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My HUGE problem with Wikileaks

BenBurch

Gatekeeper of The Left
BenBurch
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OK, I have thought about what happened with the document spill this week, and though I initially thought it might be a good thing to expose that collateral deaths were rather larger than reported to us, I have decided that a worse harm will likely result from this disclosure.

In the conspiratorial mind, something is only classified Secret because The Man is trying to hide the truth from us.

In reality, things are classified for a large number of reasons; To protect sources being among them.

In this regard, this document spill is NO DOUBT being pored over by the Taliban to find the names and locations of people who have cooperated with coalition forces and provided information to them. And once they have compiled that list it becomes a death mark on each and every one of them.

It is entirely possible that more people will die as a result of that retribution than were the subject of the misguided use of force these documents were proffered to reveal.
 
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yes, they have released names. these people may be killed...or their families killed.

and now, many Afghans and Iraqis may be legitimately afraid to work with the Americans or even the Afghan or Iraqi military.

these leaks, have not served the purpose of freedom and democracy. they have helped the bad guys
 
I suppose a body count could be seen as a negative, but what about the revelation that the Paks are aiding the Taliban? Seems to me that a bit of whacking of each other in that scenario might be to our advantage.
 
BenBurch said:
OK, I have thought about what happened with the document spill this week, and though I initially thought it might be a good thing to expose that collateral deaths were rather larger than reported to us, I have decided that a worse harm will likely result from this disclosure.

In the conspiratorial mind, something is only classified Secret because The Man is trying to hide the truth from us.

In reality, things are classified for a large number of reasons; To protect sources being among them.

In this regard, this document spill is NO DOUBT being pored over by the Taliban to find the names and locations of people who have cooperated with coalition forces and provided information to them. And once they have compiled that list it becomes a death mark on each and every one of them.

It is entirely possible that more people will die as a result of that retribution than were the subject of the misguided use of force these documents were proffered to reveal.
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So you don't cite a problem with Wikileaks per se, your problem seems to be with what they leaked, this time.
 
The guy in the Army who leaked this to wikileaks is ,quite rightly, in deep,deep,deep, doo doo.
 
casebro said:
I suppose a body count could be seen as a negative, but what about the revelation that the Paks are aiding the Taliban? Seems to me that a bit of whacking of each other in that scenario might be to our advantage.
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That "revelation" has been known for years. Discussed on this forum even.
 
BenBurch said:
OK, I have thought about what happened with the document spill this week, and though I initially thought it might be a good thing to expose that collateral deaths were rather larger than reported to us, I have decided that a worse harm will likely result from this disclosure.

In the conspiratorial mind, something is only classified Secret because The Man is trying to hide the truth from us.

In reality, things are classified for a large number of reasons; To protect sources being among them.
Click to expand...

Sure, there is material that needs to be classified and things that don't. I find it interesting that the very first court case that established the national secrets idea to keep information out of court cases was the airforce scapegoating pilots for a crash that was caused by poor maintenance.

They wouldn't want people to know that SAC planes were falling out of the sky it would hurt the US, so better to say it was pilot error. And really what proper family of the armed services wouldn't be happy to accept the fault and blame to prevent the military from looking bad.

It is also useful for cases like Abugraib. If those photos never got leaked it would be like all the photos and video from other areas that Obama will never release because it will make his desire to not charge anyone with the crimes being committed in them look bad. So you have people in prison because of a leak, not because they abused detainees, plenty of people did that, and as long as we keep the photos and video classified they will never be charged with anything.

Look at the embarrassment that would have been saved if the details of Pat Tillman's death never came out. They really needed to do a better job of covering that up and classifying the details.
 
Of course, Wikileaks has said that they try to protect individuals that may be endangered by releases of confidential documents, but considering the size of the release, I doubt they went through every page and blacked out names of Afghani folks listed as cooperating with the US, and the Taliban knows this.

This may also end up causing a restriction of the amount of intelligence info our front line fighters have access to, which could cause unnecessary harm to them down the road.

I'm torn, because I do want to know the truth about how the Afghanistan situation is actually going, but the cost may be a very high one, in actual lives and in a chilling of the atmosphere amongst Afghanis that may have been willing to work with us before, but are fearful now.
 
Arisia said:
Of course, Wikileaks has said that they try to protect individuals that may be endangered by releases of confidential documents, but considering the size of the release, I doubt they went through every page and blacked out names of Afghani folks listed as cooperating with the US, and the Taliban knows this.
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Can you dig up an example document where they didn't black out names and put Afghani citizens at risk?
 
Kestrel said:
Can you dig up an example document where they didn't black out names and put Afghani citizens at risk?
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No, that's why I said 'I doubt they went through every page...' and not 'I know they didn't go through every page...' Considering that I've heard commentators on NPR mention that the Taliban will start to mount more reprisals against cooperative Afghanis because of this leak, I'm assuming it's because they'll have a longer list of names of cooperating Afghanis, most likely because actual names are still discernible in the documents.
I really hope I'm wrong about it, and that the Wikileaks harm minimization process keeps the Taliban from threatening even more Afghan families than they already do. Apparently there are 15000 reports to be released when the security situation in Afghanistan permits, I can't tell if these are in addition to the 91000 or are the most sensitive of the 91000.
 
BenBurch said:
It is entirely possible that more people will die as a result of that retribution than were the subject of the misguided use of force these documents were proffered to reveal.
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This seems to me to be a classic example of "blaming the messenger."
 
Taarkin said:
Pentagon spokesman says that nothing they've seen in the leaks compromises intelligence sources.
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But they'll still prosecute the person who leaked the reports, even though supposedly none of the info is compromising the mission. And they'll probably rethink giving front line soldiers access to as much intelligence anymore, because even though the info could be useful in keeping them from getting killed, some pfc could leak it to the outside world if they felt their conscience was leading them to do so.
 
BenBurch said:
OK, I have thought about what happened with the document spill this week, and though I initially thought it might be a good thing to expose that collateral deaths were rather larger than reported to us, I have decided that a worse harm will likely result from this disclosure.
Click to expand...

But not from disclosing the amount of deaths and things like that. Why couldn't they have just put out that stuff?
 
BenBurch said:
OK, I have thought about what happened with the document spill this week, and though I initially thought it might be a good thing to expose that collateral deaths were rather larger than reported to us, I have decided that a worse harm will likely result from this disclosure.

In the conspiratorial mind, something is only classified Secret because The Man is trying to hide the truth from us.

In reality, things are classified for a large number of reasons; To protect sources being among them.

In this regard, this document spill is NO DOUBT being pored over by the Taliban to find the names and locations of people who have cooperated with coalition forces and provided information to them. And once they have compiled that list it becomes a death mark on each and every one of them.

It is entirely possible that more people will die as a result of that retribution than were the subject of the misguided use of force these documents were proffered to reveal.
Click to expand...

I’m sure the Taliban think tank and research analysts who work there are pouring thru those documents as we speak.
 
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