They don’t show–at least in any significant way, with the caveat that thousands of e-mails still remain to be released–the U.S. government seriously misleading its allies. They don’t show unauthorized war, fraudulent procurement practices or unexpected assassination. They don’t show America forming significant alliances with sworn enemies or visiting unexpected deceit on friends.
–James Rainey on the “dearth of scandalous behavior” in the WikiLeaks material (L.A. Times, 12/1/10)How good do you have to be to qualify as good? I haven’t killed anybody. See, that’s good, right? I haven’t committed any felonies. I didn’t start any wars. I don’t practice cannibalism. Wouldn’t you say that’s pretty good?
–Calvin (Scientific Progress Goes “Boink”)
…so if the released material is so innocent, why the calls for Assange’s arrest or even assassination? Why the pursuit by Interpol?
glenn greenwald reports these interesting examples of things the wikileaks DID “show.”
(1) the U.S. military formally adopted a policy of turning a blind eye to systematic, pervasive torture and other abuses by Iraqi forces.
(2) the State Department threatened Germany not to criminally investigate the CIA’s kidnapping of one of its citizens who turned out to be completely innocent.
(3) the State Department under Bush and Obama applied continuous pressure on the Spanish Government to suppress investigations of the CIA’s torture of its citizens and the 2003 killing of a Spanish photojournalist when the U.S. military fired on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.
(4) the British Government privately promised to shield Bush officials from embarrassment as part of its Iraq War “investigation.”
(5) there were at least 15,000 people killed in Iraq that were previously uncounted.
(6) “American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world” about the Iraq war as it was prosecuted, a conclusion the Washington Post’s former Baghdad Bureau Chief wrote was proven by the WikiLeaks documents.
(7) the U.S.’s own Ambassador concluded that the July, 2009 removal of the Honduran President was illegal — a coup — but the State Department did not want to conclude that and thus ignored it until it was too late to matter.
(8) U.S. and British officials colluded to allow the U.S. to keep cluster bombs on British soil even though Britain had signed the treaty banning such weapons.
(9) Hillary Clinton’s State Department ordered diplomats to collect passwords, emails, and biometric data on U.N. and other foreign officials, almost certainly in violation of the Vienna Treaty of 1961.
glenn adds “That’s just a sampling.”
I especially appreciate this bit: “They don’t show America … visiting unexpected deceit on friends.” As opposed to *expected* deceit?