"We have always been at war with WikiLeaks."

[Tony Scharf]

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Peter Korsten <peter at severity-one.com> wrote:
>
> It's just another manifestation of the widespread hatred of the US
> government, and anything that supports this is taken for granted, and
> anything that might detract is swept aside.
>
> In that sense, it's no difference from any other religion.
>

Well, of the targets they could choose, the US is the one who is the
safest.  I mean...If they released a bunch of cables from the Chinese
or the Russians.....forget about it.  They would be dead already and
without all this theater.

People who believe that every little discussion that happens between
representatives of governments should be public are, quite frankly,
not aware of what is involved in international relations.  When two
nations are negotiating something,  two conversations take place: One
with the other diplomats, and one in the public eye.  In negotiations,
concessions need to be made to get an agreement both countries can
live with, and then the diplomats have to go sell that solution to the
people back home.

About the cables coming out about the US diplomats acting as
spys....come on?  All diplomats work in this to some degree.  All
nations are doing all this nasty stuff to each other all the time.
The US may just have a higher technical capacity for it.  And the
outrage the other nations showed publicly when these 'shocking
revelations'  came to light?  Go read above.  Governments will take
any chance they get to make other governments look inferior to their
own in the eyes of their people.

States need to have secrets.  Now, I dont mean they need to be able to
do hush hush medical experiments and that nonsense.  If anything the
cables are showing is just how *mundane* most secrets are.

So I find the whole wikileaks thing kind of annoying at best.  I dont
believe anything he has done is illegal (though the guy that gave him
the information violated his security clearance and is in fact guilty
of treason).

One more point while I am off on a rant.  You do all realize that the
cables about the middle east and Iran's nuclear program make war MORE
likely and not less, right?  Think about it.  Now that Iran knows just
how isolated it is (many of its neighbors are basically begging the US
to take forceful action) that its going to be more determined than
ever to get the weapons to defend itself.  Its also not likely that
they will want to negotiate any more.  The US also now has the very
public urging of Iran's neighbors as fuel to go to war.  Its not a
foregone conclusion this will lead to war, but its a hell of a lot
more probable now.

Tony