Wikileaks. Any comments?

[gumboot]

That is such utter ********. Rescuing the wounded could be said to facilitate the war effort in any war, but you can't shoot non-combantants hauling off the wounded, nor can you even shoot enemy combatants who are laid hors de combat by wounds.

This is true, of course. But it comes down to a judgment call of whether the people collecting the wounded are non-combatants, and whether a wounded enemy combatant is hors de combat.

You don't get to say that any tactic no matter how depraved or illegal is justified because you're fighting an insurgency.

You're missing my point. In a counter-insurgency war, particularly where the tactics I've described are being used, it becomes much harder for a combatant in the heat of battle to judge who is and isn't a combatant, and when a wounded combatant is or isn't hors de combat. The decision to shoot or not shoot becomes very muddied.

Given that the laws of war are always judged based on what the combatants thought at the time, and not on the facts of the case (something very few armchair critics of warfare seem to be able to grasp), it therefore becomes more likely that the shooting of non-combatants and those laid hors de combat will be excused.

That's just the nature of the beast. It's ugly, and distasteful, and it's particularly crappy for the innocent civilians caught up in the whole mess who just want to help, but there's really nothing that can be done about it, sadly.

If you have a solution, I'd love to hear it.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

You're missing my point. In a counter-insurgency war, particularly where the tactics I've described are being used, it becomes much harder for a combatant in the heat of battle to judge who is and isn't a combatant, and when a wounded combatant is or isn't hors de combat. The decision to shoot or not shoot becomes very muddied.

Gumboot, the video is absolutely unambiguous that the soldiers in question were lying to their commanding officer about what was happening in order to get permission to fire.

It is disingenuous to talk about their decision being "muddled", they were deliberately breaking the rules.

Given that the laws of war are always judged based on what the combatants thought at the time, and not on the facts of the case (something very few armchair critics of warfare seem to be able to grasp), it therefore becomes more likely that the shooting of non-combatants and those laid hors de combat will be excused.

We know what they thought. We have the video.

That's just the nature of the beast. It's ugly, and distasteful, and it's particularly crappy for the innocent civilians caught up in the whole mess who just want to help, but there's really nothing that can be done about it, sadly.

If you have a solution, I'd love to hear it.

The solution is that you learn to live with not being able to murder civilians.

You don't get to assume that an unarmed civilian in a civilian vehicle picking up the bodies of unarmed journalists is a combatant. If that hurts your intelligence-gathering ability, you live with that. Sometimes you don't get everything you want. The laws of war don't have a clause that says "If you feel like taking prisoners, then civilians assisting wounded enemy are fair game to be blown away from a helicopter".

If you're taking an army paycheck you've agreed to risk your life in a war zone to carry out wars the way you are told, in line with the relevant treaties. Sometimes that means you're going to get killed in situations where if you were allowed to kill civilians, use poison gas, torture prisoners or otherwise commit atrocities you would have lived. If you don't like it, don't sign on the line or become a conscientious objector if you're already in.

It's just the nature of the beast.

 

[gumboot]

Gumboot, the video is absolutely unambiguous that the soldiers in question were lying to their commanding officer about what was happening in order to get permission to fire.

No it isn't. Aside from which that single video monitor isn't the only information available to the helicopter crew, so to assume that everything they're talking about is solely what you can see on that screen is frankly stupid.

It is disingenuous to talk about their decision being "muddled", they were deliberately breaking the rules.

It sounded to me like they thought they had identified a threat and decided to take it out. How come we don't hear the crew discussing their intended deception? Do they have some sort of mind meld so that they can just mentally agree on the details of their lie and progress from there? I don't think so.

We know what they thought. We have the video.

You think you know what they thought. But you don't. And what you claim they thought is in direct conflict with what they actually say, which is all you actually have to judge what they were thinking.

The solution is that you learn to live with not being able to murder civilians.

And how are they supposed to work out who is and isn't a civilian? It's all very easy for armchair dictators like yourself to sit comfortably at home raving about not killing civilians, but these guys have a war to fight.

