In case you were out drinking last night and missed it, the Wikileaks Iraq document dump was released last night. Here’s the Times coverage, and here’s the Guardian’s. One thing that jumps out is the Guardian’s story of how the US ignored torture, or what the Times calls “detainee abuse”.
Wikileaks
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JPL
What Americans should read
What Americans will read
This is good news for John McCain.
salacious crumb
I love it how the NYT headline’s Iran’s role in Iraq (of course written by Michael Gordon, chief NYT’s war cheerleading journalist) as if to force home the point that Iran must be attacked by the US.
I see Iran’s involvement as a way to let the US know “think twice of the havoc we can cause in the Middle East and other areas should you decide to attack us”
bkny
shows US ‘ignored Iraq
tortureharsh interrogation tactics’Xenos
Any news about the detainees who died while in American custody? Last I heard there were about 120 who were killed in the course of American interrogations. Would be nice to know how many torturers and murderers are working for us, since we are not about to prosecute them any time soon.
Bob Loblaw
I think the real story is not the ongoing subsidization, and prior installation and training of, the Iraqi (and Afghan, for the record) torture states by the US military, but how quickly we can get Julian Assange in prison for putting the lives of assuredly thousands of pro-American assets in jeopardy, just like last time. That bastard.
Get burnspesq on the fucking case.
Christopher Carr
I think there’s actually a clear difference. “Torture” is performed while wearing a serious face. “Detainee abuse” is just for shits and giggles.
Maude
@Xenos:
No information lately.
I don’t think the US can prosecute War Crimes. Handing over the evidence for investigation the the International Court would be better.
Sick in the pit of my stomach.
What a time for Bush to pop up and talk. Next, Cheney.
spudvol
I think I know who the culprit leaking all this info is- its Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
JWL
Perhaps it boils down wishful thinking. To crimes people cannot conceive will be visited upon them, if only they believe… in something.
Even if it no longer exists; even if it no longer deserves their simple respect.
In the democratic or republican/tea-bagger party, for example; or the judicial branch of the United States government; or in “the People’s Airwaves”..
burnspbesq
@Bob Loblaw:
If a jury determines that the evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Assange is guilty of conspiracy, or aiding and abetting the theft of classified material, will you have a problem with him going to jail? Or is your support for the rule of law tentative and conditional?
P.S. I’ve got an old lacrosse stick that would look really good shoved up your ass, wide side first.
JGabriel
spudvol: Or Tintin. Maybe Boutros Boutros Ghali.
.
burnspbesq
I wonder if Assange realizes that he has made it LESS likely that any Americans will be brought to justice for crimes that may have been committed in Iraq?
WereBear
If what got leaked was illegal, I have less of a problem with it being leaked.
The umbrella of “state secrets” has admittedly, by their own account, been used to cover up crimes. So it’s past time to evaluate how such a blunt stamp gets used.
Superluminar
Oh jesus, she’s back. Clearly Memetic selection against bullshyte failed on this blog.
matoko_chan
@burnspbesq: In his al Jazeera interview Assange stated that Wikileaks is working with british legal counsel on 40 cases of warcrimes. he didnt say if the perps were American or Iraqi soljahs.
JGabriel
burnspbesq:
My understanding is that improper classification is a defense in this kind of situation. If it’s determined that none of the material Wikileaks published was properly classified, will you have a problem with him going to jail? Or is that whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing just some commie propaganda?
.
JGabriel
matoko_chan: Looks like that link is overloaded: 502 Server Error. The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
.
matoko_chan
@Superluminar: interfering with your info-cocoon?
tuff titty.
:)
tole jah so, tole jah so!
the Wikileaks docs are going to be a problem for this guy, lawl.
too many leaks in the info-dyke.
