgrace. We must leave and never come back. That is the Narrative. All hail the Narrative.
Nearly every institutional policy and event that leaves us shaking our heads and thinking “I don’t understand” may be explained to some extent by the Ruling Class’ worship of Sustainability.
Mad Fiddler #45:
I DO get the impression that the usual suspects are backing away from criticizing Sherrod. This is another case like Biden’s calling Obama “Clean” in the primaries – everyone focused on the trumped up racism charge rather than Biden’s main point, which was that Obama was an empty suit.
Don Rogio: I wonder of that 47% how many receive some form of assistance from the Federal Govt? And of course there are those like the millionaire “farmers” (I think that Dan Rather is one) who do pay taxes but get various forms of Federal assistance. Unfortunately I have concluded that I am not rich enough to ever be rich – I can’t get over that hump where I can make enough money off of investments and from working to offset what the Feds take. In one of what was supposedly one of my best years I paid over 50% of my actual income to pay the taxes on my theoretical investment income that I never have realized and probably never will.
Vanity Fair’s Michael Wolff asks “Can WikiLeaks End the War?”
Who else is going to get hit who won’t be sure what hit them? The Disenchanted Journalist says he’s not sure why the administration wasn’t more concerned about information that might expose informants in it.
Speaking of purges. There’s this awful misconception that on the day of the purge one’s leftist credentials will provide a get out jail pass from the Document of Death; that it will keep you from getting mixed up with the gomers who are the necessary cannon fodder for the cause. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yet you cannot convince a true believer that the very mechansm of anonymous annihilation he has unleashed will someday come back to knock at his door.
Speaking of purges. There’s this awful misconception that on the day of the purge one’s leftist credentials will provide a get out jail pass from the Document of Death; that it will keep you from getting mixed up with the gomers who are the necessary cannon fodder for the cause. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yet you cannot convince a true believer that the very mechanism of anonymous annihilation he has unleashed will someday come back to knock at his door.
Yeah–the credentials didn’t do much for Leon Trotsky, did they?
The tectonic plates of history are grinding, and soon the social volcanoes and earthquakes will follow. But the people at the top are at the top of the food chain and always will be, or so they believe. They are the dinosaurs, and what can defeat a dinosaur? Silly little mammal taxpayers destroying us? Don’t be ridiculous.
This Wikileaks business is small potatoes compared to the leak that revealed and endangered the undercover status and identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Now, in that case, the Left had a big problem with Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. At least until it was revealed that Plame wasn’t a supersecret agent and neither Rove nor Cheney (nor, for that matter, President Bush) had anything to do with her supposed ‘outing’.
Too bad in this case people are truly endangered and likely will die. But that’s the breaks. You can’t expect Liberal guilt or remorse to extend too far when there’s an agenda to be won. Besides, all’s fair in love and war. At least for one side.
47. Pascal
Nearly every institutional policy and event that leaves us shaking our heads and thinking “I don’t understand” may be explained to some extent by the Ruling Class’ worship of Sustainability.
………..
Yeah, this one of the really big bits of nihilism that came with peak (cheap domestic) oil in the early 70′s).
We’d be in good shape if the guys on the board here can get into their heads that there are two parts to the american dream 1.limited government. 2.unlimited resources.
That’s why any conservative grand plan has to involve the idea of collapsing the cost of water desalination, & transport, turning the world’s deserts green and doubling the size of the habitable earth.
Its an organizing idea.
The skills and money made in this project will provide the experience and capital base for the bigger jump to space later in the century
TCobb @ 46 “My best guess, for what its worth, is to make things go downhill in Afghanistan fairly quickly.”
My impression of Obama’s intent in Afghanistan has always been to find a way to use that difficult and risky war to discredit if not destroy the military, and to ignore any possible political backlash that might come his way as a result.
#46 Tcobb
As far as the Obama administration goes? Stupid is as stupid does, and we’ve seen plenty of that from the idiot in chief and his underlings.
Latest dose of stupid: Obama’s choosing to travel to NYC to tape an interview for The View rather than visit the 100th anniversary Boy Scout Jamboree close to Washington:
“The Jamboree kicked off this week at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia, where organizers had invited the president to speak to the 45,000 scouts in attendance. All three of Obama’s predecessors have made it to one Jamboree while in office.
But the president will instead be traveling Wednesday to New York for a taping of the ABC show, as well as Democratic fundraisers and a stop in New Jersey. The talk show appearance comes as campaign season moves into full swing, but also amid efforts to cap the Gulf oil spill for good, contain the damage from an unprecedented leak of Afghanistan war documents and battle Arizona over its immigration law — set to go into effect Thursday. Obama also has an out-of-town event planned for Friday in Detroit.
But while the Jamboree lasts until next Tuesday, the president is sending his regards via a videotaped message.
Boy Scouts of America spokesman Deron Smith said the organization knew Obama’s invitation would hinge on his schedule and found out two months ago that he would not be able to attend.
‘It just depends on his schedule,’ he said, adding that ‘there’s always a spot’ available for the president during the Jamboree. Obama also serves as honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America.
The White House said Tuesday that the fundraisers, not the TV appearance, prevented the president from attending.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/27/obama-missing-historic-boy-scout-jamboree-fundraisers-view-taping/
Well, God forbid he should do anything that either of the Bushes did (actually, I think both 41 and 43 were Boy Scouts when they were kids). And of course we know that the BSA takes unprogressive values like duty, honor, and country seriously; Obama would be shown up as the empty suit he is in front of those young men.
Laughing_Wolf of Blackfive milblog has a post on this topic titled J’ACCUSE. He wants to see Assange in court.
Laughing _Wolf talks about an interpreter he came to know, how dangerous it is for collaborators, the many uses of an electric drill.
Charles @52
Humanity’s Dream like that drives the misanthropes within the ruling class into paroxysms.
Tell me how to do it? Give me a clue. It’s perplexing to watch how our side seems to lack a inspiring leader who can crack the thick, deadly pessimism.
Have you found water development being inextricably stymied by the “rules” Charles? Is it treated anything like the nuclear industry in the USA?
An administration packed with traitors
will not shy away from betraying its own military
If that’s what it takes to bring down domestic opposition
This administration already sent up a “trial balloon” in the widely circulated assessment from Dept of Home Security which defined ACTIVE MILITARY RETURNING FROM COMBAT DEPLOYMENT AS POTENTIAL TERRORISTS, while IGNORING the actual threat of ISLAMIC JIHAD.
Do you think for an instant that an arrogant man who can’t even bother himself to know how to pronounce “corpsman” correctly gives a SH*T about anyone in the U.S. Military? That kind of obstinate ignorance can only result from a determined animus for anything remotely connected to the selflessness of military service.
I cringe every time I think of the picture of our president refusing to place his hand over his heart during the playing of the National Anthem, while everyone around him does so.
That gesture is his slap in the face of anyone who cares for this country.
@ PA Cat: So far, I’ve only found one commenter on the internet who’s mentioned the obvious. This snub is evidently a sop to the LGBT’s, in lieu of any real pro-homosexual legislation (too disturbing to homophibic blacks and hispanics). Recall that the dems booed the “homophobic” scouts when they appeared on stage circa 2004. Ditching the scouts gives him brownie points with LGBT’s and does not get minorities’ dander up.
A pretty clever juggling act on the part of O’s handlers, who are well aware of how mainstream hatred for gays is amongst those oh-so-vibrant nonwhites, AND who recognize scouting as something disturbingly non SWPL – akin to bibles, guns, flags, NASCAR, &c. Like the Afghan shepherds who will wind up w/o heads thanks to Mr. Assange’s conniving, the scouts are just collateral damage in The Big Game.
One wonders what will happen as the tax base continues to erode, and gays, blacks, mexicans, women, and gay black/mexican biracial feminists all fight for political influence & a shrinking slice of the pie. Oh well – O! and co will deal with that in due time.
So the guy exposes malpractices in Afghanistan that goes against every single human rights code and the administartion is spewing venom at HIm for showing the wrong – not the wrong itself?
The left is making a mockery of the leaks, @wookieeleaks on twitter. Danger Room is teasing with a big scoop in about an hour: http://snipr.com/zxihg [www_wired_com]
This really stinks to high heaven.
#58 Nine-of-diamonds
Actually, several folks mentioned that aspect of the snub on the Anchoress’s thread about the Jamboree. I think the recent firing of a theology professor at the University of Illinois (for teaching official Roman Catholic doctrine about homosexuality) and the decision by the University of Augusta (GA) to withhold a diploma from a student unless she supports gay rights have made a lot of people more aware of the covert LGBT agenda in O’s administration. For more info. on the Howell and Keeton cases, here’s the link:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2010/07/28/the-clampdown-shirley-sherrod-ken-howell/#comments
Like the rest of their mistakes, this one too is an artifact of their coddled lives and their shocking historical ignorance. They don’t understand how thin the veneer of civilization really is, and they don’t seem to realize that if their revolution is successful, it ends with the Men of Action they so damned admire lining the “heretics” of the revolution up agains the wall to be shot – the final act of consolidating power and eliminating threats. They were trouble-makers for the last status quo – the new one won’t want them around.
