14 Jan What We’ve Learned from WikiLeaks
As the U.S. government continues to try to shut down WikiLeaks — preferably, it seems, without having to actually charge Assange or the website with an actual crime — it’s important not to forget how much we’ve learned through WikiLeaks’ efforts. Here is a (partial) list created by Greg Mitchell, who has been keeping a daily log of all things WikiLeaks at The Nation:
§ The Saudis, our allies, are among the leading funders of international terrorism.
§ The scale of corruption in Afghanistan tops even the worst estimates. President Hamid Karzai regularly releases major drug dealers who have political connections. His half-brother is a major drug operator.
§ The Pentagon basically lied to the public in downplaying sectarian violence in Iraq. Our military handed over many detainees they knew would be tortured to the Iraqis. US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of torture and abuse by Iraqi police and military.
§ After the release of the Iraq logs, new tallies put the number of documented civilian casualties there at more than 100,000. The Afghanistan logs similarly showed many more civilians killed there than previously known, along with once-secret US assassination missions against insurgents.
§ The British government assured Washington that our interests would be protected in its “independent” public inquiry into the Iraq War.
§ The Pakistani government has allowed its intelligence unit to hold strategy sessions with the Taliban. Despite longstanding denials, the United States has indeed been conducting special ops inside Pakistan and taking part in joint operations with the Pakistanis.
§ The Yemenis have lied to their own people, taking credit for air attacks on militants in that country—but it was the United States that did the job. The Yemeni president gave us an “open door” to combat terrorism. Washington has secretly shipped arms to the Saudis for use in Yemen.
§ The Saudis, contrary to their public statements, want us to bomb Iran. So do some other countries in the region—or so they say in private.
§ Our State Department asked our diplomats at the United Nations to spy on others, including the secretary general, even aiming to retrieve credit card numbers.
§ At last we got to read in full the historic 1990 memo from US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the first Gulf War.
§ The Obama administration worked with Republicans to protect Bush officials who faced a criminal investigation in Spain for alleged torture.
§ Pope Benedict XVI impeded an investigation into alleged child sex abuse within the Catholic Church in Ireland.
§ Bribery and corruption mark the Boeing versus Airbus battle for plane sales. “United States diplomats were acting like marketing agents, offering deals to heads of state and airline executives whose decisions could be influenced by price, performance and, as with all finicky customers with plenty to spend, perks,” the New York Times reported early this month.
§ Israel destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007.
§ US diplomats have been searching for countries that will take Guantánamo detainees, often bargaining with them; the receiving country might get a one-on-one meeting with Obama or some other perk.
§ Among several startling revelations about control of nuclear supplies: highly enriched uranium has been waiting in Pakistan for more than three years for removal by an American team.
§ The U.S. embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any European Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops.
§ The British have trained a Bangladeshi paramilitary force that human rights organizations consider a “government death squad.”
Joshua Norman has an even more complete list at CBS News, one usefully divided up by region. It’s available here.
Advocating free speech and endangering national security are not the same. And releasing a great amount of classified information without some kind of judgment or filtering is anything but responsible.
You’re absolutely right — which is why it’s a good thing that, with regard to the State Department cables, WikiLeaks has in no way released “a great amount of classified information without some kind of judgment or filtering.”
I recognize that this comes as no surprise to all of us, but isn’t this list of what we are learning as ordinary Americans quite something. I would love to look at the April Glaspie memo – at the time she was not made available to Congress if memory serves me well and the argument was made that she gave the impression to Saddam that the US did not care about Iraq/Kuwait border issues. I am a 55 year old and a person who well remembers the hoopla about the Pentagon Papers when it occurred and when it became clear in painstaking detail how our government had been not telling the truth to us about the Vietnam War. Those who speak to National Security here I believe are not really speaking to what might be called core national security concerns, but more to issues of embarassing our partners etc for their duplicity and our duplicity with regard to their people and our people. It is the foreign policy elite and heads of state in all these countries being shown with their clothes off and it is ugly. People do not like to be seen as duplicitous. But I like having newspapers and journalists dig… Read more »
Googled the Glaspie memo – what an interesting read! It is clear that she is expressing US concerns about Saddam’s buildup along the border AND she says that US is not concerned about the 20 mile border issue between Iraq and Kuwait. Does the way she said it or the way she was interpreted as saying it mean something different to Saddam? We shall never know. Saddam does come across as extremely stressed and tired by the Iraq oil/financial situation at that point. Mubarak’s efforts to broker a dialogue seem to me to be remarkable. It seems that there were meetings in the last days of July brokered by Mubarak that were possibly a way to resolve this. Something must have gone wrong – possibly seriously wrong – in those meetings leading to an interpretation by Saddam as his having to “put up or shut up” by crossing the border into Kuwait.
Best,
Ben
Always thought the text of the April Glaspie exchange was interesting. Available (well before Wikileaks) here: http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/glaspie.html
The Nation left out the most interesting bit about China. That is was actively thwarting UN sanctions on N Korea, and assisted in the export of missile technology to Iran. But that basically confirmed what those who follow news about North Korea already knew: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/128567
But that’s best swept under the table because it would impact the price of shoes and whatnot. Problem with Faustian relationships is…they have to end sometime, and seldom end well.
So then, Kevin, based on that same article I assume you are critical of the fact that “WikiLeaks has said it will ultimately post its trove online”?
Professor Heller,
Are you talking about the same State Dept. that had to warn people who were named by Wikileaks …..
Response…
Filtering for legitimate purposes (what are these and who decides?) is preferable, but I am impressed by the information that is now available for public scrutiny. Evil and self-interest, even incompetence, hides in the shadows and there seems to be over-classification of information by governments to such an extent that democratic values are threatened. These are issues that should be more thoroughly explored in the media, by academicians, think tanks, etc.
Here is a question that I would like an answer to: what was the extent of opium trafficking out of Afghanistan prior to 2002 (after the U.S. intervention into Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001) and what is the general amount three, two, and one year ago? Who has profited from such inside and outside of Afghanistan during the last nine years, esp. in the former Soviet Union? Does organized crime in the former Soviet Union provide forms of stability that were preferable to some in the West as opposed to the chaos that could have resulted in the drug trafficking had been slowed down, not increased? How does such, and concomitant corruption, help to promote democratic values or the interests of ordinary people(s) in the region?
For a number of these it seems a stretch to describe them as ‘things that we have learnt from wikileaks’, but a couple really stood out:
<blockquote>§ Israel destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007.
§ US diplomats have been searching for countries that will take Guantánamo detainees, often bargaining with them; the receiving country might get a one-on-one meeting with Obama or some other perk.</blockquote>
When was there any doubt as to this?? Where??