The Wikileak Release – An Attack Upon This Country

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Wikileaks has released the next wave of classified material and it has made this country infinitely weaker. No country will want to confide, nor help, the US again knowing that they too could be embarrassed.

Ronald Neumann, who served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, tells Danger Room he fears the impact of forced candor on U.S. foreign relations. “A man might say things to his wife about his mother-in-law that he would be horrified to hear her repeat to her mother and the doing of which might even put great strain on his marriage,” Neumann says. “That is what a lot of classification is about. I believe it serves the public. There is always an argument for publicizing malfeasance. I do not believe there is one for making more difficult just getting on with the nation’s diplomatic business.”

The excuse given by Wikileaks for releasing the documents? Naive and ignorant:

This document release reveals the contradictions between the US’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors – and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what’s going on behind the scenes.

Allah:

If you take this argument seriously, any confidential communication between government officials should be fair game for leaking so long as it somehow contradicts or questions, however glancingly, state policy. (Hypocrisy!) But of course, they’re not limiting publication to only those documents that undermine official State Department positions; as noted above in the context of Turkey’s foreign minister, a lot of this stuff will simply be bits of intelligence about various international actors and speculation about their motives. Nothing “hypocritical” about it — but mighty embarrassing.

This was done to weaken this country, plain and simple. With a already weak President in office these documents have most certainly caused major harm to this country. I mean think about it. It’s common sense that State Department diplomatic cables would contain some embarrassing facts about different countries and their leaders. Now this country, and Obama, has a much more difficult road ahead:

The President needs his ambassadors to know what he wants; they need to be able to tell him what he can get. So it’s stupid to not be blunt and forthright in private about matters that require a softer public touch.

Think they will be blunt and forthright anymore?

Not gonna happen.

Joe Lieberman:

“Wikileaks’ deliberate disclosure of these diplomatic cables is nothing less than an attack on the national security of the United States, as well as that of dozens of other countries. By disseminating these materials, Wikileaks is putting at risk the lives and the freedom of countless Americans and non-Americans around the world. It is an outrageous, reckless, and despicable action that will undermine the ability of our government and our partners to keep our people safe and to work together to defend our vital interests. Let there be no doubt: the individuals responsible are going to have blood on their hands. I stand in full support of the Obama Administration’s condemnation of Wikileaks for these disclosures. I also urge the Obama Administration — both on its own and in cooperation with other responsible governments around the world — to use all legal means necessary to shut down Wikileaks before it can do more damage by releasing additional cables. Wikileaks’ activities represent a shared threat to collective international security.

“It is also outrageous for Wikileaks and its enablers to hide their conduct behind the ideal of ‘transparency.’ As a democracy, our nation has always believed the American people should have access to as much information as possible. But we have also long recognized that — to keep our country safe — some information must be kept secret. This is a balancing act that the American people themselves ultimately control through our democratically-elected representatives and our institutions. What Wikileaks is doing is to short-circuit this entire democratic process — claiming for itself the exclusive, unilateral, and unchecked power to decide what should and shouldn’t be made public. This is therefore not only an attack on our national security, but an offense against our democracy and the principle of transparency.”

As for the information contained in the documents I’m just going to highlight two, and both deal with North Korea. First, do you recall this speech?

Turns out the man was right:

Secret American intelligence assessments have concluded that Iran has obtained a cache of advanced missiles, based on a Russian design, that are much more powerful than anything Washington has publicly conceded that Tehran has in its arsenal, diplomatic cables show.