Omnes Omnibus
I have only read a few of the pieces and skimmed several others, but what I am seeing is simply further documentation of a number of things that people already knew. Individuals who are already engaged know the general outlines of what went on and either approve or disapprove. People who are not engaged are not likely to change as a result of this.
matoko_chan
@JGabriel: Assange is not going to jail, unless America enacts a state secrets act.
do you think that would be a great idea?
Betcha President Palin would be all for that.
Xenos
@JGabriel: How is Assange, who as far as I know has never set foot in the USA, subject to US prosecution for violating US security laws? Maybe it is a dumb question, but what is the basis for it?
In any case, since there is no indication that any administration will ever prosecute these war crimes, there is a fairly strong moral justification for this sort of civil disobedience.
matoko_chan
@JGabriel: which link? they both work for me.
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan: Guardian. Why lol?
Uloborus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah. I particularly note that the torture stuff, which I find appalling, is being done by Iraqi security forces. I’m not sure what we CAN do about that. We’d have to tear down the Iraqi government again. So it’s ‘start over’ or ‘inch our way off-stage’. Eesh.
@matoko_chan:
I really don’t know what you’re smoking, Matoko. The Pentagon has already said they’ve reviewed all of this information and none of it’s sensitive or dangerous, so they’re not concerned. ‘Embarassing’ is not the same thing. And that it’s all information that could have been gotten from other sources anyway.
Xanthippas
Well I had the Texas Rangers on the brain, but I managed to read a little bit about it anyway. A pennant is a nice antidote to general evil in the world, at least for a week or two anyway.
matoko_chan
@Omnes Omnibus: that wasnt my link.
al Jazeera has the best coverage, IMHO.
Death at a Checkpoint
US turned a blind eye to torture
Assange tweeted that just before the leak went live.
All those media outlets have had the files for the last 3 months, to redact them, analyze them, and make news stories from them.
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan: I watched the CNN clip you linked. What of it? Assange walked out of an interview when the reporter kept asking questions about the Swedish criminal investigation. She got derailed on something salacious, just like most MSM reporters would, and he determined that the interview was going nowhere and left.
ETA: This information or information similar to it has been out there for quite a while. All this seems to do is aggregate it. That is valuable, but I don’t see it as a world-shaking event.
matoko_chan
@Uloborus: the big story is that they couldnt stop it.
now they cant put the djinni back in the bottle so they are going to spinspinspin.
it wont work…..its on the TEEVEE.
wikileaks tweet
shut up and swallow, cudlips.
:)
SRW1
@burnspbesq:
I wonder if Assange realizes that he has made it LESS likely that any Americans will be brought to justice for crimes that may have been committed in Iraq?
I have this odd feeling that if there ever is going to be an accounting as to who had what role in why war crimes committed by Americans in Iraq were not brought to justice, the role of Assange relative to, let’s say, the upper echelons of the US military and the US government will be judged to be so infinitesimal as to be negligible. Just a feeling, of course.
matoko_chan
@Omnes Omnibus: lawl.
if CNN wants an Assange interview, they are going to have to talk about this.
its a reverse Palin….talk about whats important, or stfu.
Svensker
Have matoko and mclaren ever had a pie fight here? Just wondering.
matoko_chan
and just for you eemom, soonergrunt, burn et al…..
incoming
the rest of A-stan docs.
why do you suppose the docs dropped right before the midterms?
hmmm?
i think wikileaks is trying to force american citizens to wake up to what to what has been done in our name. Obama is going to have to say something…..i think. :)
i wanted to have a pie fight with corner stone but he rejected meh.
:(
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan: Once the Pentagon Papers were leaked the government couldn’t stop them from being published. You are simply getting excited about a cyber-version of a fight that played out 40 years ago.
As far Assange walking out of an interview that focused on salacious person information, good for him. If more people did that, perhaps journalists would stick to relevant questions. Probably too late though.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Svensker: mclaren is actually informed and interesting, despite the frequent hyperbole. But I realize he isn’t in the BJ Kewl Kids Klub and has a bad habit of expressing views outside of the normal groupthink here.