You don't get to assume that an unarmed civilian in a civilian vehicle picking up the bodies of unarmed journalists is a combatant.

You do get to consider the facts, as they appear to you, and make a judgment call though. Or are you saying the helicopter crew knew they were shooting unarmed journalists, telepathically agreed to take those journalists out because....? and then telepathically decided on how to like about it to get permission? Please. They clearly identified the journalists and their party as a genuine threat.

The laws of war don't have a clause that says "If you feel like taking prisoners, then civilians assisting wounded enemy are fair game to be blown away from a helicopter".

Now you're just not even making sense.

Sometimes that means you're going to get killed in situations where if you were allowed to kill civilians, use poison gas, torture prisoners or otherwise commit atrocities you would have lived.

Actually self-defense supersedes all and every other law of armed conflict. If you could actually demonstrate that it was necessarily to nuke a city full of orphans in order to save your own life, your actions would have been justified.

 

[BeAChooser]

I will refute one claim you made, that being that there were WMD in Iraq prior to the invasion.

At the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq claimed to have about 14,000 WMD. The UN documented and oversaw the destruction of 13,550 WDM.

First of all, your numbers seem to be a bit off.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/iraq/un_wmd.html

UNSCOM disposed of 38,500 chemical weapons, including shells, warheads and bombs, 690 tons of chemical weapons agents, 3,000 tons of precursor chemicals and 426 pieces of chemical production equipment. UNSCOM reports, however, show that Iraq had roughly 100,000 chemical weapons at its disposal during the Iran-Iraq War, and a significant portion was not accounted for at the time of the U.N.'s departure in 1998.

Second, why would you ever think Iraq's "claims" were truthful about anything? Over and over and over they were found to be lies … in particular about the number and type of WMD they produced. Iraq's leadership can be heard on tapes recorded in the late 90s that were captured in the last war gloating about how they deceived UNSCOM (the U.N. weapons inspectors) as to the scope of their WMD efforts and stockpiles.

For example, they initially denied having researched biological weapons. After that was found to be a lie, they claimed they'd never developed any warheads based on that research. That was a lie too. In fact, UNSCOM found records proving they'd produced hundreds of bombs and missiles filled with biological agents. Then they claimed they never intended to use them or "cause harm or damage to anybody." But UNSCOM found that they'd tested the agents on animals and Iraqi opposition groups accused Saddam's regime of testing them on people. It was alleged that during one experiment, prisoners taken from Abu Ghraib were tied to posts while anthrax shells were exploded nearby. Saddam's regime of course denied this. When Scott Ritter (you know who he is, right?) demanded to see documents from Abu Ghraib showing the prisoner count during the alleged timeframe when this supposedly happened, he found the records were missing. Asked to explain the missing documents, the Iraqi government charged that Ritter was working for the CIA and began refusing UNSCOM access to certain sites.

And that pattern was repeated over and over. According to http://www.un.org/Depts/unscom/Chronology/chronologyframe.htm , in February of 1998, seven years after the first Gulf War, "the team of UNSCOM international experts conclude[d] unanimously that Iraq ha[d] still not provided sufficient information for the Commission to conclude that Iraq had undertaken all the disarmament steps required of it" in the area of VX weapons. In April 1998 "the experts unanimously conclude[d] that Iraq’s declaration on its biological weapons programme [was] incomplete and inadequate" too.

Regarding binary sarin weapons, the ISG report states:

Iraq only declared its work on binary munitions after Husayn Kamil fled Iraq in 1995, and even then only claimed to have produced a limited number of binary rounds that it used in field trials in 1988. UN investigations revealed a number of uncertainties surrounding the nature and extent of Iraq’s work with these systems and it remains unclear how many rounds it produced, tested, declared, or concealed from the UN.

Now these were the best WMD weapons Iraq ever produced, with long shelf lives because they were binary. Why Iraq would not have gone into production with them, given that its scientists told the ISG their development was "VERY successful", is illogical. Every other weapon that Iraq had success with ended up in production in that time frame.

