The Daily Beast Takes on the WikiLeaks D-Bag
July 29, 2010
Tunku Varadarajan on the Wikileaks affair and Wikileaks’ founder, asswipe Julian Assange:
When asked at a London press conference whether he thought his leaks would compromise national security, Assange’s “visibly annoyed” response . . . stripped bare the adamantly adversarial quality of his mind-set: “You often hear that something may be a threat to U.S. national security. This must be shot down, whenever this statement is made.”
For the security of the numerous Afghan informants who work with U.S. troops, he cares not a jot. As The Times of London has pointed out, hundreds of names of such local collaborators in the war effort can be found in the documents in the WikiLeaks archive, including details of their villages. How does Assange justify putting these people at mortal risk? Predictably, he does not, taking refuge behind a weasel-worded insistence that he and his team had edited the material so that there was “harm minimization,” a morally teasing phrase that might, so ironically, be part of the Pentagon’s own lexicon. So are we to assume that the Afghan informants whose names were left in the WikiLeaks texts amount, in Assange’s reckoning, to an acceptable quantum of collateral damage in his Quixotic war against the warmongers?
Well, yes. That’s it in a nutshell.
Via Insty.
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July 29th, 2010 at 8:55 am
War supporters suddenly showing an interest in the lives of Afghan civilians?
Wow, y’all are gonna break the irony meter!
July 29th, 2010 at 9:11 am
I guess we can’t shoot him for treason, since he’s not a U.S. citizen, but can we shoot him for espionage?
July 29th, 2010 at 9:20 am
ponce, ponce, ponce: isn’t that something that Assange is supposed to be all about?
And yet, he doesn’t realize that if he causes their blood to spill, his hands will be a bloodstained is if he killed them himself.
July 29th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Just like the members of Congress who voted to continue funding our pointless war in Afghanistan earlier this week, Darrell?
July 29th, 2010 at 9:55 am
er…Darth.
My apologies.
July 29th, 2010 at 10:00 am
Yes, ponce. The Democrats have established a troubling record of using critical funding for U.S. troops in harm’s way as a vehicle to enact controversial policy changes and pass huge amounts of unrelated spending. In October 2009 the House passed H.R. 2647, the Defense Authorization Act for FY 2010. The bill included completely unrelated and controversial hate crimes provisions that could result in any pastor, preacher, priest, rabbi or imam who gives a sermon being convicted of federal crime. In another example of unrelated policy jammed into a war spending bill, the FY 2009 war funding supplemental appropriations bill (H.R. 2346) included $108 billion in new loan authority for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which the president had unilaterally promised to the international community. That funding will be used to bail out profligate nations in Europe. Perhaps most egregiously, the FY 2011 defense authorization bill (H.R. 5136) repealed the law regarding homosexuality in the military and the corresponding policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The provision, which has passed the House but not the Senate, would unequivocally end the military’s policy without approval from those serving in our military or the findings of a Pentagon study.
In keeping with this pattern, Democrats have again included controversial and completely unrelated legislation into this war funding supplemental. Most egregiously, the bill includes the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, a contentious piece of legislation which requires state and local governments to collectively bargain with all law enforcement officers, firefighters, and emergency personnel. In addition, the legislation includes a provision that would require the FBI to releases its High-Value Detainee Interrogation procedures to Congress within 30 days of enactment. The legislation even increases the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) loan commitment authority to insure a greater number of home and hospital mortgages with taxpayer money. These provisions have nothing to do with funding for members of the Armed Services fighting overseas and should be debated on their own merit, not tucked into a must pass troop funding bill.
July 29th, 2010 at 10:30 am
It costs American taxpayers over $1 million a year to deploy a single soldier overseas, Darrell.
For the same amount of money, our opponents can deploy 1000 men.
This game was over before it began.
Don’t you guys care about the federal deficits?
July 29th, 2010 at 11:23 am
Don’t you guys care about the federal deficits?
That’s rich. Who’s in charge again? Since The Obama took office, Democrats have spent an astounding $4.3 trillion and added $1.8 trillion to the deficit (through June 2010). Our country’s national debt sits at $13.05 trillion or 98.5 percent of our $13.2 trillion gross domestic product. With enactment of the FY2009 Supplemental (H.R. 2346/P.L. 111-32) on June 24, 2009, Congress has approved a total of about $944 billion for military operations, base security, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs, and veterans’ health care for the three operations initiated since the 9/11 attacks: Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Afghanistan and other
counter terror operations; Operation Noble Eagle (ONE), providing enhanced security at militarybases; and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).
July 29th, 2010 at 11:37 am
So you agree we should stop pissing away taxpayer money in Afghanistan, Darrell?
July 29th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
Same policy different administration. It just shows this is not about Dem or Rep, this is about US foreign policy which has not changed since Reagan, someone who did not understand much about using force, and didn’t mind killing indiscriminately.