Gates: WikiLeaks morally 'guilty'

[Jeffersons Ghost]

Gates: WikiLeaks morally 'guilty'

WikiLeaks is at least morally guilty over the release of classified U.S. documents on the Afghan war, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said today, as investigators broaden their probe of the leak.

The whistle-blowing website published tens of thousands of war records a week ago, a move the Pentagon has said could cost lives and damage the trust of allies by exposing U.S. intelligence gathering methods and names of Afghan contacts.

Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, the top U.S. military officer, appeared on television talk shows renewing those concerns amid fears WikiLeaks may publish more documents. "My attitude on this is that there are two areas of culpability. One is legal culpability. And that's up to the Justice Department and others -- that's not my arena," Gates told the ABC News show "This Week with Christiane Amanpour."

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/gates_wikileaks_morally_wrong_8DqTHEkUdV13yz4yovIjfN#ixzz0vNDhaMhq

[Warren Stupidity]

1. gates: war criminal nt.

[avaistheone1]

2. Gates knows a lot about being guilty

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

29. And morality!

:rofl:

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. Let's hope more comes out about bush and cheney and 9/11

[kenny blankenship]

4. The biggest pig in the wallow critiques the kink in Wikileak's tail

declares it 'swine-ish', maybe even porcine.

[EFerrari]

5. Bob Gates said "morally"? He should have been hit by lightening.

[suffragette]

6. Looks like that's Gate's view of most Americans

excepting Boy Scouts and, presumably, himself.

http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1494

"We live in an America today where the young are increasingly physically unfit and society as a whole languishes in ignoble moral ease. An America where in public and private life we see daily what the famous news columnist Walter Lippman once called “the disaster of the character of men…the catastrophe of the soul.” "


There's a word for this - oh, yes - Projection.

[sabrina 1]

21. Did he really say that out loud? Wow!

He seems to hate the American people. I guess he prefers the oppressed people of the countries he's helped invade. They are easier to kill and torture without ramifications.

'Catatrophe of the soul'. I wonder when he lost his, or are people born that way?

[suffragette]

23. Yeah, surprised he said it out loud, too.

Offers a clear perspective to how he views us though, doesn't it?

And going along with that, apparently exposing lies, killing and torture is morally wrong but committing those acts - A-ok - at least in Gates' view.

In the meantime, Greenwald wrote an exceptional article which speaks to the core of what is going on with all this:
" The motive behind whistle-blower prosecutions"

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/07/14/whistleblowers/index.html

As usual, government concern over leaks is about avoiding embarrassment and other accountability; national security harm is but the fear-mongering excuse. Similarly, a new Washington Post article today details the Obama DOJ's prosecution of NSA whistle blower Thomas Drake, whose disclosures resulted in no claimed national security harm, but rather, was evidence of "waste, mismanagement and a willingness to compromise Americans' privacy without enhancing security" (leaked only after his use of the official channels resulted in nothing, as usual). As is true for virtually every whistle blower prosecution or threatened prosecution, there is no actual national security harm identified from that leak. Other than when a covert agent's identity is blown (as happened to Valerie Plame), has anyone ever heard of any actual, concrete national security harm from any of the high-profile leak cases, whether it be the illegal NSA eavesdropping program, the network of CIA black sites, the release of the Apache helicopter attack video, or the corruption and privacy infringements revealed by Drake?

The Post today quotes Obama DOJ spokesman Matthew Miller's justification for the administration's escalated war on whistle blowers as follows: "We have consistently said that leaks and mishandling of classified information are matters that we take extremely seriously." There's no doubt that they take such acts "extremely seriously," but what's the reason for it? There's been no identified harm to national security from any of these leaks.

What these leaks have actually accomplished is to "embarrass" the Government by revealing what the intelligence analyst quoted by the BBC calls "the unvarnished truth" about the illegal, corrupt, and embarrassing acts it undertakes. In all of these cases where the Obama DOJ is persecuting whistle blowers, they're punishing the greatest sin there is -- exposure of high-level government wrongdoing -- not harm to national security.

[savetomdrake]

32. NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake

For more information about NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake, visit the Save Tom Drake facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-Tom-Drake/128268337206799

Follow @savetomdrake on twitter:

www.twitter.com/savetomdrake

[suffragette]

34. Thanks and welcome to DU

:hi:

I had not heard of this case until I read Greenwald's account of it.

Can you shed more light on this?

[ixion]

7. Wow. Listen to the war monger calling the whistle blower "morally guilty"

Amazing that he can even say something like that without being shouted down.

This is why you send war criminals to trial. If you don't, they only grow more arrogant.

[frylock]

8. fucking rich..

look in the mirror, jackhole.

[Ron Green]

9. Gates, the Secretary of War who calls himself Secretary of Defense,

points an accusing finger at a truth seeker.

What. The. Fuck.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. Gates and Mullen are like the guy Abe Linconln talked about...

“He reminds one of the man who murdered both his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.” - Abraham Lincoln

[burnsei sensei]

11. The hypocrisy is stunning! nt

[IndianaJoe]

12. It's immoral to keep secrets like this from the electorate. n/t

[Bodhi BloodWave]

18. exactly what right do the electorate have to know the informants the US army uses? n/t

[Subdivisions]

13. Man! They are scared to death. n/t

[malaise]

14. How many deaths did Gates cause?

:puke:

[NJmaverick]

15. K&R

[raouldukelives]

16. Is that a log in Gates eye

or a Sequoia?

[Donnachaidh]

17. yeah, like he knows a lot about *morality*

And our government is a high authority of *morality* -- *snort*!

[Orsino]

19. Right. WikiLeaks started the war...

...and continues to promote fantasy as policy.

Fucker.

[sabrina 1]

20. Figures he'd use his propagandist friend Murdoch

to help catapult the propaganda ...

I'm constantly amazed at the gall of the warmongering killers who run this country. Why is he in a Democratic Administration? A man who already betrayed one Democratic president?

[Recursion]

22. It intrigues me how many comments point to Gates's guilt

As if that somehow undoes whatever guilt the leaker does or doesn't have. It's as if in any situation only one person can be in the wrong.

[Warren Stupidity]

26. it intrigues me that you think the real names are used in reports

and that you believe the war mongerer's counter offensive against wikileaks.

[Recursion]

27. It intrigues me that you assumed I thought real names are used in the reports...

...despite my never having said so. In fact, I posted a whole thread asking if that was true or not. Because in the hundred or so AARs I read on the site, I didn't see any real names, so I asked if anyone had seen if that actually happened.

[Warren Stupidity]

28. so then we agree that so far there is no credible evidence that

the document released has actually caused the great harm that our chronically lying government and its front men and women are all claiming it has as they recite their talking points?

[Recursion]

30. I've certainly never seen any. But whether there is or not is independent of Gates's guilt.

Which was my point in the post I made 3 posts ago.

[Warren Stupidity]

31. The relevancy is the irony

of a person closely associated with nine years of war crimes at the highest levels wagging a finger at those attempting to expose those crimes. I thought that was obvious and that you were making some other point.

[wildbilln864]

24. fuck u RG! nt

..!.

[TheKentuckian]

25. No one does hypocrisy like a Republican

Dude has more blood on his hands than Caligula and is crying crocodile years about morality.

He wouldn't know moral if it bit him on the cock in broad daylight and was on TV during the Super Bowl half time festivities.

[sendero]

33. War criminals..

... really don't like their dirty laundry published. I'll bet lots of lying asshole military leaders are shitting bricks over the "insurance" file. LOL, it's making my day.