Wikileaks

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The only reason you have a prison off shore is so you can break your own laws against violation of human rights, torture and unlawful detention.

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Not exactly. Those guys are dangerous cutthroats. I bet you'd be worried if
the moved into your neighborhood, and called you a whore for not wearing
their dress code.

They would be legitimate prisoners of war if Congress had the balls to
declare war. Declarations of war are not a nineteenth century vanity.
A declared war makes it legal to invade and subdue your enemies,
and it makes it impossible for do-gooders to cry "human rights".
Read the history of World War Two

Yeah, war really is a good excuse to trample all over another human. I wish we would declare war. I have always wanted to try my hand at waterboarding... And hooking electrodes up to people's genitals. :rolleyes:

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This guy isn't making up anything. Just making public what has already been said.

Assange is not responsible for the unauthorized release of 250,000 documents from the U.S. diplomatic communications network, The U.S. is responsible for not securing that information.

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Very true!

1. If the information was no longer required it should have been destroyed (didn't anybody learn from Watergate?).

2. If the information was required, and was sensitive, it should have been encrypted and held securely.

3. We are all aware of the "enemy within"...........why not US diplomats and military? :confused:

4. How could a private soldier access and remove 250,000 documents? well, that is because there was no security, no access control, and he had a thumb drive. :rolleyes:

A lot of this sort of stuff is the work of office cleaners and security guards, working in insecure environments. The brass look on them as morons.........rather than a potential security threat?

Assange and his co-workers (this is not a one man band) are journalists and behave with the peculiar morality of that species. They do not gather information or invent it............people send it to them unsolicited, and they merely publish it.

If they actually did solicit such information then they would be in big trouble. However, they don't know of the existence of such information until they see it, and would not know who to approach anyway?.........an army private?.....I don't think so.:p

I think that the real issue here is one of political embarrassment rather than national security. As from what I can gather only about a half dozen of the items were even classified as "secret" (the lowest classification over here).

I noted the old comment about unlocked automobiles. Well, it's your automobile and you have the constitutional "right to remain stupid". Now, when you are in the service of your country, this no longer applies, and you are quite rightly expected to be professional at all times.

If the finger is to be pointed at anyone it should be at those people who betrayed a position of trust and disclosed the information in the first place, unless you are disclosing activities that are of themselves illegal?

Hey! and don't you guys think you are the only ones with this sort of thing going on.....if you do it at home it is called "politics" and if you do it to Johnny Foreigner it is called "diplomacy" :D

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How could a private soldier access and remove 250,000 documents?

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What makes you think he was the only person in the military who was pissed off at how things have been handled? For all you know 250,000 service members felt disillusioned then leaked one document each.

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For all you know 250,000 service members felt disillusioned then leaked one document each.

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"Ipse dixit"...............................:D

He ran off at the mouth to that useless turd Adrian Lamo.............'nuff said.

Anyway, you know that it couldn't have been a distributed leak because the information and access to it is kept pretty central. If the information had been received piecemeal then that would be how Wikileaks would have published it; it wasn't, and they didn't.

You should all be glad that you have an army and have decent intelligence, here in South Africa we don't have much of that anymore.

To MLF: that leak about the US government terrorizing their own people makes me wonder about all the conspiracy docs I have seen regarding 9/11.

Came to this late...oh well the Christmas and New Years break was a loooong one....:drink:

Anyway, one of the theories of why this was allowed to happen was because of 9/11.

Prior to 9/11 all of the security agencies were not talking to each other, NSA didn't talk to the FBI and the CIA didn't talk to anyone, so some critical information got overlooked. After 9/11 Bush wanted all the agencies to be in the loop...hence "Homeland Security"...now you have vast amounts of information going back and forth between these agencies and voila (French for there you go)....leaks....usually the FBI would be responsible for Diplomats, foreign or domestic, so how did an Army specialist get a hold of "confidential" material detailing conversations amongst embassy staff....hmmmm FBI data base linked to any number of Military assets?


As for the right or wrong aspect, Assange is only guilty of being in the cross hairs of American politicians, otherwise publish it.However if some of this information does have a bearing on possible covert operations or in areas where there may be deaths as a result of publishing names, then he should cooperate with the authorities to ensure this does not happen.

I can see where certain names could be mentioned and these names are of spy assets in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia and a few other non friendly places...that would be the end of them.

There is a gray area within the media outlets where the senior editors will confirm documentation with the authorities and their lawyers before proceeding with the publication of the material, and if the President asks nicely please hold off for awhile, it comes down to the editor and his ethics and whether or not the public has "right" to know.


Bottom line is, if it does not serve the public interest to expose this material, then don't publish them. I don't care what diplomats say about each other...sounds like locker room talk or powder room talk depending on your side of the pie..

What this has done is actually worse, because now these diplomats will clam up and little nuanced tidbits of info will go begging....:rolleyes:

As for the guy wearing the uniform, I hope they throw the book at him, all personnel wearing a uniform sign off on the "Official Secrets Acts", I had to wait 6 Mths after I retired before I could say anything that may have been confidential while serving, the reason is after 6 Mths the information is no longer relevant.

Most of this info is probably non relevant by now, the problem is that the US is embarrassed, just like they were embarrassed by that guy Gary McKinnon who hacked into the Defense Dept and NASA computers looking for UFO's:bigpimp:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon