[Guest]

I'd like to open a discussion about the ongoing story of the whistleblowing website Wikileaks, which seems to be getting increasingly interesting.

Earlier this year Wikileaks released apparently classified footage of a Baghdad airstrike killing two Reuters staff and several Iraqis. I will not link to this directly because it is horrifying and I am aware that there are young people on BrainDen. Please, kids, you don't need to see this. But adults really do need to see it.

Now apparently Wikileaks is in possession of footage of a massacre of Afghan civilians. A U.S. Army Intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, is suspected of having leaked this material to Wikileaks, plus around 260,000 diplomatic cables. He has been arrested and shipped to a US military prison in Kuwait. The Editor in Chief of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, appears to be in hiding. The life of a whistleblower is a dangerous one.

I'm trying to do what I can to raise the profile of this story, in case Assange should suddenly decide to "commit suicide", assisted by US special ops, and also because this is a news story you probably won't be seeing on the TV.

All opinions welcome

[Guest]

I've heard bits and pieces of this story and it's definitely something that most Americans don't here about at all. It seems like something that the government (no matter who is in charge) tries to keep under wraps. It's something that George Orwell certainly warned against in "1984." I'm not suggesting that the US government is purposely trying to be Orwellian, but the people rarely hear about the atrocities of war on foreign shores. We always hear about the "Patriotic Duty" being done "over there" and so far we are told, our soldiers never screw up and there's never any "significant" "collateral" damage. Such reporting is probably true for pretty much any war fought abroad in human history (though I suppose when the enemies were inferior "Barbars" or some such thing, any slaughtering of innocents would be reported as a good thing ).

The people fighting the war would prefer that the people back home don't really know anything about what's going on over there other than what the army releases. As General Sherman said during the American Civil War, "War is hel" and there are times when it's easier to sanitize the reporting being done on the events of the conflict, but most of the time (especially in today's world when everyone is so interconnected), it's better than we know the truth.

That's one of the most idiotic things about American foreign policy, and the neoconservatives' vision of it in particular. Since we're "the Greatest Country on Earth," the perception given here is that we can do no wrong and that anyone who disagrees with us abroad is obviously either misguided or (more likely) our enemy. So many Americans have no conception of how the rest of the world sees us. They don't understand why people oppose our actions. We were supposed to be "greeted as liberators" in Iraq. Instead, we've gotten embroiled in a centuries-old civil war that was bubbling under the surface while Saddam held power with an iron fist.

The most meaningless phrase used to describe America's enemies is, "They hate us for our freedoms." It's an utter BS phrase that provides no real reason for why America is opposed in different regions of the world. Most of the time, I would say that people don't like the US's actions in their lands because of events like the helicopter strike. It's not an uncommon event (so far as I've heard), but you hear nary a word about it in the US, other than through sources like Wikileaks that get it from some sort of whistleblower. The rest of the world sees these sorts of things either first-hand or from their own news sources that don't report back to the US. So the rest of the world has a much more nuanced view of what the US does abroad than do most US citizens. Hence the disconnect between our efforts to "liberate" Iraq and the reality where we gave Al Qaeda a foothold in Iraq by invading.

The US people lack this perception so it's easier to just say the enemy hates us for no good reason than for us to say that we don't always do the right thing. Events like the helicopter attacks should get more coverage over here in US media. We can't understand the motivations of our enemies if we refuse to look at what we do in their countries. Showing the atrocities we commit on television won't turn more people against us. US cable television is probably not the primary source for the people who get recruited to fight us. They already know about the things going on in their country, or in neighboring countries, so denying that they happened (even through simple omission) over here ruins our perspective about what we are doing.

