Julian Assange's Nihilism (VIDEO)

From Sue Halpern, at the New York Review, "The Nihilism of Julian Assange":

Sue Halpern reviews ‘Risk,’ Laura Poitras’s documentary portrait of Julian Assange https://t.co/tgEwRkGF1q

— NY Review of Books (@nybooks) June 20, 2017

About forty minutes into Risk, Laura Poitras’s messy documentary portrait of Julian Assange, the filmmaker addresses the viewer from off-camera. “This is not the film I thought I was making,” she says. “I thought I could ignore the contradictions. I thought they were not part of the story. I was so wrong. They are becoming the story.”

By the time she makes this confession, Poitras has been filming Assange, on and off, for six years. He has gone from a bit player on the international stage to one of its dramatic leads. His gleeful interference in the 2016 American presidential election—first with the release of e-mails poached from the Democratic National Committee, timed to coincide with, undermine, and possibly derail Hillary Clinton’s nomination at the Democratic Convention, and then with the publication of the private e-mail correspondence of Clinton’s adviser John Podesta, which was leaked, drip by drip, in the days leading up to the election to maximize the damage it might inflict on Clinton—elevated Assange’s profile and his influence.

And then this spring, it emerged that Nigel Farage, the Trump adviser and former head of the nationalist and anti-immigrant UK Independence Party (UKIP) who is now a person of interest in the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, was meeting with Assange. To those who once saw him as a crusader for truth and accountability, Assange suddenly looked more like a Svengali and a willing tool of Vladimir Putin, and certainly a man with no particular affection for liberal democracy. Yet those tendencies were present all along.

n 2010, when Poitras began work on her film, Assange’s four-year-old website, WikiLeaks, had just become the conduit for hundreds of thousands of classified American documents revealing how we prosecuted the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including a graphic video of American soldiers in an Apache helicopter mowing down a group of unarmed Iraqis, as well as for some 250,000 State Department diplomatic cables. All had been uploaded to the WikiLeaks site by an army private named Bradley—now Chelsea—Manning.

The genius of the WikiLeaks platform was that documents could be leaked anonymously, with all identifiers removed; WikiLeaks itself didn’t know who its sources were unless leakers chose to reveal themselves. This would prevent anyone at WikiLeaks from inadvertently, or under pressure, disclosing a source’s identity. Assange’s goal was to hold power—state power, corporate power, and powerful individuals—accountable by offering a secure and easy way to expose their secrets. He called this “radical transparency.” Manning’s bad luck was to tell a friend about the hack, and the friend then went to the FBI. For a long time, though, Assange pretended not to know who provided the documents, even when there was evidence that he and Manning had been e-mailing before the leaks.

Though the contradictions were not immediately obvious to Poitras as she trained her lens on Assange, they were becoming so to others in his orbit. WikiLeaks’s young spokesperson in those early days, James Ball, has recounted how Assange tried to force him to sign a nondisclosure statement that would result in a £12 million penalty if it were breached. “[I was] woken very early by Assange, sitting on my bed, prodding me in the face with a stuffed giraffe, immediately once again pressuring me to sign,” Ball wrote. Assange continued to pester him like this for two hours. Assange’s “impulse towards free speech,” according to Andrew O’Hagan, the erstwhile ghostwriter of Assange’s failed autobiography, “is only permissible if it adheres to his message. His pursuit of governments and corporations was a ghostly reverse of his own fears for himself. That was the big secret with him: he wanted to cover up everything about himself except his fame.”

Meanwhile, some of the company he was keeping while Poitras was filming also might have given her pause. His association with Farage had already begun in 2011 when Farage was head of UKIP. Assange’s own WikiLeaks Party of Australia was aligned with the white nationalist Australia First Party, itself headed by an avowed neo-Nazi, until political pressure forced it to claim that association to be an “administrative error.”

Most egregious, perhaps, was Assange’s collaboration with Israel Shamir, an unapologetic anti-Semite and Putin ally to whom Assange handed over all State Department diplomatic cables from the Manning leak relating to Belarus (as well as to Russia, Eastern Europe, and Israel). Shamir then shared these documents with members of the regime of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who appeared to use them to imprison and torture members of the opposition. This prompted the human rights group Index on Censorship to ask WikiLeaks to explain its relationship to Shamir, and to look into reports that Shamir’s “access to the WikiLeaks’ US diplomatic cables [aided in] the prosecution of civil society activists within Belarus.” WikiLeaks called these claims rumors and responded that it would not be investigating them. “Most people with principled stances don’t survive for long,” Assange tells Poitras at the beginning of the film. It’s not clear if he’s talking about himself or others...

I've never liked nor respected Assange, who I consider an enemy.

But note how Halpern gets the basic background wrong: That "graphic video of American soldiers in an Apache helicopter mowing down a group of unarmed Iraqis" was actually a video of anti-American journalists embedded with Iraqi insurgents armed with RPGs. The Apache took them out in self-defense, following strict rules of engagement. That story's been totally debunked. But as with most other things in the news, the initial lie becomes the official truth for the radical left. That's why you can never let your guard down.

Keep reading, FWIW.

WikiLeaks to Release Video of Alleged U.S. 'Massacre' in Afghanistan

At ABC News (via Memeorandum):

I wonder how badly doctored the Afghanistan video will turn out to be? As readers will recall, almost everything about the WikiLeaks Apache video was manufactured and wrong. The folks at Jawa Report so thoroughly eviscerated WikiLeaks they should be up for a Pulitzer.

Meanwhile, check out this passage buried in Glenn Greenwald's long (even unusually long for Rick Ellensburg) essay on WikiLeaks and Wired's reporting on whistleblower Brad Manning:

Any rational person would have to acknowledge that government secrecy in rare cases is justifiable and that it's possible for leaks of legitimate secrets to result in serious harm. I'm not aware of a single instance where any leak from WikiLeaks has done so, but it's certainly possible that, at some point, it might. But right now, the scales are tipped so far in the other direction -- toward excessive, all-consuming secrecy -- that the far greater danger comes from allowing that to fester and grow even more. It's not even a close call. Any efforts to subvert that secrecy cult are commendable in the extreme, and nobody is doing that as effectively as WikiLeaks (and their value is not confined to leaking, as they just inspired a serious effort to turn Iceland into a worldwide haven for investigative journalism and anonymous whistle-blowers).

