To those so vigorously defending Assange naming "Victim Country X"...

[JohnnyRingo]

I'm not one of those who despise Greenwald, and I laud his weighty decision to cover the identity of Afghanistan as "Country X", but I'm not happy that Julian Assange went over his head to disclose this most recent fact.

I want to point out that this isn't the first time a CIA operation has been exposed with potentially violent results. I believe the most famous case was in 2003 when then Vice President Dick Cheney outed CIA operative Valerie Plame and cited her covert mission in Iraq and Niger. As in this case, all her sources in Iraq were immediately compromised as well as associates who worked at her front company in Greece.

Ms. Plame was safe, but her career ended on this revelation. Her associates had nowhere to hide however. The results were certain death to many foreign nationals who were known to work for her. This Afghanistan revelation, that benefits the US public in no way, is not at all unlike that selfish move by Cheney. It was done for egotistical personal reasons.

If people here are ready to defend Julian Assange and Dick Cheney as two of history's great whistle blowers for uncovering CIA operations, I'll find another place to hang out.

[bobduca]

1. "people here are ready to defend Julian Assange and Dick Cheney"

Last edited Sat May 24, 2014, 12:27 PM - Edit history (2)

"Julian Assange and Dick Cheney"

[JohnnyRingo]

2. In what way do the actions of Cheney and Assange differ?

If the revelation of a covert CIA operation can at once be noble or despicable depending on who does it, I see it as politically hypocritical.

Certainly neither Cheney nor Assange did it to improve your personal quality of life.

As a clarification, I've always admired Julian Assange, he's truly "the most interesting man in the world", but I totally disagree with his action on this particular matter.

[bobduca]

3. Disagreeing with the decision to out Afganistan is fine

What I consider a fallacy is the assertion that people are defending *Cheney* at DU, and that detracts from any argument you might have.

[RobertEarl]

6. Thank you, bob

I had written a response in the same vein as you, but when i reread it it was pretty ugly. So I did not post it. I doubt JR will get it, but most of the rest of us do.

[JohnnyRingo]

10. Perhaps I was inarticulate.

My point is that no one here has ever defended Dick Cheney, but many now seem eager to hoist Julian Assange onto a pedestal of freedom for doing nearly the same thing.

As I see it, either Cheney and Assange are both wrong, or they're both noble. Neither seem concerned with the collateral damage caused by their actions.

I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.

[bobduca]

14. Thanks for the clarification

One point though, I don't accept at face value claims by the government that this revelation poses the threat to operational security it's made out to be. Surely the scary terrorists already understood that all of their communications were under surveillance.

[JohnnyRingo]

16. Actually they don't always know how we surveil them...

Last year the NSA disclosure revealed by Snowden seems to have caused Al Qaeda to change how they communicate. I can't say with certainty that wasn't a government lie to demonetize Snowden, but it appears credible to me that such radical factions would be interested in knowing what our intelligence agencies are doing, and how they do it so they can adapt.

I believe Afghan terror cells now have a new reason to re-examine their closed network for infiltration. I understand the distrust by many of the US govt, but we have to temper that contempt with common sense foreign policy that involves keeping our fingers on the pulse of those who would do us harm.

I find it odd that I'm out on a branch for believing so. I didn't think isolationism was a particular trait of the left or democrats in general.

[bobduca]

18. skepticism is not isolationism

No, you are not out on a branch, most Americans seem to buy the military industrial complex's bullshit.

[JohnnyRingo]

19. I misunderstood you

I thought by reading your reply that you want to stop all CIA involvement in foreign countries.

Now I see that you're just dubious of government claims that we seek intel that can stop a terror attack. Fortunately for you, you can't be held accountable from your armchair if you're wrong.

Although I wonder, when you speak of the "military industrial complex", if that includes wiretaps on foreign nationals. I don't imagine General Electric or McDonnell Douglass are making their bread & butter by gathering intel.

What I consider the MIC are the expensive weapons systems that keep Georgia shipbuilders at work building another unneeded nuclear aircraft carrier. Apparently, you call it anything that involves foreign activity regardless of how passive the means. I call that isolationism, but I'm as stupid as most of the country.

My New World Order conspiracy friends tell me the same thing, that they're all smarter than me and i'll be sorry when I'm in a FEMA camp.

[bemildred]

4. Greenwald is well-off a US citizen, and free to come and go. So is Cheney.

Assange is neither.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

7. Motivation?

Cheney outed someone for political reasons to cover his own ass and keep his regime in power and the war of aggression he helped start on track.

I don't know why Assange 'named country X', but I seriously doubt it was to help plunge the United States into a war of aggression or allow him to torture and murder people.

Seems to me that there's a very significant difference between the two. What you're doing is sort of like comparing a mass murderer on a shooting spree to a cop shooting a suspect. The cop may or may not have a good reason, but the mass murder (Cheney) only ever has bad reasons. So guilt by association fail here.

[GeorgeGist]

5. Almost everyone knows we spy on Afghanistan ...

it's SOP when you're at war.

[JohnnyRingo]

11. ...and Cheney's people called Plame's CIA involvement an "open secret.

I agree that most countries assume we spy on them, but if Assange's action casts lethal suspicion on certain operatives, or incites violence against US interests, he did it without justifiable ends.

What is the global or international benefit to knowing the identity of "victim country X".

[ProSense]

8. Assange is basically screwing up Snowden's situation

N.S.A. whistle-blower Edward Snowden, who handed over his trove of documents to Greenwald, has said he also doesn’t believe in Assange’s particularly uniform view on secrecy, having entrusted the cache of N.S.A. documents he lifted to journalists he trusts will evaluate the risks inherent in publishing from them.