I haven't heard much about the 260,000 cables taken, so I don't really know what the deal is with them. If they show something underhanded or nefarious going on, then I do think that they should be exposed, but if most of them are just innocuous (or compromising legitimate operations), then I don't know that Manning was justified in leaking them all to a third party. But it's really hard to say what's best in such a situation. That's the other problem. The world is much more nuanced than Americans want it to be. They would prefer (and they're probably not alone in that desire) that everything be easily defined in Black and White terms. They are the Enemy, We are the Good Guys. And rarely is there anything so clear cut. But most Americans seem uninterested in nuance; some even are proud of being blunt and seeing everything as Right versus Wrong. I really just can't understand such thinking... You come in with a purposefully narrow-minded view, meaning that you haven't a hope of coming to terms with the other side since you have already decided that they are wrong before you've even met them. I think that we would be better respected around the world if we at least admitted the times we screw up publicly. If we stopped going around the world, telling everyone how great we are, people might start listening to us more readily.

Places like Wikileaks should keep us honest when we aren't, but we really shouldn't need them since we should be keeping it honest on our own, since as I see it, it's in our best interest to do so.

/rant

That went a lot longer than I originally intended.

[Guest]

The US people lack this perception so it's easier to just say the enemy hates us for no good reason than for us to say that we don't always do the right thing. Events like the helicopter attacks should get more coverage over here in US media. We can't understand the motivations of our enemies if we refuse to look at what we do in their countries. Showing the atrocities we commit on television won't turn more people against us. US cable television is probably not the primary source for the people who get recruited to fight us. They already know about the things going on in their country, or in neighboring countries, so denying that they happened (even through simple omission) over here ruins our perspective about what we are doing.

This disparity in perspective is very disturbing. It's rather well illustrated by this comparison of CNN and Al-Jazeera. There was I believe some limited US TV coverage of the helicopter attack video release, but the purpose of this seemed to be to play it down. The callous attitude of the helicopter pilots/gunners who were clearly intent on killing as many people as they can, for the flimsiest of excuses, the inexcusable attack on the family in the minivan, the subsequent coverup, these things seem to have been glossed over. It's business as usual.

As more and more media becomes available for the public, we can increasingly choose what sort of news we watch. We can select our media experience so we are exposed only to the viewpoints with which we are most comfortable. In this landscape, there is much scope for governments to keep our media exposure within controlled parameters. Only a small proportion of the population will be aware of this, because it is an uncomfortable truth.

I think an organisation like Wikileaks is a true hero of our times. If it helps Americans to understand why the world sees them differently from how they see themselves, so much the better. If it encourages the military to act responsibly, better still. The thoughtless disregard for human life which is exposed here is what turns potential allies into enemies. For every innocent civilian they kill, they create a hardened and bitter enemy elsewhere. That simple truth is poorly understood, and suppressing such events in your own media (under the pretence of respecting families of the victims, protecting the viewer, or security concerns) does nothing to stop the outside world knowing about it. So whose interests are being served by this selective reporting? Not yours.

[Guest]

This disparity in perspective is very disturbing. It's rather well illustrated by this comparison of CNN and Al-Jazeera. There was I believe some limited US TV coverage of the helicopter attack video release, but the purpose of this seemed to be to play it down. The callous attitude of the helicopter pilots/gunners who were clearly intent on killing as many people as they can, for the flimsiest of excuses, the inexcusable attack on the family in the minivan, the subsequent coverup, these things seem to have been glossed over. It's business as usual.

As more and more media becomes available for the public, we can increasingly choose what sort of news we watch. We can select our media experience so we are exposed only to the viewpoints with which we are most comfortable. In this landscape, there is much scope for governments to keep our media exposure within controlled parameters. Only a small proportion of the population will be aware of this, because it is an uncomfortable truth.

I think an organisation like Wikileaks is a true hero of our times. If it helps Americans to understand why the world sees them differently from how they see themselves, so much the better. If it encourages the military to act responsibly, better still. The thoughtless disregard for human life which is exposed here is what turns potential allies into enemies. For every innocent civilian they kill, they create a hardened and bitter enemy elsewhere. That simple truth is poorly understood, and suppressing such events in your own media (under the pretence of respecting families of the victims, protecting the viewer, or security concerns) does nothing to stop the outside world knowing about it. So whose interests are being served by this selective reporting? Not yours.