Only one person can have The Ring, after all, and he will have to kill to keep it.
Just as well. The Boy Scouts wouldn’t want to change their motto to “Be Completely Unprepared.” But maybe if they let him know there was a Merit Badge for Golf, he’d have shown up.
So the guy exposes malpractices in Afghanistan that goes against every single human rights code and the administartion is spewing venom at HIm for showing the wrong – not the wrong itself?
Afghanistan is authorized by the elected government of the US including Barack Obama and it is carried out by military professionals who have a great deal more experience in these matters than anybody else. I don’t agree that Afghanistan is a “war of necessity” and I certainly have no admiration for Barack Obama. But he’s elected and I’m not. I don’t have the power to break the system simply to put my point across. I can’t arrogate unto myself the power to effectively countermand this process nor can I appoint myself the sole determinant of whether to risk hundreds of lives. Or can I? If I can’t, why not?
What’s Assange got that you or I don’t? A t-shirt with Swedish lettering? Does he have more hands than you or I? Does he eat special food? If somebody sent me a document right now proving all the points I ever made on Belmont, but which risked the life of 100 Afghans what would you think of me for publishing it? “To show the wrong?” If I did, I should be damned to hell.
You have an opinion I disagree with. Very well, we disagree. Yet nothing gives me the power to put your name on a list that will expose you to death in order to “show the wrong”. If I had information right now which would enable me to “get back” at Julian Assange, but which would endanger his mother, father, cousin, and infant nephews, should I publish it? In the name of “showing the wrong”? Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander? Hardly. A goose for Assange. Goose eggs for me.
That’s the way it works, isn’t it.
Does anyone have the power to just play God on his own account? We give this terrible power only to the state and the only comfort we take is that it derives from everyone, not just a Party; and this terrible power is hedged with due process. Democracy if it is to exist, cannot presuppose the existence of a special, moral class who stand outside this system, who are somehow more equal than others. The Left does not have the power to mint itself righteousness, however it may believe that it does. They least of all; they with the blood of hundreds of millions on their hands. And yet most people do not want to sit in deadly judgment of the Left. All they want is not to be subjected to that deadly self-righteous, self-appointed judgment themselves. It is a little request, but apparently it is altogether too much to ask.
The Wikileaks expose says nothing about policy that has not already been reported in open source. But says a great deal about sources and methods. The delta for “showing the wrong” is small. The delta for inflicting the wrong is great. Who am I to judge, some will say? Well that is what the Wikileaks expose is all about. It is about who may speak and never be out of turn.
I hate it, but its coming. The day when people will raise the flag of the Jolly Roger and mutilate and kill the cult of the Politically Correct is coming. How interesting it is that so many people have simply forgotten who they voted for President of the US. How inconvenient that would be for them to remember. Its not really the disease, its merely a symptom of the disease.
And how much of history is written in the ink of blood? Almost all of it.
56. Pascal
Have you found water development being inextricably stymied by the “rules” Charles? Is it treated anything like the nuclear industry in the USA?
……….
in spades. It takes the Aussies 3 years from idea to project completion to do a big desalination plant. They’ve done a half dozen or so in the last couple years. They’re up to doing a bunch more.The latest US desalination plant the Carlsbad desalination plant in southern California–was started in 1994. Its estimated time of completion is 2011. I mentiond Aussie desal in my last rdwaterpower.com post.The largest inland brackish water desalination plant in the world was completed in El Paso 2 years ago. It was started in 1993.
Were justice truly a thing about which men and governments were concerned Julian would be snatched up and moved into the house of one of the named informants in Afghanistan while the informant moves into Julian’s digs and enjoys his bank account etc… Alas, there is no justice so perfect in this lifetime.
The other thing that shocked me from the leak was just how few civilians the US has killed. I can’t believe the uproar over less than 200 people being killed during the course of nearly a decade of warfare. Has any army ever had so good a record under such trying circumstances? Could any other fighting force in history have achieved such a thing? I think not. And for this we had to change our rules of engagement and endanger the mission? What does it say about our leaders that they would make this decision knowing that if we lose the Taliban will be back to filling up stadiums and murdering that many innocents in mere minutes?
There has never been a worse ruling class of the dominant world power since Roman times.
Sweden currently has forces deployed in Afghanistan. Maybe the US could push Sweden to charge Assange with treason.
‘CBS News reports that Times of London reporters “scanning the [Wikileaks] reports for just a couple hours found hundreds of Afghan names mentioned as aiding the U.S.-led war effort.”’
Well then, as the US withdraws it behooves us to take along the hundreds of Afghanis who have helped us as well as their immediate families. Just as we did (to some degree) in Vietnam.
Julian seems like a true, pure, 100% Swede. How many Swedes died fighting against the Kaisers in WW1? How many Swedes died fighting against Nazism in WW2? How many Swedes died fighting against Communism in Korea (the UN-approved war) or in Vietnam? Oh, yeah, the Swedes were neutral, pro-Nazi neutral, and pro-Communist neutral. Nothing has changed: Swedes hate, hate, hate the West.
Since his election most Americans have now come to wonder just who BHO is working for?
When you add up everything, and I mean everything, the only plausible explanation is that he isn’t working for the country that put him in office.
unless all the documents were fed to assange with names of people we actually wanted dead.
maskirovka anyone?
Chaos theory..particles in frantic motion. Nothing adds up. I am puzzled over the giddy attitude of the liberal journalists. today’s twitter feed had them in a Star Wars reprise making fun of Wikileaks Afghan document dump. Even the serious ones. This doesn’t make sense.
Obama’s blase attitude makes it plausible that this is a CIA op. Or as Ben Yakov muses above, just who is BHO working for. He is rushing this country into the ditch at such a pace it’s like he’s afraid he’ll be outed before he gets the job done.
Has anybody considered the possibility that the traitors who released this really intended to stop Afghans from cooperating with the U.S.? That is, they support Jihad. What afghan would talk to a U.S. agent ever again after this?
I want to know who the traitors are that told this traitor to not return to America. And lets make it very clear; releasing sensitive information to our enemies in a time of war that results in the death of allies is treason of the highest order. This guy and anyone who abets him should be lined up in front of a wall and shot plain and simple.
70. Menchem Ben Yakov
As others have said, if he had been put in power by our nation’s enemies, what exactly would he be doing differently?
71. Jerry
That depends on what you mean by “we”.
#71. Jerry
unless all the documents were fed to assange with names of people we actually wanted dead.
Under the reign of Ronald Reagan such a thing might have been possible. Under the reign of the big Zero that’s just laughable.
No one will kick in Assage’s door at 3 am. No one will bind him, put a hood over his head, throw him in the trunk of a car and take him to “a torture chamber similar to one found by Coldstream Guards…[with] such amenities as chains to hang prisoners from walls. Not that the inmates would want to walk on the floor: that features broken glass. And there is limb amputation, kneecapping with an electric drill, eye gouging, bone-breaking…” None of those things will happen to him. And that’s a crying shame.
…Our friend Wretchard plants his flag on the moral hill of personal responsibility and right, duty and dedication to the founding principles. But, Tcobb points to the dim and dismal future of that breaking point where honorable men lay down their burden of rationality and take up the pike and saber.
…As a cop I saw crowds turn…it happens in an instant. Wretchards description of his birthcountries Southern Island culture and young men, drinking, talking, arguing and acting in the most violent manner remind me that our own turning point is always just around the corner. What Pushkin called Iskra…The spark. If you ever once see it, you’ll never discount it. It will haunt your worst fears, and it should.
…Damn you Tcobb, I hope you are wrong. The misery that ensues falls mostly on the weak and unfortunate. The strong, the lucky, the prepared, the ruthless and the organized do the best. Damn you Tcobb….but I know you are right. When it’s all over…we’ll know that Wretchard was righter. He speaks of salvation and hope. Tcobb describes what’s under all our rocks. The middle just couldn’t hold.
“As it is, I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that the United States government simply cannot be trusted to run a spy network.”
Actually, Truman asked his budget director (Smith, hereafter the ‘Smith plan’) to do a clean sheet design on an “American” Intelligence system.
This was a follow on to the Carter Plan. John Franklin Carter was a radio producer and commenter ( sort of the Rush of his generation, without the controversy). He was a very smart guy and FDR asked him to look at the problem. He asked because at the time (1944) Donovan (OSS) and Hoover (FBI) were engaged in a bureaucratic death match over who was going to control post war intelligence. FDR wanted an outside opinion.
The Carter plan was a sound as any intelligence gathering organization would every get. Smith came up with a few improvements but they were just details. The Carter plan died with FDR. The Smith plan was killed by both the OSS and the FBI. They joined forces with the ONI to kill it off. The compromise was the CIA, which in it’s original scheme was organized along the lines of the FBI, but staffed by the cowboys of the OSS.
