Jonah Goldberg calls for Julian Assange’s murder.
He (Assange) told the New Yorker earlier this year that he fully understands innocent people might die as a result of the “collateral damage” of his work and that WikiLeaks may have “blood on our hands.” WikiLeaks is easily among the most significant and well-publicized breaches of American national security since the Rosenbergs gave the Soviets the bomb.
So again, I ask: Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?
It’s a serious question.
Of course, this is nowhere near as bad as using the word curb-stomping in a post.
When hundreds of thousands of Iraqis die as a result of “collateral damage”, that just proves freedom is messy. It also earns the architects of the collateral damage Medals of Freedom, natch.
If you don’t think that the right is serious about using violence to take power, you’re not paying attention.
(h/t BGinChi)
Citizen Alan
In 1998, I often thought the same thing about Lucianne Goldberg.
Scuffletuffle
One might also speculate on whether the world would be a better place if Jonah Goldberg were garrotted, in or out of a hotel room. Serious minds must ponder.
pharniel
The only hope we have is that the teahaddists start attacking wallstreet bankers and other corporate Elites.
Only once the monster they’ve made starts attempting to take care of the ‘wall street problem’ will we see any change.
That or they start firing on the military or law enforcement in earnest. Say what you will about a black and white worldview but it does mean that once the teatards cross a line it’ll be on like donkey kong.
New Yorker
My only hope is that because the right consists of old people on blood pressure drugs led by smarmy, cowardly mediocrities like Goldberg, Bill Kristol, etc. who got where they did by winning the sperm lottery, they lack the intelligence, experience, and daring to be able to pull off a Pinochet-style coup.
I’d love to see a confrontation between a bunch of armed teabaggers looking to overthrow “tyranny” and a platoon of Marines. That wouldn’t end well for someone….
Guster
They’re not like the Taliban until they start dressing funny.
DougJ
@Guster:
You don’t think bowties are funny?
John Dillinger
He hasn’t been garrotted yet because only fat, pasty blowhards believe it to be the proper response, and they are quite unlikely to be able to carry out such a task.
morzer
Jonah Goldberg – the thinking arse-head’s arsehead.
jrg
What? All Goldberg wants to do is “spread some Democracy”. Hitler was a librul because he was a vegetarian, also, too.
mistermix
I guess this is the kind of serious question only asked by serious people, because it never crossed my mind.
Chyron HR
“Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?”
I’m guessing because everyone else in the “Kill Assange” club is just as cowardly as Fatty Dorkins, here.
elmo
And don’t forget, it’s the liberals who are the fascists.
Guster
@DougJ: They’re scary, actually, if certain people wear them on airplanes.
http://muslimswearingthings.tumblr.com/post/1380255078/hakeem-olajuwon-vintage-muslims-wearing-tuxedos
some other guy
I agree. It’s perfectly acceptable to murder those who, through the act of spreading information, have in some way been responsible for the deaths of innocent people. Which is why we should all support those Afghans and Iraqis who want kill Jonah Goldberg and his warmongering buddies in the media.
Skippy-san
It is not just him. Milbloggers have been echoing this theme for days. Comments like-“turn his name over to the Mossad”, “blow up his car”, “he should be poisioned” etc etc.
As a retired Navy officer, I find this point of view very disturbing. Now mind you, I am not happy about Wikileaks and I think what they did was and remains very wrong. I am REALLY disturbed about the fact that obviously military personnel on active duty are helping him. Those people should be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
But advocating the kind of “anything goes” and “exact retribution” ideas betrays our ideals as a nation and makes us absolutely no different than the enemies we are fighting. If the country wants to go down that road-well fine. But don’t try to stand on some moral high ground and talk about “shining lights” on a hill. Its still immoral-just because its being done by our side does not mitigate that.
4tehlulz
The only surprise is that it took him this long to post this.
Jonah’s getting slow.
Zifnab
@Scuffletuffle:
Fix’d.
The fact that the Republicans are losing their shit over Assange really only indicates that Julian is doing the right thing.
liberal
@Skippy-san:
Uh, what about the military personnel who helped George W. Bush conduct an illegal, aggressive invasion of Iraq?
Zifnab
@Skippy-san:
And while we’re at it, let’s track down that Deep Throat guy and string him up too. After all, it’s poor form to attack reporters for reporting on war crimes. But snitches? Hang those bitches.