It seems the troll post stole a little bit of your thunder (though I suspect that that was the point... ). Finding the right balance of information is hard. If you only have one source of information, then you can't have any perspective on the situation (tunnel information vision). If you have almost an infinity of choices for information, you have too many conflicting perspectives watering each other down so that you can't really get a perspective on the situation either (fish-eye information vision).

So having some choices is definitely a good thing, but we have to be smart about the choices we make. Unfortunately, it also makes it easy to select your "facts" based on the perspective you want. For example, I decided to try an experiment based on the link provided by our friendly, neighborhood troll to "Conservapedia", the Conservative alternative to Wikipedia since facts have that Liberal bias. I decided to examine their respective articles on Feminism and the differences were striking. Admittedly, I only gave them both a cursory once over, but even in that small glance, they are worlds apart.

The Conservapedia version was a ~4,000 word essay that started by "explaining" that Feminism was started by pro-life Suffragettes (since abortion was such an issue back then ) and has changed into godless humanism (at least that's the gist of it, so far as I could tell). It has 30 references at the bottom of the page and I just looked at the links, but most of them looked like they were from crackpot anti-feminist websites and the like, so hardly unbiased sourcing...

Wikipedia's article, by contrast, is a 10,000 word article that discusses the various "waves" of feminism and how it changed over time. It talks about feminism in different cultures and religions and talks a little bit about opposition to feminism. It has 200 references covering the article and most of them seem to be from different books on the subject. (I will freely admit that I didn't spend any time examining the credibility of either set of references, but Wiki's already got a leg up in my book because they have a much more well-documented article on the subject.)

But Conservapedia exists because some people don't like the democratic process of the dissemination of information that is Wikipedia. It's too balanced since when someone puts up a blatant falsehood on Wikipedia, someone else is going to point out that it's wrong and take it down. If there's a conflict, moderators step in and try to get to the heart of the issue based on who's got the better sourcing for there "fact". Conservapedia censors their input from the get-go to only reference friendly opinions to their preconceived notions. As I understand it, if you try to add anything to it that doesn't fit with the narrative, then it quickly gets purged, no matter how good your sourcing is.

So sites like Wikileaks are very important since they provide us an essential avenue to truth that is otherwise obscured from us, but it can be hard to find the gold among all the pyrite that exists on the Internet. Especially since anyone can create a website about most anything they want to and then someone else may start believing things posted there are facts, even when they aren't.

[Joe's Student]

I think WikiLeaks is great, for most of the reasons already mentioned. I read the helicopter story on the Guardian when it came out, the video really is horrifying. The truth about a similar incident, Bloody Sunday, to do with an army, this time British, murdering unarmed civilians in Derry, Ireland, was made official where I live recently. It was a momentous day, as although the events unfolded 38 years ago, since then media-led propaganda painted those murdered as gun-waving terrorists, and the murderers as brave soldiers backed against a wall. A £200m ($400m) enquiry, The Saville Report, finally revealed to the wider public what had been known by the oppressed/open-minded/educated minority.

It showed the extent to which the media's influences both our version history and our socio-political outlook. David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, sounded shocked when speaking about what he had read in the report. He leads The Conservative Party, and openly said, "The 1970's [relating to Bloody Sunday] was a period I learnt about, not lived through." On first glance that statement is meaningless, but his education of the 1970's would have came from right-wing, government-supporting news outlets. He went on to apologise on behalf of the government to the families of those killed. The actions of the soldiers on Bloody Sunday, although lightly questioned, were never really put under the microscope, and those without the proper awareness would have taken the official British Government line on the days events as the complete truth. Just like David Cameron. That day shaped Northern Ireland for the next 20 years. So did the media during that period.

