Kind of like Abu Ghraib. The problem wasn’t what was done, or that some inbred low-IQ soldiers went ahead and were careless because they took pictures. No, the fault lied with people who had dared expose them.
Damned traitors!
-Joe
Some of you guys remind me of Col Jessep.
“You fucking people. You have no idea how to defend a nation. All you did was weaken a country today. That’s all you did. You put people’s lives in danger. Sweet dreams, son.”
I should hope so, in the interests of protecting secrets that genuinely need to be secret.
If the electorate doesn’t have the first fucking clue what their elected officials think about things or have any notion about how they go about their business, it’s not a very well functioning democracy.
Unless it’s your position that the people we elect know better than us?
as for this having deleterious effects on our foreign policy: as someone mentioned upthread, the security/intelligence services of foreign countries conduct espionage themselves, probably already possess this information, they definitely know what’s going on (i.e. they know what the US is doing, even if they don’t have the verbatim cable of it). Likewise, I would expect any halfway-decent thinktank to be able to glean the posture of the US (or any other nation) on any of these subjects with publicly-available information.
The benefit of this information comes in exposing how government operates to the citizenry - it will have no real foreign policy impact (other than any changes demanded by the electorate) other than personally offending some people. BFD.
OP:
Is it fair to say that the gist of what you’re against is one person having such power? Not that the leaks weren’t bad, but if it was controlled by our elected officials, who, frankly, aren’t much more trustworthy and more politically deviant, it’s better because there’s more people handling it?
The problem with that, though, is that it isn’t just the country’s own citizens who get to read it. The reason diplomatic cables are kept secret isn’t generally because because a country wants to hide what it’s doing diplomatically from its citizens, but because it wants to hide what it’s doing from other countries.
You mean people like Valerie Plame and her husband who worked to ensure better relations by sticking to truth only to be outed by Administration hell bent on making war?
The amount of venom in your gangsta-style outburst is only matched by the total absence of moral compass. Which is one and the same, kinda.
Most spying is an open secret to those in the know. It’s not like Iran woke up today, logged onto Wikileaks, and was surprised that Saudi Arabia would like them knocked off the power position in the ME.
No, but Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi might be surprised to find out that the Us considers him “feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader”. Ok, so that’s probably not much a surprise, but the point remains. Assuming that Berlusconi were going to stay in power, which he’s probably not, this would hurt America’s ability to negotiate with him, because it just came out that we called him feckless and vain and his feelings will understandably be hurt.
Plus, there’s a difference between knowing things and “knowing things”. Everyone knows that Saudi Arabia wants Iran weakened., but it’s another thing to actually say that publicly. It’s one thing to privately lobby for a strike against Iran, and it’s another to openly declare that one needs to happen.
My point is, governments have to do some things secretly, and some elements of diplomacy need to remain secret. Sure, it’s possible spies from another country will uncover secret information, but you shouldn’t just hand it to them.
I don’t think world leaders, who aren’t autocrats, are in a position (or act like they’re in a position) to play the butthurt diva and take things personally. Presidents don’t negotiate things anyway - there are legions of negotiators and undersecretaries that actually do this stuff.
What’s been said publicly? Nothing’s been said openly, here, it’s just been exposed to the public. Yes, Saudi Arabia getting on al-jazeera and saying “let’s knock Iran around a bit” is provocative. This? This is hearsay.
I have faith that the stuff that needs to be kept really secret is kept secret. Notice how there are no “top secret” leaks?
(If you need a primer on how the USG classifies things: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_secret#Secret)
My comment was clearly referring to the past, with the implicit reference to the development of the weapon.
For the satisfaction of the context-impaired “perhaps we should have published the progress being made on atomic technology developments and made the information publicly accessible to the Axis powers during WWII so that they could use that information against us.”
This joint is straight full of dopes.
NPR discussed that one fallout of this will be MORE compartmentalizing of classified information. We tried to open up communications between agencies so that a complete picture could be seen. However, we now have a low level member of the US Military (supposedly) sharing secret cables from within the US State Department. I am sure that State is now re-thinking how much they want to share with the Pentagon. That will take us back to having multiple separate intel groups not sharing information because they can not trust others to KEEP it secret.
Another problem will be that we have shift a lot of diplomats and embassy employees who were honest in their cables. Those people will not be able to perform their duties now that their appraisals have been made public. We will have to train new experts in their particular areas instead.
There is a cost to all of this, but it will not all be seen immediately.
Gangsta-style?
Veritably the most controversial part of my post, no?
I think “gangsta-style” refers to this part:
Thing is, getting butt-hurt about Assange misses the point. OK, so one guy with a website can publish any secret documents they happen to come across. And if we assassinate Assange, that won’t be true anymore? No, it’ll still be true. I guess if we declare a fatwa against Assange, it will have a chilling effect on others, like the death threats against the Mohammad cartoonists.
But all it takes is one guy willing to host one of these websites. Given that there are 6 billion people on Earth, I expect that it won’t be too hard to find a couple of people willing to do this.
And even without a website like wikileaks, there’s always the age-old practice of mailing this stuff to the New York Times and the Washington Post. How are you going to stop that?
Buy lots more bullets?
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but Assange has gone on record as saying, in effect, “Information should be free, and everyone has the right to know everything”. He seems to be remarkably inflexible on this point, and it is easy to imagine him someday releasing information which genuinely threatens the safety of undercover agents, and, by extension, the safety of our troops and innocent civilians. I have a question, for those applauding Assange’s actions; how would you feel about him if he and not the Bush Administration, had ‘outed’ Valerie Plame? I seem to remember a great many people on these boards calling for Cheney’s head over that little stunt…
Was he elected to do a job? Was he actively working counter to that job and violating oaths just so he could take out a petty feud with someone?
The VPOTUS and the POTUS owe me, as a citizen. A random Aussie with a website, however, does not.
-Joe
Osama bin laden doesn’t owe you anything either ?
Shut the fuck up, liar.