US diplomatic cables released

[ShadowOfMadness]

Speaking of DNA and Khrushchev, they also did that to his long feces when he came and visited shopping malls and argued with Richard Nixon.

I also hope Wikileaks shovels out some shit about my Philippine government. As a person who lives in a shit country like the Philippines were journalists are murdered routinely, and leftists disappeared by military kill-squads, I welcome and salute this service Wikileaks is doing. I don't know why you Americans are so bothered by this, but apparently making you look "weak" or damaging your ability to influence other nations for your own "foreign interests" takes more importance than actual immoral behavior, crimes and other such shit your government does to your people, or that of the people of other countries - now, up to and including their leaders. Cry me a fucking trail of tears and get some dispossessed group of people your country has screwed up to trek on it or some shit.

My only real objection is the fact they target the US disproportionately. It speaks to bias

[Metahive]

The biggest kid in town usually also gets the most attention, you should be proud. And I mean, honestly, what would anyone want with the dirty laundry of, say, Tuvalu?

[Shroom Man 777]

Maybe its because information is easier to leak in the USA? That means that your country isn't a shithole like Russia or the Philippines where journos and whistleblowers and leakers are killed and thrown into ditches. Those who go hurr hurr and fantasize about Assange being killed in pornographic manners, well, I guess they'd rather their country, the USA, be more like Russia and the Philippines. Seeing as they're probably also against socialized healthcare, are for deregulation, and how your country has firemen who let houses burn down because the owners didn't give them money, I guess America is already halfway there. Hey, firemen in the Philippines also refuse to save homes without getting money.

Let's trade places. I want to be in a civilized country where the government's hypocrisies and failings are laid bare for all to see by intrepid journos and leakers. Other guys want to be in an awesome country like the Philippines where people like these are either killed quietly by the military, or by the private armies and death squads of local government officials. Its just like how libertopians go blah blah blah about their crap when they can just pack their bags and go to their dreamland, like Somalia. Sounds like a fair trade, no?

[K. A. Pital]

My only real objection is the fact they target the US disproportionately. It speaks to bias

It doesn't speak to bias. It speaks to the ability of Wikileaks to get dirty shit, and they have the ability to get the US dirty shit and Russia's dirty shit (as they claim - I've yet to see it), but not others. It is also obvious that Wikileaks was created by English-speakers, who naturally have more access to Anglophone nations, but face obvious troubles trying to do the same for, say, China or Indonesia.

And yeah, the guys who want Assange dead would probably love the Russian way - no need to even use the CIA or whatever secret police. Just use the mob! Pay them and they'll off the guy. *laughs*

[Alyrium Denryle]

My only real objection is the fact they target the US disproportionately. It speaks to bias

It doesn't speak to bias. It speaks to the ability of Wikileaks to get dirty shit, and they have the ability to get the US dirty shit and Russia's dirty shit (as they claim - I've yet to see it), but not others. It is also obvious that Wikileaks was created by English-speakers, who naturally have more access to Anglophone nations, but face obvious troubles trying to do the same for, say, China or Indonesia.

And yeah, the guys who want Assange dead would probably love the Russian way - no need to even use the CIA or whatever secret police. Just use the mob! Pay them and they'll off the guy. *laughs*

Let us be blunt. The United States of Amerikkka America is the world's only superpower, and it talks really big about concepts like freedom and justice. Concepts it knows nothing about, and hasn't for some time. It is a country that uses terrorism as a pretext to go to war, and then kills over a million people in retribution for the killing of 3000...and does so IN THE WRONG FUCKING COUNTRY. It then looses more of its soldiers than the total body count of the initial terrorist attack. It then proceeds to fuck human rights sideways with a chainsaw, holding people--often only on the say so of someone collecting a bounty-- without trial for nearly a decade, torturing them, kidnapping torturing and raping foreign nationals--often via mistaken identity, brutalizing its own civilian population with privacy and private parts intrusions, all the while throwing up the state secrets privilege like Captain America's shield against lawsuits and bullying smaller governments into not enforcing INTEROL warrants against the kidnappers/torturers. Oh, and did I mention the state department "disappearing" a rape kit implicating KBR employees in the gang-rape of one of their co-workers so that KBR would not be held criminally or civilly responsible for being complicit in a gang rape?

To say nothing of the fact that government and industry are in bed so deep that they are swimming around in a pool together, with government licking the balls of capitalists like the Emperor Tiberius' "Minnows"? Certainly there are governments that are more corrupt, the problem is that when they are corrupt, they dont cause economic collapses that impact the entire world economy like America does. I could go on, and on, and on.