America went into Iraq thinking we’d be bringing freedom and flowers and kittens. Finding out that our troops are rather arbitrarily massacring civilians because they have so little control and national good will could poison the idea of unilateral invasions of third world countries for years to come. That would be terrible for
the military industrial complexnational security.Redshirt
As with all things in America, IOKIYAAR
gronald
So when do we get to call Jonah the ‘Doughy David Brooks’?
Or is it the ‘Doughy Darth Cheney’?
‘Doughy Idi Amin’? Anyone?
mds
@pharniel:
[Checks teabagger candidates’ campaign platforms, sees that promises of more tax cuts for rich people and gutting government regulation are still in place]
So … you’re saying there’s no hope, then.
@New Yorker:
Uh, if those Marines are members of the seditious Oath Keepers, or work as Joe Miller’s security on the side, that confrontation might not go as deliciously as you expect.
Avenging Angel
Why hasn’t a team been formed to assassinate the media people who helped sell the Iraq War?
The information revealed by Wikileaks may lead to people taking action, but Wikileaks didn’t create the information, it reported it.
However, the media people who helped sell the war created a reality that resulted in people dying who didn’t need to die.
And the normal systems of accountability don’t seem to be operating. None of these media people have lost their jobs.
So, if there is to be a just outcome, it will only be achieved by righteous men doing their duty even though it violates the law of a corrupt government.
BGinCHI
So, we invade Iraq to liberate it from authoritarianism (that we supported) and the kind of order that keeps sectarian violence from killing thousands.
Thousands are killed. Collaterally, and not so collaterally.
And then we wring our hands that having the info about this in a functioning democracy might endanger some American troops or assets? And THAT’s not a price worth paying for all of our military adventures?
Rome is burning people. Or, we live in the Death Star.
Comrade Dread
Because when a man does something that gets an innocent killed, it’s called murder or manslaughter.
When a group of men get together and do it as private citizens it’s a mafia or gang hit.
When a group of men get together, get themselves elected, take titles, and do it, it’s called collateral damage.
Likewise, when a man steals or destroys the property of another, he is a criminal.
When a rich man does it, it is an innovator, a Galtian superman, or a producer.
Those are the social conventions we live by. I suggest if you want anything akin to true justice, you’d best hope for an afterlife, be it a Christian hell or karma.
someguy
I don’t think that the op-ed means what you think it means.
In fact, it seems to be criticizing exactly what most of the people here are doing – inferring some malicious scheme where none exists. Read the whole thing… please? Some of you people look like assclowns.
Believe me, there are better things to hyperventilate over, particularly with Jonah “all of you to my left are Hitler’s Gay Manservants” Goldberg.
MikeBoyScout
You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
Davis X. Machina
@Redshirt: The message is the same as it ever was: It’s not your country.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@John Dillinger: Beat me to it.
Rob Roser
I think this proves that liberals are fascists.
Zifnab
@someguy:
It sounds to me like he’s saying, “The CIA isn’t made out of Sci-Fi inspired supermen, so they can’t murder him a la Jason Bourne. However, they should still send cops to his house and have him arrested.”
Which, I suppose, is preferable to suggesting we should carpet bomb Assange’s house. But Goldberg isn’t really suggesting we shouldn’t. He’s suggesting we can’t. And he’s washing his hands of the entire Iraq War (“if Wikileaks didn’t leak it, Halliburton and Israel are innocent as baby seals”) in passing. He’s playing the DFH card against anyone who would accuse the government of ever doing anything extra-legal or even quasi-amoral. After all, if the government was really composed of B-movie faceless paramilitary hitmen then surely Assange would have been murdered in his bed and arranged to look like his pet cat did it.
So, in short, Assange isn’t dead. Ergo, the government is guiltless in all things and Assange is a Swedish Computer Programming anti-American jihadist who should be arrested by international FBI agents or something.
Dr. Psycho
Isn’t anybody going to mention that the Rosenbergs didn’t “give the Soviets the atomic bomb”?
1) There is no evidence that Ethel Rosenberg engaged in spying.
2) Julius Rosenberg’s espionage (which was, of course, treason, and should have been severely punished) was mostly unsuccessful and didn’t provide any really significant information.
3) The basic outline of an atomic bomb was common knowledge well before one was actually built.