This Manning detention -- whether it was by design or just exploited opportunistically -- is being used to depict WikiLeaks as a serious national security threat and associations with it as dangerous and subversive. Just in the last week alone, several people have expressed to me fears that supporting or otherwise enabling WikiLeaks could subject them to liability or worse. There's no reason to believe that's true, but given the powers the U.S. Government claims -- lawless detentions, renditions, assassinations even of American citizens -- that's the climate of intimidation that has been created. This latest incident is clearly being used to impede WikiLeaks' vital function of checking powerful factions and imposing transparency, and for that reason alone, this is an extremely serious case that merits substantial scrutiny, along with genuine skepticism to understand what happened.

Who decides the current national security regime has gone too far in "the other direction"? Of course, just to get that initial concession from Greenwald on the necessity of governmental secrecy is something. And notice how the rest of the quote implies that Greenwald himself isn't in fact rational, ha!

WikiLeaks — News Story of the Year

Read Nick Gillespie's essay, "The #1 Game-Changer of 2010: Wikileaks By a Landslide." The key point is that unlike the umpteen other purported "game-changing" news stories, WikiLeaks is genuinely new. And Gillespie argues the frequently heard point that WikiLeaks' impact goes far beyond one individual, such as Julian Assange. Beside that though is to what effect? What's the utility beyond the crazed anarchist's dream of sowing mayhem and destroying state operations, if not the state. We get that discussion at this Reason video, which features Eli Lake, Aaron David Miller, Steven Aftergood, and Heather Hurlburt (in that initial order).

It's a thoughtful clip, although there's a bit of romanticism at parts. I like Lake's comments on the immediate impact of simply generating greater knowledge of international actor behavior and interests. Miller's comments are both lyrical and penetrating. He suggests that the effects could be like footsteps on the beach, possibly washed away by the next big wave. Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, is matter-of-fact and to the point (and agreeable if not that animated), and, sorry, but I'm not learning much from Hurlburt.

What's just barely touched is the effect of WikiLeaks on the continued rise of anti-Americanism in the world. Eli Lake mentions this at the start of the clip, but the point gets lost at the remainder of the discussion. WikiLeaks has tightened the tacit alliance between the anarcho-libertarians and the neo-communist progressives. Nick Gillespie is a respectable guy, but the problem with libertarianism is that its adherents give cover for some of the most vile revolutionary doctrines now gaining increased respectability. See, "WikiLeaks: The Revolutionary as Entrepreneur." More on that later. Meanwhile see my previous entries, "How Communists Exploit WikiLeaks," and "Exposing the WikiLeaks/Communist/Media Alliance."

RELATED: "Wired Battles Glenn Greenwald."

ADDED: Linked at The Rhetorican!

WikiLeaks: Criminal Enterprise

From Marc Thiessen, at Washington Post, "WikiLeaks Must be Stopped":

Let's be clear: WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a criminal enterprise. Its reason for existence is to obtain classified national security information and disseminate it as widely as possible -- including to the United States' enemies. These actions are likely a violation of the Espionage Act, and they arguably constitute material support for terrorism. The Web site must be shut down and prevented from releasing more documents -- and its leadership brought to justice. WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, proudly claims to have exposed more classified information than all the rest of the world press combined. He recently told the New Yorker he understands that innocent people may be hurt by his disclosures ("collateral damage" he called them) and that WikiLeaks might get "blood on our hands."

With his unprecedented release of more than 76,000 secret documents last week, he may have achieved this. The Post found that the documents exposed at least one U.S. intelligence operative and identified about 100 Afghan informants -- often including the names of their villages and family members. A Taliban spokesman said the group is scouring the WikiLeaks Web site for information to find and "punish" these informers.

Beyond getting people killed, WikiLeaks' actions make it less likely that Afghans and foreign intelligence services (whose reports WikiLeaks also exposed) will cooperate with the United States in the future. And, as former CIA director Mike Hayden has pointed out, the disclosures are a gift to adversary intelligence services, and they will place a chill on intelligence sharing within the United States government. The harm to our national security is immeasurable and irreparable.

RTWT.

Interesting discussion (FWIW), from Charli Carpenter, "Wikileaks and 'War Crimes'."

Federal Prosecutors Prepare Case Against Julian Assange

At NYT, "U.S. Tries to Build Case for Conspiracy by WikiLeaks."

But Threat Level says the Times gets the story wrong.

I'll have more on all of this later ...

Added: Here's David Dayen's headline at FDL: "Justice Department Looking for Pretense to Charge Julian Assange."

Right. Pretense.

WikiLeaks is a criminal enterprise and I'm sure prosecutors could get an indictment under the Espionage Act. The problem is whether the administration would be acting under a double standard by not indicting media outlets who published the leaks. This is holding back the prosecution, as noted at the Times' piece above. That's why Threat Level suggests the feds may seek to prosecute Assange under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which apparently affords greater leeway in charging those who encourage "a source to obtain documents in a manner known to be illegal is not protected."

Dayen links to progressive asshat Glenn Greenwald, although it's probably not worth your time to click through who is also at the video with communist Amy Goodman:

But check The Economist, "Extradition and WikiLeaks: Courting Trouble":

Some reports say that an American grand jury has already been secretly sworn in. Prosecutors seem to be focusing on Mr Assange’s involvement in enabling the leaking of secrets, rather than in their publication. That may seem a fine distinction. But it would avoid having to prosecute the New York Times.

Mr Assange may be vulnerable under the 1917 Espionage Act, which punishes leaks involving, and injuring, America’s “national defence”. The State Department warned him in writing on November 27th that the leaks would harm military operations. WikiLeaks is now trying hard to portray itself as a journalistic organisation, in order to benefit from the first amendment’s protection of the press and free speech. That was crucial in the 1971 “Pentagon Papers” case, when a Supreme Court decision upheld the New York Times’s right to publish secret material. However, Leonard Orland of the University of Connecticut notes that one of the judges’ opinions distinguished between illegal “prior restraint” and legitimate prosecution after publication. He says the more relevant precedent is United States v Morison, when the defendant was convicted for leaking photographs of Soviet naval construction to a British magazine.

So a charge against Mr Assange is possible. But extraditing anybody usually requires the deed concerned to be a crime in both countries. Convincing a judge in Sweden, which has one of the world’s most liberal press-freedom laws, of the virtues of America’s Espionage Act may be tricky. A 1961 treaty between the two countries forbids extradition for “political” crimes.