So, to the extent that the United States can and has fucked up the world, I think bias is more than slightly appropriate. If only to rub America's nose in the giant pile of shit it has dumped on the rest of humanity, and then smack it with a newspaper. I will not even go into the right of a population to be able to evaluate what its government does in its name--popular sovereignty and all that liberal bullshit, or the more prosaic concerns about the absolute necessity of the people knowing about what policy actually is so that it can hold their elected representatives accountable for their decisions. No. Those things are too boring and carry so little weight with the fascists that would prefer to wrap themselves in an American Flag while holding out a cross and an unread copy of the constitution as if to ward off the Vampires of Reason.

[Skgoa]

Yeah, but bbut... Germany was worse 70 years ago! Don't you see it? Our great brothers from across the see have to do all those mean things so that Europe is same from mean people who would mean stuff like not buying our stuff or voting against Israel at the UN! DO YOU WANT THAT TO HAPPEN? Some slaveowning smugglers froze their cocks of 200 years ago so they wouldn't have to pay taxes and you fascist marxist would let it all go to ruin!

Just FYI to frothing idiots who go about Russia - I can't fucking wait for Wikileaks to release a pile of documents on the corruption and oligarchy in Russia, which they promised to do - bank account infos of our oligarchs and corrupt officials, and much, much more. Perhaps this information will act like a bomb and force political change. I'm not sure why people in America are unhappy - what, the desire for "CHANGE" ran out after Obama was elected?

I am glad Wikileaks included Russia in it's "corrupt assholish nations" focus.

You should be grateful, not bitchy.

Yeah, I wish they had more stuff from Germany. Unfortunately we just get "everyone things the geman government is full of idiots"... which is not really newsworthy.

[Skgoa]

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...)

[Broomstick]

Just FYI to frothing idiots who go about Russia - I can't fucking wait for Wikileaks to release a pile of documents on the corruption and oligarchy in Russia, which they promised to do - bank account infos of our oligarchs and corrupt officials, and much, much more.

I look forward to the day.

'm not sure why people in America are unhappy - what, the desire for "CHANGE" ran out after Obama was elected?

I thought I was pretty explicit that my biggest dissatisfaction is with the Middle East bullshit - asking the US to bomb Iran for them. Now, I do know why Saudi Arabia wants the US to do it rather than doing it themselves (there are several reasons) and want to strenuously avoid even an appearance of agreeing with Israel, even if in actual fact the two nations are pretty much on the same page here. I still do not have to like it.

I have not denied that the US has done bad stuff otherwise. I do think this will make international diplomacy harder, which means defusing dangerous situations will be harder. That doesn't mean I like the dark and shadowy world of diplomacy. I suppose if they do this to all the world power then down the line this might clear the air somewhat. Might. If they actually do air out everyone's dirty laundry (Shroom's comments about other groups being happy to use murder to silence whistleblowers is spot on).

I am glad Wikileaks included Russia in it's "corrupt assholish nations" focus.

Same here. I was not aware such a list existed. Who else is on it?

At best, the lesser of two evils, but I'm not yet convinced the Chinese in Tibet are an actual good.

You know what theocracies look like, don't you?

Yes, yes I do. However, from what I read - and here in the pro-Dalai Lama US it's hard to find anything that doesn't portray him as a wonderful, saint-like creature - I'm not sure the Chinese are a good thing for Tibet, either. And let me explain before people go roaring off half-cocked.

Yes, unquestionably the Chinese have done some good things in Tibet. I am aware that there are many Tibetans in Tibet who like the current situation better than the prior one. However, it is my understanding that China claims there is no difference between the Tibetans and Chinese except on a cultural level, which flies in the face of facts. Tibetans are physically different from other people in a manner that lets them live permanently at a higher altitude than anyone else. I also have heard that the Chinese government is trying to encourage Han colonization of Tibet. I expect that one such motivation is China's population density elsewhere, which is completely understandable. However, I have also heard that ethnic Tibetans fear becoming an ethnic minority in their own homeland as there are so many more Han than Tibetans. Sort of like what happened to the Native Americans and the Australian Aborigines. Yeah, we know how well that turned out for the natives. Living under a theocracy sucks. I'm not sure trading it for being a tiny minority in your own country, with loss of your own land, language, culture, and ethnic identity is so much better. Of course, there are definite differences between those groups and the Tibetans - the Tibetans aren't at such a technological disadvantage, and the extreme altitude in some locations means that even if you move a lot of other people in they're not going to be able to sustain a population without continual immigration from outside (the locations are so high non-Tibetan women find it very difficult to sustain a pregnancy to term. Even in slightly lower places, non-Tibetan women have a notably higher incidence of miscarriage, premature birth, low birthweight babies, and lowered fertility. Pregnant Han women in such areas are encouraged to seek lower altitudes when pregnant according to a book I read by a researcher working in the area). Unfortunately, for this scenario, there really are a lot of Han.