4) There is no evidence that espionage by Julius Rosenberg or anyone else hastened the Soviet nuclear program.
5) The technical details of building a functional atomic bomb could not actually have been written down or photographed and conveyed by any spy or army of spies.
Evan
Umm, not to let reading the article get in the way of a good blog post, but nowhere in that link does Goldilocks call for Julian Assange to be murdered. His Royal Hackness is bizarrely trying to use the fact that Julian Assange hasn’t been assassinated to make some poorly defined point that “The Left” doesn’t understand how the intelligence community operates. Apparently, Assange’s continued survival shows us all to be wrong about something important. Or something. It’s rather hard to follow a train of thought that is more akin to fevered rambling than coherent argument. But he’s definitely not calling for Assange’s murder.
Reks
@liberal:
I find this interesting on two levels. One that the second takes away from the first at all. Two, as a liberal member of the military, I find it hard to accept responsibility for decisions that primarily civilian leadership make.
RSA
Some of Goldberg’s colleagues have used the Pentagon Papers as an analogy, and I think it’s a better one.
Joe Max
@mds:
It’s not the Marines to be worried about, since if it’s a domestic kerfuffle it will be the National Guard (US Army) that has to deal with it. So I’m more concerned about how many of these “Oath Keepers” are in the Guard rather than in the Marines. (In fact, if I were in charge of these “Oath Keepers”, the Guard is where I would be focusing my recruitment efforts.)
The Guard, though I do honor their service, are not the most well-trained soldiers, and have been known to panic (viz: Kent State, 1970).
If it were me in charge, I would consider belonging to Oath Keepers as sedition, and drum them out of the Guard.
Joseph Nobles
@Evan: You are ascribing a level of competent writing to Doughy that he just doesn’t possess. (This is sarcastic.) Yes, he idly reflects that Assange’s continued breathing is proof of the goodness of the American military/spy establishment. But the only reason the bastard offers for the government not garroting Assange is that they couldn’t get away with it. “The law” is an afterthought, and there’s certainly no “it’s fucking fucked up and wrong, muthafuckas” present in Doughy’s regal pondering.
The proper frame for every Jonah Goldberg utterance is a plump baby in a high chair. Sometimes it is satiated and thus can survey its kingdom in a carbohydrate haze, and sometimes it is hungry and yelling for its food in a fit of pique. This article is one of the former. I hope this helps. ;-)
lacp
DougJ, better watch it or Pantload’s gonna get all Mossad on your ass. If you go into your hotel room and find Cheetoh dust on the furniture, call security immediately.
catclub
“easily among the most significant and well-publicized breaches of American national security since the Rosenbergs”
First, let’s consider some actual breaches of security.
Ask Doughboy what he thinks about Jonathan Pollard.
beergoggles
Conservative, yet another synonym for torturer and murderer.
John Bird
Note that Jonah Goldberg also ‘theorized’ in 2003 that Scott Ritter was denying the existence of the (totally real and not made up) Iraqi WMD program because Iraqi intelligence had caught Ritter in a child pornography sting and turned him into a double agent.
Goldberg is scum.
Silver
@liberal:
Just following orders…
Jose Padilla
“I’d like to ask a simple question: Why isn’t Julian Assange dead?”
Couldn’t the same be said of Dick Cheney? Didn’t he out an undercover CIA agent. Didn’t he do for no other reason than political spite? Didn’t that agent’s work center on surveilling the Iranian nuclear threat, probably the biggest threat to peace on the planet? It’s a sure bet that every Iranian that Valerie Plame ever spoke with was taken into custody and “interrogated harshly”. We probably lost dozens of intelligence sources. And persons who trusted the US lost their lives.
DanF
Wellstone’s death tipped the Senate to Republican control.
What? You don’t think Dick Cheney wouldn’t do such a thing?
eemom
@DanF:
did you happen to catch the piece on Democracy Now this morning about Wellstone being trailed by the FBI since 1970?
Calouste
Let’s say that if I were a life insurance salesman, I would politely turn down Mr. Assange as a client. The man is indeed an “accident” waiting to happen.
rea
let’s track down that Deep Throat guy and string him up too
Well, he did go to jail . . . oh, wait a minute, that was for harrassing Bill Ayers. (Strange but true)
liberal
@Reks:
Yes it does. Wikileaks is exposing information about a criminal war in the case of Iraq, if not Afghanistan. I don’t see why criminals are entitled to have their secrets protected.