The source of news-censorship on ongoing wars comes from The Vietnam War. The reason barely any American will have heard the helicopter story, is, as you both have made clear, that it paints a negative picture. Although there were numerous reasons for America's pull-out out from Vietnam, one of them was that journalists and reporters had a free pass at the time to film, photograph and write about whatever they came across. Inevitably the atrocities perpetrated made their way to the West and became part of the pressure that caused to Nixon pull out. But that was the last time widespread reporting of their offensives was permitted by America and its allies.

But that brings us to a new problem. You're right dawh, America's foreign policy is idiotic, but only if it's aim is to make peace. Referring again Orwell's 1984, Oceania is constantly at war with either Eurasia or Eastasia, which is a very similar situation to the US. The US's economy needs the country to be at war. The Defense sector contributes massively to your GDP whilst also being the fastest growing sector of your economy. From Haliburton, Lockheed Martin and the other huge 'defense' multinationals, to the smaller corporations that are fed the sub-contracts and sub-sub-contracts. Without both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq this portion of your economy would not have contributed half as much. It's an argument that scares me personally. Admittedly this was Bush-era 'politics' but even so, where would America be without War?

So I would contend that America feeds it citizens the stories of soldiers' heroic deeds against the armies of "freedom haters" and cover-up those less tasteful, because it needs its people to not question but support its wars for as long as possible, because without them it would incur a bust not unlike the dotcom bust of the nineties.

And the US isn't alone in arms industry-led economy. The main reason Israel avoided the global financial meltdown was because its economy is heavily reliant on both the defence and technology industries. And so why then does Israel have so many "enemies" and "threats"?

Anyway, I went off on a tangent there. Those involved with WikiLeaks are extremely brave, I'd love to have the courage to do work of that nature.It's really honourable stuff.

[Guest]

It showed the extent to which the media's influences both our version history and our socio-political outlook. David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, sounded shocked when speaking about what he had read in the report. He leads The Conservative Party, and openly said, "The 1970's [relating to Bloody Sunday] was a period I learnt about, not lived through." On first glance that statement is meaningless, but his education of the 1970's would have came from right-wing, government-supporting news outlets. He went on to apologise on behalf of the government to the families of those killed. The actions of the soldiers on Bloody Sunday, although lightly questioned, were never really put under the microscope, and those without the proper awareness would have taken the official British Government line on the days events as the complete truth. Just like David Cameron. That day shaped Northern Ireland for the next 20 years. So did the media during that period.

To be fair to the British media, I'm about 5 years younger than David Cameron, brought up in England, and while I can't say I had an acute awareness of what happened on Bloody Sunday, my understanding was always that it was an inexcusable killing of innocent civilians. While it has sadly taken this long for the government to officially acknowledge it as such, IMO they were only owning up to what the public already knew. Perhaps if the public didn't already know, they would never have owned up to it. You could chalk that up to the integrity of the British media which, relative to the rest of the world, has a pretty good tradition of allowing dissenting voices to be heard. The balance isn't always right, for sure, but an independent and conscientious media is a fragile and precious thing, and I consider it an important part of British culture that such values are maintained to the extent that they are.

[unreality]

The only way I've heard of 'bloody sunday' is via the U2 song haha. But I agree with what's been said above, about WikiLeaks and whatnot. It's an important thing they're doing

[Joe's Student]

To be fair to the British media, I'm about 5 years younger than David Cameron, brought up in England, and while I can't say I had an acute awareness of what happened on Bloody Sunday, my understanding was always that it was an inexcusable killing of innocent civilians. While it has sadly taken this long for the government to officially acknowledge it as such, IMO they were only owning up to what the public already knew. Perhaps if the public didn't already know, they would never have owned up to it. You could chalk that up to the integrity of the British media which, relative to the rest of the world, has a pretty good tradition of allowing dissenting voices to be heard. The balance isn't always right, for sure, but an independent and conscientious media is a fragile and precious thing, and I consider it an important part of British culture that such values are maintained to the extent that they are.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to respectfully disagree here .

