26 July 2010

found, a larger than life hero at last

[click image — disco queens everywhere can finally relax....]

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I love Julian Assange. Period.
Damage from leaks? WH says disclosure alarming
By ANNE FLAHERTY and RAPHAEL SATTER, Associated Press Writers – 10 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The monumental leak of classified Afghan war documents threatened Monday to create new conflict with Pakistan, whose spy agency was a focus of much of the material, and raised questions about Washington's own ability to protect military secrets. The White House called the disclosures "alarming" and scrambled to assess the damage.

The documents are described as battlefield reports compiled by various military units that provide an unvarnished look at combat in the past six years, including U.S. frustration over reports Pakistan secretly aided insurgents and civilian casualties at the hand of U.S. troops.

WikiLeaks.org, a self-described whistleblower organization, posted 76,000 of the reports to its website Sunday night. The group said it is vetting another 15,000 documents for future release.

Col. Dave Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, said the military would probably need "days, if not weeks" to review all the documents and determine "the potential damage to the lives of our service members and coalition partners."

The White House says it didn't try to stop news organizations who had access to secret U.S. military documents from publishing reports about the leaks. However, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said it did ask WikiLeaks — through reporters who were given advanced copies of the documents — to redact information in the documents that could harm U.S. military personnel.

It was not clear whether Wikileaks' decision to withhold 15,000 of its files was related.

The Pentagon declined to respond to specifics detailed in the documents, including reports of the Taliban's use of heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles.

"Just because they are posted on the Internet, doesn't make them unclassified," Lapan said.

The Pentagon says it is still investigating the source of the documents. The military has detained Bradley Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst in Baghdad, for allegedly transmitting classified information. But the latest documents could have come from anyone with a secret-level clearance, Lapan said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange promised on Monday that the release of documents — one of the largest unauthorized disclosures in military history — was just the beginning.

Assange told reporters in London that he believed that "thousands" of U.S. attacks in Afghanistan could be investigated for evidence of war crimes, although he acknowledged that such claims would have to be tested in court.

Assange pointed in particular to a deadly missile strike ordered by Taskforce 373, a unit allegedly charged with hunting down and killing senior Taliban targets. He said there was also evidence of cover-ups when civilians were killed, including what he called a suspiciously high number of casualties that U.S. forces attributed to ricochet wounds.

The Defense Department declined to respond to specifics contained in the documents, citing security reasons.

But Lapan said that coalition forces have made great strides in reducing the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

White House national security adviser Gen. Jim Jones said the release of the documents "put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk," while Pakistan dismissed the documents as malicious and unsubstantiated.

Pakistan Ambassador Husain Haqqani said the documents "do not reflect the current on-ground realities." Islamabad's ministry of foreign affairs issued a similar statement, defending Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, against allegations it has supported insurgent networks.

"The people of Pakistan and its security forces, including the ISI, have rendered enormous sacrifices against militancy and terrorism," the ministry wrote.

NATO refused to comment on the leak, but individual nations said they hoped it wouldn't harm current operations in Afghanistan.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said there has been significant progress recently in building up the Afghan state "so I hope any such leaks will not poison that atmosphere."

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle warned about possible "backlashes" and urged all sides in Afghanistan to work toward national reconciliation.

Rep. Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the documents reflect his view that U.S. war strategy was adrift last year, before President Barack Obama's decision to retool the war plan and add tens of thousands of U.S. forces.

Skelton, D-Mo., warned Monday that the documents are outdated and "should not be used as a measure of success or a determining factor in our continued mission there."

U.S. government agencies have been bracing for the deluge of classified documents since the leak of helicopter cockpit video of a 2007 fire fight in Baghdad. That was blamed on Manning, the 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst who was charged with releasing classified information earlier this month.

Manning had bragged online that he downloaded 260,000 classified U.S. cables and transmitted them to WikiLeaks.org.

Assange on Monday compared the impact of the released material to the opening of East Germany's secret police files. "This is the equivalent of opening the Stasi archives," he said.