If that sounds like a lot of "maybes" it is - because of where I live it's very difficult to get unbiased information about Tibet, although the internet makes that easier these days. The longer the Tibetans remain dominant in Tibet, the better their material lives, and so on the more I'm coming to think China is not the bad guy here. On the other hand, I am also certain that China annexed/retook/whatever Tibet for the benefit of China, not the benefit of the ethnic Tibetans. If it so happens those two interests coincide that's great - but if they don't China is going to call the shots simply because they're a juggernaut and Tibet is not. Now, if someone can point me to a valid source of information that shows the vast majority of Tibetans are happy with the new Tibet, want the Chinese to stay, don't fear obliteration, and so on I am prepared to change my mind. I just have not seen such information myself. Very frustrating, as I know much of what I get here about Tibet is so horribly biased but I'm not going to kneejerk into thinking China is automatically good just because the Dalai Lama's theocracy sucked yak-balls for everyone but the elite. It's entirely possible to replace one nasty form of government with another.

So - if China is a good thing for Tibet, help me change my mind. Point me to a source of information.

What does the Russian Civil War have to do with the Soviet land grab turning Eastern Europe into "puppet buffer states"?

Lots, actually. Buffer states were seen as crucial to secure the USSR from a land invasion, which after the 1920s' interventions by every imperialist power on Earth (including uncanny brotherhood of the USA and the Japanese Empire in the East) and the 1941 massive invasion by the Nazis, was seen not just as a real possibility. It was seen as a dire and ever-present threat. Western Europe didn't invade the USA in World War I and could not do so. Hence, Western Europe did not pose a threat to the USA.

Thank you for that, I did not know that. Of course, I've been aware that Russia has a long history of being invaded, but the why and wherefore of the Eastern Block hasn't been expressed to me in those terms, and that's a good point about the Western Block. That explains why Russia created their puppet buffers. That doesn't automatically make it right of them to do so. Essentially invading other people so you aren't invaded is understandable, that doesn't make it nice.

I suppose you've forgotten that communism was ideologically committed to crushing capitalism? Krushchev pounding his shoe on the table declaring "We will bury you!". Did you forget about that? Or is it OK for anyone other than the US to be "ideologically committed" to crushing the competition?

Khrushev's shoe incident seems to be an urban legend. The photo turned out to be a montage. More than that, the shoe and "Bury you" are completely different cases, and the latter was mistranslated to hell and back (not to mention that Khrushev had Dubya-like speech gaffoes, this being one of them). I mean, it's even mentioned on fucking wikipedia.

Propaganda on both sides. Yes, I'm aware that Krushchev supposedly meant communism would outlast capitalism, not engage in armed obliteration. However, it's no secret that the US and USSR were long-term adversaries and enemies, even if we managed to get through the cold war without direct open conflict (lots of proxy conflict, though). The USSR wanted their system to win, just as the US wanted our system to win. Meanwhile, other people were cherry-picking what they thought best from both systems, and they might well outlast both the USSR and US. People who are setting up puppet buffer states are definitely spreading their own system around, imposing it by force, and being just as dickish as the US about imposing their will on others. In which case we're back to everyone has dirty hands.

Did anyone tell the Afghanis shooting at the Soviets that?

Oh wow. Unbounded hypocrisy much? The USA entered Russia, a major power, at a time when the latter had civil war. Nobody asked the Russians shooting at the Americans, right?

And Europeans gleefully got involved with the American revolution (both France and Poland contributed on the colonial side, there were numerous European mercenaries, not to mention the British Empire) and the American Civil War (and continued to happily support the CSA by buying their slave-produced products, usually while patting themselves on the back because they no longer held slaves, until the blockade became just a little too inconvenient) and so on. If there's a civil war or revolution other nations frequently involve themselves because they hope to somehow benefit from it, not out of the goodness of their hearts. Of course, if you do that you do risk getting your guys shot at and killed.

For the record, you can at least technically argue the Us intervention in Vietnam was entirely about supporting the ruling government of South Vietnam.

You can argue the same about every single Soviet intervention in Eastern Europe and the war in Afghanistan. I'm not sure what this argument was supposed to prove.

