Tag: julian assange

By now, you’ve probably heard that Wikileaks managed to have over 250K classified US diplomatic dispatches released out into the digital wilds, complete with the names of what used to be informants and intelligence assets in a large number of unpleasant countries.  I say ‘used to be’ because, thanks to Wikileaks, a lot of those people are going to be arrested, fined, turned, beaten, coerced, raped, tortured, imprisoned, and/or killed.  Spiegel has the details of how it happened; the details can be summed up as A variety of adult children stole and disseminated information that the US State Department had officially deemed too dangerous to distribute free; and these children did so in a manner that demonstrated that the State Department was right. Seriously, the whole thing – what with the theatrical, too-complicated security arrangements; the lackadaisical treatment of the original information; the pointless grudge matches; and of course the lack of self-control – reads like a demented high school clique fight.  Except that those usually don’t end with SAVAK goons raping and murdering dissidents in underground interrogation rooms.

Just to remind potential financial supporters of Wikileaks about what their money is likely to be funding.

Moe Lane (crosspost) Continue reading The deadly incompetence of Wikileaks.

Accused rapist Julian Assange* continued to justify the upcoming backlash against transparency this weekend by promising to illegally release more classified government documents on the notorious site Wikileaks. These documents in particular are apparently State Department diplomatic cables: up until, oh, today, those documents were typically much more blunt and ambiguity-free than the standard State Department bumpf, mostly because nobody out there considered that anyone would be insane enough to release them even if they had access. This will likely change – quickly – now that the diplomatic corps knows that its private communications are insecure; in other words, from now on the folks in the striped-pants brigade are going to be as mealy-mouthed in private as they are in public. As Allahpundit noted above, the Left should keep this in mind when trying in the future to boost State at Defense’s expense: Assange just made that harder for you.

And I will also note that, while I will happily ding President Obama for both his wrong actions and for not living up to his own side’s previously-established standards of behavior, this line of attack by Wikileaks is made up of pure garbage designed to weaken both my country and my government. The President needs his ambassadors to know what he wants; they need to be able to tell him what he can get. So it’s stupid to not be blunt and forthright in private about matters that require a softer public touch. It’s even more stupid for Wikileaks to keep publicly attacking the USA like this.

Because when the backlash comes, it’s going to splatter.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Continue reading Assange keeps digging Wikileaks’ grave.

I’m not saying that, put in a position of sufficient power and responsibility, I would initiate or sign off on a series of events that ended with Julian Assange’s head interfacing with a large-caliber bullet at supersonic velocities.  I’m merely saying that, if such a thing happened and I was made aware of the gory details afterward, I suspect I wouldn’t feel obligated to forward them along to Wikileaks.