US diplomatic cables released

[Pelranius]

They teach Tibetan in those schools. There was a protest a while back when a rumor went around that they were only going to teach in Mandarin in the high schools, but that was just a rumor and the authorities let it blow over.

[Dahak]

ghetto edit:

Defense Minister zu Guttenberg revealed in
a February 3 meeting with Ambassador Murphy that coalition
partner FM Westerwelle -- not the opposition Social
Democratic Party (SPD) -- had been the single biggest
obstacle
to the government seeking a bigger increase in German
troops for Afghanistan.

Well, we get another confirmation that the Traitor Party is unelectable. (as if we needed another one...)

For crying out loud, what has the amount of troops in Afghanistan to do with treason? Just because they happen to have a different opinion than you?

[Skgoa]

Nice strawman, but since we are supposed to give actual answers on this forum, let me restate what I actually said:
The german political party SPD - called "Traitor Party" by some of their former voters and by a portion of the german civil rights movement - has once again shown that it would not be wise to vote for them, due to them being twofaced cunts who support the A-Stan dickwaving, although they again and again claim publictly that they were the ones who tried to stop it and all times and still stand for the old Left values like pacifism. As the text I quoted shows, this claim is patently false. It is not the only one, hence the party's massive loss in practicly every election that we had in the last 5 years.

[Broomstick]

They teach Tibetan in those schools. There was a protest a while back when a rumor went around that they were only going to teach in Mandarin in the high schools, but that was just a rumor and the authorities let it blow over.

:::psst! I started a Tibet thread over here Let's not derail this one any more than we have on that topic:::

[Alyrium Denryle]

I think Alyrium's counting excess mortality: deaths caused by indirect effects, not just by bomb and bullet. What is the military counting? I suspect it's just bomb and bullet deaths.

The military is only counting the number shot by coalition troops. I am including excess mortality from shortages, disease, and ethnic/cultural/religious cleansing by extra-governmental militias etc. We dont have to pull a trigger to kill someone, and we are responsible for the indirect mortality from a war we start.

What's the point of this? We lost 2,500~ in Pearl Harbor, and then lost ~12,000 taking Okinawa.

Yes, but WW2 was not a war of retribution. Japan was currently trying to take over the pacific rim and most of Asia. There really is a certain moral burden to stop that sort of thing. They were also a state that could actually be defeated. The war had defined objectives. A "war on terror" is a war against an arbitrarily defined military/political tactic, which is really just a smoke screen for killing brown peopleer muslims sorry people who have stuff we want, suppressing internal political dissent... well... shit. There really is no redeeming quality to it is there? No defined objective, no end point. Hell, shooting our soldiers while we invade a country is considered terrorism... even though they are hitting military targets.

Sometimes there really is a valid case for a "lawsuit shield". The problem, of course, is when there isn't a valid case. It should certainly not be done lightly. This sort of thing sure as hell didn't start with Obama or either Bush, it goes back a lot farther than that.

Yes. There are valid reasons. I have a hard time thinking of any, but there must be something resembling a valid reason. However, what is not a valid reason is that you want evidence gathered illegally used in court, you are spying on your civilian population illegally and want that intelligence for criminal prosecution, or you just dont want to face up to the fact that you got caught breaking international and domestic law with respect to human rights.

"Your honor we would like to present Exhibit A"

"Objection your honor, that document was obtained illegally! We have documents X, Y and Z proving that this was done, as well as the cooperating testimony of one of the CIA agents who tapped the phone."

"Was it, Justice Department?"

"State secret. It does not exist unless we present it as evidence, in which case its source shall have to remain unknown--it is in the interests of national security"

"I am forced to agree with the justice department. Our constitution has exceptions written into it with invisible ink regarding national security and the limits of due process"

and

"Your honor. They tortured me. They kidnapped me from my home, took me to (egypt IIRC) where they deprived me of sleep, beat me, raped me with a broom stick, and waterboarded me. I have documents X,Y, and Z, and the facility is visible on google earth. I also have reports from a medical examiner after my repatriation and affidavids from my government. All of this was done to me, and the got the wrong person. I demand recompense"

"CIA, what do you have to say for yourself?"