Ritter said in August 1998 that "Iraq retains the capability to launch a chemical strike." He told Congress in September 1998 that "based on highly credible intelligence, UNSCOM suspects that Iraq still has biological agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, and clostridium perfringens in sufficient quantity to fill several dozen bombs and ballistic missile warheads ... snip ... Iraq probably retains several tons of the highly toxic VX substance, as well as sarin nerve gas and mustard gas. This agent is stored in artillery shells, bombs, and ballistic missile warheads. ... snip ... Iraq still has components (high explosive lenses, initiators, and neutron generators) for up to four nuclear devices minus the fissile core (highly enriched uranium or plutonium) ... snip ... Iraq has retained an operational long-range ballistic missile force that includes approximately four mobile launchers and a dozen missiles. He also stated at that time that Iraq retained "the means to continue manufacturing" biological agents", "significant dual-use industrial infrastructure that can be used to rapidly reconstitute large-scale chemical weapons production", "the means to produce 'high explosive lenses, initiators, and neutron generators' for nuclear weapons", and "production means necessary for the rapid reconstitution of long-range ballistic missile production."

And shortly after that, the UN inspectors were kicked out for a period of 4 years. And when the last finally war rolled around, Iraq clearly spent considerable effort, before and during it, sanitizing files, computers and laboratories thought by the ISG to be connected to WMD. What were they hiding, qayak? The real quantities of WMD produced? Where those weapons went? I say we don't really know what Iraq had in the way of WMD in 2003, given the possibility (acknowledged by the ISG) that WMD were moved to Syria just prior to the war. Which numerous sources said occurred.

Documents and audio tapes discovered in Iraq after the invasion show that in the last year of his regime, Saddam was in fact still trying to expand his chemical weapons capability. In January 2002, his advisors discussed research into a precursor for Sarin nerve gas. In September 2002, only seven months before the war, Saddam's Military Industrial Commission approved the illegal production of the precursor chemicals used to make Tabun nerve gas. Four days later, another office discussed plans to import a banned compound, phosphorus pentasulfate. The UN had required Iraq to prove that it had destroyed all of its stocks of this chemical, which is a precursor for VX nerve gas. Instead, they were importing more of it. In October 2002, Saddam's Director of Planning ordered more than forty tons of various chemicals which, when mixed together, would make Zyclon B – the poison gas used by the Nazis to kill millions of Jews during the Holocaust.

The secret planning for banned chemical weapons in 2002 was no last-minute decision on the eve of war. Rather, it typified Saddam's long, well-thought-out plan to deceive the UN – an ongoing project that went back more than a decade. For example, Saddam's intelligence service sent out a memo in 1997 ordering his staff not to destroy any WMD but to conceal prohibited materials, "hide equipment and documents....make sure that labs are cleaned of any traces of chemical or biological substances." That was the real Saddam: hide the WMD, clean up the tell-tale evidence.

As well, the WMD were unusable because of their age and Iraq had no facilities to make new ones.

No. Experts concluded that the binary sarin warhead, that insurgents tried to use as an ordinary IED, was still able to produce 40% pure sarin in sufficient quantity that terrorists could have used that warhead to kill thousands of people if properly distributed. And the ISG report states that at the time the 2003 war started, Iraq still had the ability to produce mustard gas warheads within 6 months and nerve gas warheads within a year or two. And were planning to do so once sanctions and UN oversight ended. You are simply wrong to suggest Iraq posed no threat to anyone.

And let me close by pointing out that you decided to champion Wikileaks as the purveyor of truth in this thread. Fine. Would it surprise you to know that Wikileaks leaked classified US documents that indicate there were WMD in Iraq and that Iraq did indeed have the ability to make WMD? This was first reported back in October.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/201...nt-continued-in-iraq-with-surprising-results/

But WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction.

And here is the latest:

http://www.examiner.com/public-safe...wmd-program-existed-iraq-prior-to-us-invasion

December 7th, 2010

… snip …

One of the WikiLeaks document dumps reveals that as late as 2008, American troops continued to find WMD in the region.