Either members of the military are moral agents or they’re not. If they’re moral agents, they’re responsible for their actions and should not obey illegal or immoral orders. If they’re not moral agents, they’re just jackbooted thugs who do what they’re told.
liberal
@Jose Padilla:
Huh?
I’d rank the US as the greatest threat to peace on the planet, right now, followed by China and perhaps Pakistan.
liberal
@Joe Max:
My impression is that today’s Guard is not at all the same as the Guard back then.
Jose Padilla
@liberal:
Foolish me, I guess I’m not as sanguine about nuclear proliferation — or a nuclear armed Iran — as you are.
Jose Padilla
@liberal
For that matter, I’m not as a cavalier regarding Dick Cheney’s treachery as you seem to be.
Cris
Thank goodness Evan came along to keep me from being the first person to reluctantly agree with someguy.
Seriously folks. Saying “I can’t believe the spooks didn’t kill this guy years ago” is not in any way the same as saying “this guy should be killed.”
liberal
@Jose Padilla:
I’m not sanguine about nuclear proliferation, either, but I see no evidence based on its past behavior that a nuclear Iran would be more dangerous than other nuclear states.
Just based on aggressiveness towards neighbors and so on, a purely empirical read would suggest that the following are more dangerous:
– The US
– Russia
– Israel
– Pakistan
– North Korea
– China
Just curious—do you find Israel’s nuclear force as dangerous as a prospective Iranian one?
liberal
@Jose Padilla:
I’m not cavailier at all. Rather, if we’re going to define treason broadly, it’s clear that the bulk of Cheney’s treason was his role in the weakening of the US by getting us involved in Iraq—and the attendent loss of American treasure and blood. (That’s aside from the moral (war crimes) angle.)
Not to say the network in Iran wasn’t important and so on—it’s important to know what other nations are up to, esp. as regards proliferation. OTOH, invading Iraq was a much bigger event than the outing of the spy network was, even on the narrow dimension of Iranian nuclear weapons work, as the invasion of Iraq surely multiplied Iran’s determination to be a nuclear or nuclear threshold state by a rather large factor.
MattR
@Cris: My issue is that Goldberg is being Beck-ian. He is talking about how horrible Assante is, how he needs to be stopped and how it would not be surprising is he was killed. He is pretty much planting the seed in his right wing readers minds without actually saying it so that he has deniability when someone uses this as an inspiration to go after Assante.
eemom
@Cris:
actually, I read the Goldberg thing with both POVs expressed here in mind and concluded that it’s an just incoherent mess. Don’t think anyone knows what he really meant, least of all him.
Savage Henry
I think that Jonah is just the guy to do it too. Jonah, put down the twinkie, step away from the keyboard, climb out of your mother’s basement and garrote your some Assage!
Be sure to put on some sunscreen first. All that time in the basement probably has made your skin sensitive.
fasteddie9318
I’m with Savage Henry; if Porky wants Assange dead so bad, why doesn’t he crowbar himself out from behind the keyboard, brush off the Cheetos dust, and waddle on after him?
Terry
This is utter crap. I read Goldberg’s article, and while I think his prose was a bit brutal, it was also pretty obvious that he was simply asking what was stopping the US Government from taking out what amounted to an enemy spy.
I call on the author of this tripe to publish Goldberg’s own response to this, and apologize to the readers here for what amounts to an out-right lie, or at least a case of being too thick-headed to read.
Jose Padilla
@liberal:
Revealing the identity of a covert operative during wartime is the very definition of treason — there’s nothing “broad” about it.
Terrier
It is not treason if it is not your country, idiot!
eemom
uh oh…….looks like the Mossad is on it already.
Don’t worry DougJ — I’ll hide you! They’ll never think to look here! : )
@fasteddie9318:
thank you, sir. You crack my ass up with images like that.
Ron
Just read the article and it seems pretty clear to me he isn’t actually calling for him to be killed. The right says enough crazy nasty stuff that I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to use out of context quotes like this to demonize them.
Skippy-san
@Zifnab:
Clearly you don’t understand the military very well. When you get a security clearance you sign a an oath to protect classified material. That’s a lifelong obligation that is not voided just because you diagree with Presidential policy. It goes part and parcel with the oath of service I took on a Saturday morning a long time ago.