"State secret. The executive branch does not need to defend its actions to the independent judiciary. That undermines executive power. We cannot have our torture methods known to the world, it undermines national security because then we would not be able to put those people in front of a kangaroo court and be guaranteed a conviction."

"State secret? But everyone already knows you do this! It is not a secret if everyone knows!"

"Sorry dude. I have to defer to the Executive Branch. Admitting to this would compromise national security, because if bring this to court, the illegal and unethical means by which we compel false confessions and obtain faulty intelligence would be known to our enemies abroad which we seem to create more of every day. I have no idea how that happens. People just hate us for some reason, they must hate our freedom. Oh and Germany! I know we did this to one of your citizens, but dont you dare enforce the interpol warrants you just put out on our citizens. Giving them a fair trial for the crimes against humanity they commit on a regular basis which we executed your people for back in the 40s will seriously damage our international relations"

As for being disappointed with Obama... yeah, I was rather hoping someone who taught constitutional law would not follow in his predecessor's footsteps and use the bill of rights and geneva conventions as jizz rags while he jerks off to his own executive power. My hopes were a little bit better than that.

[Guardsman Bass]

This was a particularly amusing cable to read, containing the discussion of Prince Andrew with a bunch of British businessmen operating in Kyrgystan.

[Dahak]

Nice strawman, but since we are supposed to give actual answers on this forum, let me restate what I actually said:
The german political party SPD - called "Traitor Party" by some of their former voters and by a portion of the german civil rights movement - has once again shown that it would not be wise to vote for them, due to them being twofaced cunts who support the A-Stan dickwaving, although they again and again claim publictly that they were the ones who tried to stop it and all times and still stand for the old Left values like pacifism. As the text I quoted shows, this claim is patently false. It is not the only one, hence the party's massive loss in practicly every election that we had in the last 5 years.

What you actually said was: "Well, we get another confirmation that the Traitor Party is unelectable. (as if we needed another one...)"
So to get the whole paragraph out of this little gem requires some hefty usage of a crytal ball, which I am quite sad to say is under repair...
If you *actually* said that instead of your pointless one-liner, one could have gotten a meaning out of it.
I have never heard of SPD as "Traitor Party" but then I don't seem to be in the same circles as you. Probably the Greens are too...
And the SPD lost for a plethora of reasons in their last elections, and being for/against Afghanistan was not probably very high on that list unlike the heritage of Schröder.

[Simon_Jester]

Paraphrasing the US courts:

"Sorry dude. I have to defer to the Executive Branch. Admitting to this would compromise national security, because if bring this to court, the illegal and unethical means by which we compel false confessions and obtain faulty intelligence would be known to our enemies abroad which we seem to create more of every day. I have no idea how that happens. People just hate us for some reason, they must hate our freedom. Oh and Germany! I know we did this to one of your citizens, but dont you dare enforce the interpol warrants you just put out on our citizens. Giving them a fair trial for the crimes against humanity they commit on a regular basis which we executed your people for back in the 40s will seriously damage our international relations"

Yeah, pretty much.

This is a separate issue from the one I've been pushing, though I think (not surprisingly) that it falls under the same umbrella: government loves to operate in secret. Secrecy is a great tool for disabling oversight and checks on government power, because it forces the oversight agency to operate in an information blackout: even if they have the ability to order people to stop doing something, it doesn't matter if they never find out.

The problem is that inevitably, the oversight-free zone created blackout gets filled up with stupidity and empire-building.

In policy, demagogues take over by telling us we're fighting for X when we are in fact fighting for Y, because no one has to openly admit we're fighting for Y even when cynics the world over already know it.

In judicial affairs, the evaporation of responsibility means that there is no penalty for failure: bringing the wrong man in and getting no information out of him is not punished effectively. Using illegal (and unreliable!) techniques or keeping prisoners around as much out of sadism as out of any real desire for knowledge are, likewise, not punished effectively. And the judges are complicit in all this, as Alyrium implies.