So does Britain’s extradition treaty with America. But it also sets a lower burden of proof. Simon Chesterman, a law professor at the National University of Singapore, notes that Britain’s tough Official Secrets Act would also outlaw WikiLeaks’ actions. For Mr Assange and his pals, Sweden may soon seem a haven, not a threat.

Well, maybe the U.S. can put a little pressure on Sweden to play hardball. Assange is dangerous to all parties involved.

More: At LAT, "WikiLeaks' Julian Assange is granted bail, will leave jail for country mansion":

After nine days in jail, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was granted bail Thursday in a politically charged case concerning alleged sex crimes in Sweden.

A high-court judge in London upheld an earlier decision to allow Assange to remain free while he fights extradition to Sweden, where authorities want to question him over allegations of molestation, unlawful coercion and rape stemming from encounters he had with two women in August.

Assange, 39, can now swap what his lawyer calls the "Dickensian conditions" of a south London jail for the tony comforts of a country mansion owned by a friend, where the high-court judge agreed that he could stay while out on bail. But he must surrender his passport, submit to monitoring by electronic tag, abide by a curfew and report to the police daily.

It's hard out there for a pimp, I guess.

Also, at London's Daily Mail (with lots of pics), "Rape-charge WikiLeaks chief heading for Christmas in a country mansion after being granted bail at High Court."

Added (11:40am):

How Communists Exploit WikiLeaks

It's one thing when you have communist Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviewing convicted computer hacker and communist activist Julian Assange on the U.S. government's response to WikLeaks. It's quite another thing when mainstream newspaper editors also come down on the side of the WikiLeaks/communist alliance. But that's what's happening today at LAT, "WikiLeaks and a Journalism 'Shield Law'." Speaking of Senator Schumer's legislative effort to police criminal organizations like WikiLeaks, the Times notes:

Rather than trying to figure out who should be protected and who should not, Congress should focus on what it is trying to accomplish — namely, to preserve for citizens of this democracy the information they need to govern themselves, information that sometimes only becomes public if those who have it can supply it anonymously.

Spoken like a true hardline communist apparatchik.

If you travel around the horn of the Internet, you'll find a clear split between those patriots who recognize that WikiLeaks' criminal activities put lives at risk (military and civilian) and those anti-Americans who want to damage the United States at all costs.

This Ain't Hell has more, "Left Plots Exploitation of WikiLeaks Documents":

The Left didn’t waste any time getting together in New York City yesterday looking for ways to use the documents from the Wikileaks drop for their own nefarious purposes. Someone dropped a link to me Saturday about the conference. They highlighted the luminaries that they had invited to speak;

* Dahr Jamail, journalist, author of “Beyond the Green Zone”
* Cindy Sheehan, antiwar leader, author, Director, Peace of the Action
* Josh Stieber, Army veteran of Bravo Company 2-16
* Matthis Chiroux, Army veteran, Iraq war resister
* Mike Ferner, President, Veterans for Peace
* Ray McGovern, former CIA Agent, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
* Jeff Paterson, Courgage to Resist, spokesperson for Bradley Manning Support Comm
* Elaine Brower, military mother, World Can’t Wait
* Debra Sweet, Director, World Can’t Wait

Debra Sweet calls them “a strong group of resisters and truth-tellers”. They resist common sense and none would know the truth if it bit their collective ass. Dahr Jamail has made a career of ignoring facts that get in his way, Cindy Sheehan you all know, Josh Stieber bears witness to the “Collateral Murder” video yet he was still behind the wire during the events of that day. Matthis, well he’s a celebrity here. TSO dealt with Jeff Paterson’s hyperbole last year. Elaine Brower, hiding behind her son’s service, calls other troops baby killers.

That's Debra Sweet of the communist World Can't Wait organization: "Webcast: Anti-War Leaders and Veterans Respond to the WikiLeaks Revelations."

This is the leftist coaltion we're dealing with. Or, this is the domestic/international enemy coalition stabbing our troops in the back. (And recall also that the New York Times has been right at the center of this entire criminal leaking enterprise. Treasonous and disgusting.)

WikiLeaks Diplomatic Cables

Blazing Catfur has the key headline: "Wikileaks Diplomatic Cables Released by Times, Der Spiegel."

Here's this at NYT, "Cables Obtained by WikiLeaks Shine Light Into Secret Diplomatic Channels." And I love this at Spiegel: "A Superpower's View of the World." And Doug Mataconis has a report: "Wikileaks Releases Diplomatic Cables, Revealing International Secrets." (Via Memeorandum.) I've commented on WikiLeaks extensively. I won't think twice if Julian Assange meets the cold blade of an assassin, and apparently a significant number of others don't care for the guy. See the WikiLeaks Twitter page and Hot Air: "Wikileaks servers under DOS attack ahead of diplomatic document dump" (with lots of updates). I continue to be amazed at the fawning credibility Assange gets on the progressive left. Anything that tears down the military --- even putting at risk the lives of Americans and our allies --- is totally cool with these freaks. But maybe something good will come of all this, in the end.

WikiLeaks Dismantling of #DNC is Clear Attack by Putin on Clinton

Following-up from yesterday, "Is Donald Trump a Vladimir Putin Plant?"

From John Schindler, at the New York Observer:

EXCLUSIVE: Inside the Kremlin's covert operation via Wikileaks to destroy Hillary + the DNC & elect Donald Trump.https://t.co/ezoTER1v3D

— John Schindler (@20committee) July 25, 2016

The recent Wikileaks dump of 20,000 emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee has caused political sensation and scandal on a grand scale. These internal communications reveal nothing flattering about the DNC or Hillary Clinton, who is set to be anointed as the Democrats’ presidential nominee at their party convention in Philadelphia that gets underway with fanfare today.

Wikileaks has thrown an ugly wrench into Hillary’s coronation. DNC emails reveal a Clinton campaign that’s shady and dishonest, not to mention corrupt. Its secret dealings with Hillary’s opponents—whether Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump—have been distasteful and possibly illegal. To say this is an unflattering portrayal of Team Clinton is like saying the Titanic had issues with ice.

The ramifications of this massive leak are already serious. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the embattled DNC chair, has been forced to tender her resignation in advance of the party conclave in Philadelphia, while Senator Sanders, who’s been revealed as the target of much aggressive DNC attention during the Democratic primary campaign, stated he was “not shocked but I’m disappointed” by the Wikileaks revelations. The Democrats are anything but united now as they prepare to take on Donald Trump and the Republicans.