That is why the CIA is more of a danger to the USA then any of our enemies.
The CIA gets by in the world of intelligence by being the 800 Lb gorilla. They have a bigger budget then everyone else so they throw money at a problem. Sort of like a Chinese human wave attack.
Both the Smith plan and the Carter plan are in the book “The Armies of Ignorance” by Col. William R. Corson. Corson was a Marine assigned to the DIA. His history of the American intelligence bureaucracy is the best one ever published.
The Smith Plan is a thing of beauty. It is to the CIA what the space shuttle is to the Wright Flyer.
Forget treason. Assange claims he is an Australian. So ONLY Australia can charge him with treason. He hasn’t broken any laws. Wikileaks is immoral to an extreme, it isn’t illegal. He obviously considers the USA an enemy. That is between him and Australia.
Any attempts on his life, fortune or property would be a crime. Considering the leaks were not real important, I’m not sure what the point would be to chasing him to the ends of the Earth. Considering that he lives in Sweden, it wouldn’t be much of a chase.
Besides how does anyone know who’s side the ‘gani’s named are on. When you open the window and smoke blows in the room, you have to wonder just where the fire is.
Ass(hole)ange is the kind of human being that all people despise. Those who expose actual combatants to make himself feel important. He is as important as a bloated carp on a summer boat landing and the carp has more character and smells better. Julian hopefully will suffer a terrible accident in the near future at the hands of someone who was hurt by his horrible inhuman acts. He is nothing more than a fetid puddle of monitor lizard vomit…and his actions are on par with child rapists, heroin dealers, the New York Times and almost all of Congress. He needs a beating.
Moen@59 (your name has a link, which turns out to be a link to the fine plumbing products of the same name.)
You appear to be here to try to toss a handgrenade into the discussion. Your premise is that the actions generally of the U.S. military in Afghanistan have been evil, and so the revelations of the recent massive leak are justified, and we should all be grateful and relieved that brave people are willing to risk their lives to “speak truth to power.”
Sorry, Moen. I’ve been reading about Islam for 25 years, and what every source – INCLUDING the websites created by Muslims for other Muslims to discuss issues of importance to Muslims – confirm that ISLAM’s holy writings call for the faithful to bring Islam to the infidel by any means necessary. The history of Islam’s spread around the world is the story of military assault, murder, maiming, bullying, and intimidation of its neighbors, and brutality to its own co-religionists to keep those in line who are less fanatical than they should be. With humble apologies, I don’t buy the moral-relativism argument. It is morally and logically BANKRUPT.
You might as well be trying to persuade us that we really should have been giving the Japanese and the NAZIs the data from our Manhattan Project, because US society is so flawed, and we’ve so abused the aboriginals living here before us, and we had started polluting the atmosphere with coal and petroleum long before World War II, when it was already clear to really thoughtful scientists that combustion products were responsible for the greenhouse effect so we should’ve seen it coming.
A friend (” “) I hung around with some years back was a very reasonable and patient person. That is, until the instant you disagreed with her about ANY DAMN THING. I recall a conversation in which I questioned whether it was fair to budget ten times the research money for AIDS that was being spent on Breast Cancer, considering that the number of deaths from AIDS was just a fraction of those from Breast Cancer. (In the US, about 50,000 women still die annually from Breast Cancer; about 15,000 die from AIDS.) She blew up, and started shouting that SHE had LOTS more homosexual friends than ***I*** did, and that SHE was FAR MORE COMPASSIONATE and CARING about GAYS than I am, so I didn’t have any right to be talking about or making decisions about Gay issues.*
In the fullness of time I came to understand that this was her way of winning arguments. The logic didn’t matter, only the volume and vehemence.
Sadly, this seems to characterize the great majority of the little pricks of conscience that comprise the morally-superior Left/Liberal/Marxists.
I invite you to hang around and read here for a while. Wretchard, our host, looks at things from a number of points of view, and welcomes diversity. You will find there are people here who speak plainly. Some are assertive to a high degree. But they also LISTEN to other views, MORESO when their views are presented logically, and with citations and references.
Who knows, you might persuade a few people to see things your way.
* Don’t know how she went back and did a survey of all the gay friends I’ve had, or did some scale-comparison of how I’d treated them compared to how she treated HER gay friends…
Perfidy. I don’t know what else to add except perfidy with collusion from who knows where. Three conjectures are closer.
Does anyone have the power to just play God on his own account?
Ah, isn’t that the definition of a philosopher king?
Democracy if it is to exist, cannot presuppose the existence of a special, moral class who stand outside this system, who are somehow more equal than others.
But why not? Isn’t a council of guardians that special moral class that stands outside of this system?
Why can’t a democracy exist where the people continue to vote for a self-elected “special, moral class”, principally because that class monopolizes the choices of the electorate? Why can’t a democracy exist where those who are not members of this “special, moral class” are so isolated and demoralized that they wouldn’t garner votes from the electorate even if they did have the nerve to run for election?
Why can’t a democracy subsidize a class of people merely upon the basis of their presumptive right to judge the rest of humanity?
If the people freely choose to be oppressed, how is this not democracy? If the people of South Vietnam were to choose Communism in a free and fair election, wouldn’t they deserve to live under Communism? If the people of Algeria were to choose Islamism in a free and fair election, wouldn’t they deserve to live under Islamism? Why should we assume that most people throughout the world want freedom? What if they don’t?
What would you call it when people routinely prefer to vote to dishonest politicians who disrespect them over honest politicians who respect their electorate?
There comes a time when, if the people consistently vote for confidence artists, one should consider the possibility that the people want to be lied to. Perhaps we should accept that sheep may prefer to be led by pigs rather than think for themselves.
#80
Any attempts on his life, fortune or property would be a crime. Considering the leaks were not real important,
You assume that the leaks were “not real important” but it is your assumption. Some people in Afghanistan might think differently…..
Some people elsewhere might from now on avoid collaboration or cooperation with US. They would be scared to work with the nation of peoples who leak collaborators names left and right and think it “not real important”.
wretchard:
“Gibbs, explaining that the White House didn’t try to stop the publication said he met with reporters from the New York Times and sent a message through its reporters to Assange asking that he redact information in the documents that could harm US military personnel. As for the Afghans?”
The wogs? What do they have to do with anything?
And then some of those same people will wonder “why they hate us”.
“But competence is not required to sit in judgment of others. Not today. All it really takes is enough self-righteousness to impose your amateurish viewpoint on the world because on the theory that nobody else has ever been as clever as you. We are always the people we’ve been waiting for.”
A tale I heard from Mark Steyn comes to mind: “[Sinatra] wound up leaving Columbia, but he never forgave Miller. Years later, they happened to be crossing a Vegas lobby from opposite ends. Miller extended his hand in friendship; Sinatra snarled, ‘F— you! Keep walking!’”
To all the “waiters” you describe, “F— you! Keep waiting!”
I would love for this to be disinformation, drawing the enemy into the open, that Petraeus has had in his knapsack until such time that he had his hand on the tiller.
Sadly, though, it’s been years since we saw American cunning of this sort anywhere but in American movies.
starling (#15): “It’s quite possible that Assange does not see people fighting against the Taliban as ‘innocents.’”
Come now, starling, let’s not be blinded by propaganda. Surely you don’t think that the Taliban would kill truly innocent people? I mean, why would they do that, it makes no sense!
[/sarc]
Assange: “I enjoy crushing bastards.”
So do the US military and the Taliban; they only disagree on who the bastards are. Given Assange’s actions, what conclusion are we to draw as which he agrees with?
wretchard (#63): “What’s Assange got that you or I don’t?”
A Polished Brass Four Function Hand Shower.
Charles (and Pascal):
The usual “Green” suspects, Israeli branch, have incredibly enough been trying to block Israel’s new desalination plants from proceeding, based on spurious claims. (I went in more detail in a comment from the last few months, but I can’t find it.)
Mad Fiddler (#82):
AIDS is a disease that can strike anyone; don’t you dare imply that it’s related to homosexuality. Oh, and if you express any doubts about the relatively high level of spending on AIDS, that makes you a homophobe.
Glad to clear that up for you.
78. Dave D.
I don’t mean to diminish you in any way just because you say I should be damned. No problem there. I have instructed my brother and sister that when I die the tombstone should read, “He has gone away to a far warmer climate.”
Try to keep the big picture in mind, people.
There might have been a lot of discussion about BP being required by GAAP to take the full $20 Billion Obama slush fund as a charge against this year’s taxes, even though BP only pays $7 Billion this year. That book charge cut BP’s US federal taxes by — $7 Billion. So the money for Obama’s slush fund effectively came out of the US Treasury. Hmmm. But instead of talking about that, everyone is talking about Wikileaks. Good job!
Then again, people might have been talking about Obama’s missus heading off to Spain on the taxpayers dime for a fancy vacation. She could have given the Alabama coast a boost by going there, but she didn’t. Instead, she is off to Spain — the summer playground of wealthy Middle-Eastern potentates. But no one is talking about it, thanks to Wikileaks.