[Broomstick]

What's the point of this? We lost 2,500~ in Pearl Harbor, and then lost ~12,000 taking Okinawa.

Yes, but WW2 was not a war of retribution. Japan was currently trying to take over the pacific rim and most of Asia. There really is a certain moral burden to stop that sort of thing.

Um... actually I'd say there was an element of retribution due to that whole Pearl Harbor thing. It was certainly what was used to rally popular support.

They were also a state that could actually be defeated.

That was by no means certain in 1941. Even so, the cost was very high on both sides.

Sometimes there really is a valid case for a "lawsuit shield". The problem, of course, is when there isn't a valid case. It should certainly not be done lightly. This sort of thing sure as hell didn't start with Obama or either Bush, it goes back a lot farther than that.

Yes. There are valid reasons. I have a hard time thinking of any, but there must be something resembling a valid reason.

How about the deal worked out between the US and Libya between 2002 and 2008? In return for settling decades-long simmering poking at each other the two governments agreed to stop pissing in each other's cornflakes and pull all lawsuits out of the courts (on both sides - 'cause Americans aren't the only people who know how to sue folks. There were several lawsuits brought by Libyan citizens against the US for our bombing of Tripoli) The benefit is that relations are much improved between the two nations (though we are by no means "friends" of any sort), the UN sanctions against Libya were removed, there is a compensation fund for victims and their families, and we've stopped trying to bomb each other. The downside, of course, is that some legitimately aggrieved parties on both sides are barred from their day in court. Of course, the two situations aren't exactly the same and the parallel is inexact. But it might qualify as an appropriate use of "lawsuit shield", and might satisfy your ethics, Alyrium, where you feel the larger good can trump individual desires.

As for being disappointed with Obama... yeah, I was rather hoping someone who taught constitutional law would not follow in his predecessor's footsteps and use the bill of rights and geneva conventions as jizz rags while he jerks off to his own executive power. My hopes were a little bit better than that.

He learned his politics in Chicago. I may be a little disappointed, but I'm not at all surprised. But then, I've been living in or near Chicago for over 25 years.

[Skgoa]

Nice strawman, but since we are supposed to give actual answers on this forum, let me restate what I actually said:
The german political party SPD - called "Traitor Party" by some of their former voters and by a portion of the german civil rights movement - has once again shown that it would not be wise to vote for them, due to them being twofaced cunts who support the A-Stan dickwaving, although they again and again claim publictly that they were the ones who tried to stop it and all times and still stand for the old Left values like pacifism. As the text I quoted shows, this claim is patently false. It is not the only one, hence the party's massive loss in practicly every election that we had in the last 5 years.

What you actually said was: "Well, we get another confirmation that the Traitor Party is unelectable. (as if we needed another one...)"
So to get the whole paragraph out of this little gem requires some hefty usage of a crytal ball, which I am quite sad to say is under repair...
If you *actually* said that instead of your pointless one-liner, one could have gotten a meaning out of it.

Which is exactly why I expanded my comment when you made it obvious that it wasn't clear without the neccessary context.

I have never heard of SPD as "Traitor Party" but then I don't seem to be in the same circles as you.

Really? It seemed to be all over the (german) internet. Anecdote: I was told even Julia Bonk (one of the big names of the saxonian Left Party) used the term during a debate before the last state election.

Probably the Greens are too...

Sorry, I don't get what you are saying here.

And the SPD lost for a plethora of reasons in their last elections, and being for/against Afghanistan was not probably very high on that list unlike the heritage of Schröder.

Actually, if you listen to people who had or would have voted for them before their left wing broke of to join the PDS, the SPD going against core left values IS a major factor in their decline. It is also exactly the heritage you are talking about.
Pacifism IS one of those values and many people DO feel betrayed by the SPD.

[Simon_Jester]

They were also a state that could actually be defeated.

That was by no means certain in 1941. Even so, the cost was very high on both sides.