Stas does have a point - Vietnam was not just a civil war, it was a proxy fight between the big powers, too. So was Korea. Although post WWII there was the problem that pre-war governments had been removed so not so clear cut, but we've covered the buffer state issue already. There are reasons the USSR did what it did, and it wasn't because they were Pure Evil, it's because they were acting in their own interests - just like everyone else.

They won the war.

*laughs* China won "the war" in Tibet.

Yes, yes they did - valid comeback.

To sum up - I see no reason why America's dirty laundry should be kept secret. And neither that of any other goverment.

To be fair, I haven't claimed all this shit should be kept under wraps, either - I may not LIKE having it out in the open to the extent it works against my nation's interests - on the other hand, I dislike my own nation to the extent it works against MY self-interest. I'm certainly not calling for the head of what's-his-name. I do have concerns that this will cause problems as well as bring them to light. Not everything should be made public, even if most things should be. I'd like to live in a world where all can be truly open but that's not reality. Maybe WikiLeaks really did vet the material and really is sitting on anything that would pose an unreasonable danger to anyone, as they claim - I would sure like to believe that. But why should I trust WikiLeaks any more than anyone else?

[Guardsman Bass]

It doesn't speak to bias. It speaks to the ability of Wikileaks to get dirty shit, and they have the ability to get the US dirty shit and Russia's dirty shit (as they claim - I've yet to see it), but not others. It is also obvious that Wikileaks was created by English-speakers, who naturally have more access to Anglophone nations, but face obvious troubles trying to do the same for, say, China or Indonesia.

Depending on how the state department cables release plays out, that may be more of a possibility in the near-future. They do seem to have people translating the stuff into other languages (the main website has French, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic translations in a side-bar), and a spike in donations would allow them to hire more people for that.

On a side-note, I'm surprised at how this discussion glided into the typical "American hypocrisy" back-and-forth, considering that we've had, what, a half-dozen of them in the past year or two?. I thought it went without stating that no nation's hands are clean, but the US has a disproportionately bad impact because of its size, military power, and certain particularly repugnant things like Guantanamo.

EDIT: On another note, I wish the Wikileaks website had an option to see just the newly released cables. It's going to be rather difficult to find them after a while if we have to scroll through the whole list everytime.

[Alyeska]

We live in a new age. It is much harder to keep a secret and far easier to spread it. For better or worse, Wikileaks could fundamentaly change how governments handle classification and secrecy.

[Kane Starkiller]

December 2009 - to be classified till 2035
Talks between US and Russia about Iranian and North Korean missile development, ranges, throw weights, missile casings, fueling, procurement of required materials etc: link.

[MKSheppard]

then kills over a million people in retribution for the killing of 3000...and does so IN THE WRONG FUCKING COUNTRY.

Wikileaks leaked the US Military's own classified assessment of deaths in Vietraq.

109,032 deaths January 2004 to December 2009

It then looses more of its soldiers than the total body count of the initial terrorist attack.

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

all the while throwing up the state secrets privilege like Captain America's shield against lawsuits

Sounds like you're disappointed in Obama, I think.

[Uraniun235]

My only real objection is the fact they target the US disproportionately. It speaks to bias

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 not like WikiLeaks decided at their secret council meeting in Sturzdorf that it was time to hit AMERIKA with the full force of their intelligence resources; they get leaked data as it's offered.

Now, that said, I have heard elsewhere that there is a considerable backlog of material still awaiting release because WikiLeaks has been so closely focusing on the war documents and now the cables, but I don't know how valid that is.

[MKSheppard]

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.

[Lusankya]

So - if China is a good thing for Tibet, help me change my mind. Point me to a source of information.

Have you read the Chinese Report on the Economic and Social Development of Tibet? Alternatively, there's the White Paper on Fifty Years of Democratic Reform in Tibet, which is a much more propaganda-ey, but gives more details on the differences between the older system and the reforms instituted by the central government.

Now, I'll leave it to you how much you want to believe it, but statistics like "opened up 1,017 schools" don't really leave much to be interpreted or fudged. It's also worth noting that while Tibet has periodically experienced disturbance since China gained control, the 2008 riots were the first since liberation that were not predominantly led by monks. Up until that stage, I suspect that the majority of Tibetans were more or less satisfied with the state of affairs. I'm not even sure how much the riots actually suggest that the majority of Tibetans are dissatisfied with the current system, any more than I'm sure how much riots in Paris suggest that the majority of French are dissatisfied with their current system.