The trouble with us “small people” is that we think morality should trump politics. Silly idea!
Tcobb (#89): “when I die the tombstone should read, ‘He has gone away to a far warmer climate.’”
Sooner or later, Global Warming’s a-gonna get ya.
Powerline has been on a real tear recently, this is piece about Wilson and FDR’s New Bill of Rights and the roots of liberalism, and it’s terrific, underlays all sorts of topics and arguments these days.
Kinu Ach Drach,
The Odmnistration does at least 20 things EVERY SINGLE DAY that demand a major criminal investigation. It will take intervention by a benign but firm race of super-intelligent and super ethical beings from a distant galaxy just to chronicle all the crap these folks are churning out.
ooops. I guess that’s suggesting that not even the combined wisdom of Belmont can extricate us.
AAAAUGGHH. We need DIVINE help!
Better pray for those aliens! >;-D
Unsk @ 53 “My impression of Obama’s intent in Afghanistan has always been to find a way to use that difficult and risky war to discredit if not destroy the military, and to ignore any possible political backlash that might come his way as a result.”
Agree. One more nail in the coffin. He calls Afghanistan “the good war,” in public, but isn’t that a clue? Given his record for honesty, I mean. The leak won’t be found and Assange will keep his distance, or like Sherrod, will be deemed mishandled and subsequently allowed back in the country so that he can appear on the View. Perhaps Congress will be browbeaten by constituents into holding some hearings. . .
Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Some of you simply disgust me.
This same government with all of its secrets, like Obama authorizing the murder of U.S. citizens without a trial that you want to pare down is the same government you will automatically assume is waging a glorious war (which was never declared) for glory of the glorious empire.
You can’t even keep yourselves to the Constitution.
I spit on everyone who is outraged about secrets we shouldn’t even be keeping about a war that was never properly declared, while we defend and protect the mineral exploration and harvesting of heroin that will kill our citizens.
Don’t even call yourselves conservatives.
Who runs this country? The people. To think that some of you have shouted those slogans and then run around touting the keeping of secrets from us that would affect our voting decisions belongs in the sewage systems beneath where you live.
One final note. Jesus has no need of secrets, only those who want to hide in the shadows and do unchristianly things do.
Is Spencer Ackerman commenting here under a pseudonym? That last one read like a Journolist entry.
That’s right, Jeff (#95), Jesus would have wanted the Manhattan Project to be transparent. Damn Oppenheimer, Bethe, Teller and other such unchristian creatures of the shadows!
By the way, could you please post your credit card number, expiration date, and CCID? Thanks.
JMH, no. Only one person has the balls to use my name.
Bob, So your Jesus is an impotent midget hidden in your drawer next to your CP?
My Jesus has no need of nuclear weapons.
2 Corinth 7:14 – I didn’t realize I was the only one who owned even so much as the Soncino’s collection and dared to suggest his children were abandoned, rather than the other way around…but I guess the story of how they demanded a King (sound familiar)…why bother you have your God of nuclear deterrence, don’t you? God of national security? Department of God the Man will Protect us from war, oh snaps, MAJOR wars.
Sorry J Bare A…
We’re not God.
Last time I checked the truth in wartime required the protection of deceit.
Just ask Mohammed.
As for the rest…
Pure J-List ism…
In English: argumentative nonsense.
—-
Wiki-Leaks…
Freedom bleeds.
EVERY exposed liberal/progressive in Afghanistan is now subject to barbaric reprisals due to Ass-age and company.
The torture rooms are documented. The victims buried.
Yet on comes synthetic JB with his kindergarten rant…
The last time I saw such naivete was in the fictive Time Machine.
Morlocks eating organic, as I recall.
Go forth and pander Ms Eloi.
blert, you fake conservatives make this too easy.
1) Never said we were God.
2) Constitution decides how we go to war, not the President.
3) Who?
4) My bona fides are solid, troll all you want.
5) Yes, you described your comment accurately in English.
6) Freedom is a concept not an organism, factually incorrect. We bleed, whether for freedom or slavery. Trick is knowing which is which.
7) Guess we should get out then. Never much cared for progressives. Or protecting heroin cultivation.
8) Unless those rooms are in our borders, not really caring so much.
9) Sympathetic to which of your random points? Am I sympathetic to progressives being subjected to barbaric reprisals or God or organic food???
10) Which remake of the Time Machine? Or the book. Secretive much?
11) Organic food sucks, if I wanted to pick out bugs, I’d rub my food on the ground outside.
12) Are you actually responding to someone on a different site? Huh?
I see Assange as potentially an accessory to murder. People of his ilk love to think in grand terms and pretend to be operating on principles for the good of mankind. In reality he is holding a target over real people and he should be held responsible for any harm that comes to them. For too long we have allowed super moralists to label their feces-filled swamps as the high ground. That has to stop.
“AAAAUGGHH. We need DIVINE help!
Better pray for those aliens! >;-D”
-93. Scythianeedle
No, that’d be extra-terrestrial help
We already have enough of those; they call themselves progressive.
Just look at Al Gore; look at those reptilian eyebrows: David Icke was right!
Jeff (#98): “My Jesus has no need of nuclear weapons.”
Nor does he need a Colt .45. Do you have a point?
I’m still waiting for your credit card info.
Bob,
I don’t own a Colt .45 either so are you calling me Jesus?
I don’t own credit cards. I pay as I go.
I also don’t use check cards since lost they give access to everything in the account.
No need for impulse purchases. I buy what I intend to buy. I make sure I have just enough to do that. Keeps me from losing too much to muggers.
Dayyam. Why am I that responsible? What do you do with your budget Bob? Buy the latest car so you can look rich to your neighbors? Load up on credit card debt because you simply can’t wait the few months it takes to save up to get that new tv?
Yeah, Jesus didn’t even plan for dinner, just said pass it around.
If you can’t understand that point, not sure typing it here will sink in either.
What about the actual leaker(s)? And the people who set up a system where people with such motivations can work there and have access? And the technology and procedures that permit it?
Yes, Assange is an ass and deserves whatever misfortune comes his way, but our intelligence system has been leaking like a sieve for decades and no one ever seems to do anything (effective) about it.
As 75. rickl says, ” . . if he had been put in power by our enemies, would he have done anything different? . .” and that is the guide as to what is going on.
One cannot figure out who is trying to fool who, and one doesn’t have to. One just has to look at the results.
Of course, by then it’s all academic. And then MSM, or whoever, try to regain credibility such as the recent sad lament that, oh, perhaps Joe McCarthy was right after all and there were agents going more or less all the way to the top.
Main thing is to go by results.
As for the poor Afghanis who have been betrayed, yes, they must be got out.
Vietnam it was boat people. Only a few of those who worked with the US got out.
No doubt the same will happen.
The evil people who have done this may even take out Julian Assange and make it look like one of those betrayed did it.
Watch the results and see who actually benefits.
Assange has no integrity, is not sincere and is not honest.
He chanced on a belief in his life that sponsored a vengefulness born of jealousy and that ignited an agenda constantly fueled by his emotions only tempered by schadenfreude.
He has no feelings for that poor Thai guest working in Sderot (#8) nor the Arabs or anyone else, only for promoting his “self-esteem”.
He is as malicious as are those from Journolist but also an accomplice to murder.
“One final note. Jesus has no need of secrets, only those who want to hide in the shadows and do unchristianly things do.”
Then why wouldn’t JC say where he was for those missing 3 years? When you say Christian, I think of the Inquisition, Thirty years war, Sack of Jerusalem and all the millions of humans Christians have murdered over the ages.
BTW, Congress has only declared war 5 times in American history;
http://www.answers.com/topic/war-powers-act-of-1973
yet there isn’t room on this site for a list of the wars the USA has been involved in over the last 2 centuries.
So what does a declaration of war have to do with anything? Almost ever President in America history has waged war. 5 of them had Congressional authority to do so. The other 30 some just did it. Wars are fought for politics. If Congress has a problem with a war, then they can impeach the President. If the citizens have a problem with a war, they can vote in a Congress that will impeach the President. Until then, Life goes on. Even for wanna-be tyrants who are deranged enough to believe they can dictate to the 300+ million citizens of the most powerful nation on Earth.
If that didn’t answer your questions, sorry, your post was a tad irrational, or as we say around here, ‘Whiskeyish’. I tried to reply in a manner that you would understand, but it really isn’t my style.
Then you think about Christianity wrong.
Perhaps some relative of those who are about to die in Afghanistan will take it upon himself to help Assange understand the pain they will experience.
This is not about Jesus.
It is about the betrayal of Afghanis who mistakenly (?) entrusted their lives to an external help of a democratic, merciful, helpful, external force, the United States, only to be disgustingly betrayed into the hands of their most merciless enemies.
Jesus’ Kingdom was not of this world, but issues of compassion and mercy and genuinely trying to be of benefit, are important as they indicate one’s true nature.
American forces seem to me to have done the best possible in very difficult circumstances.
That seems to me to be honourable.