On the eve of the four-day Democratic convention extravaganza, this data-dump could not have been timed better to damage Hillary and her efforts to move back into the White House this November. Although it’s doubtful that leaked RNC internal emails would make any more pleasant a read for the public, Clinton will emerge from this tarred with the indelible brush of corruption and collusion with her party’s leadership to fix the Democratic presidential nomination.

Wikileaks has delivered as promised on its public threats of damaging Team Clinton with hacked emails. Although the DNC can’t deny that many of the leaked messages appear authentic—they wouldn’t have forced the chair’s resignation if they were fake, obviously—there remains the important question of how the vaunted “privacy organization” got its hands on them.

It turns out there’s hardly any mystery there. It’s no secret that the DNC was recently subject to a major hack, one which independent cybersecurity experts easily assessed as being the work of Russian intelligence through previously known cut-outs. One of them, called COZY BEAR or APT 29, has used spear-phishing to gain illegal access to many private networks in the West, as well as the White House, the State Department, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year. Another hacking group involved in the attack on the DNC, called FANCY BEAR or APT 28, is a well-known Russian front, as I’ve previously profiled.

These bears didn’t make much efforts to hide their DNC hack—in one case leaving behind a Russian name in Cyrillic as a signature—and Kremlin attribution has been confirmed by independent analysis by a second cybersecurity firm.

The answer then is simple: Russian hackers working for the Kremlin cyber-pilfered the DNC then passed the purloined data, including thousands of unflattering emails, to Wikileaks, which has shown them to the world...

I'm getting a little more sold on the idea that Russia's behind the hack, although not so much that Trump's a Putin plant.

But keep reading.

WikiLeaks Blows Lid Off Sinn Féin's Dubious Past

I must admit there's been a few upsides to WikiLeaks, with one of these is that even terrorists have had their dealings cracked open. At the Irish Independent, "Wikileaks: Gerry Adams denies IRA and bank robbery claims."

Gerry Adams has denied claims on WikiLeaks that he was an IRA leader and had advance knowledge of the infamous Northern Bank raid.

According to the latest US diplomatic cable leaks, the Irish government had "rock solid evidence" on the allegations.

But Mr Adams said the claims were not new, that he had denied them at the time, and blamed Irish political rivalries with his Sinn Fein party for the allegations.

Mr Adams and Martin McGuinness were aware that the £26.5m (€31.5m) robbery at the Northern Bank in Belfast in 2004, which was blamed on the IRA, was going to be carried out, officials in Dublin told the US ambassador James Kenny.

But Mr Adams said the claims were made publicly by the then Taoiseach, and Fianna Fail, leader Bertie Ahern, and were denied by republicans at the time.

"I repudiated it then, as did Martin. It isn't true," said Mr Adams.

"I then spoke to the Taoiseach privately about this matter.

"It was my conviction at the time, because there was very intense, as there is now, electoral rivalry between Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail.

"I saw this and still see this as part of Fianna Fail's attack on or fight back against Sinn Fein at that time."

And there's more at Sydney Morning Herald, "IRA used Celtic Tiger to buy respectability, cables say."

LONDON: The IRA used the Celtic Tiger economic boom in Ireland to diversify into ''sophisticated business enterprises'' by buying up properties in London, Dublin and Spanish resorts, according to US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

A senior Irish police officer told the US embassy in Dublin that the IRA used the booming Irish economy to move on from racketeering, turning to ''apparently respectable businessmen'' to raise funds.

The IRA's changing business practices are revealed in a cable by Jonathan Benton, the then deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Dublin, which reported on meetings with senior Irish officials and police officers.

Advertisement: Story continues below Mr Benton wrote that a senior garda, or police officer, whose identity is protected by The Guardian, said IRA money was constantly moving, flowing from diversified sources into wide-ranging investments.

The cable said the new funds were being used to support Sinn Fein. ''Irish officials, more generally, remain concerned that IRA funds acquired through sophisticated investments are seeping into resources available for Sinn Fein's political activities in the Republic of Ireland.''

Also at The Guardian, "WikiLeaks cables: IRA used Irish boom to turn 'respectable'." And, "US embassy cables: Gerry Adams plays a 'double game' on criminality – future Irish PM."

Plus, an analysis at Irish Times, "WikiLeaks Blows Dust Layer Off Dubious Past of SF."

RELATED: From Simon Jenkins in 2005, "Poor Jerry Adams ... It is now convenient for everyone to regard the IRA as 'criminals' not terrorists."

WikiLeaks Collaborated With Mainstream Media on Afghan Leaks After Previous Scoops Failed to Win Enough Attention

I mentioned Julian Assange's TED interview previously. It's about 20 minutes long, so grab a cup of coffee if you're up for it (the last few minutes are the most intriguing, so if pressed for time, scroll ahead toward the end). By now it's no longer a mystery the kind of agenda Mr. Assange is working. Interesting is that he sees himself as a "journalist," although clearly not of the old school "objective" kind (if there ever was one). The boys and girls on JournoList would no doubt welcome the likes of Assange into their ranks.

Also, at Wall Street Journal, "WikiLeaks Rolled Dice to Raise Its Profile":

WikiLeaks, frustrated at the lack of splash of recent leaks on its whistle-blowing website, has rolled the dice to try to raise its profile by teaming up with news organizations in its latest dump of classified documents.

The site's secretive founder Julian Assange surfaced in London on Monday to give a rare news conference as part of that new strategy. The white-haired Australian computer hacker schooled a packed room of reporters on how to navigate the 76,000 documents just released, arguing they contained evidence of war crimes and could work as "deterrents" to further abuses.

WikiLeaks was launched in 2007 by self-described Chinese dissidents and Internet hackers as a warehouse of leaked documents. Through its bare-bones site Wikileaks.org, it has landed big scoops, including its most infamous disclosure—video footage of American soldiers shooting down a group of people in Iraq in 2007. Representatives for the site have repeatedly declined to say how they obtain their material and their activities have prompted investigations by federal authorities

People familiar with the matter say Mr. Assange is frustrated that some of the site's other disclosures, such as a database of military procurements in Iraq and Afghanistan, didn't garner more attention. Some senior members of the group also want to combat the perception that the site is veering into the realm of opinion, one of the people said. The site took flak from some commentators for editing the 2007 Iraq video and for dubbing the video "Collateral Murder."

Mr. Assange launched a new plan this summer in a Brussels cafe. He offered a U.K. newspaper, the Guardian, advance access to documents the site planned to release about the war in Afghanistan, according to the Guardian's account. They came up with a password for accessing the trove based on the logo on the cafe's napkins.

