Well, I believe that a corrupt and caniving government is anti-american as it can get. I also believe that a congress that doesn't do the job od oversight to rein in the misdeeds is anti-american. Anti-american is the officials that throw away the bill of rights for any reason. There were oaths taken that mean absolutely squat when some of the deeds uncovered by the leaks are known. This is what the harm is. Not so much to our armed forces members, or informants, but to the credibility of the US government. this US government is already without credibility. Any leaks I have read are just confirmation of what I already know about how our electeds operate. If anyone thinks that the entities that put anyone at risk seriously cares about those souls more than they care about their ability to continue to dupe everyone.......well that would seem to be irrational or stupid to me. That would be as naive as thinking a thing is so, just because the government of the USA says it's so. I simply do not trust the US government because they are not trustworthy, not because I am un-american. The rest of the world knows this too, that is why they are anti american. Has anyone even asked themselves why it's a secret how many people actually died in a war? Why it's a secret how we acrtually deal with other nations? Why we "americans" are the only ones who do not know some of the things contained in the cables? seems like too many of the secrets are to keep americans in the dark whereas the rest of the world is allowed to see first hand from the recieving end. When we talk of lives put at risk, do we even concider how much our leaders do to piss people off and it leads to anti american sentiments and violence, including wars, to the people of the USA and our fighting men and women? Other countries/societies hate us and want to wipe us out because we fuck with them.
^^^ All that says is what everybody knows, that the government is corrupt and needs better oversight. Nothing in there that really makes Assange or Wikileaks more reasonable as a solution. It's OK to acknowledge that the US government AND Wikileaks are both wrong. Arguing to the contrary is just crazy.
"Corrupt and needs more oversight". And who/how do we achieve oversight? The congresional oversight commitee? I've never thought of that: the fox guarding the henhouse. let me know how well that's working. Nobody thinks it's more reasonable to deduce that a lyer is going to lie? A cheater cheat and a politician act as both? Than expect truth and the public being a priority from DC? I believe it's more reasonable to expect that there's a campaigne against the rights we have that'd expose and make politics-as-usual harder for those that make all the claims against the acts of whistleblowing. Than I would believe the amount of claimed damages. Too much just doesn't add up and politics is the game. I haven't seen a politician that incorporates honesty and integrity into the way they go about their careers yet. I also don't see a need to start trusting in every word a politicain spews, especially when it'd benefit them to lie/bend the truth/spin more than tell the truth.
I think to me it's a lot like when there's a fire or disaster in the area. It's exciting to see something like it happen, but when you really look at how devastating it is to those directly affected, it really makes you realize that's it's not as cool as you thought. I like the idea behind Wikileaks, but the main problem is you either have to release everything with no filter for integrity, or you have to censor certain things to protect someone/thing. Neither one works, because censorship basically makes it easily vulnerable to payoffs or threats, and releasing everything is just asking for terrible things to eventually happen. I guess maybe a "no government documents" policy could save a lot of trouble, but what if there's really something worth releasing? What if our government was funding the genocide in Darfur or something equally fucked up. I don't really have any solution, but I have a hard time fully condemning Wikileaks, but I have an equally hard time supporting it.
So lets say a police officer unnecessarily uses excess amount of force to arrest a suspect. Uses a taser, baton, a couple of fists to the head, all on an undeserving citizen. Now if this incident goes under review, my understanding is that it goes before a board of other police officers to determine if the brutality was warranted or not. So the police police the police. The cop is gonna get off because cops look out for other cops, not civilians. They are basically above the law. But it just so happens that this incident was captured by a bystander on their cell phone, which apparently is in the process of becoming illegal (or already is in some places). We need this outside source, the bystander, to provide us with the correct information so we can form our own opinion and use our rights to police the police. Obviously these congressional oversight committees are not really doing their job and our government has given itself a get-out-of-jail free card for anything it does. We need this outside source to help watch the watchmen. Being against Wikileaks is like being against that bystander who's watching over the watchmen. Now, of course Wikileaks is not perfect. Censoring informants names would probably be a good idea. I understand the argument that they shouldn't just release absolutely everything. But if they happen to get information that falls along the lines of whistle blowing, I don't see why they shouldn't release it. One man's secrets, however, is another man's whistle blowing. So it's arguable what is subject to be released and what should stay secret. But finding one lie opens up everything else for scrutiny and dissection. I basically agree with the idea of an outside entity providing the general population with some oversight power. This is my logic at 4:30am so it probably isn't worded as well as I'd like it to. Zzzzzz...
Made sense to me. I also refuse to form an opinion based on what a known lier, in this case the US government and all it's bureaucrats and agencies, say or insinuate. Present to me some facts instead of claims and I'll consider changing my opinion. Just the fact that some members of this forum thought it neccesary to inject put downs and near name calling into this discussion and all discusions we have about wikileaks and whistleblowing, leads me to believe there's an emotional rather than logical/factual connection they have to this subject.
This still misses the point because what was released was some 250,000 documents. That is not whistle-blowing. Even the "collateral murder" video, whose contents admittedly ARE disturbing, was apparently found in a folder called "Jag" on the apparent secret share drive. What does that tell you? It was probably already being investigated!!! There are appropriate channels, with admittedly varying degrees of effectiveness, that can be use to raise something like this internally. He didn't even try these avenues. But the fact that it was sitting in a jag folder tells me it had already caught someones eye - but we all know how slow the government likes to move.
Well, I think it's obvious that at this point no opinions are going to be changed so I'm going to stick to my initial "Fuck this thread" attitude. US government abuses are bad, Wikileaks's activities are bad, and you're a fool if you refuse to see it. A bad solution is not a solution.
Slowness is not a defense for the government. It is often used as a tactic. Another point to make is the efficiency of such an overbloated government. If there weren't such a huge number of personell with access, large blocks of classified materials would be more secure. It was never intended for our governing body to be so all-encompassing as it is now. It has taken on a life of it's own. The monster has grown to gargantuan proportions and now wants us to give up some freedom of the press as well as other freedoms to compensate for it's own inefficiencies. It's not about WL or assange at all. it's about how much we're willing to comprimise the founding principals this country began with just so incompetance can flourish and thrive. I'm all for the needed secrecy of military operations. I'm not for secrets against the people, comprimising the bill of rights or a huge government that has lost the ability to effectivly manage our international affairs short of relying on underhanded, often illegal tactics. In essence, villifying WL and the art of expose' in the press does way more to cause damage and perpetuate the problems within our government than any amount of whistleblowing can. Our government is broken by it's own admission, are we going to make excuses, let the machine run until it explodes in our faces, or are we even going to attempt a fix?
This is largely due to the abuse of the security classification system, that puts all the true "Kill yourself before reading" stuff with a mountain of other things that don't need that level of classification (like next week's lunch menu for the Liliputian Embassy to the UN), just because of the need to "CYA". You've now got this HUGE MOUNTAIN of classified material, which a HUGE MOB of people needs to access. This is a recipe for disaster of just the sort that happened. To fix this problem, we need to change the attitudes that lead to the blatant overuse of document classification.