Betraying one’s allies is disgusting.
Funniest part of this comment thread is that the one sentence throwaway on Jesus on my original comment was just that. A throwaway sentence.
That the substance of my actual comment was never disputed or discussed is hilarious to me, but reflects a sad thread among the commenters who focused on it to deleterious effects of their positions.
It also exposed a decidedly weird OP questionable censorship or delay that seems a bit slanted towards ad hominem attacks and against those who refuse to groupthink. That I find troubling.
It is possible Assange did not intend to expose these people, or better said, he did not ever think about it.
The same probably can be said about the White House – they did not think through the consequences of the potential release. That seems to be a very common thing with elite types – no one does due dilligence – no one does detailed risk assessment anymore. It’s all amatuer hour and shoot from the hip. This is mostly due to the self absorbed thought that one has “natural talent” that does not need mental or physical effort to wield – in other words, they are lazy pretenders.
Jeff Barea:
Why haven’t you posted your full college transcript, your employment history, a full description of your sex life, and your rap sheet online? If you haven’t, should I assume that you have something to hide?
I don’t give a rat’s ass about Afghan mines or opium. What I do care about is defeating al-Qaeda. You know, the folks who plunged airplanes full of living people into large buildings in the United States. Although a formal declaration of war would make it much easier to prosecute anti-war activists for treason, present hostilities fall under the Authorization to Use Military Force Against Terrorists.
Precisely what is your strategy for defeating Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and their gang? Or is your attitude toward terrorist attacks, “Thank you, sir. May I have another?”
For what it’s worth here’s a sort of biography:
The Founder of WikiLeaks and His Secret Life
But Assange’s own profile, far from that of a conscientious moral critic bent on revealing unethical behavior, shows the evolution of an information vandal sublimely indifferent to those who might be put at risk by his behavior.
To Jeff Barea:
I do not choose to adhere to that which you deem proper.
The choice is mine, not yours. I have an absolute natural
right to my choice.
Therefore you, and those who agree with you, have a decision
to make. You can either agree to stand aside while I, and those who
agree with me, go about our business as we see fit, or you can decide
to force our compliance with your desires.
Should you choose the latter course, I daresay you will then face
the necessity of personally engaging in mortal combat.
This concludes my personal correspondence on the matter.
[The news came as Wikileaks founder Julian Assange expressed fears he could be arrested. The Telegraph says he “has been warned by ‘inside sources in the White House’ not to return to the US as he could be arrested.”]
Boo-freaking-hoo. Mr. Assange should have been given the following message from the White House: “Be very careful when starting your car, when you cross the street, when you are out in public and always make sure to lock your doors. In other words, be afraid, be very afraid.”
Geeze Barea, take a breath.
For whatever masochistic reason I took a peak at your blog. You’re all over the place, and pointlessly foul mouthed, but somewhere in all those pop-offs of yours I can see someone that actually cares about his country and doesn’t like what he sees. I don’t know what got you so bent about Belmont, but I can assure you this place is filled with deeply patriotic folks who are light years beyond you in depth and experience and knowledge. You would be wise to listen more and mouth off less.
In any case, one thing is clear. You are young. Very young. What, 22-ish? I know what it’s like to be young and outraged, and I know — with the passing of time — that young rage is often blind rage.
I don’t argue with your outrage. I’m there with you, as is most everyone on Belmont. But learn to recognize your allies. Don’t assume everyone but you is an asshole. Believe me, there are folks on this blog — and I’m not one of them — that have a depth of knowledge that ought to make you bow your head in awe, not snap at them like some angry puppy dog.
Dude, we need young people on our side. I want to see you channel your anger appropriately and smartly, because bad times are coming and we’ll need you out there, with your energy and passion.
So settle down. Admit you don’t know everything (or anything), and stick around and listen for a while. There is great, great wisdom here. Let it in. Learn.
All your rage will lead to is doing something stupid. It may even get you very dead. I wish I could you send you out to Habu for a bit of basic training and learning the fine art of respect.
Leave the mindless rage to the Leftists where it belongs. You need to be fierce, not angry. Believe me, read Belmont for a few months with an open mind. You’ll find a community of kindred souls here. And we’ll invite you in happily if you show people the respect they are due, and learn to engage here like an adult.
Be strong. But don’t get stuck on stupid.
Speaking of introductions Jeff: Who sent you?
Jeff Barea’s opening line here @ 95 is “Some of you simply disgust me.”
Then Jeff follows up @112 with:
“That the substance of my actual comment”
What substance club members? After such a juvenile outburst of an introduction, one expects nothing more than an infantile wail.
Jeff’s self admission is in his projection on the club: “It also exposed a decidedly weird OP questionable censorship or delay that seems a bit slanted towards ad hominem attacks.” Indeed, Jeff “You disgust me” self indicts.
Where are the moderators? This troll is opening flaunting the rules and inciting others to follow his wretched example. (We could use Tocque again Wretchard.) For the most part, the BC is one of the most informative and well respected sites on the web. You can be sure that is disliked in certain quarters. Who sent you?
Wait a second! Remember to Libs like this ass, Assange, the Taliban are freedom fighters and Afghan “traitors” aiding and abetting the most evil terrorists on earth, the American military, deserve whatever torture they must rightfully endure; maybe even the cruelest torture of all, water boarding. Assange will sleep well and probably suffer no pangs of guilt or remorse. He did the courageous, righteous thing exposing the inner workings of the evil empire to the cold light of liberal truth; a hero no doubt to those in his camp and there are many, here and abroad. If a few must die as he goes about his righteous crusade, so be it.
Leftist Garbage
Valerie Plame was a fixture on the Georgetown cocktail circuit.
The closest she ever got to undercover work was while wearing a
silk negligee.
She and her husband were shamless publicitiy hounds. They loved publicity and milked
it for all it was worth on the speaking circuit. It made them rich.
In Afghanistan publicity gets you dead.
Slight difference.
46 tcobb:
My best guess, for what its worth, is to make things go downhill in Afghanistan fairly quickly. We have lost “the hearts and the minds” of the Afghan people. We are a moral disgrace. We must leave and never come back. That is the Narrative. All hail the Narrative.
Could it be that the new CO, Gen Petraeus, is the *real* target? This effectively leads to the ‘lose lose’ for him. { and ‘win-win’ for Obamanoccio?}
tom
Peterike, Maybe you’re more adept at reading between the lines than I (no great accomplishment that) but I looked at Jeffie’s blog and saw a mad egotist spewing incoherence and not a little irony ( commenting on the “15 hardcore circle-jerkers at Belmont with nowhere to go” on his own blog with no comments) Of course it’s hard to reply to senseless cryptic confusion. I saw a guy in downtown Tucson screaming while waving a sign condemning the “Nazi traitors at the Pima County Kangaroo Court” His rant and Jeff’s have a lot in common.
Its time for an object lesson.
Send a STA Team after the leakers.
Reports in the press seem to be zeroing in on a single individual military person – rank of PRIVATE – as the source for the 9,000+ documents which have made Mr. Ass-sang such a celebrity.
(Boy… At least Le Pétomane only made sweet music by issuing gas from his anal orifice!)
My clearance was not so high as that of the PFC mentioned in the press, but the folks who interviewed me during the process repeatedly reminded me of the severe penalties that could be applied to me for betraying the trust given.
On one hand, I find it a frog too large to swallow to think this little pipsqueak would have had the wit first to spend the weeks and weeks that would have been involved in assessing which information to plunder, then to transmit such encyclopedic amounts of information, even in this age of instant internet. Let’s remember that the august MEDIA organizations who received the leaked volumes needed something like eight weeks with their TEAMS of righteous readers to review the stuff.
The Wall Street Journal mentions in passing that: “WikiLeaks says it has at least 15,000 more Afghanistan documents the group withheld until some details could be redacted.
To me this suggests the kid was being deliberately allowed to do this, whether he knew it or not. Like Golem “escaping” from FourDoor, he was performing a task that had been planned and approved by persons in the highest secret rooms of the overlords.
You’d really have to be an ignoramus to believe some pipsqueak PFC would have been able to sift through the tens of thousands of documents involved, select something on the order of 25 THOUSAND documents, and make arrangements to deliver them to Assange, all while performing his assigned tasks, entirely un-aided and un-detected.
Sure I know about plenty of predecessors who went undetected for years. They were almost all of ‘em much older, who started their betrayal AFTER they’d been working at their jobs for years.
Jeff
I am an IDIOT.
WSJ’s report puts the total number of documents RELEASED by Wikileaks this week at 76,000, NOT 25,000.
Though I can’t stop (completely) being an idiot, I can at least occasionally correct a mistake.
Well, that larger number just makes my point all the more emphatically.
Maybe PFC Manning will be given the same legal team and backing that helped Sandy Berger skate away with no prison time after HE stole, misplaced, shredded and otherwise dissappeared top secret documents covering actions by CLINTON that the 9-11 commission was asking him to provide.
