Monday, April 12, 2010

Wikileaks: Chock Full o'Nuts

What a piece of work these folks are,
Activists behind a website dedicated to revealing secret documents have complained of harassment by police and intelligence services as they prepare to release a video showing an American attack in which 97 civilians were killed in Afghanistan.

Julian Assange, one of the founders of Wikileaks, has claimed that a restaurant where the group met in Reykjavic, the capital of Iceland, came under surveillance in March and one of the group’s volunteers was detained for 21 hours by police.

Assange, an Australian, says he was followed on a flight from Reykjavik to Copenhagen by two American agents.
Pathetic paranoia, pathetic attention hounds, or both? Either way, they need one of these.

As a sidenote - as usual - if you want to know what is going on, listen to the SECDEF.
UPDATE: In case you missed my appearance on the BBC - you can get the archive here. Bouhammer has a good summary as well.

16 comments:

Old NFO said...

The left has always been paranoid.  Whenever THEY set out to destroy conservatives they consider it the height of patriotism.  Whenever conservatives, or anyone else, fight back it's a subversive conspiracy.  

Proud plank owner of the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" that first opposed putting politicians and bureaucrats in charge of healthcare. 

YNSN said...

It would be one thing if I could go there and pull up documents from Canada, Ireland, China, Japan, ummm.. Botswana.

But, no.

It is all US documents.  With a few useless documents form anywhere else.  Until I see substantive documents from other Nations as well, I will call them bias and an enemy.

Anonymous said...

oh, and about that Wikileaks murder of journalists video from last week. Saint Petersburg Times referenced it in a sidebar to the recent "intelligent drone" development story in a Sunday OpEd article. No mention of the journalists being embeded with irregulars. No mention of the ambvush formation. Thank's to the Cdr Sal blog for outing that crap slander and btw, my letter to the editor of SPT to lenghty to post here.

YNSN said...

You know.  slashdot.com asked the question how they decrypted the video.  No one knows how they did that.

AW1 Tim said...

Blackfive has a short bit about releasing classified info. You can read it here:

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2010/04/uber-pigs-policy-on-leaks-and-protection-of-sources.html#comments

Read Doc B's comments. He was there and comments about how this affects him.

ActusRhesus said...

Fact: whoever gave them that video violated US law.

Fact: when US law enforcement learns that US law has been violated, they tend to investigate.

Fact: This often involves surveillance.

So...

AW1 Tim said...

Let us hope that the guilty are outed and dealt with appropriately. However, that doesn't ever seemed to have deterred the NYT, or WashPo, etc.

ActusRhesus said...

I just love that Julian whatever his name is feels he's being "persecuted".  Oh boo hoo....I facilitated a crime and now they are bothering me.  derp derp derp.

C-dore 14 said...

As someone who lived through the whole "Pentagon Papers" thing and the flap surrounding Frank Snepp's <span>Decent Interval</span>, I predict much hyperventilating with little actual punishment.

cdrsalamander said...

Fact:  Never, ever cross AR.

surefoot said...

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Why should this video be a secret a document? I see a lot of comments doing their best to justify the inhuman killing of children in that van. There no need for pointing blame though, as you get older and you see children playing, all that may come to mind may be a day in a battle. We need better combat training it is OK to stop shooting sometimes and let the civilians collect their dead.
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AW1 Tim said...

 In that video, there are NO civilians. there are terrorists and terrorist enablers. It is only later that two are "journalists", however, that term is usually applied to AP or Reuters stringers who are, as often as not, working WITH the terrorists while using their cover as journalists to gather intel on Coalition forces.

 What idiot brings children to a combat zone? They were as likely there to BE killed in order to give the terrorists more faux news of American atrocities.

  I have no feelings towards those who were killed. I have some very SEVERE feelings towards those who leaked this video and those who posted it. It's release and posting is indefensible.

Quartermaster said...

NYT and WaPo should be prosecuted for receiving the stolen stuff. They'll keep enabling if they don't feel the sting themselves. It's past time to make a few martyrs of Journalists.

Casey Tompkins said...

Surefoot, this may come as a surprise to you, but the Apache pilots had no idea there were children in that van. What they did know was that it did not have any "first responder" marking; neither a red crescent nor a red cross. There have been at least a few updates from various blogs (sorry, didn't bookmark 'em; try MyPetJawa or Confederate Yankee) which tend to indicate the same van was seen earlier dropping off insurgents.

...And I hate to break it to you, but the kids were not killed. They were in fact taken to US medical facilities where they were successfully treated for their wounds.

...And the "civilians collect[ing] their dead bit? The soldiers in question saw an unmarked van loading armed, wounded insurgents. That's a valid target, amigo.

Casey Tompkins said...

Addendum: Tim, maybe you should direct surefoot to Doc B's comments. I'm sure he would find them quite enlightening... {/snark}

C-dore 14 said...

QM, Been tried before without much result (see "Pentagon Papers" item above).