I think that by "defeated" Alyrium means "is theoretically capable of losing."

It was theoretically possible to fight and defeat Japan, even if Americans in 1941 could imagine not being able to do it. It is not theoretically possible for the US to defeat "terrorism" by fighting a war against it. It's an abstract concept; we can't beat it permanently any more than we could beat "boredom" or "the color blue."

The War on Terror is pitched as an unlimited war, one where the US reserves the right to attack anyone and anything for whatever reasons it sees fit. And as far as we can tell, the war is being fought with no well defined grand strategy, no plan for winning beyond "beat up some brown people, a miracle happens, victory!"

It's not hard for me to see why Alyrium would think it impossible to justify fighting a war that way. To justify a war you must be able to explain what would happen if you won... and we can't do that because it's impossible to come up with a clearly defined statement of what it means to "defeat terrorism."

[Broomstick]

Oh, by that reasoning, no, "War on Terror" isn't winnable.

[Fire Fly]

Up next, the North Korean issue from the New York Times.

Leaked Cables Depict a World Guessing About North Korea

WASHINGTON — With North Korea reeling from economic and succession crises, American and South Korean officials early this year secretly began gaming out what would happen if the North, led by one of the world’s most brutal family dynasties, collapsed.

Over an official lunch in late February, a top South Korean official confidently told the American ambassador, Kathleen Stephens, that the fall would come “two to three years” after the death of Kim Jong-il, the country’s ailing leader, Ms. Stephens later cabled Washington. A new, younger generation of Chinese leaders “would be comfortable with a reunited Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the United States in a benign alliance,” the diplomat, Chun Yung-woo, predicted.

But if Seoul was destined to control the entire Korean Peninsula for the first time since the end of World War II, China — the powerful ally that keeps the North alive with food and fuel — would have to be placated. So South Korea was already planning to assure Chinese companies that they would have ample commercial opportunities in the mineral-rich northern part of the peninsula.

As for the United States, the cable said, “China would clearly ‘not welcome’ any U.S. military presence north of the DMZ,” the heavily mined demarcation line that now divides the two Koreas.

This trove of cables ends in February, just before North Korea began a series of military actions that has thrown some of Asia’s most prosperous countries into crisis. A month after the lunch, the North is believed to have launched a torpedo attack on the Cheonan, a South Korean warship, that killed 46 sailors.

Three weeks ago it revealed the existence of a uranium enrichment plant, potentially giving it a new pathway to make nuclear bomb material. And last week it shelled a South Korean island, killing two civilians and two marines and injuring many more.

None of that was predicted in the dozens of State Department cables about North Korea obtained by the organization WikiLeaks, and in fact even China, the North’s closest ally, has often been startlingly wrong, the cables show. But the documents help explain why some South Korean and American officials suspect that the military outbursts may be the last snarls of a dying dictatorship.

They also show that talk of the North’s collapse may be rooted more in hope than in any real strategy: similar predictions were made in 1994 when the country’s founder, Kim Il-sung, suddenly died, leaving his son to run the most isolated country in Asia. And a Chinese expert warned, according to an American diplomat, that Washington was deceiving itself once again if it believed that “North Korea would implode after Kim Jong-il’s death.”

The cables about North Korea — some emanating from Seoul, some from Beijing, many based on interviews with government officials, and others with scholars, defectors and other experts — are long on educated guesses and short on facts, illustrating why their subject is known as the Black Hole of Asia. Because they are State Department documents, not intelligence reports, they do not include the most secret American assessments, or the American military’s plans in case North Korea disintegrates or lashes out.

They contain loose talk and confident predictions of the end of the family dynasty that has ruled North Korea for 65 years. Those discussions were fueled by a rash of previously undisclosed defections of ranking North Korean diplomats, who secretly sought refuge in the South.

But they were also influenced by a remarkable period of turmoil inside North Korea, including an economic crisis set off by the government’s failed effort to revalue its currency and sketchy intelligence suggesting that the North Korean military might not abide the rise of Mr. Kim’s inexperienced young son, Kim Jong-un, who was recently made a four-star general despite having no military experience.