Monday, the Guardian, along with the New York Times and German weekly Der Spiegel, published a flood of stories based on mostly raw field reports, citing WikiLeaks as the source. They say they weren't told how the site obtained them but tried to verify them independently.

A spokesman for WikiLeaks said the group didn't pay for the leaked documents.

Mr. Assange told reporters on Monday that he limited his outreach to these three organizations out of expediency and that more collaborations with traditional media are on the horizon. "We had hoped to partner with a network to do a more significant investigation, but limited time and resources eclipsed that," he said. "We do hope to do that next time."

RTWT.

Readers know my position. Assange and his media cohorts are way past any "good government" or "transparency" motives. These actions put lives at risk, no matter what your thoughts are on the continuing rationale for our fight against the Taliban.

RELATED: At Sister Toldjah, "The Definitive Smack Down of WikiLeaker Julian Assange" (via Memeorandum).

BONUS EXTRA: Boston Globe, "Pentagon Studies Possible Risks to Afghans From Leaked Documents."

WikiLeaks Champions Busted Army Specialist Brad Manning as 'National Hero'

The main story is at Threat Level, "U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe," and LiveShots, "Soldier Busted for Leaking to WikiLeaks."

But checking WikiLeaks on Twitter, Julian Assange proves his outfit's a criminal enterprise:

More at Robert Mackey, "U.S. Soldier Arrested in WikiLeaks Inquiry After Tip From Former Hacker."

Plus, Gateway Pundit, "Disgruntled Army Specialist Arrested for Leaking Thousands of Classified Records," Jules Crittenden, "Leak Bust," and Jawa Report, "U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested In WikiLeaks Video Probe (Bumped - Updated: WikiLeaks: If True Manning Is A National Hero)."

Julian Assange Timed WikiLeaks Release to Harm Hillary Clinton (VIDEO)

Of course he did.

Assange is interviewed at Democracy Now! below.

And see the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Assange Timed WikiLeaks Release of Democratic Emails to Harm Hillary Clinton":

WASHINGTON — Six weeks before the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks published an archive of hacked Democratic National Committee emails ahead of the Democratic convention, the organization's founder, Julian Assange, foreshadowed the release — and made it clear that he hoped to harm Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the presidency.

Assange's remarks in a June 12 interview underscored that for all the drama of the discord that the disclosures have sown among supporters of Bernie Sanders — and of the unproven speculation that the Russian government provided the hacked data to WikiLeaks in order to help Donald Trump — the disclosures are also the latest chapter in the long-running tale of Assange's battles with the Obama administration.

In the interview, Assange told a British television host, Robert Peston of the ITV network, that his organization had obtained "emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication," which he pronounced "great." He also suggested that he not only opposed her candidacy on policy grounds but also saw her as a personal foe.

At one point, Peston said: "Plainly, what you are saying, what you are publishing, hurts Hillary Clinton. Would you prefer Trump to be president?"

Assange replied that what Trump would do as president was "completely unpredictable." By contrast, he thought it was predictable that Clinton would wield power in two ways he found problematic.

First, citing his "personal perspective," Assange accused Clinton of having been among those pushing to indict him after WikiLeaks disseminated a quarter of a million diplomatic cables during her tenure as secretary of state.

"We do see her as a bit of a problem for freedom of the press more generally," Assange said.

(The cables, along with archives of military documents, were leaked by Pvt. Chelsea Manning, then known as Bradley Manning, who is serving a 35-year prison sentence. WikiLeaks also provided the documents to news outlets, including The New York Times. Despite a criminal investigation into Assange, he has not been charged; the status of that investigation is murky.)

In addition, Assange criticized Clinton for pushing to intervene in Libya in 2011 when Moammar Gadhafi was cracking down on Arab Spring protesters; he said that the result of the NATO air war was Libya's collapse into anarchy, enabling the Islamic State to flourish.

"She has a long history of being a liberal war hawk, and we presume she is going to proceed" with that approach if elected president, he said.

In February, Assange said in an essay that a vote for Clinton to become president amounted to "a vote for endless, stupid war."

Efforts to reach Assange for comment were unsuccessful, and a Clinton campaign spokesman did not respond to an inquiry. In November 2010, when WikiLeaks and its media partners began publishing the cables, Clinton strongly condemned it...

More.

WikiLeaks 'Collateral Murder' is Left's Latest Attempt to Criminalize U.S. Wars

The story's at the BBC, "WikiLeaks Posts 'Killing' Video," and Guardian UK, "Wikileaks Reveals Video Showing U.S Air Crew Shooting Down Iraqi Civilians."

There are two versions, long at short, available at WikiLeaks' Twitter page, and there's a website as well, with links to "Collateral Murder." And Glenn Greenwald's orgasmic tweets are here, here, and here (for starters). Greenwald's been active in getting WikiLeaks public, for example, "The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters." MSNBC extremist-hack Dylan Ratigan also tweets, and the network has an item up already, "U.S. pilot seen firing on people in Iraq." And radical feminist Charli Carpenter has a post up entitled, "Precision Targeting at Work." (Via Memeorandum.) These folks, anti-Americans all, have long pushed a delegitimation campaign against the U.S. and American foreign policy.

The Guardian provides a synopsis of the news, and the short version is embedded:

The newly-released video of the Baghdad attacks was recorded on one of two Apache helicopters hunting for insurgents on 12 July 2007. Among the dead were a 22-year-old Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40. The Pentagon blocked an attempt by Reuters to obtain the video through a freedom of information request. Wikileaks director Julian Assange said his organisation had to break through encryption by the military to view it.

In the recording, the helicopter crews can be heard discussing the scene on the street below. One American claims to have spotted six people with AK-47s and one with a rocket-propelled grenade. It is unclear if some of the men are armed but Noor-Eldeen can be seen with a camera. Chmagh is talking on his mobile phone ...

I'll first note that WikiLeaks online infrastructure is questionable. The Collateral Murder page barely loads, if at all, but WikiLeaks claims to be raising hundreds of thousands for the effort, so why not launch with enough servers to handle the load? Plus, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks' editor, is Australian, and a key activist in the global left's movement for international war-crimes trials against Bush administration civilian and military officials. In a piece at communist Alexander Cockburn's CounterPunch, "The Anti-Nuclear WANK Worm," Assange's bio reads:

Julian Assange is president of a NGO and Australia's most infamous former computer hacker. He was convicted of attacks on the US intelligence and publishing a magazine which inspired crimes against the Commonwealth.