Iran obtained 19 of the missiles from North Korea, according to a cable dated Feb. 24 of this year. The cable is a detailed, highly classified account of a meeting between top Russian officials and an American delegation led by Vann H. Van Diepen, an official with the State Department’s nonproliferation division who, as a national intelligence officer several years ago, played a crucial role in the 2007 assessment of Iran’s nuclear capacity

~~~

The missile intelligence also suggests far deeper military — and perhaps nuclear — cooperation between North Korea and Iran than was previously known. At the request of the Obama administration, The New York Times has agreed not to publish the text of the cable.

Hmmmm, things just got much more difficult for Obama to deal with regarding the North Korea situation.

X2

Thinking about an eventual collapse of North Korea: American and South Korean officials have discussed the prospects for a unified Korea, should the North’s economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans even considered commercial inducements to China, according to the American ambassador to Seoul. She told Washington in February that South Korean officials believe that the right business deals would “help salve” China’s “concerns about living with a reunified Korea” that is in a “benign alliance” with the United States.

This release just gave North Korea an excuse for all-out war.

As Lieberman said above….blood is definitely on the hands of Julian Assange and his wikileaks.

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You can search all of these new leaks and not be able to validate the Left’s weird preconceived notions about Israel as a warmonger nation.
Quite the opposite is proven, however.

Obama’s June 2009 meeting with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah

You learn the Saudis gave Obama a bruising lecture on what they actually care about, and it wasn’t the Palestinians.
King Abdullah expected to talk about militarily confronting Iran, and he couldn’t believe it when Obama kept reciting bromides about the earth-shattering importance of the Israeli/Arab conflict and his enthusiasm for solving it.
That was a regular public topic between the two – Obama’s first talk with Abdullah focused on Gaza and the President later emphasized his abiding support for Saudi Arabia’s “Israel Has To Commit Suicide” plan – but the King kind of thought he was dealing with a serious person who could separate spectacle from policy.
Instead he got the equivalent of an International Relations graduate student enamored with pseudo-sophisticated “insights” he’d gleaned from Arab media outlets. Ergo, meltdown.

10. (S) The King, Foreign Minister, Prince Muqrin, and Prince Nayif all agreed that the Kingdom needs to cooperate with the US on resisting and rolling back Iranian influence and subversion in Iraq. The King was particularly adamant on this point, and it was echoed by the senior princes as well. Al-Jubeir recalled the King’s frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program. “He told you to cut off the head of the snake,” he recalled to the Charge’, adding that working with the US to roll back Iranian influence in Iraq is a strategic priority for the King and his government.

4.(C) IRAN: King Hamad pointed to Iran as the source of much of the trouble in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He argued forcefully for taking action to terminate their nuclear program, by whatever means necessary. “That program must be stopped,” he said. “The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.” King Hamad added that in light of these regional developments, Bahrain was working to strengthen GCC coordination and its relations with allies and international organizations.

Did the soldier that leaked the first round also have access to these, or is there an additional leak in the government?

Wikileaks is despicable, but those that gave the documents to them are even worse and should be dealt with as harshly as Democrats treat Palin – if not worse.

Somebody needs to remind Mr Assange that the CIA kills people for a living

@SouthernRoots:

First, it pains me greatly that an American soldier would commit treason, as this appears to me to be.

Second, to answer your question: There are a number of message handling services that can be accessed from SIPRnet systems. A Secret clearance and an M3 account can give an individual an opportunity to access a fair amount of diplomatic traffic. Much of what Wikileaks appears to have may have come from accessing databases that would probably require PKI certification or at least permission to view materials located in such a database. Then again, hacking within a DoD system by a DoD cleared individual could yield greater access than the average “need to know” basis allows.

So far it does not seem that PFC Manning has transferred any Top Secret materials to Wikileaks. I have to believe that it is because his access was limited, his ability to download materials classified as TS was limited, or he simply did not have a TS clearance. I’m hoping that all three apply.

For decades we have watched a steady parade of Americans handover treasure and blood through acts of espionage and treason. The worst of them gets a life sentence and yet we wonder why it continues. If Manning has done the things he has been accused of, then he should be put to death. The CIA’s Aldrich Ames and the FBI’s Robert Hanssen spied for the Soviet Union and later Russia and in doing so caused great harm to national security and their actions lead to the death of many human intelligence assets. There have been others and there are almost certainly more Americans engaged in espionage directed against the United States right now. There’s no way of knowing right now how many people will die because of Manning’s decision to compromise enormous amounts of classified materials but current and potential traitors could be deterred from engaging in espionage if Manning is put to death.