This quote is the most telling, I think, in regards to whether or not the Chinese government has been better for Tibet than an Independent state is this one:

Analyses of relevant statistics [5] show that the central government's transfer payments to Tibet amounted to 201.9 billion yuan between 1959 and 2008 and the figure totaled more than 154.1 billion yuan between 2001 and 2008, making up 93.7 percent of Tibet's financial revenue in the same period. This means that for every 100 yuan that Tibet spent, over 90 yuan came from the central

Now, I'm not going to comment on what the Dalai Lama would have been like as a ruler had he remained in Tibet. He was still a young man when China came in, and I don't think that even the Dalai Lama knows the Dalai Lama well enough to know what kind of leader he would have turned out to be in a hypothetical alternate universe where Tibet remained an autonomous nation.

I do however, think it is fair to say that whatever policies the Dalai Lama would have attempted to implement in Tibet, he would have had to effect them on a budget 1/10th of the size of the current budget. Even if a hypothetical 14th Dalai Lama in charge of an independent Tibet wanted to build something like the Qinghai-Tibet railway, he would not have been able to do so without strong outside investment, which seems unlikely unless China for some reason decided that the development of its poorer neighbour was somehow more important than developing its own territory which seems unlikely, given that Tibet's neighbours all have their own troubles to worry about.

[Simon_Jester]

Reality is that there needs to be a balance between openness and secrets. Our diplomats have to be able to speak frankly amongst themselves about people in other countries, and their counterparts likewise, but such discussions when made public can often make things worse, not better. Part of diplomacy is finding a way to work with people you don't like who do things you don't approve of - preferably while doing so in such a polite manner the other party in unaware of your disapproval of them.

Yes, some of the stuff coming out really did need to be aired in public. Absolutely. Particularly (in my opinion) where other nations have pretended to have clean hands and in truth had fingers just as dirty as anyone else's.* But some of this information released will not benefit anyone.

I agree. I think, though, that things have swung far enough towards the "secrecy" side of the balance that it becomes impossible to obtain even basic honesty without this kind of leak. That's a sign of a flawed government policy on the issue.

It isn't just that we as citizens operate in an information vacuum when it comes to our government's real opinion on certain issues. It's that the vacuum gets filled with fake information: talk about Iraqi WMDs, or misleading claims about the cost effectiveness of ABM systems, or the like. At which point we wind up with a problem worse than mere ignorance when election day rolls around.

That kind of environment doesn't justify willy-nilly leaking of all classified information "because it's there." But it does create an atmosphere where it's hard to keep special information secure because the desire for any information manifests itself as a desire to snoop around in classified documents.

Shep mentioned the Pentagon Papers; the analogy seems appropriate to me. With the Pentagon Papers, the US government was keeping critical secrets about its official assessment of the situation in Vietnam. They were hiding the fact that the real focus of their strategy was more on preventing embarrassment than on improving the situation in South Vietnam (which, to be fair, would have been immensely difficult if not impossible). They were hiding the timeline on which decisions regarding the war had been made. They were hiding their concerns about the winnability of the war.

That secrecy affected voting patterns in the 1964 and 1968 elections. For instance, it let Johnson get away with presenting himself as antiwar and Goldwater as pro-war in '64... when Johnson was already planning to escalate the Vietnam War should he be reelected.

When that kind of thing becomes possible, when the voters are making decisions based on deliberate lies about what their government is up to, democracy cannot function. How are we supposed to vote on a president's war record when his speechwriters tell us we're winning while his Cabinet tells him he's losing... and then classifies the files that tell him so?

On that level it's not a question of whether US behavior is good or bad compared to other nations; I don't even want to get into that swamp. It's a question of whether the US seriously wants to be a democracy, whether we actually believe it's a good idea for politicians to answer to the voters when they do things the average voter would have qualms about.

If the answer is "yes," then basic information about American strategy and foreign policy needs to be available to the public, in great enough quantity that the public can't be kept in an information vacuum while the government pulls an endless sequence of dirty tricks in secret.

If the answer is "no..." well, I'd like to see people admit they believe that, if they really do. If someone wants to argue that real democracy with an informed citizenry is not a tenable form of government for a major world power because of the need to keep state secrets, then I'm prepared to listen, for the novelty value if nothing else.

then kills over a million people in retribution for the killing of 3000...and does so IN THE WRONG FUCKING COUNTRY.

Wikileaks leaked the US Military's own classified assessment of deaths in Vietraq.
109,032 deaths January 2004 to December 2009

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.

all the while throwing up the state secrets privilege like Captain America's shield against lawsuits

Sounds like you're disappointed in Obama, I think.

Why shouldn't he be? Obama turned out to be much less of a change from Bush than many who voted for him were expecting (or at least holding out hope for).