WE
ARE
BEING
GOVERNED
BY
TRAITORS.
tomww #22: The name of the game both in Afghanistan and elsewehere is to induce despair on our part. To have us believing that all efforts, whether by General Petraeus or ourselves, are futile. They tried the same in Iraq but “The Surge” foiled them.
The sabotage in the Gulf Of Mexico was for the same purpose. To make us believe
that nothing could be done other than to forgo the benefits of petroleum and revert
to a mid-19th Century standard of living——and population ereduction.
Obamacare is for the purpose of making us believe that we have to submit to edicts or suffer and die from treatable ailments.
Eliminating the Bush tax cuts is for the purpose of making us believe that our incomes are going to dwindle to the point of inadequacy and we must surrender or starve.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
The latest developments indicate that their plan is not working anywhere near as well as they need for it to. Thus they are resorting to intimidation in places. Coercion and force cannot be too far behind. Wonder if they actually dare?
Whoo! This Obama character does have a sense of humor, when he’s not busy dismantling stuff that works…
He’s calling his education program – intended as an “improvement” on Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program – now brace yourselves:
“Race to the TOP”
Honesty in a lowlife politician is SO refreshing, innit?
Jeff Barea = epitome of incoherency.
What a waste of bandwidth!
Ass-ange = A sociopath without a shred of conscience. Since it is not that easy to navigate within society without conscience, like a substantial portion of lefties, he filled the gaping hole with the delegated conscience.
He will be in a special kind of hell once his time’s up.
128. Dave
Coalition efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq ARE doomed to failure.
The problem is Islam.
Unless we are to go into these places and level every mosque, kill every Imam and impose a more amenable ideology on the populations, our efforts are futile.
And not just futile but absolutely damaging and dangerous, not only to the locals who might be receptive to the lure of Western democracy, as this
Assange affair effectively demonstrates, but also the the West generally.
We build infrastructure for societies who view everything in terms of how it can best serve Islam!?
We arm and train police and military so that when we leave those same splendidly equipped forces can round up locals who collaborated with the hated Crusaders!?
Madness.
The whole bloody thing was madness from the beginning.
George W Bush was clueless about Islam, and boy did it show.
Madness.
The problem is not the Taliban, or Al Qaeda, or extremists, or insurrection or any other symptom.
The problem is Islam.
How many millions will die when the West abandons its silly, badly thought out adventure and pulls out?
Sorry Abdul, hope things work out for you and the family; thanks for all the help; sorry about plastering your name all over the internet and all; gotta go.
*zip*
Dave, Mad Fiddler, and others seem to agree classical liberal society is in grave danger from traitors within.
The main thing one can do in the West is to get the information to people. That is how the enemies of the west have got themselves “into power”. Control of the media, the universities, etc. It has taken them immense cost, effort, dedication, time to push an agenda of lies to the point at which the narrative of the lie could be accepted as truth. Post modern thinking, whatever.
It has taken such cost/time/effort because it as a narrative of lies.
If the truth is presented it dispells the lies as light does darkness. It requires almost NO effort and is welcomed by those who realise in an instant the deception.
It is good to discuss in blogs but the real drive must be to get truthful, well reasoned and moderate statements effectively communicated to Joe Public.
Lies can be simply dispelled with the simple truth.
Essentially it is a fairly easy war to win as long as one is focussed and honest.
Honesty in a lowlife politician is SO refreshing, innit?
Mad Fiddler, I’m sure he didn’t do it on purpose. It was an accident plain and simple. And be careful with your language. The “H” word can cause extreme distress to some individuals. There might be some elected officials who are reading these comments. Think of them and the children.
You probably should apologize at once. Its the sensitive thing to do. Before you say or do anything there is one simple test you need to perform: Just ask yourself, if Oprah was in my position now, what would she do?
I don’t expect the Left to get too concerned about the exposure of the Afghans mentioned in these documents.
1. They aren’t card carrying members of the Left, nor are they victims of the Right. Bereft of Political Significance, their lives are of no consequence.
2. They cooperated with Amerikkka in a war initiated by the evil BushHitler and Darth Cheney (a pox be upon them). Just as these two Neocon demons deserve assassination so do these Afghans deserve assassination. They have it coming, karma and all that.
3. Assangle’s intentions were good, therefore he is excused from any unintended consequences that may follow from them. Membership in the Progressive Left automatically grants him this Plenary Indulgence.
Mad Fiddler @ 129,
I know you were being tongue-in-cheek when you praised the President for his honesty over Race to the Top. But what to make of this? He’s gone on The View and said that blacks constitute a mongrel race. Is this a weird kind of evil genius? It seems he flaunts places he can go in speech and attitude, apart from us mere mortals constrained by polite practice and by political correctness. You know he’s going to get away with it, and so he’s sitting there kind of mockingly, perhaps looking over at George Allen and “Macaca”. Or is this a case of the tinnest ear for leadership anybody’s ever seen from a major politician? He struck me as being particularly and pompously academic in tone when he said it, as if he forgets he’s President of the United States and becomes some faculty party poseur riffing on the latest line of bs he’s thought up to be a cool thing to riff on.
To make this gig on The View Obama foreswore going to the Boy Scouts of America’s National Scout Jamboree, the semi-annual celebration of scouting going on at Fort AP Hill, VA this week and next. It’s also a centennial year in BSA history. So, he passes up speaking on a historic once in a lifetime opportunity that’s fallen in his undeserving lap to the boys and young men on the doorstep of adulthood’s crucible in order to yak it up with the girls who are there every day on The View? Yes, yes he does. I think this answers the question on if the guy’s got the tinnest ear for leadership in the Annals of Man.
Better to bow to the progressives’ ongoing war against the BSA. Ironic, isn’t it? The Progressives founded the BSA as a part of their good governance, civilizing influence on the rubes, type of things. But the BSA grew a minds of their own, how dare they? Sharper than a serpent’s tooth it must be that the BSA won’t lie down for figs and grapes with the LBGT crowd. It’s the one institution they founded that’s worth a damn, it’s actually the crown jewel of their legacy had they eyes to see it, and boy do they hate it so!
The actual volume of data fits easily into a shirt-pocket drive, maybe even a thumb drive. I would hope for a maskrikova, but most crimes tend to be pretty banal and a PFC jacking into a network and snarfing up several GB of .doc or .jpg files is pretty banal. Once you’re inside the Army’s system, you are probably inside the system, and some social engineering to get into areas that you’re “not supposed” to be into is also pretty common. The PFC says he downloaded the things that he is known to have released onto his iPod, IIRC. This works just the same way.
Part of the problem is the enormous number of pieces of hay needed to find a needle when it comes to tracking down people without ID cards. I think it was JD Johannes who said the most potent weapon the military had in Iraq was the de facto census they did with digital cameras and biometrics. All of the sudden they aren’t just a bunch of simple goat herders and mechanics, they have names and home villages and the people who lie to you when their prints and pictures match someone else are suddenly far more interesting. All of that data has to be somewhere, in a convenient form for mining. That also makes it a convenient form for stealing. Typed AARs are a lot harder to steal because somehow you have to get into a secured area with a photocopier under your shirt. Digital data is easy to steal by comparison, and when you’re in a war and surrounded by urgent things, important things like data security take a back seat. The problem is that if you turn up the slider on ‘security’, you turn down ‘responsiveness’ and ‘flexibility’, TANSTAFFL still applies.
The fact that drone video and data feeds aren’t encrypted should tell you the level of security we’re dealing with here. In short, it doesn’t take a genius, it just takes a motivated a-hole like PFC Bradley and his magic iPod, may they both rest in a lime pit.
As far as not being able to try Assange for treason, a motivated Justice Department could try him for something. Might not be able to get him in front of a firing squad, but were I advising him I would suggest somewhere other than the US to scratch his PinkBerry itch.
IIRC the Private No Class was first reported to be a Sergeant.
But stripes can be lost in a hurry.
As I get older and my IQ drops, I tend to read historical or in some cases hysterical novels, instead of even secondary source non-fiction history. So anyway I’m reading a “historical” mystery by John Maddox Roberts, “The Years of Confusion”, When I come across passage by the main character a Roman Senator.
“In truth, Cleopatra was no worse than other rulers of the time and a good deal better than most of them. If she was ruthless, all rulers have to be. It is an inescapable fact of history that the worst rulers are not the cruel ones but the weak ones. The former may oppress some of their subjects, but the latter bring needless disaster to all.”
I think that the perception of strength in a leader by the populace is as important as the actual strength.
I suspect that Obambi has lost the perception that he is a “strong” leader. How say you?
#134. Tamquam
I don’t expect the Left to get too concerned about the exposure of the Afghans mentioned in these documents.
Of course they won’t. The main attraction of the Left to Muslims is their mutual respect of strict orthodoxy. Western leftists can only dream of a society where anyone who deviates from the party line can and will be put to death with the local populace cheering on the leaders.