Your issues are with the authors of the policy-but the miltitary has an obligation to obey lawful orders regardless of who is President.
What these people who aided Wikileaks did is wrong. Period, end of statement. These people made a concious decision to violate the law and their oath of service and there should be consequences for that. As prescribed by the law-nothing else and certainly not as Mr. Goldberg suggests.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Terry: What a joke. Goldberg’s point is that Assange should be assassinated, but that our government won’t do it.
Will nobody rid me of this meddling wikileaks guy?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
There sure are a lot of new names stating their deep and abiding concern that we’re not taking pains to give Goldberg the most lenient reading possible. Who knew that so many lurkers on this site were so concerned about giving Goldberg a break? The dude just says that it’s a serious question to wonder why Assange hasn’t been rubbed out yet; surely his motives in writing this are clean and pure.
I mean, it’s not like Goldberg’s entire shtick is making batshit insanity sound reasonable. We should really take everything he says at literal face value, because Goldberg would never try to slip disgusting ideas in with his oh-so-reasonable musings.
Christ almighty, we haven’t forgotten this fucker’s book, trolls. Piss your concern elsewhere.
voice of reason
@elmo: How is a liberal a fascist? Do your self a favor you, do a google search on what the definition of a liberal is and what a fascist is. NOT EVEN THE SAME. Tea Bag party people are so dumb they don’t realize that they’re party is a gay sex act.
BGinCHI
@Terry: You’re the fucking idiot of the day. Congrats.
And BTW, why don’t you go ahead and email Big Jonah and ask him to come over to the site and explain himself.
I’m dying to hear it.
thomas Levenson
The biggest problem with this is deciding the evil/craptacular ratio in Goldberg’s piece.
It seems to me clear that he wishes Assange dead — that’s the “serious question,” whose justice he defends by saying that Assange is responsible for the deaths of covert agents in Iraq.
He is saying that we can’t, sort of – most of the middle part of his piece is the usual Goldberg slothful rant, complaints against Hollywood and unnamed and uncited lefties who assume a hypercompetent evil US intelligence agency, but he seems to think that the CIA can’t quite get it together to knock off his enemy du jour.
But then he says the only real problem is that Assange isn’t brown enough — it’s easy, he says, to kill an Islamic terrorist (and a lot of other Muslims too who happen to look like terrorists from a distance…or rather he doesn’t say that, but he should), but not a “hipster” bit o’ Eurotrash.
And then he whines about us not doing enough to stop Assange, while acknowledging that given the internet, the cat is probably already out of the bag.
Oh, and just to compound the incoherence, he notes that Wikileaks dumps have debunked conspiracy theories and targeted corporations as much as governments, for which acts, we may infer, he doesn’t think Assange needs to die. Who can keep all this straight? Gimme another donut.
In sum: Goldberg wants Assange dead, but acknowledges that it would be against the law and it probably wouldn’t make any difference anyway. Gimme many more donuts.
So: yes, Goldberg is advocating murder, even though it’s not clear quite what for; he doesn’t like either Hollywood (what? you mean those movies aren’t true? Waaaah); and what the hell why doesn’t daddy just make it all go away.
In other words, the ratio of evil to dumb here is 1.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@thomas Levenson:
I’m no mathematician, but isn’t the ratio of infinity to infinity undefined?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@thomas Levenson:
I’m no mathematician, but isn’t the ratio of infinity to infinity undefined?
Yes, Goldberg’s mendacity is so great that it breaks mathematics.
Oops, double post. Delete one if ya like.
Chief
I don’t know what Julius Rosenberg was guilty of, but it wasn’t a capital crime. Ethel Rosenberg was prosecuted to try and make Julius talk.
J. Edgar Hoover and Jonah are serious colostomy bags.
BGinCHI
@Chief: Let’s agree to call him J. Edgar Goldberg from now on.
I also thought Rube Goldberg would work too.
thomas Levenson
@Jrod the Cookie Thief: I was using the formalism where by all evil =1 and all stupid = 1, which leads to a ratio of 1/1 =1.
You want to go all infinite on me, go ahead, but another possibility (warning mathy nonsense to come; I mean complete nonsense) is that we can put Jonah on the complex plane and map his properties with imaginary numbers. Coz there’s nothing real about that waste of space.
The Other Chuck
@Zifnab:
You’d have to dig him up. Mark Felt died in 2008.