I have a completely different view of the British Media. Yes compared to most American outlets they infinitely better, but the reason I have both such distrust and dislike of the British Media is that, in my eyes, it has this veil of respectability, appearing to be reasonable and catering to both sides. Yet the majority of the mainstream media (bar maybe the Guardian in the print media and Channel4 news for television - though they are by no means perfect) is neither reasonable nor caters to both sides. They are right-wing outlets (which would be fine except that the reason for this is that they are owned by big business), that for the most part supported Iraq and Afghanistan wars, support Israel etc. But because they come across as being reasonable the general public accept that what they are reporting is an unbiased, objective view of a situation - it is harder to question their message, and their ability to sway public opinion is masterful. Which is worse imo that US media which, with a bit of awareness, can be seen through.

Just to illustrate what I'm saying: http://www.glasgowme...ntent/view/4/2/ <---- A report by Glasgow University on the reporting of Israel/Palestine conflict in by British Media. Worth a look, far more succinct in explaining my point.

Oh and that's great how you knew about Bloody Sunday, but, and this is only from my own experiences and the experiences of my peers, which are obviously not widespread but enough to form an opinion, your insight is would be rare. And I don't think it's a coincidence that you know about WikiLeaks as well. But don't get me wrong, it's great you had the view on Bloody Sunday.

And back to WikiLeaks: WikiLeaks founder breaks cover

[Guest]

To resurrect yet another old thread ( ), I'm wondering what people think of the latest round of government cables released by Wikileaks. I was vaguely supportive of the release of the copter shootings, but I think that to some extent this latest leak has a much more nefarious effect. The shooting was/is a common occurrence that has been/is still occurring in the name of US citizens, so we ought to be aware of what is going on in our name. I see this, on the other hand, undermining diplomatic ties between the US and the rest of the world. While much of it is banal and/or just embarrassing, it's going to make it harder for US diplomats to reach accords with other nations.

I admit that I haven't looked that closely at what has been posted about the leaks (and the US government is undoubtedly overplaying it to some extent), but from what I have garnered, in some cases it reveals supposedly private conversations between US diplomats and foreign diplomats who may have put themselves in personal danger for talking frankly with the US. And even in cases where the diplomat may be in no immediate danger for having the conversation revealed, how comfortable is that diplomat going to be talking "privately" with US officials, if they expect/fear that their conversation may one day be publicly posted on the Internet?

If Person A tells Person B something in confidence and then Person C posts that correspondence on the Internet, I highly doubt Person A will come to Person B with another sensitive message, even if it would behoove both Person A and Person B to do so, if having it publicly revealed would put Person A at some personal risk. I think that there is a substantial difference between encouraging government transparency and what this latest leak is. It seems like Wikileaks is crossing a line that they perhaps ought not to cross. I'm not sure I see how the dissemination of this sort of information is informative to the public, and not really just destructive to the diplomatic process.

My main resource for the leak is the blog Talking Points Memo, which is a political blog that I really like and I think that they are fairly straight-shooting in their reporting of such information, even if they may have their own slant to what they report. Two relevant posts to the leak can be found here and here.

What do you all think about it? I don't have any relevant links other than those to TPM, but I'm sure you can Google it, or go to Wikileaks itself, if you so choose.

[araver]

I did not see them yet, so I don't have a direct opinion.

But I did want to say 2 things related to the leak-hype rather than the leaks themselves:

1) It's not "local" to US. There's nothing stopping from happening to any other country so IMO it will have roughly the same impact on all diplomatic relations.

2) In the long-run leaking does not amount to much, though.

I mean, it is (and it always was for any self-respecting state) a basic rule of thumb that anything can be broken theoretically, some things are just harder to break. And generally information going to the whole public AND you knowing of the leak is a milder scenario than the one where information is leaked only to covert channels AND you don't know it's been leaked.

[gvg]

I agree with everything written here. To me, if it doesn't risk the lives of Military personnel (like releasing military plans, etc.), it's fine. The gov. shouldn't say anything it didn't want anyone to know. From what I've seen, it is a lot of memos insulting foreign ministers.

