WikiLeaks Has No Blood On Its Hands

[Hissyspit]

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2011/09/10/wikileaks-has-no-blood-on-its-hands

WikiLeaks Has No Blood on Its Hands

By: Kevin Gosztola Saturday September 10, 2011

Cassandra Vinograd and Bradley Klapper of the Associated Press conducted a partial review of US State Embassy cables released by WikiLeaks focusing on the sources the State Department “categorized as most risky.” The findings in the report cast further doubt on the official party line the government promotes when commenting on anything WikiLeaks and concludes, US examples of threatened sources have been “strictly theoretical.” The review found “several of them” are “comfortable with their names in the open and no one fearing death.”

The story highlights the reactions of several sources, whose names have now been exposed. One is Ferrari Bravo, who worked for the Italian Foreign Ministry’s Iran desk and was a “veteran of her nation’s embassy in Tehran.” She openly discussed “her government’s view of the Iranian nuclear standoff” and “urged continued dialogue.”

- snip -

The real threat is and has always been that, one, people now know their government’s secrets and, two, they might think they have a right to know those secrets, because up to now government has been able to convince Americans they should “trust” their government and many have forgotten what investigative journalist I.F. Stone said, “Governments lie.”

The real threat is and has been that a citizenry might grow disenchanted with American foreign policy and challenge the agendas of both neoconservatives and neoliberals who write the policies, craft the theories, and design the global scenarios that Americans are made to understand in terms of “us vs. them.” And so, in a classic case of “kill the messenger,” Americans have been (pretty successfully) made to believe that Assange has committed espionage against America (even though he isn’t a US citizen) and WikiLeaks might pose such a threat that a JSOC raid ending in the kill or capture of Julian Assange might be justified.

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Original AP LBN Thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4990220

[chill_wind]

1. K & R and thanks for both of these today.

I like Greenwald's piece, too.

This says it all, IMHO:


"Directing all this passionate hatred toward the state's identified Enemy and their Evil Acts has an added benefit: the resulting mass contempt, by design, distracts all attention away from of the evil committed by those stirring that passion. Thus do we all stomp our feet in righteous fury over the potential, speculative harm caused by WikiLeaks while steadfastly ignoring the actual, massive death and destruction on the part of our own leaders which WikiLeaks reveals."

Glenn Greenwald: Orwell, 9/11, Emmanuel Goldstein and WikiLeaks

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1913327#top

[lob1]

2. K&R for all whistleblowers.

[EFerrari]

3. Kick

[gateley]

4. K&R, and like lob1 said, K&R for all whistleblowers. nt

[Gregorian]

5. JSOC? Good lord. It's like a maze of divisions and departments, all nonproductive death related.

PUKE! I had to Google JSOC, because I had never even heard of it. Isn't the CIA bad enough.

Our tax dollars being wasted in the most vile of ways.

[kenny blankenship]

7. "Death Squads" covers the different outfits and their common mission well enough & fairly

[Exilednight]

6. Yet Obama wants to investigate. It makes you wonder who is really on the people's side. n/t

[Hissyspit]

8. Kick to annoy the unreccers. nt

[Luminous Animal]

9. K&R