GregB
We had to invade because Saddam was mean to his own citizens!
Just Some Fuckhead
@burnspbesq: I believe that was sarcasm, He-man.
ornery curmudgeon
@burnspbesq:
“If a jury determines that the evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Assange is guilty of conspiracy, or aiding and abetting the theft of classified material, will you have a problem with him going to jail? Or is your support for the rule of law tentative and conditional?”
P.S. I’ve got an old lacrosse stick that would look really good shoved up your ass, wide side first.
You just have to enjoy hearing apologists for torture and lawless wars act all rule of law-ey. Yeah, like that’s on YOUR side burnespsq, or like you actually give a f about justice. lol.
Oh, and about that ‘old lacrosse stick’ you want to shove up people’s asses .. well look at you go. Found common cause with torturers, you did.
Hypocritical bastard, your words are shadows without substance. You unmask yourself.
Svensker
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Oh, geez. Mclaren CAN be interesting. But he/she also goes off on ridiculous rants that remind me very much of my OCD/slighty schizo uncle. Sometimes the ideas are interesting, but the judgmental acrimony, the obsessiveness and the inability to take a breath and listen are what make mclaren a pain in the butt, not the lack of membership in the Klub.
Omnes Omnibus
@Just Some Fuckhead: Actually, mclaren has a habit of ad hominem attacks on people he disagrees with. For example, he has leapt straight from a comment he disagreed with to an accusation that the commenter (myself) masturbates to holocaust pr0n. This is not a person with whom I care to have any kind of engagement.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Svensker: It takes all kinds. That’s what makes the world a beautiful place.
Uloborus
@Svensker:
To be honest, my problem is that he’s NOT informed. I’ve followed his references more than once, and they frequently don’t say what he thinks they say. He relies on rumors, on making sweeping generalizations out of anecdotes, and occasionally on just plain making things up. If a source said that maybe there’s a special base we don’t know about in Afghanistan, why, to Mclaren that’s proof that the torture regime has proceeded unimpeded in a new administration.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s a feature around here, not a bug.
Omnes Omnibus
@Just Some Fuckhead: To me, it is a matter of degree. I am okay with disagreement with what I say. I am okay with people saying what I said was stupid. I am okay with people saying that I am an idiot for having said a particular thing. I am okay with people saying that I am an idiot on general principle. If I weren’t, this blog is the wrong place for me to hang out online. There is a group of commenters here who have taken on the role of gadfly, and the blog is a better place for it. There is, however, a line between being a gadfly and being an obnoxious ass, and mclaren seems to reflexively leap over it. I do not pie filter people, but, if I did, s/he would the one person who spoke of boysenberries. YMMV.
Bob Loblaw
@Uloborus:
Technically, there’s some small kernel of truth to that claim. The Open Society Foundation, among others, has published findings of ongoing “abusive” practices at the JSOC-operated Tor facility at Bagram. No torture, that should be made absolutely clear, just the old standbys of disorientation, prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation and environmental manipulation. Nothing like cuffing and blindfolding a guy all night in a cell without heat to make him more talkative come morning.
Of course, the same techniques (and then some) could all be found in US domestic prison facilities across the country, so there’s that. Perspective.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Omnes Omnibus: Dude, I don’t really care about your explanations. The truth is a good majority of the commentariat only care about who is in their little circle of truth, no matter how they dress it up.
I prefer to read everything and make my own judgments. I don’t need proponents of groupthink trying to eliminate my options.
Svensker
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Chip on the shoulder much?
Omnes Omnibus
@Just Some Fuckhead: My dear boy, how did anything I said constitute an attempt to limit your options? There was a discussion about the value that a particular comment brings to the discussion. People had differing opinions. If it makes you happier though, please feel oppressed and superior.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Svensker: No more than usual.
Chyron HR
@Just Some Fuckhead:
“But sometimes this paranoid schizophrenic shrieks obscene things about Obama, so he’s a-ok in my book!”