There was a point in American history when the government didn't do so much of this... but it may have been in the nineteenth century for all I know. It's not a unique vice of any one presidential administration.

[cosmicalstorm]

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.

Your head?

I imagine there are more than a couple of places in this world where treason on a far lesser scale would end with you and anyone you ever talked to having most of your'e extremeties removed with pliers and blowtorch in a darkened basement.

[Broomstick]

We live in a new age. It is much harder to keep a secret and far easier to spread it. For better or worse, Wikileaks could fundamentaly change how governments handle classification and secrecy.

While I'm all for change for the better, it's the potential for "or worse" that makes me concerned. I'm not terribly optimistic in the matter, am not sure politicians and/or diplomats have a better nature, and yet would be very happy to be proved entirely wrong in my pessimism.

December 2009 - to be classified till 2035
Talks between US and Russia about Iranian and North Korean missile development, ranges, throw weights, missile casings, fueling, procurement of required materials etc: link.

Oddly enough, I find some reassuring things in that one.

then kills over a million people in retribution for the killing of 3000...and does so IN THE WRONG FUCKING COUNTRY.

Wikileaks leaked the US Military's own classified assessment of deaths in Vietraq.

109,032 deaths January 2004 to December 2009

Of course, criteria for determining who is in the body count varies, and it's helpful to know. One group might only count those directly killed in fighting, whereas another might also include those killed by shortages, forgotten ordance, and so on. This will always result in a collection of different figures for "number killed". That, and Alyrium might have been engaging in a bit of hyperbole.

Suffice to say, though, the US killed a lot more people in Iraq than Americans have been killed in Iraq, in a war that we never should have started. So, to that extent, nothing new here although there is a part of me that prefers having a number rather than a nebulous "we aren't keeping track" or "we aren't talking about that".

It then looses more of its soldiers than the total body count of the initial terrorist attack.

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

And that's another reason War Is Bad - lots and lots of people die, often horribly.

all the while throwing up the state secrets privilege like Captain America's shield against lawsuits

Sounds like you're disappointed in Obama, I think.

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.

My only real objection is the fact they target the US disproportionately. It speaks to bias

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.

US intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, arrested in Iraq in June for leaking information to WikiLinks, currently held by the military in Virginia. It is unlikely he will ever walk free again. He is accused of obtaining this information not only through the channels he legitimately held as an intelligence ananlyst, but also by hacking into other US intelligence computers. Alledgely, he downloaded over a million documents, of which WikiLeaks apparently thought only about 250,000 were worth bothering with - so if you think some of the current pile is insipid and uninteresting imagine the original full collection. Mr. Manning is viewed by a number of his countrymen as a traiter, and by another subset as a patriot for exposing government duplicity.

Clearly, having a source like that for a nation makes hanging out the dirty laundry considerably easier.

Now, that said, I have heard elsewhere that there is a considerable backlog of material still awaiting release because WikiLeaks has been so closely focusing on the war documents and now the cables, but I don't know how valid that is.

Valid - confirmed by several sources, including the US government which is apparently aware of what WikiLeaks has. I saw a schedule somewhere for broad categories of information to be released this week, but I didn't note the location.

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

True.

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

Unlikely, as it was obtained through access granted by a military clearance - I'm pretty sure that even if Manning did it for all the right reasons they can still nail him for technical violations of the UCMJ.

[Broomstick]

So - if China is a good thing for Tibet, help me change my mind. Point me to a source of information.

Have you read the Chinese Report on the Economic and Social Development of Tibet? Alternatively, there's the White Paper on Fifty Years of Democratic Reform in Tibet, which is a much more propaganda-ey, but gives more details on the differences between the older system and the reforms instituted by the central government.

No, I haven't read them yet but I'll look into them. It's an example of the sort of information that likely would have been completely unavailable, or at least extremely difficult to access, in the US prior to the current information age. I might have some time today, as my planned road trip has been delayed but my time is limited (and I can hear those who don't particularly care for my ramblings here yelling "BUT NOT LIMITED ENOUGH!")

I do however, think it is fair to say that whatever policies the Dalai Lama would have attempted to implement in Tibet, he would have had to effect them on a budget 1/10th of the size of the current budget. Even if a hypothetical 14th Dalai Lama in charge of an independent Tibet wanted to build something like the Qinghai-Tibet railway, he would not have been able to do so without strong outside investment, which seems unlikely unless China for some reason decided that the development of its poorer neighbour was somehow more important than developing its own territory which seems unlikely, given that Tibet's neighbours all have their own troubles to worry about.