I saw the video of the copters, btw. Absolutely disturbing. He treated it like it was Call of Duty. At one point he was begging the injured journalist to pick up a weapon so he could shoot him. And the van... it was just horrifying.

[Izzy]

So the Wikileaks dude is up for arrest for sex crimes? Part of me can't help but feel it's a bit of government fabrication to shut the dude up. *shrug*

[gvg]

Really? Sex crimes? When did this 'fact' come out?

Governments don't like being found out is all.

[Guest]

Really? Sex crimes? When did this 'fact' come out?

Governments don't like being found out is all.

I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but he's been accused for a little while now. It apparently happened in Norway or Sweden (can't remember where he was at the time since he's always on the move). He insists the relationships he had were consensual; it's a he-said, she-said situation. Could governments have pressured these women to press charges? Yes. Did they? We don't know.

There's government transparency (which is good), but there are also things that really don't need to be made public. In the deluge of documents, most of it is very banal, but sometimes meeting in private can be useful/essential to make progress. If a union is striking and the union leader is having secret talks with the business owner to iron out the details of a compromise, having their correspondence revealed publicly (before the deal is cut) can be counterproductive to the whole process. If a third party is going to be revealing supposedly private conversations, it's going to undermine the trust between the interested parties.

At this point, I think that Assange is overplaying his hand. Some of the information that he's posted in the past is important. But now, he just seems to like the idea of being this "International Man of Mystery." I don't see how most of the stuff that he's posting now is relevant to good governance, or useful for informing the public. All it really seems to be doing is harming the US's diplomatic relations.

[Guest]

While I don't much care for Wikileaks' latest stunt, I have to say that government reactions to it have been less than comforting. (It's also not comforting that it appears that a majority of Americans would like to try some combination of Wikileaks and Julian Assange for treason, neither of which makes any sense for a number of reasons I hope I don't have to get into... ) The appearance of government pressure to get Wikileaks ejected from Amazon's servers and the various denial of service attacks on their Swedish servers seems to be pushing us into the territory of our

Additionally, the Library of Congress is apparently blocking Wikileaks from being accessed on its workstations, giving a flimsy excuse about not revealing classified information, even if it's already in the public domain. It has been pointed out that that would mean that a number of New York Times and Washington Post articles should be censored too since their investigative pieces sometimes reveal classified wrongdoing. It seems that that hasn't been the case for them or others like them. Wikileaks is proving to be the exception.

This article on Salon.com discusses some of the issues with this sort of attack on Wikileaks and the limitations of the "freedom of the Internet."

From the article:

That's Strike 1 to our faith in the Internet. We are all, to one degree or another, forced to rely on the good will of larger enterprises that host and serve the media we create online. So when a company as big as Amazon -- and it's huge in the Web services arena -- yanks down content this way, it is demonstrating that we cannot fully trust it with our content, either. And if Amazon, a powerful enterprise, can be bullied, which one can't?

It's not exactly a heartwarming thought...

[Guest]

Hmm, as a follow-up to the Library of Congress and other Federal agencies blocking access, it seems that any Federal computer without the clearance to be found with copies of the classified documents downloaded to the computer (even cached by a web browser), would need to be scrubbed, as per Federal law. So any data you had on your workstation would be deleted if it was discovered that any classified information (no matter what the source) was on you machine. It seems that some of the efforts are in place more to halt the mass destruction of data. So there is a flip-side to that coin, but there are still definitely some censorship issues at play.

What makes some of the efforts rather futile and seemingly idiotic though is the fact that anyone outside the US, or someone on their personal computer, is free to view it (if they can get access), especially since we can be sure that copies have been downloaded and stored for further analysis all across the globe already.

[peace*out]

I saw the (part 1) wiki leaks video where the helicopers shoot down innocents in iraq. not part 2 though where the iraqis try to help the man and the helicopters...

F***. Im pissed at the gov right now.