What the Leftists don’t seem to understand is that the Muslims don’t have the same respect for Leftists as Leftists have for Muslims. Consider Iran. Much of the movement to end the reign of the Shah was driven by communists. They thought that they could co-opt or beat down the religious extremists after the Shah was thrown down. They were wrong, and for the most part they are all now dead.
As the saying goes, be careful for what you wish for, you just might get it.
I suspect that Obambi has lost the perception that he is a “strong” leader. How say you?
Wake me up when he returns that Nobel Prize.
Skip,
“Forget treason. Assange claims he is an Australian. So ONLY Australia can charge him with treason. He hasn’t broken any laws. Wikileaks is immoral to an extreme, it isn’t illegal. He obviously considers the USA an enemy. That is between him and Australia.”
Excuse me, maybe I ‘m not getting this right, but normally stealing American state secrets by a foreign national goes by the name of this little thing called espionage. AKA spying. I think in the old days, death by firing squad was the appropriate remedy or punishment. Now one of the sentences is probably lethal injection. Either one works for me.
JohnB #132: Correct. I have been convinced for 20 years now that we are seeing the end of Burnham’s Managerial Elite. Change of logistics makes them the Managerial Obsolete, or is doing so. Some take it with good grace, some do not.
Those that do not make mischief or one form or the other.
The trouble with the Managerial Elite system was that is lent itself to a disconnect
between authority and responsibility. The real problem lies with those that have prospered via the disconnect and who are incapable of letting it go.
I believe they are close to their point of no return, where they either have to accept things as they are now emerging or forcibly silence and repress any and all
manifestations of equilibrium between authority and responsibility. We see signs of
attempted repression every day.
We can whup them and we shall, IF we do not fall for the charade of hoplelessness
they are throwing at us. As noted, getting us to despair is the only real weapon in their arsenal.
So, Trust in God, Keep Powder Dry, etc and our side will come through just fine.
Mike_W #131: You are being preposterous. If Christendom and the other portions of Western Civilization cannot take root in those climes and cultures where Islam is the dominant church, then Christendom and other portions of Western Civilization
are unfit for general human consumption and shall—–willy nilly—–give way to
that which can be universally digested. In short there is NO sanctuary to which we can retreat. If we try, we shall be routed. If we are routed, we shall not survive.
I figure on our making it. If you do not want to participate, hush your mouf and do not interfere.
PS: Do you propose to commit murder and mayhem on Marzouq? If the followers of that dufus camel jockey have to be slaughtered en masse over there in order to establish a republican form of governance, then you must not shrink from following the same
mandate here. Else we are all doomed to an eternity of Obamacare.
PPS: You just illustrated my point about inducing despair.
#141. Unsk
A .50 caliber rifle bullet blowing Mr. Assanges head away might send a message. The bravery of the press, and their ability to “speak truth to power” seems to be inversely proportional to the personal consequences they can expect to get by doing so.
And no–I’m not advocating any such thing. But corruption has a way of turning on you. The sword has two edges. It swings both ways. The corrupt never seem to realize this until the sword swings back in their direction in which case it is too late to dodge the blade.
Cowboy @ 135:
I loved your whole comment Cowboy. But this last paragraph stirred me to recalling two different essays from my old website, the most relevant, Wisdom and Antiwisdom, I’ve updated at my blog.
Excerpt from the new introduction:
The essay by Angelo Codevilla has captured the imagination of a great many. It occurred to me that slightly updating and republishing this old essay may prove useful. It highlighted key areas where our wannabe Ruling Class fostered actions that undermined our good cultural influences and promoted bad ones. The latent excesses in human nature had been greatly suppressed by institutions that our ancestors had built for that purpose.
—-
We are the people the globalists have been waiting for: us foolish caretakers of America, descendant guardians of the liberties she was created to safeguard.
Have we so fumbled that we’ve fatally lost the baton?
Thank very much for the inspiration.
“Mike_W #131: You are being preposterous. If Christendom and the other portions of Western Civilization cannot take root in those climes and cultures where Islam is the dominant church, then Christendom and other portions of Western Civilization
are unfit for general human consumption and shall—–willy nilly—–give way to
that which can be universally digested.”
- 143. Dave
Since the coalition enshrined Sharia law in the Iraq constitution, Christians have been persecuted and have been fleeing the country en-masse.
Yes, everywhere Islam has gone it has digested other cultures through force and intimidation and it will happen here in the West as well eventually.
Christianity and its daughter, Western Civilization, CANNOT take root in Islamic cultures.
Perhaps some of the benefits and trappings can, just look at the Saudis; they love many of the pleasures of Western Civilization; but as someone once said, “Money can buy everything, except civilization”.
Islam is the antithesis of, and is inherently hostile to Christianity and free thought.
For example, it is illegal to build churches under Sharia law.
I do not propose murder and mayhem on anyone; just that if we ARE to invade Islamic countries then killing the imams, razing the mosques and converting the locals to a more amenable ideology is the only approach likely to work.
I’m glad to have been of service, Pascal. Folks should check out Pascal’s links. He’s put together good stuff.
@#108
When you say Christian, I think of the Inquisition, Thirty years war, Sack of Jerusalem and all the millions of humans Christians have murdered over the ages.
When you say atheist I think of famine in China where 35 million people got dead within 3 years for glory of Mao, gulags in Siberia, famine in Ukraine under glorious atheistic communists and misery of untold Ukrainians, Latvians, Estonians, Hungarians, Poles and others under rule of atheistic governments. I also think of wars for the glory of Islam whereby millions of Hindu people got dead, and of millions of blacks were sold on slave markets of Arabia . I also think of Ottoman empire and their army of Janisaries composed of christian slave children forcibly converted and brought up in hatred of their families and of Bulgars and Greeks enslaved by Ottomans.
So what is your beef with Christianity, skip?
****
#131, 146
Coalition efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq ARE doomed to failure.
So you assume, but that assumption is wrong. Because you think that the problem is religion, but problem are people.
How many millions will die when the West abandons its silly, badly thought out adventure and pulls out?
Ah, but these millions in Iraq and in Afghanistan were killed by other believers in Islam, not by the West.
You also repeat the beliefs of some in the Middle East that:
– Western political ideology is antithetical to people in the Middle East
– Christianity or other “amenable” ideology is what West have to impose and wants to impose – genocidally – on the “East” in order to win. Otherwise I assume everything is doomed to failure.
- the West [aka USA] wants invade Islamic countries right, left and centre.
Yup, of course. All are innocent. Like Taliban. Like Al Qaeda. Like Hamas and Hizbullah.
Go, Mike_W, and peddle these theories somewhere else.
148. ella
I never said that the problem is religion.
The problem is the ideology of Islam; its texts, tenets, nature and teachings.
“Ah, but these millions in Iraq and in Afghanistan were killed by other believers in Islam, not by the West.”
What on earth do you mean by this, and why do you use the words “were killed”?
I never said these people were killed by the West.
In fact, I was asking what might happen in the FUTURE to these people.
I never said that Western political ideology is antithetical to people of the Middle East.
I said that Islam is the antithesis of Christianity and free thought.
People need to be free of the totalitarian nature of Islam to be able to embrace freedom and until that happens Islam will dominate people.
I never said that the West wants to impose an amenable ideology on the “East” in order to win.
In fact the West has done the exact opposite; doing everything it can to appease Islam, even going so far as to enshrine Sharia law in the Iraq and Afghanistan constitutions.
I never said “the West[aka USA] wants to invade Islamic countries right left and centre.”
Why do you make these things up and resort to ad hominem attack?
# 149
You did not say. You implied.
Unless we are to go into these places and level every mosque, kill every Imam and impose a more amenable ideology on the populations, our efforts are futile
You wrote that West must fail if it will not impose, brutally, Western political ideology on people of the Middle East.
We build infrastructure for societies who view everything in terms of how it can best serve Islam…..Madness. The whole bloody thing was madness from the beginning..
You wrote that the West, if it wants to win any war, must kill imams and raze mosques? You propose this out of the concern (as you implied in your post later) for the people of the Middle East, or because you want some people in the West, reading Pajamas Media, to doubt themselves and be convinced of futility of doing anything in the ME?
You also wrote that it is the West (aka NATO and USA) who enshrined Islamic law in Afghanistan and Iran. You would be correct if and only if the West imposed (or wanted to impose) laws in Afghanistan and Iraq and if and only if the West imperialistically wanted to rule over these people. In fact it is Iraqis and Afghanis who decided that sharia is what they want. Not “the West”
There are not ad hominem attacks. There is a clear reading of what and who you represent.
150. ella
What are the definitions of “victory” in Iraq and Afghanistan?
What exactly is the coalition trying to do in these countries?
Are we trying to build stable democratic societies which are self-sufficient and no longer posing a threat to us?
Well, it is my belief that creating a stable democratic society from a society dominated by Islam is impossible.
The very act of invading an Islamic country GUARANTEES long term animosity from the humiliated Muslims.
Being subject to invasion strikes at the very heart of Islam’s teachings of Islamic supremacy.