Which is also a valid point. A country can be poor, but not a bad place to live. However, improving the lot of the average citizen is hard to do without a source of wealth. Tibet doesn't have that much to sell to the rest of the world, at least not at the moment.

[MKSheppard]

Shep mentioned the Pentagon Papers; the analogy seems appropriate to me. With the Pentagon Papers, the US government was keeping critical secrets about its official assessment of the situation in Vietnam.

The media only selectively released parts of the Pentagon Papers however. The full papers actually tell a much different story. But by the time the full papers were released much later, the damage had been done.

[Broomstick]

Reality is that there needs to be a balance between openness and secrets. Our diplomats have to be able to speak frankly amongst themselves about people in other countries, and their counterparts likewise, but such discussions when made public can often make things worse, not better. Part of diplomacy is finding a way to work with people you don't like who do things you don't approve of - preferably while doing so in such a polite manner the other party in unaware of your disapproval of them.

Yes, some of the stuff coming out really did need to be aired in public. Absolutely. Particularly (in my opinion) where other nations have pretended to have clean hands and in truth had fingers just as dirty as anyone else's.* But some of this information released will not benefit anyone.

I agree. I think, though, that things have swung far enough towards the "secrecy" side of the balance that it becomes impossible to obtain even basic honesty without this kind of leak. That's a sign of a flawed government policy on the issue.

Yes, agreed. On the other hand, it's a lot harder to keep secrets in today's world. It's a LOT easier to access information from other nations, and outside of government approved sources for anyone with access to the internet. Which, of course, is why some governments so strenuously attempt to limit such access, and another government wants to have hold of an on/off switch for the whole thing. Was anyone shocked when WikiLeaks came under a DoS attack yesterday? Do you think if we all wrote down who we think the most likely culprit is we wouldn't all come up with the same name?

It isn't just that we as citizens operate in an information vacuum when it comes to our government's real opinion on certain issues. It's that the vacuum gets filled with fake information: talk about Iraqi WMDs, or misleading claims about the cost effectiveness of ABM systems, or the like. At which point we wind up with a problem worse than mere ignorance when election day rolls around.

True. Also bad that our educaitonal system doesn't promote critical thinking, and that not everyone has discovered how to use the internet to get different viewpoints and information simply not mentioned on their side of an issue. But, again, there's a lot of that everywhere.

Shep mentioned the Pentagon Papers; the analogy seems appropriate to me. With the Pentagon Papers, the US government was keeping critical secrets about its official assessment of the situation in Vietnam.

Ah, yes, the Pentagon Papers... you know that initially Nixon didn't have a problem with their publication, as he felt they were embarassing to the former, Democratic administrations and that maybe he could use that to his own benefit and that of his Republican party. That's why both the New York Times and the Washington Post started publishing the information. THEN the government concluded that this might be a problem for the government overall and slapped on injunctions - which were later overturned by the SCotUS. All of which convinced subsequent adminsitrations to clap down tighter on anything might conceivably be embarassing. So in a sense the backlash to the Pentagon Papers lead somewhat to the current situation. Isn't history interesting?

But yes, some shit is being hidden that shouldn't be. It's an ongoing battle that's never going to end since the government has an inherent interest in keeping stuff secret.

On that level it's not a question of whether US behavior is good or bad compared to other nations; I don't even want to get into that swamp. It's a question of whether the US seriously wants to be a democracy, whether we actually believe it's a good idea for politicians to answer to the voters when they do things the average voter would have qualms about.

If the answer is "yes," then basic information about American strategy and foreign policy needs to be available to the public, in great enough quantity that the public can't be kept in an information vacuum while the government pulls an endless sequence of dirty tricks in secret.

If the answer is "no..." well, I'd like to see people admit they believe that, if they really do. If someone wants to argue that real democracy with an informed citizenry is not a tenable form of government for a major world power because of the need to keep state secrets, then I'm prepared to listen, for the novelty value if nothing else.

I'm continually surprised by the number of Americans who don't really want a genuine, democratic and egalitarian society. There are quite a few authoritarian assholes in this nation, another pack of self-serving selfish jackasses, a pile of elitists over here, power-hungry oligarchs over there... and all too many sheep who won't think and do what they're told by whoever happens to get their attention at the moment.

But yeah, there are those who argue democracy is inherently unstable and will go down in flames any day now.

all the while throwing up the state secrets privilege like Captain America's shield against lawsuits

Sounds like you're disappointed in Obama, I think.

Why shouldn't he be? Obama turned out to be much less of a change from Bush than many who voted for him were expecting (or at least holding out hope for).
There was a point in American history when the government didn't do so much of this... but it may have been in the nineteenth century for all I know. It's not a unique vice of any one presidential administration.