The cables reveal that in private, the Chinese, long seen as North Korea’s last protectors against the West, occasionally provide the Obama administration with colorful assessments of the state of play in North Korea. Chinese officials themselves sometimes even laugh about the frustrations of dealing with North Korean paranoia.

When James B. Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, sat down in September 2009 with one of China’s most powerful officials, Dai Bingguo, state councilor for foreign affairs, Mr. Dai joked that in a recent visit to North Korea he “did not dare” to be too candid with the ailing and mercurial North Korean leader. But the Chinese official reported that although Kim Jong-il had apparently suffered a stroke and had obviously lost weight, he still had a “sharp mind” and retained his reputation among Chinese officials as “quite a good drinker.” (Mr. Kim apparently assured Mr. Dai during a two-hour conversation in Pyongyang, the capital, that his infirmities had not forced him to give up alcohol.)

But reliable intelligence about Mr. Kim’s drinking habits, it turns out, does not extend to his nuclear program, about which even the Chinese seem to be in the dark.

On May 13, 2009, as American satellites showed unusual activity at North Korea’s nuclear test site, officials in Beijing said they were “unsure” that North Korean “threats of another nuclear test were serious.” As it turns out, the North Koreans detonated a test bomb just days later.

Soon after, Chinese officials predicted that negotiations intended to pressure the North to disarm would be “shelved for a few months.” They have never resumed.

The cables also show that almost as soon as the Obama administration came to office, it started raising alarms that the North was buying up components to enrich uranium, opening a second route for it to build nuclear weapons. (Until now, the North’s arsenal has been based on its production of plutonium, but its production capacity has been halted.)

In June 2009, at a lunch in Beijing shortly after the North Korean nuclear test, two senior Chinese Foreign Ministry officials reported that China’s experts believed “the enrichment was only in its initial phases.” In fact, based on what the North Koreans revealed this month, an industrial-scale enrichment plant was already under construction. It was apparently missed by both American and Chinese intelligence services.

The cables make it clear that the South Koreans believe that internal tensions in the North have reached a boiling point. In January of this year, South Korea’s foreign minister, who later resigned, reported to a visiting American official that the South Koreans saw an “increasingly chaotic” situation in the North.

In confidence, he told the American official, Robert R. King, the administration’s special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, that a number of “high-ranking North Korean officials working overseas” had recently defected to the South. Those defections were being kept secret, presumably to give American and South Korean intelligence agencies time to harvest the defectors’ knowledge.

But the cables also reveal that the South Koreans see their strategic interests in direct conflict with China’s, creating potentially huge diplomatic tensions over the future of the Korean Peninsula.

The South Koreans complain bitterly that China is content with the status quo of a nuclear North Korea, because they fear that a collapse would unleash a flood of North Korean refugees over the Chinese border and lead to the loss of a “buffer zone” between China and the American forces in South Korea.

At one point, Ambassador Stephens reported to Washington, a senior South Korean official told her that “unless China pushed North Korea to the ‘brink of collapse,’ ” the North would refuse to take meaningful steps to give up its nuclear program.

Mr. Chun, now the South Korean national security adviser, complained to Ambassador Stephens during their lunch that China had little commitment to the multination talks intended to force North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arsenal. The Chinese, he said, had chosen Wu Dawei to represent Beijing at the talks. According to the cable, Mr. Chun called Mr. Wu the country’s “ ‘most incompetent official,’ an arrogant, Marx-spouting former Red Guard who ‘knows nothing about North Korea, nothing about non-proliferation.’ ”

But the cables show that when it comes to the critical issue of succession, even the Chinese know little of the man who would be North Korea’s next ruler: Kim Jong-un.

As recently as February 2009, the American Consulate in Shanghai — a significant collection point for intelligence about North Korea — sent cables reporting that the Chinese who knew North Korea best disbelieved the rumors that Kim Jong-un was being groomed to run the country. Several Chinese scholars with good contacts in the North said they thought it was likely that “a group of high-level military officials” would take over, and that “at least for the moment none of KJI’s three sons is likely to be tapped to succeed him.” The oldest son was dismissed as “too much of a playboy,” the middle son as “more interested in video games” than governing. Kim Jong-un, they said, was too young and inexperienced.