… snip …

According to the latest WikiLeaks document "dump," Saddam’s toxic arsenal, significantly reduced after the Gulf War, remained intact.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The hydrogen bomb wasn't invented until the early '50s /pedant

...

I sit corrected.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The internet has been the best thing since we discovered how to use fire. Easy access to information and people, and at least in the US, can be fairly inexpensive. I hope that the Assange episode doesn't end up ruining it for us.
I'm a little concerned about that.

On the contrary, the response to Wikileaks demonstrates the extent of the people's involvement and that is a good thing. I'm not saying the hack attacks were directly useful. But they demonstrate the number of people in cyberland who are ready to act in support of freedom of information.

I wrote a protest email to PayPal. I don't know how many people also did so. Today PayPal backed off somewhat. I don't know the details. But it made me glad I wrote the email. I essentially said they had no right to discriminate as no laws were broken and their action amounted to political censorship.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Doing business with anybody is a matter of free will as long is it isn't for racial or religious discrimination.

You have no RIGHT to a merchant account with Paypal, MasterCard or Visa.

And they have the RIGHT to refuse to service anybody they feel violates their ethics or who sheds a bad light on them.

For example, PayPal will not deal with donations to porn sites, and they have every right to do so.

You don't need to be proven guilty for me to think that your actions are horrible and that I won't associate myself or my company with them.

Is that what you really want? Big corporations with the right to choose the political affiliation of their customers? No anti-war protestors allowed in Walmart or Home Depot? And they have you IDed by data mining what you post in a forum so they check your ID at the door to see if you are on their "no buy list"?

Baloney it is their right. There may not be a current law against such discrimination and currently the government clearly supports this activity and have big business on their side. But if a lot of companies started denying people more than air travel, I'd wager the public would protest that "right" you think people in power should have over those who don't hold the same power.

 

[dirtywick]

Is that what you really want? Big corporations with the right to choose the political affiliation of their customers? No anti-war protestors allowed in Walmart or Home Depot? And they have you IDed by data mining what you post in a forum so they check your ID at the door to see if you are on their "no buy list"?

Baloney it is their right. There may not be a current law against such discrimination and currently the government clearly supports this activity and have big business on their side. But if a lot of companies started denying people more than air travel, I'd wager the public would protest that "right" you think people in power should have over those who don't hold the same power.

Guess he shouldn't threaten to take down major banks by publishing their stolen private files and expect to benefit from their services.

 

[Hellbound]

By the way, why is it illegal for military personal to look at the wikileaks information?

I'll answer this, but I'm not going to get involved in any discussion of these documents (as I'm military as well).

In the military, you sign what is essentially a non-disclosure agreement, with a statement of understanding regarding how you treat classified information. You also recieve training in various aspects of this, especially if you recieve a security clearance.

As otehrs have stated, just because information is improperly disclosed, that does NOT make it automaticaly declassified. So, the information on the site is still classified information.

Part of your security training is that, in order to access classified documents, you need two things: appropriate clearance level AND a legitimate need-to-know. IN other words, just because I have a Secret level clearence doesn't mean I can go look at any secret documents when the fancy strikes me. I have to have a legitimate need to see the documetns in order to perform my assigned duties. This appleis to all military personnel.

Thus, going to the site and looking at or discussing these documents is a violation of my agreement with the U.S. government, and grounds for revocation of my securoty clearance (at the least). Basically, I've been trained and should know better. If classified documents reveal some sort of unethical or illegal behavior, then that should be brought to the attention of the appropriate agencies (JAG or military police, for example), and is outside my job field.

It's the same principal that applies in many private businesses. For example, I work for an insurance company on the civillian side. As IT staff, I have access to a LOT of sensitive information: patient data, bank account numbers, etc. I require acces sto certain data storage locations and data transfer processes to do my job. However, if I were just browsing through files and looking at interesting bits, my butt would be fired so fast the revolving doors still be spinning a week later, because I don't have need to know. The only time I look inside files is during file transfer testing, when we need to make sure the internal formatting is maintained (and this is almost always test data, not real data). The only possible exception to this is if I think something unethical or illegal is going on (such as a file being copied to a suscpicious location), and even then I don't have the right to take it on myself to investigate...I report it to the legal department and/or my supervisor, and don't go digging into things I have no need to know.