BooYa
@Evan:
Wow, about 35 posts in, someone finally actually reads the referenced article with sufficient comprehension to understand that the original BJ post is actually a total load of C&@P.
Immediate pivot, to complain about something else we don’t like about the (insert juvenile adjectives here) Goldberg guy.
“Reality Based community” — snicker
BGinCHI
@BooYa: Please offer us a precise summary then.
Thanks.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@BooYa: “sufficient comprehension” =/= “giving Goldberg huge benefits of the doubt that his past writings show he doesn’t deserve.”
I’m sure you’d be just as sanguine if Glenn Greenwald penned a column asking why George W. Bush hadn’t been assassinated yet. You know, he’s just asking questions and tweaking the right a bit, so it’s all good. Such a column would surely not lead to three months of constant whining from the right-wing, oh no.
@thomas Levenson: And they told me I’d never need i in everyday life.
rilkefan
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Of course we aspire to being a bit better than those guys.
Hasn’t Wikileaks done about as much harm by posting the “climategate” emails as the good that will result from the stuff Goldberg’s upset about?
jpe
I’ve voted (D) down the line since I could vote, but this post is just retarded.
Fail.
Dr. Psycho
@BGinCHI: Don’t ever compare Jonah Goldberg with Rube Goldberg!
Rube Goldberg was an intentional humorist, and a brilliant one.
Also, Rube Goldberg was a union organizer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Cartoonists_Society
YouAreAKook
If you read the post Doug you know Goldberg’s point was left wing conspiracy theorists are a bunch of kooks. The reason being that if our government and its clandestine agents were nearly as evil and nearly as super competent (or incompetent depending on the particular leftist kook theory) Julian Assange would surely be dead by now via some mysterious car accident or heart attack etc. The kookiest of leftists would never believe Julian Assange would ever be able to publish the thousands of classified and top secret documents without meeting his maker. Unless of course those documents were actually misinformation that our government wanted us to read.
Or the best theory of all, Julian Assange is actually a “Jason Bourne” like super agent himself and despite our government’s repeated failed attempts to assassinate him he lives on by the skin of his teeth fighting the good fight for all the little people.
So the only question remaining is what are you;
A. a leftist kook who thinks Mr. Assange is just one step ahead of the evil US government (not the elected government of course but the shadow government that holds real power run by Halliburton).
B. A hack writer who reads headlines and then writes his posts without checking his facts.
Or
C. Just a liar who likes to mischaracterize the words of people who disagree with his leftist kook politics?
daveinboca
When hundreds of thousands of Iraqis die as a result of “collateral damage”
Hey, DougJ, the real number is about 60,000 and about three of four were killed by Saddam-supporting Sunnis or by criminal mafias simply doing what the DNC is doing in the US, participating in a crime wave. You fucktards should get your numbers straight.
I doubt if the US killed as many as 10,000 in collateral damage. Why don’t you use the Lancet number of 700,000 just to be totally completely fucked up out of your mind?
TCinLA
Skippy-san:
As a “retired naval officer” you should be proud of the active-duty military who are helping Wikileaks to publish the proof of the war crimes of the Cheney-Bush Administration, I know as a former naval person who was a direct participant in the lies that became known to history as “The Tonkin Gulf Incident”, I am very damn proud of active-duty personnel who understand the meaning of the Nuremberg Laws. “I was just following orders” hasn’t been a legal excuse now for 65 years.
I am sure as a “retired naval officer” you would be the first to say you respect Richard H. Best Jr. the man who, as commander of VB-6 at the Battle of Midway, won the battle by sinking the “Akagi.” Dick was a good friend of mine for many years, and he always said he gave more service to his country when – as Librarian at the RAND Corporation – he “turned a blind eye” to Daniel Ellsberg’s removal of The Pentagon Papers, which ended up telling us the truth about the war crime masquerading as a “ar” in Vietnam. The documents Wikileaks have now published tell us similar information about the war crime known as the “War in Iraq.”
Perhaps you should re-examine your oath as an officer – you know, the one where you said you would defend and protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic????