But within months, a senior Chinese diplomat, Wu Jianghao, was telling his American counterparts that Kim Jong-il was using nuclear tests and missile launching as part of an effort to put his third son in place to succeed him, despite his youth.

“Wu opined that the rapid pace of provocative actions in North Korea was due to Kim Jong-il’s declining health and might be part of a gambit under which Kim Jong-il would escalate tensions with the United States so that his successor, presumably Kim Jong-un, could then step in and ease those tensions,” the embassy reported back to Washington in June 2009.

But carrying out plans for an easy ascension may be more difficult than expected, some are quoted as saying. In February of this year the American Consulate in Shenyang reported rumors that Kim Jong-un “had a hand” in the decision to revalue the North’s currency, which wiped out the scarce savings of most North Koreans and created such an outcry that one official was executed for his role in the sudden financial shift. The cables also describe secondhand reports of palace intrigue in the North, with other members of the Kim family preparing to serve as regents to Kim Jong-un — or to unseat him after Kim Jong-il’s death.

Also, the Guardian. No doubt the North Korean leadership will grow more paranoid with China distancing itself from them. I also cannot help but to think that this material probably shouldn't have been published. Humiliating North Korea will only harden their stance and make them more prone to violence.

[Srelex]

I agree. What purpose would it serve to risk making matters in a hotspot like that even more uncertain?

EDIT:It at least seems that not all of the Chinese leadership is so uncertain about supporting NK, at least.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Um... actually I'd say there was an element of retribution due to that whole Pearl Harbor thing. It was certainly what was used to rally popular support.

There was, but it was used to get the isolationist population to get their head out of their ass. There were legitimate moral and political interests in going to war irrespective of pearl harbor.

That was by no means certain in 1941. Even so, the cost was very high on both sides.

That was not the point. I mean defeat in the sense that theoretically there was an objective: making japan surrender and stop its expansionism. The war on terror has no such objective. It can never be won or lost. It is declaring war on a concept.

How about the deal worked out between the US and Libya between 2002 and 2008? In return for settling decades-long simmering poking at each other the two governments agreed to stop pissing in each other's cornflakes and pull all lawsuits out of the courts (on both sides - 'cause Americans aren't the only people who know how to sue folks.

Was that solved using the State's Secrets Privilege, which is what I was referring to?

[Fire Fly]

This is quite hilarious:

Grigoriy Logvinov said his country's foreign minister (Sergey Lavrov) had just had a rough trip to North Korea because its leadership "was 'very angry' and told Lavrov categorically that it was resolved to restart its nuclear programme, would never participate in the six-party talks again and would not trust anything but nuclear deterrence as its security guarantee".

Logvinov urged patience, suggesting Pyongyang's hard line "was either a negotiating tactic or an indication that a power transition was near, but in any case did not represent the final word on the denuclearisation issue". He derided North Korea's rocket as "a piece of junk that miraculously flew".

[Broomstick]

How about the deal worked out between the US and Libya between 2002 and 2008? In return for settling decades-long simmering poking at each other the two governments agreed to stop pissing in each other's cornflakes and pull all lawsuits out of the courts (on both sides - 'cause Americans aren't the only people who know how to sue folks.

Was that solved using the State's Secrets Privilege, which is what I was referring to?

The initial negotiations certainly had to be handled confidentially until some initial terms were worked out. It was gradually made public as, of course, it would eventually have to be given the nature of the final agreement. If, however, the entire process had played out under the spotlight it is highly doubtful that we would have had an agreement or an outcome that would defuse tensions.

Which would also be an example of an appropriate use of keeping secrets and confidentiality - enabling events to occur such that the secret and confidence would no longer need to be kept.