That's him at this Al Jazeera broadcast, "Video of US attack in Iraq 'genuine'":

I've watched the "Collateral Murder" clip above. Seeing the video and listening to the combat audio, the crew in the Apache are engaging an insurgent contingent, and at the distance the transmissions identify the fighters as clealy armed with AK-47s and RPGs. There is no mention as to an accompanying civilian or journalists' detachment. It appear as a routine search-and-destroy aerial operation. The crew commander repeatedly calls to hold fire until "we see weapons." This is not indiscriminate fire. When an unmarked van rolls up the street near the fallen bodies, the commander radios, "trying to get permission to engage." A lot is being made of the two small girls who were injured in the fight and rushed to a local hospital (not a military hospital, and which is alleged to mean they'd deliberately get inferior care). At the end of the clip, the caption denounces not just this episode -- which shows civilian casualties as incident to an ongoing active combat engagement -- as dedicated "to all the victims of war whose fates remain unknown."

As I'm writing, checking Memeorandum, there's an entry up at hard-left MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow's blog, "Wikileaks posts combat video from Iraq showing civilian casualties."

This is going to be the lead story before the night's out, especially with the dinnertime news hour coming up right now on the East Coast. The story's being engaged by conservatives as well. See Ed Morrissey, "Video: Collateral murder, or the risks of war zones?":

In the video, starting at the 3:50 mark, one member of this group starts preparing what clearly looks like an RPG launcher, as well as some individuals with AK-47s. The launcher then reappears at the 4:06 mark as the man wielding it sets up a shot for down the street. In 2007 Baghdad, this would be a clear threat to US and Iraqi Army ground forces; in fact, it’s difficult to imagine any other purpose for an RPG launcher at that time and place. That’s exactly the kind of threat that US airborne forces were tasked to detect and destroy, which is why the gunships targeted and shot all of the members of the group.

More at the link and Memeorandum.

I'll have more on this when I get some information from military personal, although we do have rigorous political science research that provides context. U.S. policy on the rules of engagement were more comprehensive and effective in Iraq than at any time in the history of American wars. See, Colin H. Kahl, "In the Crossfire or the Crosshairs? Norms, Civilian Casualties, and U.S. Conduct in Iraq." Here's the abstract:

The belief that U.S. forces regularly violate the norm of noncombatant immunity (i.e., the notion that civilians should not be targeted or disproportionately harmed during hostilities) has been widely held since the outset of the Iraq War. Yet the evidence suggests that the U.S. military has done a better job of respecting noncombatant immunity in Iraq than is commonly thought. It also suggests that compliance has improved over time as the military has adjusted its behavior in response to real and perceived violations of the norm. This behavior is best explained by the internalization of noncombatant immunity within the U.S. military’s organizational culture, especially since the Vietnam War. Contemporary U.S. military culture is characterized by an "annihilation-restraint paradox": a commitment to the use of overwhelming but lawful force. The restraint portion of this paradox explains relatively high levels of U.S. adherence with the norm of noncombatant immunity in Iraq, while the tension between annihilation and restraint helps to account for instances of noncompliance and for why Iraqi civilian casualties from U.S. operations, although low by historical standards, have still probably been higher than was militarily necessary or inevitable.

And from the body of the article:

The number of documented fatalities attributable to U.S. forces or crossfire in Iraq is much lower than those for many other U.S. military campaigns of the last century where civilians were clearly targeted. During World War II, for example, U.S. and British forces engaged in strategic bombing against German and Japanese cities, killing more than 1 million noncombatants. In a single night of U.S. firebombing over Tokyo in 1945, at least 85,000 people, mostly civilians, were incinerated—nearly 21 times the total number of civilian deaths from U.S. air strikes in Iraq through the end of 2006 (according to IBC data), and 6–10 times the total number of Iraqi civilians killed by all U.S. ground and air forces or crossfire in the first three and one-half years of the war. Although some might argue that improvements in precision-guided munitions account for the majority of this historical difference, many of the noncombatant fatalities from bombing during World War II were the result of attacks aimed at destroying enemy morale, not incidental by-products of crude targeting and guidance technologies.

Perhaps the most telling comparisons, however, are to the U.S. wars in the Philippines and Vietnam, the two most significant foreign counterinsurgency campaigns in U.S. history. In the Philippines between 1899 and 1902, approximately 16,000 guerrillas were killed and at least 200,000 civilians perished (out of a total population of 7.4 million in 1900). U.S. forces engaged in the widespread destruction of crops, buildings, civilian property, and entire villages as forms of collective punishment against families and communities suspected of supporting insurgents. Hundreds of thousands of Filipino civilians were moved to concentration camps to separate them from guerrillas, and ablebodied men who dared to venture outside of these “protected zones” were assumed to be enemies and could be shot.

In Vietnam, the United States also fought in ways that put civilians directly in the crosshairs. Almost 750,000 North Vietnamese troops and Vietcong were killed during the war, and a conservative estimate of civilian deaths from violence in South Vietnam places the total at 522,000 (out of a total population of 16 million in 1966). U.S. troops fighting in Vietnam relied on massive firepower directed on occasion at targets in densely populated areas. U.S. forces established “free fire zones” in some areas, allowing anyone not wearing a South Vietnamese military uniform to be shot. The U.S. military used more than 29 times the tonnage of incendiary bombs in Vietnam as it did in World War II, and sprayed toxic defoliants on land in South Vietnam that was home to about 3 percent of the population. U.S. forces were also involved in many cases of outright murder and several incidents of mass killing. In the most notorious case, at My Lai on March 16, 1968, as many as 571 unarmed men, women, and children were massacred by a platoon of U.S. soldiers. Recently declassified records show abuses were documented in every U.S. Army division deployed to Vietnam.

The contrast between the current Iraq war and previous U.S. counterinsurgency campaigns is striking. Adjusted for population size and duration, civilian deaths in Iraq through the end of 2006 were 11–17 times lower than in the Philippines. Because available data for the Philippines do not separate casualties caused by U.S. forces, this estimate is based on all violent deaths in Iraq. This certainly underestimates the difference between the Philippines and Iraq because, in the former case, anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that U.S. troops were responsible for a much higher percentage of total deaths. In the case of Vietnam, extrapolations from available hospital records suggest that at least 177,480 South Vietnamese civilians were killed by U.S. bombing and shelling. Controlling for population and duration, Iraqi civilian fatalities ttributable to direct U.S. action and crossfire through the end of 2006 were 17–30 times lower than those from bombing and shelling alone in Vietnam. Without adjusting for population, the average monthly deaths are still 10–16 times lower than in Vietnam.