Assange, on the other hand, deserves something much worse than a merciful death.

I’m with the Conservatives on this one. We’re not talking about a novel, or someone’s opinion, it’s classified documents for the nation’s security. Stopping it would not fall under censorship.

Everyone involved with these leaks from Assange all the way down to whoever gave him these docs needs to have their necks stretched. This is nothing but pure, unadulterated treason against the United States and her allies.

I’m with Smokey Behr on this; it’s the worst sort of treason, and Assange needs to be treated in the manner of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Julian Assange’s reason for doing it? By his own admission he loves to incite and instigate. He admitted he loves conflict. ❓

No other reason.

Stupid Claire McCaskill gets on TV and says, “whomever did this should check their patriotism”
😯
Who did it was Julian Assange and he is AUSTRALIAN. OMG this is the type of stupid people we have in the progressive congress. She simply has NO CLUE! 🙄

Soldier leak these.. 😛 Tell me another lie. That’s Julian Assange’s story but it’s just a story.

Who are the STUPIDEST people?
The ones who thought they could write an email saying (for example)

Sarkozy is a “naked emperor…”

Hamid Karzai is “paranoid…”

Ahmadinejad is “Hitler…”

Angela Merkel is “Teflon…”

and no one could ever expose it are the dumbest folks of all!

If you write anything digitally is forever indelible.

Yes, Assange is the product of two hippies one night’er at an antiwar rally.
And he was raised to be just like he is.

Also Bradley Manning was gay and geeky when the Army allowed him to enlist.

Those two made a perfect storm together for spreading these secrets.
Their less-than-perfect childhoods are NO EXCUSE!
Whoever else sent any more secrets to Assange is probably just as imperfect.

But some of our ”secrets” show plain old childishness and stupidity.
We need to do some serious weeding.

Over the next few days and weeks we will learn more and more through these leaks.

I remember seeing a video of a Red Crescent ambulance being used to drop off men with rocket launchers during some fighting between Muslims and Israel a few years ago.

But it seems to be much worse…..

Wikileaks document shows Iranian Revolutionary Guards helped Hizbullah in 2006 Lebanon War, disguised as Red Crescent officials.
According to the US embassy cable, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps smuggled officers into Lebanon during the 2006 war with Hizbullah under the guise of Red Crescent officials.

He [the source] said that [the] Iranian Red Crescent had seen missiles in the planes destined for Lebanon when delivering medical supplies to the plane. The plane was allegedly ‘half full’ prior to the arrival of any medical supplies,” the cable read.

@ono:

So your story is that PFC Manning should not be locked up for passing documents to Wikileaks?!

Why would you say, “Soldier leak these.. 😛 Tell me another lie. That’s Julian Assange’s story but it’s just a story.”?

Hey, if you’ve got evidence that the Pentagon is lying about Bradley Manning, then you need to contact his legal defense team because that little creep is headed for some serious prison time unless you have some sort of proof to back up that nonsense.

As for Assange, he used the little fool and could care less what happens to him. It’s up to you to save Manning, ono, because you’re the only one I’ve heard say that Assange didn’t get his hands on all of this classified information without inside help.

For my part, I’d hang Assange and Manning from opposite ends of the same rope.

Nan, let’s not forget they tried to frame the American soldiers in the “Colateral Murder” video through editing.
Assange should be declared an enemy combatant and treated accordingly.

Is it just me or did the leaks start with the Obami, and his incompetent team? This never happened under Pres. Bush!
I just hope that it was not some twisted logic to show transparency; because what it shows in incompentence. Since when are we in the business of threatening a small nation as Slovenia in exchange for taking a terrorist from Guantanamo vs. a brief conversation with a US president? This is childish, if not outright amateur.

Not unless we clean this anti-american nest out in DC, things will change. We need proud americans in office, who are not ashamed to be proud, and that incl a President. The as*clown are lucky Cheney is gone; he would initiated actions contrary to what this ‘smart team’ are doing.

If Wikileaks is so enthralled with transparency, why haven’t they posted the email exchanges, the IP addresses and other information between them and the leaker(s)?

First and foremost. This is treason of the highest order! PFC. Manning and if possible this Assange guy should be tried and executed as should any others involved. Being a Jew, my ears perked up when Bibi put as a condition to stall settlements on the West Bank the release of Jonathan Pollard. As we all know, he was spying for Israel. Some folks seem to think as he was doing it for an ally, he should be cut some slack. NO! He is a spy! He committed treason against his country. As such he should have been shot as should the 2 people mentioned above.

The really galling part is the NYT as well as our moron Attorney General? This has been going on for some time now. As one will never convince me that there are not so many more people involved than just the PFC in these releases, one must ask not only where is the outrage against scum bag papers like the NYT, but also exactly what arr our investigative entities doing about this? There seems to be little outrage on the left. The President is hiding, the Secretary of State is out trying to pull the covers over it and security apparatus of this country is to busy branding it’s own citizenship as extremists, choosing to ignore the real enemies of this country. One could well start with the NYT as one of those real enemies. The very fact that this so called “Paper of Record” can openly try to justify publishing this is in my view an act of treason as well. They put their open leftist agenda above the good of our country.