“We don’t share identical politics,” Snowden told Vanity Fair earlier this year. “I am not anti-secrecy. I’m pro-accountability. I’ve made many statements indicating both the importance of secrecy and spying, and my support for the working-level people at the N.S.A. and other agencies. It’s the senior officials you have to watch out for.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/05/julian-assange-glenn-greenwald-nsa-afghanistan

...by revealing information that Greenwald is saying will cause people harm. The decision to release information unrelated to the domestic surveillance issues has been coming back to bite him in the ass.

“If I have time to go through this information, I would like to make it available to journalists in each country to make their own assessment, independent of my bias, as to whether or not the knowledge of US network operations against their people should be published.”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023084875

Greenwald said that some journalists’ accounts of the Snowden leaks scandal, the impression many get is that America would turn to extraordinary methods to eliminate the threat posed by Snowden if he decided to turn over to a foreign government the information at his disposal.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023035095

"Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had," Greenwald said in an interview in Rio de Janeiro with the Argentinean daily La Nacion.

"The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023242606

[Comrade Grumpy]

9. You seem to presume that everything the CIA does is hunky-dory.

I, on the other hand, have no use for their secret wars, secret torture chambers, and the like.

Or their plotting coups and revolutions.

Or their running drugs to pay for their dirty little wars.

I want them exposed, for the good of our country's soul.

[JohnnyRingo]

12. Valerie Plame was investigating the yellowcake sale from Niger to Iraq.

As it turned out, there was no such transfer, but if there was, she would have undoubtedly reported it, and that info would, to some, have justified overthrowing the Iraqi government (not me).

Obviously, Plame didn't initially go about trying to prove there was no sale, she was just doing her unbiased job as an intelligence professional. She could just as easily have prompted a war of choice and Cheney would never have uttered her name.

I don't think we're spying on Afghanistan to justify starting a new war, do you? I prefer to believe the CIA is acting to gather intel of future terror attacks, both here and abroad, and that intel is unfortunately now compromised.

What do we gain by shutting this covert operation down? Our country's soul? Remind me of that after the next terror attack that spawns Patriot Act II.

[Comrade Grumpy]

17. Meanwhile the CIA's secret armies are running the CIA's secret wars.

From Somalia to Pakistan. Not to mention stirring shit in Iran, Syria, Central Africa, and more.

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”


― Friedrich Nietzsche

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. Considering the CIA's lengthy record of humanitarian policies and acts....

Shut 'em down so they don't have to worry about exposure.

[msanthrope]

15. Assange is well-known for not giving a shit about people in Afghanistan......

Assange re: Afghan Civilians: "They're informants. There's no reason for protecting them."

A very interesting interview about why the NYT's and the The Guardian's relationship with Assange soured---

"On Tuesday's Fresh Air, Keller explains why the paper decided to publish the documents, the impact of those cables and why he came to regard Julian Assange as "elusive, manipulative and volatile." Keller tells Terry Gross that during an early conversation with representatives of The Guardian, Assange was told that both The Guardian and The New York Times wanted to edit out the names of ordinary Afghan citizens in classified military documents.

"Assange's reaction was, 'Well, they're informants. There's no reason for protecting them,' " Keller says. "But I think over time, he came around to the view that at least, from a public relations point of view, it was better to allow for a certain amount of editing out of things that could cost lives."

But after the Times published the cables, their relationship with Assange went from "wary to hostile." Assange was upset, Keller says, because the Times would not link to the WikiLeaks website, which did not redact the names of low-level informants.

"Obviously, there was no way we were going to prevent people from going to the WikiLeaks website to see the documents, but as a matter of principle, we said that when we published our stories about the Afghanistan documents, we were not going to link to their website," Keller says. "We feared that it could become hit-list material for the Taliban. was deeply offended, not just that we had not linked to his website, but that we had made a point of not linking to his website. He thought we had shown disrespect."

More at link.

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/01/133277509/times-editor-th...

**********************************
Now, just imagine if you were an 'informant.' Imagine if you were a secular person who 'informed' on the Taliban bastards who burnt a school, blew up a Buddha, or killed a US soldier. Imagine if you were an 'informant' who told about a tribal leader who had wrongly sold a person to Guantanamo, ran drugs, or helped kill US soldiers.

Imagine if you told what you knew about the murder of Daniel Pearl.

Imagine thinking that what you told, in good faith to do right, was 'leaked.'

Imagine an anarchist--a world away--deciding your fate.

Imagine that because you were not HIS 'whistleblower'--you were called an 'informant.'




http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x326988

[treestar]

20. I think the difference to them hinges on

who did it. Julian is outside the government. Cheney was in the government. To this mentality, Cheney spilling secrets is bad, because Cheney is bad, because he was in power. Julian is good, because he is not in power, and his spilling secrets sort of spites the bad people, the ones in power, so that's a good spilling of secrets.

This is why Obama is as bad as Cheney. He's the one who is in power in the government. So his keeping secrets from us is bad. His spilling secrets, if he did it, would be bad.

But be Julian or Comrade Eddie or anyone outside the government, their spilling secrets is good and their hiding information is good too.

[CJCRANE]

21. Didn't the Repubs (Issa or whoever) spill the beans

about the CIA annex in Benghazi?

[iandhr]

22. Assange can say...

The words N****r and F****t in the same sentence. When people post that it's racist and anti gay those people would get called a NSA apologist.