TCinLA
This is what really upsets Jonah the Whale:
NOW WE KNOW
By William Rivers Pitt
I’ve been writing about the war in Iraq for going on ten years now. My first words on the subject were published eight months before the invasion was undertaken, and the war has been a grim drumbeat in my work ever since. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about those writers who were tasked to cover the war in Vietnam. After ten years chronicling the same grim topic, did they wish for a day when they could write about something else, finally? I know I do. Iraq has been like a tumor in my mind, always there, always growing, and by all appearances totally inoperable and incurable.
My job over this last decade was to hammer home the fact that the rhetorical preamble to the invasion, the invasion itself, and the occupation were and remain bullshit of the purest ray serene. George W. Bush and his pack of thugs used September 11 against the American people to frighten them into supporting an unnecessary, costly and ultimately criminal war. They lied about weapons of mass destruction, they lied about al Qaeda working with Iraq, they lied about virtually every aspect of the conflict, and they got what they wanted: a big, fat payday and an excuse to bulldoze our constitutional rights.
I knew all this was true, down to the detail, and over time that truth became self-evident to a majority of Americans. The perpetrators of this massive criminal enterprise stuck to their stories all the way down the line, and ultimately paid for it in 2006 and 2008, but the echo of their efforts resonates to this very day.
I knew the truth, but always lacked the smoking-gun proof that could lay it all bare. There were pieces here and there – the “Downing Street Memo” document revelation showing Bush and Blair’s decision, made the April before the invasion, to use false WMD “evidence” to gin up support for an attack being the most prominent – but a full-scale snapshot of the entire deception always remained just out of reach.
Until now.
The release by Wikileaks of some 400,000 pages of official Iraq war documents has ripped the lid finally and forever off what must surely become known as one of the largest lawless actions by a presidential administration in all of American history. The documents prove, beyond all doubt, that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Rice and the rest of them deliberately led this nation down a nearly-unprecedented path of infamy. The only comparable criminal act was the grindhouse of Vietnam, which spanned five presidencies, left millions dead and enshrined the so-called “defense” industry as the biggest money players in the American political game. What was done in and to Iraq has not yet risen to the level of what happened in Southeast Asia, but it is right up there, and the Wikileaks documents hammer this fact home with no remorse and no room left for doubt.
They knew the WMD threat was false. They knew that al Qaeda was nowhere in Iraq until more than a year after the invasion had taken place, and that it was the invasion which gave al Qaeda the opportunity to kill Americans without having to board an airplane. They knew that torture and murder were widespread and unpunished. They knew civilians were being butchered wholesale. They knew the “independent contractor” mercenaries were completely out of control. They knew that Iran became the principal beneficiary of our “war for freedom.” Hell, Rumsfeld’s best chum, Ahmed Chalabi, became a paid player for Iran years ago, even as the Bush administration allowed him to burrow into the Iraqi government.
They knew this and more, and beyond all doubt, now we know, too.
It is not fashionable within the circle of Washington “elites,” both in the media and in government, to take part in anything that resembles “looking backward” or “re-litigating the past,” or whatever euphemism currently passes for seeking accountability. There was plenty of evidence before Wikileaks came along to undertake a comprehensive prosecution of any and all who were involved in the murderous fraud that was and is the war in Iraq, but it was never done. With the arrival of these 400,000 new pages, however, a new urgency must be injected into the argument.
They knew, and now we have the proof. They lied, they stole, they murdered by the tens and tens of thousands, and if there is no accountability for crimes of such scope and breadth, then ours is a doomed and eternally discredited nation. Mr. Obama’s Department of Justice has officially run out of excuses for not pursuing criminal action against the previous administration and all the players involved. The criminal acts were documented, in meticulous detail, and those facts are now in the public eye for all to see.
They can’t deny it anymore. They can’t hide behind ramped-up rhetoric or media malingering. They knew, and now we know, and if prosecutions are not undertaken, then justice has no meaning, and Mr. Obama’s administration has no honor.
GeoX
@daveinboca: Wow–what a psychopath you are. There are no words.
Skippy-san
@TCinLA:
You are wrong on this one. I know the law, do you? I won’t accept your line of thinking-any more than I will accept Goldberg’s. They are both wrong.
One thing that this comment stream does prove is that liberals are just as intolerant as conservatives are.
xian
too much Tom Clancy
Mike G
It’s actually a typo.
Goldberg meant to ask, “Why wasn’t Assange carroted in his hotel room years ago?”
Nothing could be more terrifying to the Doughy Pantload than the threat of being forced to eat fresh vegetables.