Julian "Inconceivable!" Ass-ange
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
RE: Julian Assange Sentences 1,800 Afghans to Death
For Julian Assange, it would be "inconceivable!" that his leaked documents would backfire...
There is a great piece in the WashPo on the actual truth found in the Wikileaks documents on Iraq.
The news organizations granted privileged access to the documents, including the New York Times and Britain's Guardian, have focused on reports that Iraqi security forces abused and tortured prisoners; that private security contractors often acted recklessly and violated rules of engagement; and that U.S. soldiers sometimes killed Iraqi civilians at checkpoints. All these stories are troubling. But the incidents were extensively reported by Western journalists and by the U.S. military when they occurred.
<...>
The report confirms that the vast majority of Iraqi civilian deaths were caused by other Iraqis, not by coalition forces; claims such as those published by the British journal The Lancet that American forces slaughtered hundreds of thousands are the real "attack on truth."
<...>
In Afghanistan, Wikileaks appears to have put the lives of courageous Afghans at risk, by identifying them as American sources. In Iraq, it has at least temporarily complicated negotiations to form a new government...
Read the whole editorial here.
Instead of averting war or preventing bloodshed, Julian Assange has actually increased the chances of civilians being murdered and the possibility of civil war in Iraq...