If there was such a point in the US government it was more from a lack of ability to do that than a lack of desire. When the government had less power it also had less control. Of course, that wasn't a utopia either, there are downsides to having a weak government, just as there are downsides to having a powerful one.

[Broomstick]

Shep mentioned the Pentagon Papers; the analogy seems appropriate to me. With the Pentagon Papers, the US government was keeping critical secrets about its official assessment of the situation in Vietnam.

The media only selectively released parts of the Pentagon Papers however. The full papers actually tell a much different story. But by the time the full papers were released much later, the damage had been done.

The selective release was not their choice though - as I mentioned, the US government stepped in with injunctions, all of which had to travel to the SCotUS. The original plan by the Times was to publish everything as near as I can recall. The delay benefited the government, or at least mitigated what the government perceived as damage, which might also be part of the reason they sought to delay the release of information in this current situation - hey, it worked as damage control before, right? Not to mention giving everyone a head's up - obviously, this would be much more disruptive if it came out of the blue with no warning. WikiLeaks did give the US some time for damage control. Which other governments probably also saw as beneficial in regards to anything embarrassing coming out about them.

[Alyeska]

While I'm all for change for the better, it's the potential for "or worse" that makes me concerned. I'm not terribly optimistic in the matter, am not sure politicians and/or diplomats have a better nature, and yet would be very happy to be proved entirely wrong in my pessimism.

The only way for something to remain secret is not to tell anyone. But then the secret is worthless. So the information will be spread. And if technology is used for this, it will be available to more people than intended.

Living in a world where such information can be acquired and then spread with extreme ease. Governments of the world are going to have to simply deal with it. Attempting to take down Wikileaks will simply cause The Streisand Effect to occur. Better information security will help but it will not prevent this from happening.

Stamping your feet in the ground saying "Its not fair!" isn't a solution. Governments are going to have be be prepared for unprecedented access to state information not intended for public consumption becoming public.

[Simon_Jester]

Shep mentioned the Pentagon Papers; the analogy seems appropriate to me. With the Pentagon Papers, the US government was keeping critical secrets about its official assessment of the situation in Vietnam.

The media only selectively released parts of the Pentagon Papers however. The full papers actually tell a much different story. But by the time the full papers were released much later, the damage had been done.

Which loops back to what I was saying about an information vacuum breeding misinformation.

If the public knew nothing, and knew that it knew nothing, the situation be bad, but not impossible. But instead, the public knows nothing and therefore listens to the first demagogue who pretends to have inside information. We know nothing about the capabilities of an ABM system, and are therefore easily lied to and told it won't work. We know nothing about the government's real take on the Vietnam/Afghanistan/Iraq War, and are therefore easily lied to and told either that we can win easily or that we can't win at all.

The problem is not just the lack of information; it's the fake information that flourishes in the absence of the real thing.

It's much easier for the government (especially the people holding power at a given time) to simply classify all the real information while feeding their own line of fake information to the public. Many dictatorships work that way, using state-run media to control public opinion and present their actions in the most favorable light for public consumption.

But in a democracy, giving the general public the mushroom treatment has side effects. It opens up a clear field for people who make up fake information of their own- government propagandists, antigovernment propagandists, or simply misguided people who fool themselves into thinking they know the truth.

It's not just a case of "oh well we'd have won in Vietnam if the damnlibruls didn't spill misleading information to the press and convince everyone we were losing!" If that's a valid argument, then there's another side to the coin: we lost in Vietnam because not only did the government fail to make an honest, compelling case for the war, they didn't even try. Instead, they put together a misleading case in public while keeping their own counsel in private.

As soon as fragmentary information on the private side was revealed, the public side was shown to be a pack of lies, and the public understandably revolted. It's difficult and pointless to trust someone you know is lying to you, who is telling you they'll do something and doing the exact opposite.

As long as the government insists on trying to keep the basic facts of what it thinks and does secret from the American people, this is going to keep happening, because this kind of illegal leak will be the only way for said people to really know anything about what their elected leaders are up to. Sure, the leaks have huge dangerous consequences... but they'll happen anyway, and the public will eat them up whenever they happen because they're starving for information.

[hongi]

Now, I'll leave it to you how much you want to believe it, but statistics like "opened up 1,017 schools" don't really leave much to be interpreted or fudged.

But what do they teach in those schools? I've been hearing that in schools in the Xinjiang Autonomous Province, only Chinese is used in the schools and universities. One of the arguments that Chinese critics use is that the government is exporting primarily the Han culture and assimilating everyone else. Schools would just be another example of this.