The reactions startled me the most. If their accuasations were at least somewhat close to what the scene was, i would have been more welcome to thinking "this was a (horribly) missunderstood situation. What they said was in front of them was a lie. and what really got to me was the US covereing it up. i want to cry...please dont tell me that this is how it all is.

meh.

I dont know what exactly are the "cables"...i think i saw them ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2010/nov/28/wikileaks-cables-world-leaders#/?picture=369143698&index=5 ), but i dont get what they are.

im a stupid noob...

[Guest]

What makes some of the efforts rather futile and seemingly idiotic though is the fact that anyone outside the US, or someone on their personal computer, is free to view it (if they can get access), especially since we can be sure that copies have been downloaded and stored for further analysis all across the globe already.

It seems to be part of a growing trend in which the people of the USA are given a censored view of the workings of their own state. It's worrying for the rest of the world because where the USA leads, the rest follow. Democracy and freedom are in serious danger. Time after time I see the US government cross lines that should never be crossed. You need to protect yourselves from your own government or pretty soon the only human rights you will have will be those they see fit to grant you. I don't know how progress is achievable, but I'm pretty sure it must involve people getting angry. The only rights a people truly have are those they are willing to fight for.

[Quag]

didnt see the helicopter stuff so no comment on that. This latest wikileaks stuff is silly on their part. frank assesment by diplomats of other foreign leaders/dignataries/policies etc., is, has and will always be something that all countries will keep secret. Lets face it sometimes/often govts have to deal with other govts that they do not like either due to political differences or sometimes just personality clashes. If a diplomat publicly states what he/she is willing to say in private to their own leaders they will become completly innefective as diplomats.

dip·lo·mat   /ˈdɪpləˌmæt/ Show Spelled

[dip-luh-mat] Show IPA

–noun

1. a person appointed by a national government to conduct official negotiations and maintain political, economic, and social relations with another country or countries.

2. a person who is tactful and skillful in managing delicate situations, handling people, etc.

please note #2

have to check out the helicopter stuff, as that seems like a case where i would be for the posting of the info on wikileaks, though from what ive read here it seems it is a bit disturbing.

[gvg]

It is, but it says a lot about our war practices. Very Vietnam like. Anybody expect something other than that?

[peace*out]

...so what are the "cables"?

are they just people talking about people other people?

[Guest]

It is, but it says a lot about our war practices.

I think it also says a lot about the difference between what we perceive and what is going on. The video would never have come to light were it not for the killing of the Reuters journalists, but by far the most disturbing aspect is the shooting of the family in the minivan, who stopped to help a wounded journalist. This only came to light by chance. It shows just how indiscriminate the killing is, and how innocent victims get labelled as Iraqi insurgents, just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Makes you wonder how many other "Iraqi insurgents" were just like this man and his children.

[gvg]

The gov. has just told columbia law students,, and other Federal prospects around the country, that the mere mention of wikileaks will prevent them from being hired. This includes on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Um, red flag anyone?

[Izzy]

Meh, not liking the government's latest stunt. Some of Wikileaks' latest stuff wasn't admirable, and yes, it may f'uck up foreign relations. However, government, had you done what you were supposed to do in the first place, Wikileaks would have nothing but positive information to post. Consider the exploitation of your cover-ups part of the consequences.

[Thalia]

After skimming through rhe previous posts, it looks like the majority of you view Wikileaks as a positive thing (although I may be missing something). I think some of the footage that I have heard about should be seen. I have also heard that a lot of the released information is just "he said, she said" stuff. However, from what I have heard, it sounds like this website has released the names of people who have cooperated with the US government in Afghanistan or Iraq or other countries. All these people could be either dead or in danger. It also discourages people from cooperating with the US if they think their name is going to be posted on the internet. This is the part that I have a problem with. This site is putting people's lives in danger.

[gvg]

Yes, that's true. I did have a major problem with that part. That plus the good makes me look at it in a neutral light. It's good for some things, bad for others.