He also said his group had many more documents on other subjects, including files on countries from across the globe.

"We have built up an enormous backlog of whistleblower disclosures," he said.

Assange said he believed more whistle-blowing material will flood in after the publicity about the Afghan files.

"It is our experience that courage is contagious," he said.


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Raphael Satter reported from London. AP Writers Kimberly Dozier in Washington, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Robert Burns in Washington contributed.
No. Really. Even though I was graduating from high school when he was born, he still blows my skirt all the way up over my head.

His site is getting hammered by other women trying to beg him to marry them....


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Have I mentioned lately how much I hate these people?

Old Uncle Dave, down in comments here, provides us with some theories about how maybe we ought not to be so quick to canonize Julian Assange, throw ourselves at his feet and beg to be his love slaves, but, well, Dave might be paranoid... or he may resent my goofy geek hero worship... :o) OR... he might be RIGHT. Goddammit.

Maybe you want to listen to Scott Horton interviewing him...?

Maybe, just maybe, this interview is what got Bradley Manning FINALLY transferred out of the Kuwaiti prison to an American one.

Half hour interview with Assange about the latest leaks....


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12 comments:

  1. Something's hinky about these war logs that has the white house "upset."
    It's also getting MSM coverage, which makes me wonder what's really going on.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/26/afghanistan-war-logs-osama-bin-laden

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  2. Oh, great. They're going to feed him what they want us to believe now. Perfect. Of COURSE. Of COURSE. Scum.

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  3. Quote from Julian Assange:
    "I'm constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud."
    LINK
    also see
    Leaky Vessels: Wikileaks "Revelations" Will Comfort Warmongers, Confirm Conventional Wisdom

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  4. Wikileaks has been praised by Time magazine, which should make everyone suspicious.

    Suspicions abound that Wikileaks is part of U.S. cyber-warfare operations

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  5. Are you trying to tell me that Assange is a bad guy posing as a good guy? Is that what you are trying to tell me? Is this the Mully and Sculder thing? TRUST. NO. ONE. ???

    Poppa had a very early morning trip to the ER today and I'm pretty fucking fried. I'll have to read about it later, but I wish you'd just break it to me... OR shoot me.

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  6. I agree with the guy at cryptogon - "Sources that say, categorically, that there’s nothing to see here on 9/11 smell really bad to me. As bad as anything can smell."

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  7. Well, I believe that SOME of the sources ate the bogus intelligence reports and can't jog off them. It doesn't make them complicit. It makes them too used to trusting in their compatriots. So I can't just knock him out on THAT account, EVEN as I think ANYONE who can't just stop and look at it and SEE that it was at LEAST a HELPED IT HAPPEN ON PURPOSE scenario has to be a total jackass.... Between all the agency people they grew into trusting completely and the company line, they decided THAT was the path of most integrity.... It does NOT excuse them, but it does explain them, and does NOT make them "bad" guys. It makes them MISTAKEN guys, even GRAVELY mistaken guys.

    There are gradations of assholishness behind the 9/11 gig.

    Many of the space lizard guys are CONVINCED it was torsion physics death ray weapons on 9/11 and THAT doesn't wash because what in the fuck would they need with packing the buildings with nanothermite if they were going to space ray them to the ground?

    So the 9/11 thing doesn't automatically put them out... just colors it.

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  8. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/07/29/gordon-duff-wiki-leaks-is-isreal-like-we-all-didnt-know/

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  9. Who are you? I love your love for Assange, I love you! I am so happy to have found (I think) someone who shares my unhealthy obsession with this man and my crazy desire to bear his children. Yeesh.

    Ok, off to snoop around your other posts. (I googled "I love Julian Assange")

    I have a few sources to feed your obsession, if you like... <3

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  10. Well, I'm not obsessed, but I do think he's pretty damn wonderful. We need men and women with his kind of courage very, very badly.

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