Secrets and confidentiality are tools - they are neither inherently good nor bad, rather, the use to which they are put determines whether or not they are good things. Like all tools, they can be misused and misuse can cause damage.

[Andrew J.]

...Broomstick, keeping governmental negotiations confidential isn't the same thing as using the state secrets privilege to have a private lawsuit dismissed.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The initial negotiations certainly had to be handled confidentially until some initial terms were worked out. It was gradually made public as, of course, it would eventually have to be given the nature of the final agreement. If, however, the entire process had played out under the spotlight it is highly doubtful that we would have had an agreement or an outcome that would defuse tensions.

That is a little bit different than using the state secrets privilege. That is like anything else having confidentiality like business negotiations or a talk between lawyer and client. That it created an international agreement that changed the law of the US is fine and kosher, even if people are harmed. The state's secrets privilege is something completely different.

Secrets and confidentiality are tools - they are neither inherently good nor bad, rather, the use to which they are put determines whether or not they are good things. Like all tools, they can be misused and misuse can cause damage.

Which has been my point. The state secret privilege being used to cover up or quash things that are and were illegal and explicitly protect those responsible from punishment. WAY the hell different from using a relevant form of confidentiality to protect the proceedings of an agreement between states.

[Broomstick]

...Broomstick, keeping governmental negotiations confidential isn't the same thing as using the state secrets privilege to have a private lawsuit dismissed.

Well, yes, the circumstances ARE different, it was being offered as a possible example, not as a definitive one. If, in fact, "states secrets privilege" was involved in the Libya deal we might not be aware of it... unless something like WikiLeaks releases it.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Secondly, Brussels, the capital of the EU is in Belgium - that is much greater prominence.

I'd hazard to guess being the HQ of NATO doesn't hurt either.

[K. A. Pital]

If I remember right, the war docs and the cables have both come from a single source (who is now under arrest) who happened to be an American.

It's also just easier to get access to whistleblowers in America and safer for the whistleblowers too.

If you whistleblow in Russia by passing on classified documents on the Strategic Rocket Forces, you end up with a fucking bullet in the back of your head and the case shuffled off to the most junior inspector.

Here? There's a good chance you can get off on the precedent set by the P'Gon Papers.

Shep, that's an epic fail. Wikileaks put out diplomatic cables, not "classified documents on Strategic Nuclear Forces". You should at least be consistent.

I believe, if the matter was nuclear arsenals, people wouldn't be glad to see that flying in the open. Although even such a release could be beneficial - after all, if say, America is planning something horrendous with it's nukes or missiles and then whistleblowers make it known, all the better for the world, right?

As a matter of fact, while I might disagree with the methods of Wikileaks and similar groups (say, 4ATA in Latvia), I agree with their general mission. No large organization, no government and no corporation should be allowed to have dark secrets, and if they do, the faster this shit gets out, the better.

[Elfdart]

What's really funny is that the State Department was tripped up in much the same way that adolescent girls who keep diaries are: They put things in writing that they don't want anyone else to read, when writing it down guarantees that someone will see it.

[eyl]

What's really funny is that the State Department was tripped up in much the same way that adolescent girls who keep diaries are: They put things in writing that they don't want anyone else to read, when writing it down guarantees that someone will see it.

That's not really a good analogy; if you're going for school-age parallels, try note in a classroom. They intended the information to be disseminated, but inly inside the organization. OTOH, they couldn't do it by word of mouth, obviously.

[Simon_Jester]

What's really funny is that the State Department was tripped up in much the same way that adolescent girls who keep diaries are: They put things in writing that they don't want anyone else to read, when writing it down guarantees that someone will see it.

Eyl's right.

A lot of this is information that people within the State Department will legitimately need to know five to ten years from now; they may have to look this stuff up later because they're trying to form dossiers on foreign politicians, for instance. And a lot of it is stuff they need easy access to; you can't call up the American ambassador to Russia every time some random CIA analyst wants to double-check the latest assessment on Dmitry Medvedev's personality.

While there are surely dark secrets in among these files, the mere existence of the files is not a "mistake" on the State Department's part.