Before getting to Wikileaks, condolences to the family of Richard Holbrooke. He was widely respected, and I wish solace for his family.
I have avoided discussing Wikileaks because there have been so many subplots that I wanted to thoroughly digest everything and wrap my mind around this entire situation. Like many people with a passion for politics, raw emotion can trump logical reasoning in my world as well. So the last few weeks has been me putting the science back in political science and coldly analyzing what I have seen.
First let me shift briefly back to raw emotion and hot-headedness. If Julian Assange ends up in the bottom of a river with a pair of bullets in his heart, I will not lose an ounce of sleep.
Ok, I feel better now. Time to get back to logical reasoning.
While it feels good to say that Julian Assange is a terrorist, and he may very well be, I am very troubled by the circumstances surrounding his arrest.
I think the rape charges reek to high heaven. I would not be surprised if they were trumped up. I am not a lawyer. If Assange is guilty of white collar cybercrimes, arrest him for that. I know he cannot be tried for treason because he is not an American citizen. Yet surely he must have violated some law, whether it be espionage, sabotage, or something else. America has plenty of lawyers. Surely one of them can find something. Arresting him on sexual crimes makes the arresting nation look like idiots.
The big issue is that Assange, while clearly a scoundrel, is not the first domino. Everything starts with Private Manning. Those who want to accuse Assange of possessing stolen property face another problem. What if he had no idea the stuff was stolen?
Now of course I do not believe the ludicrous assertion I just posted, but it is not enough to know he knew. We have to prove it. Those who think that Manning will give up Assange fail to take into account one horrific scenario.
What if Private Manning is acquitted?
This could happen. I am totally against civilian trials for enemy combatants, whether it be Khalid Sheik Mohammed or Private Manning. Barack Obama and Eric Holder so how dangerous it is when gambling on a civilian jury. Private Manning could be acquitted. Then there is no link to Assange.
Another fascinating question has barely been broached, if at all.
What if some of the documents are fake?
I am again advancing an argument I do not believe just because it makes for stimulating conversation. Think about this. What if our government was so intelligent that anywhere from 10-30% of the documents were fake, and mixed in with the real documents? That would be brilliant, which our government has not often been accused of being over the decades. If we have not done this, our government should consider doing this from now on. If thieves have no idea which documents are real and which are fake, it makes any potential actions more difficult.
The next issue is an ethical one. If a ton of good comes out of the release of secret documents, does that allow the ends to justify the means?
I emphatically believe it does not. While many people decry secrecy and want transparency, that is not for Assange or Manning to decide. Our government keeps secrets on everything from UFOs to internal memos on colossally boring topics. We may think our government is hiding things it should reveal, and we may very well be right. Yet that is for history to decide. National security requires that we give our government some measure of latitude.
Yes, that latitude can be abused, but think about what a vicious circle this can be. If we lack the information, we cannot know what we should know. If we know the information, maybe we will know we should not know it. Sometimes all we can do is hope that our leaders have integrity. That is what elections are for. I happen to be a big believer in presidential prerogative. The leader of the free world needs to do his job with minimal interference in national security matters.
The reason this issue matters is because we now know (assuming as I do that the documents are real) a couple pieces of information that I find vital.
For one thing, we found evidence that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his Weapons of Mass Destruction program. Every liberal whoever uttered the words “Bush lied” can now shut up and sit down for good.
We also now know that John Kerry is a two-faced anti-Israel weasel. He wanted to give the Palesimians their own state with Jerusalem as the capital. He is another over-privileged leftist with no concept of the real world Middle East issues.
Now I knew both of these facts years ago, but that is not the same as having proof. I now have proof.
Yet if I am against releasing the documents, which I am, isn’t it hypocritical of me to use the documents to advance my arguments?
Some will call this an exercise in navel gazing, but it is a serious ethical question.
If I had my way, I may never have known that these documents existed. So for me to bash liberals regarding WMD and John Kerry may be problematic because I think it is wrong for that to be known.
If I find out that a certain Congressman may be a racist or anti-Semite, isn’t that better for me to know to avoid me accidentally voting for that person?