y’all take note, WITH, PRESIDENT BUSH, NO TELEPROMPTER, NO ROLLING EYES,

I’m surprised that anybody would be shocked at the findings.
1. We already knew diplomats spied on other countries. The information from the Iranian hostage crises told us that. It was also verified from my high school teacher that did some of that at the many dinners where the many parties would try to get the other guys drunk and hopefully spill some knowledge. It was open knowledge that the people that went to these dinners were all spies posing as diplomats.

2. Of course some countries in Europe would back Russia. Nuclear waste from France goes to Russia and many European countries get the majority of their energy resources from Russia. When Russia threatens to cut off the oil supply to western Europe, the majority of those countries panic.

3. We already knew the Lybian leader was strange and the Afghan leader was corrupt.

4. We also knew the Saudi Arabians didn’t really care about the Palistinians and really cared about Iranian’s nuclear program. Saudi Arabia had allowed Israeli to fly to Iraq to bomb it’s nuclear facility and recently it’s believed that Isreali F-16s were spoted on Iraqi airbases when Isreal threatened to bomb Iran’s nuclear facility. Those F-16s had to be flown over Saudi Arabian air space. Also outside enemies help connect unpopular leaders with its peoples. Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states have constantly refused to economically help the Palestinians or send troops to protect them. The West Bank is prime economic real estate that has been neglected.

5. We also knew that leaders had strengths and weaknesses that the diplomats would try to exploit. One learns that in basic debate classes. What made the news is the weaknesses that U.S. diplomats believe other leaders have.

6. What is interesting is the U.S. spends $80 billion a year now and how amateurish the CIA and the diplomatic process is. Nothing has changed since my teacher was doing this in the 1950s. So where is the money going? Maybe these papers will tell us.

Where there is an action then there will be an equal & opposite reaction.

Forget FOIA or transparancy in our govt (action) so there is the release of classified cables (reaction). Our govt. has classified everything to the point of not being release for 25+ years & that is only up to SECRET items.

Our government is going along with us having a clue to what is happening. Like everyone else, I pray that no one gets hurt over these classified cables but we finally get to see what is really happening with our govt. in regards to foreign policy.

Rather than hanging, I’d like to see the CIA or someone find this little faggot Assange and administer a beating so severe that he’s withing .005 of an inch of his worthless life. Crippled and unable to communicate verbally or physically, he’d have the rest of his days to think about what he’s done.

I’d consider THAT justice.

Hillary Clinton called it an attack on America, too. I guess I’m not the only one on the left that feels this way.

I wonder if we even know where he is? I say we mark his position with a Hellfire or three.

What Wikileaks and some of its apologists fail to understand is that diplomacy is a highly choreographed form of tact…..which with holds any truths that are not helpful.

So when someone thinks…..

gregory_dittman
19Reply to this comment

I’m surprised that anybody would be shocked at the findings.
1. We already knew diplomats spied on other countries…..

3. We already knew the Lybian leader was strange and the Afghan leader was corrupt.

4. We also knew the Saudi Arabians didn’t really care about the Palistinians…..

5. We also knew that leaders had strengths and weaknesses….

and so on….YES, we did already know that.
But that is not the point!
Face-saving is what diplomacy has as a trump card.
Wikileaks has taken that card away.

Moamar Kadaffi’s destruction of a nuclear program (or anything LIKE that) will never be repeated because we’ve outed ourselves as looking down our collective noses at his oddness.

The Afghani people will lose trust in their government because we exposed the corruptness of one of its leaders.

The Saudi’s have been exposed as Muslims who choose the Jewish state of Israel over a state full of fellow Muslims! (Yes, read enough and you learn just how close the Saudi’s are with Israel.)

I dare any of you to throw out tact and kindness in your marriage and see if it can last.

Try being brutally honest about your mate’s looks, cooking, ability to provide, to parent, etc., not holding back even a bit, and see for yourselves why these diplomatic memos should have remained secrets.

@Nan G:

Exactly. Same goes with ANY relationship. I don’t tell my boss when I think she’s wrong about particular position and actively support her when I do agree. I thus enjoy a great working relationship, while tactfully choosing my battles because I have some leverage. Same goes with friendships, family, and yes… governments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdy3orO6tQA

The LA Times and the other major outlets reported that the Afghan people felt their government was corrupt years ago.

John Madden is a guy that doesn’t like to fly and has odd commentary and he was well loved by those that watch the NFL. Muammer Kaddafi was deemed odd in the mainstream press back in the 1980s when he was called Kadaffy and other names. Even his own people think he is odd.