Steeplejack
@Just Some Fuckhead, @Just Some Fuckhead:
JSF as the cool voice of reason?!
You’reYer rockin’ my world, dude.Uloborus
@Bob Loblaw:
Absolutely. That is the kernel of truth. I’m not really thrilled with it. I put more trust in interrogators who’ve said that this kind of crap is utterly useless, so it’s not just cruel, it’s stupid.
But it’s not ‘torture’, it’s never BEEN ‘torture’, it’s things that have always been in the army manual of operations (whatever that thing is called). There’s a huge difference between standard military tactics that I don’t much like and the abuses of the Bush state. For one thing, only one of them violates international law.
But a complete lack of context is one of the problems I have with Mclaren.
EDIT – It sounds like you’re sympathetic to Mclaren here, but consider the gigantic difference between what you’re saying and using a rumor about a black ops base to declare categorically that Obama is continuing the Bush policy of torture unabated. It is exactly that lack of perspective or respect for the difference between truth and rumor that I’m decrying. I have a lot more respect for being pissed about the things you talk about than the things he talks about – especially if someone understands they’re utterly different.
Bob Loblaw
@Uloborus:
Dude, I couldn’t care less about mclaren. The guy’s an obsessive weirdo. I’m just setting the story (as far as we can ever know about these things) straight.
Cat
Is the most interesting thing to me so far. I’m interested if this is an inference from a report or if someone actually wrote those words about the Gunship pilots.
Edit…
NM, its the same gunship, but no idea if was piloted by the same pilots. The incident is pretty screwy. If you read the article about it.
Mnemosyne
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Did you know that if you lose your Social Security card, you can never get another one and you’re totally screwed and can never get another job because there’s absolutely no way for you to get a new one issued?
You’d think so if you actually thought mclaren had any fucking idea what she was talking about.
Stillwater
@burnspbesq: If a jury determines that the evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Assange is guilty of conspiracy, or aiding and abetting the theft of classified material, will you have a problem with him going to jail? Or is your support for the rule of law tentative and conditional?
See, this kind of deference to ‘the rule of law’ as some final arbiter of civil society is both worrisome and incorrect. It’s worrisome because the legislative process is arbitrary and capricious. It’s incorrect because the law, insofar as it is intended to create a foundation for a functioning society, is supposed to serve the interests of society.
That a particular law merely exists is not sufficient to justify that it ought to exist. Presumably, other considerations come into play – the laws consistency with other principles and laws, whether it can realistically constrain the behaviors and actions it is designed to constrain, whether it adds to, rather than detracts from, the smooth functioning of civil society, etc.
With a simple whistle-blower protection law in place, Assange’s activities would be entirely legal (supposing, of course, his actions satisfied the conditions for such protection), and your legal criticism of his activity dissolves. But I feel like you would still criticize what he’s doing even if it were legal.
Uloborus
@Bob Loblaw:
And you did, and I’m cool with that.
roshan
But…but…Assange fucked two women on the side. Gotta know if he is a rapist or not. How is all this Iraq stuff relevant to that?
burnspbesq
@JGabriel:
I think you’re wrong about misclassification being a defense under 642. The statute doesn’t say anything about classification, it’s about theft of government PROPERTY.
Got cases?
burnspbesq
@Xenos
18 USC 371, conspiracy.
Aiding and abetting violations of 18 USC 642, theft of government property.
burnspbesq
@ornery curmudgeon
Find one post, here or anywhere else, where I have ever done anything but unequivocally condemn torture or other mistreatment of detainees. Take all the time you need. When you come up empty, I will graciously accept your apology.
I expected better of you.
Xenos
@burnspbesq: I suppose Assange is liable for quite a few counts for theft of government property. At ten years’ incarceration per count, and by his own admission at least 400,000 documents stolen, he could really regret this after the first couple million years in Leavenworth.
Paula
@Svensker:
You mean they’re not the same person?