Again, the ends do not justify the means. Assange is making the same argument that the Jayson Blair Times is making to justify the horrid decision to release the documents. They argue that they are only conduits. The bad guy is Manning. Everybody else is blameless.
I don’t accept that argument. Our legal system is one example of where procedures exist to deal with those coming in contact with material that they should not possess. If a juror gets hold of a newspaper that affects their view of the defendant either way, that could be grounds for a mistrial. Certain evidence gets excluded for various procedural violations. While jurors could claim that they may have voted differently had they had the excluded information, the legal system would collapse if jurors got to decide what they saw and did not see. Judges can be corrupt, but we have to accept their roles as arbiters to prevent chaos.
The legal system also has something called “inevitable discovery,” which allows evidence to be introduced even if was obtained under questionable means if it would have been figured out anyway.
I believe that at some point I would have inevitably discovered that Kerry was an anti-Israel weasel, and that Saddam had WMD. I already had strong suspicions. I have already argued both positions in the past. However, using Wikileaks documents to bolster my arguments is something I am not comfortable with.
Not everything is complex. The hackers who took down Visa and Mastercard should spend the rest of their lives in jail. Yet unless it can be proven that they were acting on orders from Assange, he cannot be blamed for their actions. Could he and should he have known this would happen? That needs to be sorted out.
The very last question deals with the timing of the crackdown on Wikileaks.
Wikileaks has been hurting America for months. This is not the first release of documents. Wikileaks was not publicly targeted for prosecution early on. So the question must be asked.
Why now?
Tune in tomorrow.
eric
Why now? Because they were targetting our banks next.
For an ostensibly “free” people, who live in an onstensibly “republican” nation, we sure have a lot of state secrets. The authoritarian streak that runs through the Right in America has allowed for this state of affairs. What we should be discussing, but predictably are not, is whether all this state secrecy is healthy for a democracy. I suggest it most certainly is not. I am far less concerned with the leaks than I am with the fact that there is so much to be leaked at all.
JMJ
Kerry is my enemy, simply said. His sentiments, if carried to their
final conclusion, will result in my demise, and the destruction of my people.
I had friends who fought in Vietnam. I worked with people who fought in Vietnam. To them, Kerry and Kissinger, were the kisses of death.
They fought all over Vietnam, in the Iron Triangle, the south, the large
weapon base in the north, all over. They fought on the ground and under the ground. They were sent, with 50,000 others to search and destroy.
Typically, they found nothing but black mambas and red ants.
We lost 55,000 in Vietnam, in a failed war, thanks to people like the above mentioned. Im sure that 100s of thousands were wounded. Millions were affected. I lost a high school chum in that war. He will always be remembered by me and his classmates., not to forget his family.
He was a nice, quiet guy..brilliant, and a patriot.
I have friends and acquaintences who fought for Christianity and Judaism
during the Gulf Wars. A few volunteered for the IDF (Israeli army) in wars for that country’s survival. They were wounded.
Years later, they told me of their many battles..fighting the Syrians on the Golan Heights..digging shelters beneath the ground, blowing up Syrian Russian supplied tanks. They fought in the Sinai, against overwhelming
odds., outmanned 3 to 1. Dodging Russian Sapper Missiles and Saggers.
They fought for me, the USA, Israel, the freedom of the West, and
our way of life. They did not want the Russians to win the cold war, through their surrogage client states.
I saw him interviwed on the Charlie Rose Show, a few years ago.
He and Charlie ( your typical left wing liberal, defeatest and retreatest),
shared a wink and a private thought when the Goldstone Report was
mentioned as a distraction in the Congress.
Goldstone was the South African judge who sentenced blacks to death
for fighting the blatantly racist regime. He agreed to lead a review by the UN of the Israeli incusions into the Gaza Strip, and described their actions as war crimes, targeting civilians ( 1200 plus Arabs were kiled, some civilians). This was after thousands of rockets slammed into Israel, fired
by Hamas, and other militant, terrorist groups.