One could be living in a cave and knew that many Arab states supported Israel. The real problem is the fictious cold war is hurting a lot of people. The Palestinian militias actually think they have support and so continue to fight. Israel also has problems. They tend to reverse engineer any weapon system they can get a hold of and they sell weapons to China which reverse engineers those weapons and sells them to Pakistan. Pakistan then turns around and gives those weapons to the Taliban which then uses them on our troops. I’d say within 5 years of Israel getting the F-35, China will be making their version of the F-35.

The reason Kadaffy gave up WMD is he really wasn’t interested in WMD in the first place (he was suing for peace) and after the U.S. airstrike he wasn’t intersted in supporting terrorism either.

If diplomacy worked, the UN would be seen as a model and not the failure that it is. Not is the U.S. diplomacy policy costing the taxpayers $80 billion for the song and dance, it has also cost U.S. lives (with the U.S. government funding our enemies) and the lives of others. The so called tact has done nothing for the U.S. and any gains is just spin. The way that treaties get done is both parties want the same thing. It’s a disservice to the American people that the U.S. that the U.S. keeps trying to do the same old things even when the U.S. government knows they don’t work and then charge the taxpayers with its inefficiency. A cheaper and more open policy would achieve a more favorable response. One thing the U.S. could do is kick countries off our allies list if they are deemed to not being helpful. Allied troops refusing to go outside the wire or not sending their share of troops in Afghanistan should be the first to go.

This is the second time under this administration that WIKILEAKS has published stolen files. We have known this was coming for weeks yet the so called attorney general as well as most of the establishment and media have downplayed the situation. why the outrage now?! Could it have anything to do with the fact that the Obama administration is now being sold out by these guys? Heaven forbid! No one bothered to cry about this kind of stuff in the past administrations.This isn’t even hypocrisy. This is purely an administration that is now getting caught and wanting to point the finger anywhere but at themselves. Once they find out this leak was not only on purpose, but goes much deeper and possibly entraps their own people, I assume the cover-up will get worse.

Wikileaks does not only impact countries with a free press, like the USA, the UK, Germany and France.

How is it when a country that does not have a free press and Wikileaks MIGHT make some of the leadership look bad deal with it?


LATimes

Headlines in the heavily state-controlled Saudi media were dominated by news of King Abdullah’s ongoing physiotherapy, while the top story in the Emirati newspaper, Al Bayan, centered on Prince Mohamad bin Rashid’s praise for the country’s progress toward “transparency.”

Most mentions of the WikiLeaks documents in official Arabic news outlets were scrubbed of any reference to the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, focusing instead on U.S. attempts to control the damage to its diplomatic relations.

Even the Qatar-based Al Jazeera, considered one of the most credible pan-Arab news outlets, tread lightly in its coverage and generally refrained from repeating the most incendiary quotes from the heads of neighboring states.

While nothing was openly redacted, nothing was covered …. that mattered.

Assange is a lily-livered war protester and an attention-seeking weasel-nosed traitor (my apologies to all the respectable lilies and weasels out there.) His acts show that he doesn’t mind putting the lives of tens of thousands of our troops in danger just to make a point. Diplomacy is a dance, one designed to keep the diplomats dancing instead of committing entire populations to even more senseless wars and the associated strife. To render diplomacy inactive is to jeopardize magnitudes more lives than those of our armed forces.

Whether Manning was used or not is immaterial. He knew he was responsible for guarding any and all sensitive information and the access to such information. I seriously doubt Assange used “water-boarding” or other “enhanced interrogation methods” to get what he wanted from Manning.

I’d hang both the punks and make sure the press was there. Life in prison is too good for these idiots.

I’m glad to see that many of my liberal friends feel the same way. Protesting apparently senseless wars is one thing, but jeopardizing lives by such callous, treasonous acts is quite another.

Jeff

Exactly. Same goes with ANY relationship. I don’t tell my boss when I think she’s wrong about particular position and actively support her when I do agree. I thus enjoy a great working relationship, while tactfully choosing my battles because I have some leverage

Hey Cary, what’s that brown stuff on your nose? 😆 😆

(Yes I’m kidding.)

@Hard Right:

You are, but I do get that from some of the younger co-workers. They don’t get that, yes, you can actually LIKE your employer.

Exactly. Not to mention you can maintain a good work relationship without kissing ass. As you get older one learns that staying on the bosses good side isn’t such a bad idea. It is also a lot easier if they are a good, likable person.

There is a saying, probably uttered by some crusty curmudgeon:
Youth is wasted on the young.

@Hard Right:

Bingo.

JVrive wrote:

I’m glad to see that many of my liberal friends feel the same way. Protesting apparently senseless wars is one thing, but jeopardizing lives by such callous, treasonous acts is quite another.

Agreed! Some things are beyond partisanship. I remember the right was equally upset with the outing of Valerie Plame and her network of contacts who were reporting on WMD.

These leaks, while reprehensible and possibly criminal, are likely to do far less long-term damage than 2 more years of our current foreign policy.