Without entirely crushing the Islamic ideology, just as the west crushed the Nazi and Shinto ideologies in WW2, we are certain of future violent payback.
The Islamic honor code demands it.
The coalition invaded both countries and gave the people more of what they wanted: Islam in their constitutions, in the mistaken belief that Islam is not the root cause of our problem.
But the truth is that unless and until Islam is removed from the equation and hearts of the people then any possible long-term stable outcome conducive to western interests is impossible.
I don’t want to invade any country and certainly would prefer not to have to kill anybody; I’m just trying to be honest about what is required.
If I had my way there never would have been an invasion of either country; lots of surgical strikes maybe; hunting down Bin Laden and his cronies, sure; but this whole invasion and nation building insanity: definitely not.
The West did invade and was in a position to impose its will.
It chose to appease Islam and allow the people to choose Sharia law as the basis for their constitutions, believing that through appeasement hearts and minds would be won; instead, the Muslims saw us as fools and took us for everything they could.
Once again our leaders demonstrated an appalling ignorance of the nature of Islam.
Ella: Thank you. I seem to have the knack of getting fire support out of nowhere.
You have done a darned good time on target.
Mike-W: In the second place: If our folkways were not transplantable, the Wahabis
would not be so desperate to repress and silence them. And it is the Wahabi enforcement apparatus that keeps Arabia from a much more widespread adoption of
western mores. Reduce that kind of capability and they are toast.
And in the FIRST place: I shall under no circumstances support, cooperate with or
comply with yourprofessed beliefs. I shall instead follow a much more assertive course of action. Kindly stand aside while I proceeed.
“Kindly stand aside while I proceeed.”
152. Dave
Go for it Dave; I’m not standing in your way or holding you back.
We’ll see soon enough how this will end.
Hopefully you are right and everything will turn out just fine.
I agree with Mike_W that Islam is the problem, and that there is no possibility of co-existence with it. It must be destroyed. However, that does not automatically mean that the West must commit genocide, or slaughter millions and millions as some hysterically claim. How many millions of Russians did America slaughter in order to kill Russian communism? Hardly any. It wasn’t necessary, because it was possible to kill the lying, fantasy-based ideology, and induce people to abandon it. Russians didn’t believe in Communism enough to throw themselves into a furnace for it. Germans finally realized that Nazism was a failure and abandoned it, long before it became necessary to kill every single German. I think Muslims will react the same way. It’s Allah who must be killed, and then everything else will follow.
But it won’t happen if nobody tries. Somebody said somewhere that it’s impossible to kill a man and somehow persuade him not to notice it. When Bush had to go to war with Islam, he shrank from pointing out to Muslims (or admitting himself) that it was their failed religion that had caused all the trouble and necessitated such an extreme action. It was too embarrassing, and would cause too much loss of face. Instead, he tried a “kinder, gentler” method, that would require nothing of them – American would just do it all. There was no attempt to get at “root causes” because everyone knew that there was only one root: Islam.
I think Islam is a weak horse – if it’s spurred and whipped hard enough, it’ll collapse and die. Unlike Christianity, Islam has no backup system to cope with crushing defeat. Christians know that defeat is often all we can expect in this world and it doesn’t ultimately matter; Islam is based on bribes and promises, and doesn’t have any untouchable citadel to retreat to when things go wrong. Mohammed says that they’re superior and conquerors: when that assertion is crushed and trampled, what is left? What other “unquestionable truths” could be lies? But to work, the defeat must be final and blatantly unignorable, like the defeat of Germany and Japan after WWII. Any attempt to leave a scrap of honor for Islam, any softening or good-natured impulse to let them save face, will defeat the whole project. Holy places must be destroyed and desecrated – a dare to Allah to do anything about it. And when he can’t, when their god is shown to be helpless and worthless, THEN Muslims will be ready for Western civilization.
143. Dave
Mike_W #131: You are being preposterous. If Christendom and the other portions of Western Civilization cannot take root in those climes and cultures where Islam is the dominant church, then Christendom and other portions of Western Civilization
are unfit for general human consumption and shall—–willy nilly—–give way to that which can be universally digested.
Ironically, the original Caliphate was exactly where Christendom had taken root and been dominant for 4 centuries.
Meanwhile, it’s in Africa where Christianity and Islam are butting up against each other in the old-fashioned, contentious way. It may well become a genuine battlefield of the two faiths as the Mediterranean basin was 1,300 years ago. Christianity is growing by leaps and bounds in central Africa, while Islam there is not keeping pace. Violence has already flared.
Dr Mabuse
It is not Islam that is a problem. It is perception of what tenets of Islam are or, to put it differently, beliefs in what some people imagine Islam is – that is the biggest problem.
In the middle ages majority of Europeans believed that Bible and New Testament should be read literally. Nowadays many believing people do not read Bible literally but as a parable because people can not understand God’s mind. (If we could then, in fact, we would have God’s powers, won’t we?)
Nowadays in the Middle East and elsewhere majority of people believe that Quran should only be explained by what Mohammed did or said. That it can not be explained by itself. Or even that it can not be explained by Mohammed actions but by explanation put to Mohammed actions by other men living 200 or more years after Mohammed . Not by what HE really did, but what other people said HE did.
But it seems that some people in the West (like you) swallowed the Islamist propaganda and started to argue from their view-points, arguing from Islamists perception of what Islam is. Thinking that there is no co-existence…which, of course, there is none, if one accept Islamists perception of what Islam is. Forgetting that there are different views of Islam and different explanation for tenets of Islam.
So I think that if majority of us think the problem is Islam or the prophet then the West and the East may loose. If majority of us think the problem is interpretation of tenets by Islamists and current rigid perception of what tenets of Islam are then we (West AND the East) may win.
You have got to be kidding. The Pentagon, by it’s own admission “accidentally” kills five to six hundred Afghans yearly in pursuit of it’s goals. You’re suddenly worried about the people that “may” be affected by Assange’s leak, but you have absolutely no compassion for the deaths you’ve caused with your support for this war. This doesn’t even reach the level of hypocrisy. It’s sheer unexamined and uninformed stupidity.
157. Gould’s Ghost:
Why should we listen to you? You’re just a ghost.
I’m sorry you can’t tell the difference between Assange’s actions and those that sometimes occur in the prosecution of a war. Besides, the deaths of those exposed by Assange will not be accidental.
Thanks for stopping by to do some silly moral posturing detached from reality.
“the deaths of those exposed by Assange will not be accidental.”
You are wasting your breath Don Rodrigo.
You have got to wonder if Gould’s Ghoul or NYUkid will even have the capacity to grok what will happen when the Afghanis working at PJM, challenging Assange’s conscience one better, passes along their IP addresses to the families so affected.
“In the middle ages majority of Europeans believed that Bible and New Testament should be read literally.”
Wrong. I don’t think someone with a self-serving cartoon concept of Christianity is going to have any more accurate view of Islam. (Not “Islamism”, by the way – there is no ‘Islamism’, there is only Islam. ‘Islamism’ is an invented word adopted by Daniel Pipes after 9/11 to try to shove Islam’s Original Sin onto some more acceptable scapegoat.)
As Chesterton said, “I have tried in vain to hammer into the head of Mr. H.G. Wells, for instance (if I may allude to so large and illustrious a head in so irreverent an image) the perfectly elementary historical fact that the mystic and partially symbolic interpretation of Scripture is the old and orthodox interpretation of it; and that the mania for materialistic exactitude is a modern mania. At the very beginning of Christian history, St. Augustine said that some things in Scripture must be read as symbols, and that it was puerile to do anything else. But right at the end of Christian history, Brigham Young and the Mormons refused to see anything symbolic even in God’s eye or right hand; and insisted that He must physically exist, like a sort of giant. A certain margin of mystical interpretation was an idea perfectly familiar to the Fathers and Schoolmen; and it was not their fault, or the fault of the Bible, if the idea was less familiar to Billy Brimstone, the saved Bootlegger of Kansas City, or Freeze-the-Devil Debora, the sweet and winning Prophetess of Potluck, Neb.”
@ 63. wretchard
“I certainly have no admiration for Barack Obama. But he’s elected and I’m not. I don’t have the power to break the system simply to put my point across.”
==
That’s a lie, and you know it.
Barack Obama was not elected. Barack Obama was selected. As was/is practically everyone who is anyone in the government mafia. These bought-and-paid-for politicians, lawyers, judges, do not represent anyone except the Central Bank Warfare/Welfare Model elites who pay their way to office and bamboozle the public thru their CIA-MSM propaganda organs.
You do have the power to break this depressing Orwellian Empire. All you need to do is tell the truth, the real truth, in this Brave New World.
Jeff Barea
Isn’t your arrogance and vitriol decidedly unChristian – Especially for some schmuck throwin’ it around like you’re the pope?
Explain it for all us retards how it is that exposing people aiding the American war effort is a good thing – regardless of how weak in the knees you get because it was declared improperly.
I’m not sure what your problem is, but I’ll bet it’s real hard to pronounce and mostly involves the portion of your body behind your zipper.