Outside the U.S. context, contemporary Russian counterinsurgency efforts in Chechnya offer an even starker contrast. In the two Chechen wars (1994–96 and 1999–present), the Russians used an extraordinary amount of indiscriminate firepower, including intensive artillery and aerial bombardment in dense urban settings. The lowest estimate of civilian deaths attributable to Russian actions through 2003 is 50,000 out of a total Chechen population of approximately 1 million (other estimates place the death toll for the two wars as high as 250,000). Even the most conservative estimate is 100–175 times the U.S.-caused toll in Iraq through 2006 (controlling for duration and population). Given the nature of the conflict, the number of civilians killed in Iraq, however awful, is not sufficient to suggest systematic U.S. noncompliance with the norm of noncombatant immunity. On the contrary, compared with conflicts where civilians were directly targeted, Iraqi casualty data provide some indirect evidence for U.S. adherence.

These findings will be meaningless to the anti-Americans of the neo-communist left and their enablers in the Democratic-media-complex. But keep an eye on those now pushing the meme of a wartime cover-up (compared to the objective analysis of international security specialists). You can see that this is just one more instance in the global left's campaign to criminalize American foreign and military policy.

WikiLeaks and the Afghanistan War Logs

It's strange, since I was just listening to a 20 minute interview with Julian Assange yesterday at TED. I had planned to write about that as soon as this latest breaking news cycle winds down (JournoList, Shirley Sherrod, etc.), and now we've got the release of the Afghanistan war logs, which had been expected. Yeah, since the Iraq Apache video smear (and the detailed coverage at Jawa Report, et al., and my own), I've been gaining a sharper understanding of Assange and his hard-left enablers worldwide. It's simply more clear by the day that America's enemies are not just on the battlefield, but also among the global transnational issue networks working to bring down the United States and its Western allies.

I need to research the war logs and find out more on this, so expect updates. Below is a clip featuring Julian Assange for The Guardian. There's also a big exposé at The Guardian as well, so it's clear that the newspaper's coordinating its coverage with WikiLeaks. See, "Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation." And of course, the New York Times is on the case, seemingly as deeply involved as is The Guardian. See, "Inside the Fog of War: Reports From the Ground in Afghanistan."Also at NYT (FWIW), "Piecing Together the Reports, and Deciding What to Publish":

The articles published today are based on thousands of United States military incident and intelligence reports — records of engagements, mishaps, intelligence on enemy activity and other events from the war in Afghanistan — that were made public on Sunday on the Internet. The New York Times, The Guardian newspaper in London, and the German magazine Der Spiegel were given access to the material several weeks ago. These reports are used by desk officers in the Pentagon and troops in the field when they make operational plans and prepare briefings on the situation in the war zone. Most of the reports are routine, even mundane, but many add insights, texture and context to a war that has been waged for nearly nine years.

Over all these documents amount to a real-time history of the war reported from one important vantage point — that of the soldiers and officers actually doing the fighting and reconstruction.

The Source of the Material

The documents — some 92,000 individual reports in all — were made available to The Times and the European news organizations by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to exposing secrets of all kinds, on the condition that the papers not report on the data until July 25, when WikiLeaks said it intended to post the material on the Internet. WikiLeaks did not reveal where it obtained the material. WikiLeaks was not involved in the news organizations’ research, reporting, analysis and writing. The Times spent about a month mining the data for disclosures and patterns, verifying and cross-checking with other information sources, and preparing the articles that are published today. The three news organizations agreed to publish their articles simultaneously, but each prepared its own articles.

Classified Information

Deciding whether to publish secret information is always difficult, and after weighing the risks and public interest, we sometimes chose not to publish. But there are times when the information is of significant public interest, and this is one of those times. The documents illuminate the extraordinary difficulty of what the United States and its allies have undertaken in a way that other accounts have not.

Most of the incident reports are marked “secret,” a relatively low level of classification. The Times has taken care not to publish information that would harm national security interests ...

There's more at the link, but I stopped at this line. "The Times has taken care not to publish information that would harm national security interests"?

Don't believe it for a second. The New York Times has been the radical left's institutional organ working to bring about an American defeat in Iraq and the War on Terror, and now in Afghanistan.

Recall Heather MacDonald's piece from 2006, on the Times' reporting that helped killed the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program. See, "National Security Be Damned":

BY NOW IT'S UNDENIABLE: The New York Times is a national security threat. So drunk is it on its own power and so antagonistic to the Bush administration that it will expose every classified antiterror program it finds out about, no matter how legal the program, how carefully crafted to safeguard civil liberties, or how vital to protecting American lives.

The Times's latest revelation of a national security secret appeared on last Friday's front page--where no al Qaeda operative could possibly miss it. Under the deliberately sensational headline, "Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror," the Times blows the cover on a highly targeted program to locate terrorist financing networks. According to the report, since 9/11, the Bush administration has obtained information about terror suspects' international financial transactions from a Belgian clearinghouse of international money transfers.

RTWT.

See also, Michelle Malkin, "NY Times Blabbermouths Strike Again."

I'll have more later after I read and research a bit. Meanwhile, readers can check WikiLeaks directly: "Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010." And the Der Spiegel piece is here: "Explosive Leaks Provide Image of War from Those Fighting It" (via Memeorandum).

Amazon Bounces WikiLeaks

Update to this morning's entry.

At AoSHQ, "Amazon Kicks WikiLeaks Out of the Cloud." And at WyBlog, "Three Cheers for Amazon.com, they pulled the plug on WikiLeaks!" Also discussed at Hot Air, "Pentagon: We could have shut down Wikileaks but chose not to" (via Memeorandum).

And in related news, "Sen. McCain Wants Heads to Roll for Wikileaks, But Others Say Not Likely: New Wikileaks Express U.S. Fears Terrorists May Get Pakistan's Nukes":

Disclaimer: I Hate WikiLeaks

Just because I'm posting on the Panama Papers leak, which is a WikiLeaks-style operation being promoted by WikiLeaks and the far-left Guardian newspaper, doesn't mean that I've caved to depraved leftist Anonymous-style hysteria and propaganda.

