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WildCat said:
Would you like the US to overthrow the Iraqi government again?
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Maybe the US shouldn't have done it in the first place. After all, there were no WMDs, it was obviously nothing to do with oil, and apparently torture and murder by government forces is not considered a particularly big deal either.
 
Matthew Best said:
Maybe the US shouldn't have done it in the first place. After all, there were no WMDs, it was obviously nothing to do with oil, and apparently torture and murder by government forces is not considered a particularly big deal either.
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This has nothing to do with that.

What do you expect US forces to do when they see Iraqis misbehaving? Should we depose the elected Iraqi government?
 
Possible CT here: The coalition intentionally leaked the civilian body count to counter all those extremely high estimates? "No, the war didn't kill 2,000,000 Iraqis, only 66,000, about as many as militants."

Backup evidence: Who did all the redacting on 400,000 documents? Who had the resources- the one guy who leaked them, Wikileaks, or the Pentagon? The Pentagon even admits that the redacting was well done, no direct harm to any individual.
 
Checkmite said:
Under what authority? Iraq has a police department. Just because the US was made aware of the allegations doesn't put them in a position to act on them.
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I don't know the legal position but the US could easily have made a big noise about it if they had wanted it to stop. The US military occupation was, after all, propping up a weak Iraqi government.
 
casebro said:
Backup evidence: Who did all the redacting on 400,000 documents? Who had the resources- the one guy who leaked them, Wikileaks, or the Pentagon? The Pentagon even admits that the redacting was well done, no direct harm to any individual.
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I believe Assange is on record as stating that WL did all the recasting not because they were concerned about peoples' safety, but because they didn't want anyone to be able to attack the leak as putting people in harm's way. According to CNN, the level of redaction is almost over-the-top.

Given what I've read about Assange's views on the US war effort, I can't see him being concerned for the safety of people who collaborate with the US military.
 
casebro said:
The link above mentions 66,081 civilian deaths, per a coalition body count.

Doesn't jibe with the um hundreds of gazillions by door to door polling a couple years a go, does it?
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Earlier on in the war, the Lancet was past 100,000 civilian deaths.
 
The Vietnam War demonstrated the problem with governments keeping the majority of the war secret from the public. When the reason for war is clear (Germany invading Europe, Japan invading Asia, Saddam invading Kuwait, clearing al Qaeda out of Afghanistan) the government doesn't necessarily need to have that many secrets from the public. When you have a war like Vietnam and Iraq, now you have a government lying to the public because the public would not otherwise be behind the leaders' decisions to carry on these wars.

And, when war is not going well, or is not clean which happens when the enemy and the people on your side are from the same country, there are sadly many things the public wouldn't likely tolerate.

These are not legit reasons to hide the truth from the public under the lie of 'troop security'. When these things come to light they are more likely to stop. It is our tax money and our soldiers dying in these wars. Only a few of the people making decisions have any family or loved ones taking the bullets and bombs for everyone. The public has a right to know. And if the Pentagon and government were honest with the people, Wikileaks would not be dumping documents for us to see. There would be no need.


Everyone should watch the documentary on the Pentagon Papers or read the book if they haven't already.

Keep in mind that the SCOTUS ruled the Papers could be published, and a member of Congress read the Papers into the Congressional Record to thwart suppression of the information getting out. NYTs summary of the events.
 
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Skeptic Ginger said:
The Vietnam War demonstrated the problem with governments keeping the majority of the war secret from the public. When the reason for war is clear (Germany invading Europe, Japan invading Asia, Saddam invading Kuwait, clearing al Qaeda out of Afghanistan) the government doesn't necessarily need to have that many secrets from the public. When you have a war like Vietnam and Iraq, now you have a government lying to the public because the public would not otherwise be behind the leaders' decisions to carry on these wars.

And, when war is not going well, or is not clean which happens when the enemy and the people on your side are from the same country, there are sadly many things the public wouldn't likely tolerate.