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Basically, I've been trained and should know better. If classified documents reveal some sort of unethical or illegal behavior, then that should be brought to the attention of the appropriate agencies (JAG or military police, for example), and is outside my job field.

This reads to me as an admission that wrongdoing within the military or government can only be legitimately exposed by either 1) those outside the military, and thus not under the restrictions you've described, or 2) by someone within the military whose "need to know" allows them access to information that just happens to point to the wrongdoing.

 

[Hellbound]

This reads to me as an admission that wrongdoing within the military or government can only be legitimately exposed by either 1) those outside the military, and thus not under the restrictions you've described, or 2) by someone within the military whose "need to know" allows them access to information that just happens to point to the wrongdoing.

No.

It just means that if I suspect wrongdoing, and it's outside my area, I'm not authorized to go digging for the classified documents on my own, unless I've been apponted as an investigatin officer or the documents in queston fall within my normal duties. I can, however, report my suspicions to the appropriate authorities.

There's also the fact that the military requires you to report wrongdoing. You have a duty to report illegal orders or violations of the laws of war. Failure to report carries a penalty not much less than actually committing the offense.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

No it isn't. Aside from which that single video monitor isn't the only information available to the helicopter crew, so to assume that everything they're talking about is solely what you can see on that screen is frankly stupid.

This attempt at an argument only erodes your credibility. From the video:

01:43 Hotel Two-Six; Crazy Horse One-Eight. Have five to six individuals with AK47s [automatic rifles]. Request permission to engage [shoot].

Going over the video frame by frame nobody has been able to find five to six individuals with AK47s, because they were not there.

From the video:

07:18 Bushmaster; Crazyhorse. We have individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly uh picking up bodies and weapons.

Going over the video frame by frame nobody has been able to find civilians touching weapons, because they were not there.

They were assisting the wounded, something civilians have the right to do regardless of what the occupying power thinks of the matter and regardless of whether the occupying power would prefer that the wounded be left to die or be picked up by its own troops. That right cannot be unilaterally revoked by the occupying power stating a preference that wounded be left for its own troops to capture.

It sounded to me like they thought they had identified a threat and decided to take it out. How come we don't hear the crew discussing their intended deception? Do they have some sort of mind meld so that they can just mentally agree on the details of their lie and progress from there? I don't think so.

That's nice.

The only person who needs to be "in on it" is the guy watching the screen and lying about what he is seeing to get permission to kill.

And how are they supposed to work out who is and isn't a civilian? It's all very easy for armchair dictators like yourself to sit comfortably at home raving about not killing civilians, but these guys have a war to fight.

What authoritarians all too often forget is that the army is subject to civilian rule. Their job is to go and kill and die in the way they are told to. The armed forces have a degree of discretion in how they kill and die but morally and legally that discretion has clearly-drawn boundaries that sometimes lead to soldiers getting killed. That's the price they signed up to pay.

They have a war to fight, and they have rules as to how they are allowed to fight it. Break those rules and you're a murderer - thus "Collateral Murder".

Actually self-defense supersedes all and every other law of armed conflict.

Is this a derail, or are you seriously arguing that blowing away unarmed civilians who are assisting wounded persons constitutes "self-defence" in any reasonable sense of the term?

 

[DaN K. StAnLeY]

What happened to all the leaks? They were the major topic of 24/7 MSM, but lately all I hear about is Assange and his rape case.

Is anyone really buying these allegations against him still? I can't believe people aren't making a bigger deal out of this.

Anyone got some insight?

 

[qarnos]

What happened to all the leaks? They were the major topic of 24/7 MSM, but lately all I hear about is Assange and his rape case.

I was just wondering the same thing. After the release of the diplomatic cables, Assange really seemed to be getting off over the "big U.S. Bank" documents he was going to release early this year, but all I can find now is some emails stolen by anonymous.