Julian Assange Responds to Increasing US Government Attacks on WikiLeaks

[bigtree]

from interview with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman:

{snip}

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined on the phone now from Britain by Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. Why don’t you start off by responding to this charge that you have blood on your hands, Julian?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, we’ve got to be careful, Amy. Mullen actually was quite crafty in his words. He said "might already have" blood on my hands. But the media has gone and turned that into a concrete definition. There is, as far as we can tell, no incident of that. So it is a speculative charge. Of course, we are treating any possible revelation of the names of innocents seriously. That is why we held back 15,000 of these documents, to review that.

Now, some names may have crept into others and may be unfortunate, may not be. But you must understand that we contacted the White House about that issue and asked for their assistance in vetting to see whether there would be any exposure of innocents and to identify those names accordingly. Of course, we would never accept any other kind of veto, but in relation to that matter, we requested their assistance via the New York Times, who the four media partners involved—us, Der Spiegel, The Guardian and the Times—agreed would be the conduit to the White House so we wouldn’t step on each other’s toes. Now, the White House issued a flat denial that that had ever happened. And we see, however, that in an interview with CBS News, Eric Schmidt, who was our contact for that, quoted from the email that I had relayed to the White House, and that quote is precisely what I had been saying all along and completely contradicts the White House statement.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange, you’re correct that even when Admiral Mike Mullen was on Meet the Press this week and was challenged about the statement about blood on the hands, that he said "could"—you’re right—or "might." But he also pointed out, as Newsweek did, they said that the Taliban has begun to threaten Afghans listed in the document as aiding American troops. What is your response to that?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, we have to be careful again. I reviewed the statement of someone that a London paper claimed to be speaking for some part of the Taliban. Remember, the Taliban is actually not a homogenous group. And the statement, as far as such things go, was fairly reasonable, which is that they would not trust these documents; they would use their own intelligence organization’s investigations to understand whether those people were defectors or collaborators, and if so, after their investigations, then they would receive appropriate punishment. Now, of course, that is—you know, that image is disturbing, but that is what happens in war, that spies or traitors are investigated.

Now, these statements, all together, are designed to distract from the big picture. And it’s really quite fantastic that Gates and Mullen, Gates being the former head of the CIA during Iran-Contra and the overseer of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Mullen being the military commander for Iraq and Afghanistan—I’m not sure what his further background is—who have ordered assassinations every day, are trying to bring people on board to look at a speculative understanding of whether we might have blood on our hands. These two men arguably are wading in the blood from those wars. According to the statistics we pulled out of the Afghan War Diary, those reports covering six years, we see in the internal reporting itself, just of the regular US Army and not the top-secret operations, that 20,000 people have been killed. And similarly, we know from Iraq Body Count that there’s 108,000 people, where there’s media reports and other evidence to show, that have died in Iraq. The hypocrisy in these statements is extraordinary . . .


read more: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4245-us-government-attacks-on-wikileaks.html

[mike_c]

1. "These two men arguably are wading in the blood ..."

Bingo. Once again, let's not ignore the crimes in favor of excoriating the person who bore witness.

[Oregone]

2. "we contacted the White House about that issue and asked for their assistance in vetting"

Wow. That seems to blow some arguments out of the water of people who are so livid about this

[faithnotgreed]

3. thank you for posting this - he says it exactly right

they and many others are wading in blood

extraordinary hypocrisy indeed

[bigtree]

4. yep. I like this response

It mirrors the response by Veterans groups today:

{snip}

"As veterans and families with members in the military, we consider statements like Admiral Mullen's to be nothing more than calculated attempts to turn public attention away from the real problem -- the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan that has already caused the deaths and injuries of many thousands of innocent people ... while millions of Americans are jobless and face foreclosure or eviction.

"This suffering in Afghanistan and this bleeding at home will continue as long as our troops remain in that country. Congress must stop funding this war. We must bring our troops home now, take care of them properly when they return and pay to rebuild the damage we have caused to Afghanistan."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8872389

http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=2304