I hate WikiLeaks. I hate what they stand for. But every now and then these ghouls highlight an issue that deserves attention nevertheless; and greater governmental transparency doesn't necessarily have to be a leftist issue, particularly when the left's fundamental problematique isn't actually transparency but anarchist revolutionary politics. Frankly, WikiLeaks is a criminal enterprise and always has been.

I wrote a lot on the group, and its leader Julian Assange, back in 2010. Here's a refresher, "Exposing the WikiLeaks/Communist/Media Alliance."

Also, flashback, to My Pet Jawa, "59 Seconds of Crucial Reuters 'Murder' Video."



So, yeah. I freakin' hate these people.

Even a broken clock's right twice a day, so now and then I'll give CWCID.

Barrett 'Bodies' Brown Disses Him Some Social Conservatives!

In my in-box, from Barrett Brown:

I think that in person you are probably a decent fellow who cares for this country and who tries to do the right thing, but that in the realm of politics, your honor and integrity are non-existent. Clearly, your religious beliefs have not done anything to prompt you to act in accordance with basic ethical standards. And although I doubt it will play out this way, I sincerely invite you to ask yourself why you have chosen dishonesty and misinformation over a mere correction that would have taken you 30 seconds to write and which would have cost you nothing in terms of ideological point-scoring.

If I'm not mistaken, Barrett wants an update to this post on Wikileaks, where I note, "the video and illustrated photo are added just for idiot Barret Brown, who like all hardline leftists, denies truth for a manufactured reality." (Now updated.) Or it could be this post, where, after debunking Wikileaks' propaganda, I write, "Sorry, Barrett, don't pass go, don't collect $200. Better go back and visit Jawa a bit more." (Now updated.) The Jawa reference is to Rusty Shackleford, et al., who did the yeoman's work in debunking the lies of Julian Assange.

But what's particulary interesting is that, in fact, when first contacted by Barrett, I went to update my posts -- but I couldn't find Barrett's alleged correction. And readers can check for themselves. Below are the relevant headlines at Barrett's blog. Only the first post cited includes anything resembling normal blogospheric practice indicating revisions, such as "UPDATED", or "CORRECTION APPENDED", etc. Frankly, looking again, I'm just now finding what could be seen as a retraction, but the post is not marked in any highlighted fashion, or is the post appended to previous entries to reflect a major rethinking or recognition of others. Truth is, Barrett Brown lives in his own atheistic world of hate, but see the titles for yourself:

* "Wikileaks Press Conference; Mankind Decides His Future, One Eye Open; VIDEO, TRANSCRIPT NOW UP."

* "Fascist U.S. Bloggers Come Late to Game, Announce Score."

* "Wikileaks, the Reactive Media, and the Necessity of Project PM."

Here's where he corrects his mistakes, but there's no special mention at the post or anywhere else. And Barrett never sent me the link as a courtesy heads up:

* "WikiLeaks Editor Lies to Stephen Colbert, World; WikiLeaks Necessary Nonetheless."

And this is what I get instead:

* "Video: Why Project PM Will Not Include Social Conservatives."

Here's the vloggy edition:

Amazing resemblance to Johnny Rotten (social conservative). Anyone for some "Bodies"?

she was a girl from birmingham
she just had an abortion
she was a case of insanity
her name was pauline she lived in a tree
she was a no one who killed her baby
she sent her letters from the country
she was an animal she was a bloody disgrase
body i'm not an animal
body i'm not an animal
dragged on a table in a factory
illegitimate place to be
in a packet in a lavatory
die little baby screaming fucking bloody mess
it's not an animal it's an abortion
body i'm not animal
mummy i'm not an abortion
throbbing squirm, gurgling bloody mess
i'm not an discharge, i'm not a loss in
protein, i'm not a throbbing squirm
fuck this and fuck that fuck it all and
fuck the fucking brat
she don't wanna baby that looks like that
i don't wanna baby that looks like that
body i'm not an animal
body i'm not an abortion
body i'm not an animal
an animal
i'm not an animal...
i'm not an abortion...
mummy! ugh!

RELATED: "Barrett Brown -- Another Progressive Bigot and Racist."

Julian Assange Arrested

At ABC News, "Wikileaks' Julian Assange Arrested in Britain for Sex Crimes: Assange Had Warned 'Doomsday Files' Will Be Opened If He Is Detained."

Also at Telegraph UK, "WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Arrested by Scotland Yard." Updates throughout the day.

6:30 AM: We've got a huge thread at Memeorandum. And video c/o Gateway Pundit and Google:

12:15 PM: At NYT, "British Court Denies Bail to Assange in Sex Inquiry," and at National Journal, "Assange Arrested; What Will U.S. Do Now?"

And Assange himself has an essay at The Australian, "WIKILEAKS deserves protection, not threats and attacks." And from the anti- anti-WikiLeaks clown Glenn Greenwald, "Anti-WikiLeaks lies and propaganda - from TNR, Lauer, Feinstein and more."

Plus, tabloid fodder at London's Daily Mail, "The Wikileaks sex files: How two one-night stands sparked a worldwide hunt for Julian Assange."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates on WikiLeaks

WaPo has a Reuters wire-report (and recall it's Reuter's own reporters at issue), "Defense Chief Backs Troops on Apache Attack Video." Plus, from Fox News, "Gates Defends Soldiers in Iraq Shooting Video, Says Footage Lacks Context."

And here's Jake Tapper's report, "Gates on Wikileaks Video: 'Not Helpful' but 'Should not Have Lasting Consequences'."

And, linking once more, in an evasive, bloviating essay, LAT calls for an investigation, "Bringing War Home":

Videos such as these are extremely valuable for the public to see. We must understand what is being done in our name when the United States is at war. But we also must know that pictures may not tell the full story. WikiLeaks, which is more an advocacy group than a journalism site, titled the video "Collateral Murder." The military had investigated this case and absolved the soldiers of any wrongdoing; for three years, Reuters was denied a copy of the video. It does not answer all our questions, but it certainly raises enough of them to warrant further investigation. Now that we have a close-up look at the ugliness of battle, we have a right to know what it means. The key is not just what happens in the video, but what happened before, and what happens after.

LAT's right up there with the communists at Wonk Room, "Wikileaks Video Confirms What Iraqis Already Assume about U.S. Forces."

Clearly, if you oppose wars, you support WikiLeaks, no matter what the facts show.

See my post from last night, "UPDATE! WikiLeaks' Julian Assange Claims CIA Threats on Eve of Afghan Video Release; Communist/MSM Alliance Launches Stage II of DISINFO Campaign."