These are not legit reasons to hide the truth from the public under the lie of 'troop security'. When these things come to light they are more likely to stop. It is our tax money and our soldiers dying in these wars. Only a few of the people making decisions have any family or loved ones taking the bullets and bombs for everyone. The public has a right to know. And if the Pentagon and government were honest with the people, Wikileaks would not be dumping documents for us to see. There would be no need.


Everyone should watch the documentary on the Pentagon Papers or read the book if they haven't already.

Keep in mind that the SCOTUS ruled the Papers could be published, and a member of Congress read the Papers into the Congressional Record to thwart suppression of the information getting out. NYTs summary of the events.
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Good post.
 
'Iraq war logs: US turned over captives to Iraqi torture squads'

"Within the huge leaked archive is contained a batch of secret field reports from the town of Samarra. They corroborate previous allegations that the US military turned over many prisoners to the Wolf Brigade, the feared 2nd battalion of the interior ministry's special commandos.
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The Wolf Brigade was created and supported by the US in an attempt to re-employ elements of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, this time to terrorise insurgents"
 
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Jihad Jane is so excited she linked to the wrong article. Calm down, and take the time to type the correct link.

BTW, where were you when Hussein's regime was doing this on a daily basis? I guess torture is a bad word and worthy of your attention only when the US is somehow attached to it.

You were perfectly willing to let well enough alone when it was Hussein who was doing it:

JihadJane said:
Are not those who violently invaded, occupied, terrorized and trashed a sovereign country under false pretenses also "part of the problem"?
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http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6147767&postcount=12


JihadJane said:
Life for women in US Iraq is much worse than it was under the murderous Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi's yearn for "the good ol' days" because they were better for most than the New American Century days.
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http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4286154&postcount=247
 
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Pardalis said:
Jihad Jane is so excited she linked to the wrong article. Calm down, and take the time to type the correct link.

BTW, where were you when Hussein's regime was doing this on a daily basis? I guess torture is a bad word and worthy of your attention only when the US is somehow attached to it.
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Yes, it's all about JihadJane. :rolleyes:
 
And what do you think will happen if the US left Iraq? Suddenly and magically things will improve on their own?
 
Pardalis said:
And what do you think will happen if the US left Iraq? Suddenly and magically things will improve on their own?
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So it is our obligation to create a peaceful and prosperous nation out of the death and destruction we have turned loose upon that nation? How much more is that going to require,...why were these costs and timeframes more prominent than the "cake walk" and "greeted as liberators" discussions prior to the war? Who exactly should we blame for this tar-baby?
 
Fun from Twitter:

@natlsecuritycnn: CONSPIRACY ALERT! Asked whether the #Pentagon has cracked the #Wikileaks insurance file, a Pentagon spokesman just smiled in response.
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Rock on. :)
 
Pardalis said:
His name is Saddam Hussein. Next question?
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So sorry, but I do understand why accepting reponsibility and being willing to accept the consequences of one's own actions aren't real high priorities for some individuals, but thank-you for playing, you're free to try again later (try reading something beyond the political opinion pages).
 
Just to clear up some misconceptions about some things...

From STRATFOR:

