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Obama Officials Caught Deceiving about WikiLeaks

Whenever the U.S. Government wants to demonize a person or group in order to justify attacks on them, it follows the same playbook: it manufactures falsehoods about them, baselessly warns that they pose Grave Dangers and are severely harming our National Security, peppers all that with personality smears to render the targeted individuals repellent on a personal level, and feeds it all to the establishment American media, which then dutifully amplifies and mindlessly disseminates it all. That, of course, was the precise scheme that so easily led the U.S.

Whenever the U.S. Government wants to demonize a person or group in order to justify attacks on them, it follows the same playbook: it manufactures falsehoods about them, baselessly warns that they pose Grave Dangers and are severely harming our National Security, peppers all that with personality smears to render the targeted individuals repellent on a personal level, and feeds it all to the establishment American media, which then dutifully amplifies and mindlessly disseminates it all. That, of course, was the precise scheme that so easily led the U.S. into attacking Iraq; it's what continues to ensure support for the whole litany of War on Terror abuses and the bonanza of power and profit which accompanies them; and it's long been obvious that this is the primary means for generating contempt for WikiLeaks to enable its prosecution and ultimate destruction (an outcome the Pentagon has been plotting since at least 2008).

When WikiLeaks in mid-2010 published documents detailing the brutality and corruption at the heart of the war in Afghanistan, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, held a Press Conference and said of WikiLeaks (and then re-affirmed it on his Twitter account) that they "might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family." This denunciation predictably caused the phrase "blood on their hands" to be attached to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, in thousands of media accounts around the world. But two weeks later, the Pentagon's spokesman, when pressed, was forced to admit that there was no evidence whatsoever for that accusation: "we have yet to see any harmcome to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents," he admitted. Several months later, after more flamboyant government condemnations of WikiLeaks' release of thousands of Iraq War documents, McClatchy's Nancy Youssef -- in an article headlined: "Officials may be overstating the danger from WikiLeaks" -- reported that "U.S. officials concede that they have no evidence to date" that the disclosures resulted in the deaths of anyone, and she detailed the great care WikiLeaks took in that Iraq War release to protect innocent people.

The disclosure of American diplomatic cables triggered still more melodramatic claims from government officials (ones faithfully recited by its servants and followers across the spectrum in Washington), accusing WikiLeaks of everything from "attacking" the U.S. (Hillary Clinton) and "plac[ing] at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals" and "ongoing military operations" (Harold Koh) to being comparable to Terrorists (Joe Biden). But even Robert Gates was unwilling to lend his name to such absurdities, and when asked, mocked these accusations as "significantly overwrought" and said the WikiLeaks disclosures would be "embarrassing" and "awkward" and would have only "modest consequences."

Read the full article at Salon...

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hillary clintoniraq warjoe bidenjulian assangewikileaks

Whenever the U.S. Government wants to demonize a person or group in order to justify attacks on them, it follows the same playbook: it manufactures falsehoods about them, baselessly warns that they pose Grave Dangers and are severely harming our National Security, peppers all that with personality smears to render the targeted individuals repellent on a personal level, and feeds it all to the establishment American media, which then dutifully amplifies and mindlessly disseminates it all. That, of course, was the precise scheme that so easily led the U.S. into attacking Iraq; it's what continues to ensure support for the whole litany of War on Terror abuses and the bonanza of power and profit which accompanies them; and it's long been obvious that this is the primary means for generating contempt for WikiLeaks to enable its prosecution and ultimate destruction (an outcome the Pentagon has been plotting since at least 2008).

When WikiLeaks in mid-2010 published documents detailing the brutality and corruption at the heart of the war in Afghanistan, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, held a Press Conference and said of WikiLeaks (and then re-affirmed it on his Twitter account) that they "might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family." This denunciation predictably caused the phrase "blood on their hands" to be attached to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, in thousands of media accounts around the world. But two weeks later, the Pentagon's spokesman, when pressed, was forced to admit that there was no evidence whatsoever for that accusation: "we have yet to see any harmcome to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents," he admitted. Several months later, after more flamboyant government condemnations of WikiLeaks' release of thousands of Iraq War documents, McClatchy's Nancy Youssef -- in an article headlined: "Officials may be overstating the danger from WikiLeaks" -- reported that "U.S. officials concede that they have no evidence to date" that the disclosures resulted in the deaths of anyone, and she detailed the great care WikiLeaks took in that Iraq War release to protect innocent people.

The disclosure of American diplomatic cables triggered still more melodramatic claims from government officials (ones faithfully recited by its servants and followers across the spectrum in Washington), accusing WikiLeaks of everything from "attacking" the U.S. (Hillary Clinton) and "plac[ing] at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals" and "ongoing military operations" (Harold Koh) to being comparable to Terrorists (Joe Biden). But even Robert Gates was unwilling to lend his name to such absurdities, and when asked, mocked these accusations as "significantly overwrought" and said the WikiLeaks disclosures would be "embarrassing" and "awkward" and would have only "modest consequences."

Read the full article at Salon...

Whenever the U.S. Government wants to demonize a person or group in order to justify attacks on them, it follows the same playbook: it manufactures falsehoods about them, baselessly warns that they pose Grave Dangers and are severely harming our National Security, peppers all that with personality smears to render the targeted individuals repellent on a personal level, and feeds it all to the establishment American media, which then dutifully amplifies and mindlessly disseminates it all. That, of course, was the precise scheme that so easily led the U.S. into attacking Iraq; it's what continues to ensure support for the whole litany of War on Terror abuses and the bonanza of power and profit which accompanies them; and it's long been obvious that this is the primary means for generating contempt for WikiLeaks to enable its prosecution and ultimate destruction (an outcome the Pentagon has been plotting since at least 2008).

When WikiLeaks in mid-2010 published documents detailing the brutality and corruption at the heart of the war in Afghanistan, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, held a Press Conference and said of WikiLeaks (and then re-affirmed it on his Twitter account) that they "might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family." This denunciation predictably caused the phrase "blood on their hands" to be attached to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, in thousands of media accounts around the world. But two weeks later, the Pentagon's spokesman, when pressed, was forced to admit that there was no evidence whatsoever for that accusation: "we have yet to see any harmcome to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents," he admitted. Several months later, after more flamboyant government condemnations of WikiLeaks' release of thousands of Iraq War documents, McClatchy's Nancy Youssef -- in an article headlined: "Officials may be overstating the danger from WikiLeaks" -- reported that "U.S. officials concede that they have no evidence to date" that the disclosures resulted in the deaths of anyone, and she detailed the great care WikiLeaks took in that Iraq War release to protect innocent people.

The disclosure of American diplomatic cables triggered still more melodramatic claims from government officials (ones faithfully recited by its servants and followers across the spectrum in Washington), accusing WikiLeaks of everything from "attacking" the U.S. (Hillary Clinton) and "plac[ing] at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals" and "ongoing military operations" (Harold Koh) to being comparable to Terrorists (Joe Biden). But even Robert Gates was unwilling to lend his name to such absurdities, and when asked, mocked these accusations as "significantly overwrought" and said the WikiLeaks disclosures would be "embarrassing" and "awkward" and would have only "modest consequences."

Read the full article at Salon...

hillary clintoniraq warjoe bidenjulian assangewikileaks