Israel had had it..and sent in the IDf. The Arabs used human shields
mainly children. They had spotters on roofs. They used mosques and hospitals as arms depots. They fired from civlian areas ( a violation of
international law),. Goldstone could have cared less. He was on a witch hunt..to burn Jews and Israel, who dare to fight back.
Kerry typically does not support pro-Israeli (Jewish) Congressional
actions. He is my enemy, just as the Viet Cong were my enemy.
The leaks had a flip side. They revealed some information and attitudes
that were previously unknown to the public. Saudi Arabia, which beheads people or flogs them, hates and fears Ahmads Iran. China, similarly,
wants No. Korea leashed.
Or as my grandmother used to say, if you dont want anyone to know
your secrets, dont reveal them.
If people knew what is being said behind closed doors at civil service agencies..there would be no agencies.
Give me a break. Hillary had UN personnel watched and investigated.
Some believe she should be fired, I do, but not for the above.
Frankly, we should get out of that organization, or stop funding it.
It is nothing more than a Muslim dominated group of thugs., with some
exceptions. When a group of nations applauds someone like Hitlers wannabe, what more can I say?
So far as I know, no one was adversely affected by the leaks, now
or before, but many have mud on their faces. I can think of something else Id like on their faces, to be honest. It looks like mud.
Hey guys, Obama apologized for all the US evil done to the Arab-Muslim worlds. Hmmmm, during the 1st Gulf War, we went to war to save a Muslim country. We saved thousands finally from Hussein. We protected
Saudi Arabia with Patriot Missiles. We saved people in Kosovo from
their Christian enemies. We have allowed trillions of petro dollars to leave
our shores thanks to the extortion by some countreis. We supplied
Arabia with technology from US oil producers. ( Occi Oil). We have extensive trade
with Arab/Muslim countries. We even give Egypt 2b year. And Obama
apologizes.
Which is worse, Obama’s actions or the leaks? You determine. I have already formed an opinion.
Like the World Courts decisions, this will come to nothing, but
further aggravate people to tell the truth..as only they know it.
To this day, Arabia says 911 was caused by the Jews,and US pilots
raided Egyptian/Syrian airfields in 1967. I mean, Jews flying jets.
Oy vey! Next they will say the Wailing Wall is actualy Algerian or
Moroccan. There was never a Solomon to begin with.
The problem is not knowing all the nasty crap going on whithin our government or deals with other nations.
The problems is the intent of those who posses this info.
Sure, I want transparency and accountability.
But not at the potetntial risk of innocents or those on our side.
Who made Assange, an Australian, the arbitrator of American secrets ?
And as Eric mentions, whos to say this intel could not be edited to inflammatory nature ?
If such actions were being taken by a mixed non partisan committee thats one thing. But the a$$hats behind this are leftists who’ve clearly stated their intent is to cause global chaos.
They’ve unleashed a slew of sympathetic hackers from all over the world who are now committed to disrupting anything possible in the defense of Assange.
Yes, I think the rape thing is a bunch of crap.
Whatever the case may be, this has been terribly mishandled and information that could prove dangerous is in the wrong hands.
So, the government is telling us not one person has been harmed by these dumps…yet.
How do we know when the government no doubt keeps secrets ?
“However, using Wikileaks documents to bolster my arguments is something I am not comfortable with.”
I wouldnt be either as I dont approve of the aqquistion. But theres some things that do go best unknown. Just use your imagination.
Saudi royalty has been exposed by wikileaks for drinking liquor and having hookers at parties.
Not that I care but now we could see some radical Islamists come after Royal Saudis in some fashion.
We could catch a lot of flack for simple little things like this. I’ve always known half these devout Islamists were hypocrits. But when their own people here it from what are supposed to be accurate reports the list of scenarios is endless.
Also released was the Saudis asking/supporting America to take out Iranian nuke facilities.
Maybe it was no secret, nothing most wouldnt suspect. But what if something was in the works and now that effort has been compromised ?
Bottom line, I cant defend Assange, Manning, or anyone who printed whats is no doubt classified for a reason.
Sure, it exposes corruption, as if we already didnt know.
But if one innocent person, especially an American is hurt because of this I want heads on sticks