When one takes a careful look at the classified documents released by WikiLeaks, it becomes quickly apparent that they contain very few true secrets. Indeed, the main points being emphasized by Al Jazeera and the other media outlets after all the intense research they conducted before the public release of the documents seem to highlight a number of issues that had been well-known and well-chronicled for years. For example, the press has widely reported that the Iraqi government was torturing its own people; many civilians were killed during the six years the documents covered; sectarian death squads were operating inside Iraq; and the Iranian government was funding Shiite militias. None of this is news. But, when one steps back from the documents themselves and looks at the larger picture, there are some interesting issues that have been raised by the release of these documents and the reaction to their release.
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Due to the nature of SIPRNet, most of the information that was downloaded from it and sent to WikiLeaks consisted of raw field reports from U.S. troops in Iraq. These reports discussed things units encountered, such as IED attacks, ambushes, the bodies of murdered civilians, friendly-fire incidents, traffic accidents, etc. For the most part, the reports contained raw information and not vetted, processed intelligence. The documents also did not contain information that was the result of intelligence-collection operations, and therefore did not reveal sensitive intelligence sources and methods. Although the WikiLeaks material is often compared to the 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers, there really is very little similarity. The Pentagon Papers consisted of a top secret-level study completed for the U.S. secretary of defense and not raw, low-level battlefield reports.
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Another factor to consider when reading raw information from the field is that, while they offer a degree of granular detail that cannot be found in higher-level intelligence analysis, they can often be misleading or otherwise erroneous. As anyone who has ever interviewed a witness can tell you, in a stressful situation people often miss or misinterpret important factual details. That’s just how most people are wired. This situation can be compounded when a witness is placed in a completely alien culture. This is not to say that all these reports are flawed, but just to note that raw information must often be double-checked and vetted before it can be used to create a reliable estimate of the situation on the battlefield. Clearly, the readers of these reports released by WikiLeaks now do not have the ability to conduct that type of follow-up.
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In addition to the glaring personnel security issues regarding Manning’s access to classified information systems, these cases are in large part the result of a classified information system overloaded with vast quantities of information that simply does not need to be protected at the secret level. And, ironically, overloading the system in such a way actually weakens the information-protection process by making it difficult to determine which information truly needs to be protected. Instead of seeking to weed out the overclassified material and concentrate on protecting the truly sensitive information, the culture of classification reacts by using the WikiLeaks cases as justification for continuing to classify information at the highest possible levels and for sharing the intelligence it generates with fewer people. The ultimate irony is that the WikiLeaks cases will help strengthen and perpetuate the broken system that helped lead to the disclosures in the first place.
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The article goes on to point out the issues with the current classification system in place in the government currently and bemoans the likely fact that this leak will, instead of prompting real reform of the system, instead make it more cumbersome. It does state unequivocally that what Manning AND Wikileaks have done is wrong; Manning because, regardless of whether the reports should have been classified or not, deliberately downloaded then CLASSIFIED material and provided it to individuals who did not have the necessary clearance or need to know, and Wikileaks because their doing so contributes more to the perpetuation of the mistakes that have been made rather than contributing to a solution. In my opinion, the author of this article raises some extremely good points. In order to foster some decent discussion on the subject, may I suggest that everyone take the time to read the article and discuss the points raised in it? I think we can approach this rationally that way rather than engaging in pointless and useless hyperbole (which, I might add, I'm somewhat guilty of myself in this and other threads).



"WikiLeaks and the Culture of Classification is republished with permission of STRATFOR."
 
Sabrina said:
Just to clear up some misconceptions about some things...

From STRATFOR:

(...)
The article goes on to point out the issues with the current classification system in place in the government currently and bemoans the likely fact that this leak will, instead of prompting real reform of the system, instead make it more cumbersome. It does state unequivocally that what Manning AND Wikileaks have done is wrong; Manning because, regardless of whether the reports should have been classified or not, deliberately downloaded then CLASSIFIED material and provided it to individuals who did not have the necessary clearance or need to know, and Wikileaks because their doing so contributes more to the perpetuation of the mistakes that have been made rather than contributing to a solution. In my opinion, the author of this article raises some extremely good points. In order to foster some decent discussion on the subject, may I suggest that everyone take the time to read the article and discuss the points raised in it? I think we can approach this rationally that way rather than engaging in pointless and useless hyperbole (which, I might add, I'm somewhat guilty of myself in this and other threads).



"WikiLeaks and the Culture of Classification is republished with permission of STRATFOR."
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of what value or merit do you consider the STRATFOR perspective, and why should anyone else, US citizen or not, attribute similar value or merit to their considerations?
 
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