wintler2 wrote:Sorry Alice, i don't buy it. I cannot be certain you are wrong, but your evidence doesn't convince me i am.
Did you expect US State Dept memo's to be completely true and accurate?! Surely not - institutional communications are always tilted to tell management what they want to hear, which is 'bomb Iran' and 'our client states are obedient'. The lack of cables yet publicised pointing at Israel could have others causes apart from 'Wikileaks is Israel' (sic): State Dept bias's or subversion, Wikileaks corruption or strategising, or MSM filtering.
Thanks for the links to rightwing media pulling out what they want us to hear, but no way is that all that is in the cables. Are you surprised they only see/publish what they want to see? I wasn't.
Do you believe the cables are entirely fabricated, or true but incomplete?
Umberto Eco wrote:[A]s Georg Simmel once remarked, that a real secret is an empty secret (which can never be unearthed); it is also true that anything known about Berlusconi or Merkel’s character is essentially an empty secret, a secret without a secret, because it’s public domain. But to actually reveal, as WikiLeaks has done, that Hillary Clinton’s secrets were empty secrets amounts to taking away all her power.
Alice isn't providing "evidence." She's giving us insight into her own reading response. This was one of the only explanatory links in one of the links she posted:
One or two readers may recall Tim Lambert, the error-prone Sydney academic who became romantically attached to Lancet‘s absurd claim that some 655,000 Iraqis were killed during allied liberation of their country. According to shocking WikiLeaks data, however, the death count in Iraq over six years was closer to 100,000:
The Iraq documents gave “not just the aggregate, not just that, you know, ‘in Fallujah a lot of people died,’ but rather the deaths of each person, with precise geographic coordinates and the operation under which they died”, [WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange] said.
“That is the big outcome for us, is that these people whose deaths were previously anonymous, they are no longer anonymous.
“We can see where they died and under what circumstances.”
Further from Slate‘s Fred Kaplan:
The WikiLeaks documents add further doubts to a controversial report in a 2006 issue of the medical journal the Lancet, claiming that, even that early in the war, 655,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed, most of them by U.S. air and artillery strikes.
Previous thoughts from Francis Sedgemore. And further still.
UPDATE. “I’m not sure it’s what WikiLeaks intended,” writes Andrew Bolt, “but its latest leaks reveal that the infamous Lancet paper which claimed the US-led liberation of Iraq cost the lives of 655,000 Iraqis in fact exaggerated the death toll by at least 600 per cent.”
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/count_down/That isn't WikiLeaks' doing--that is spin, pure and simple, and not even A-dawg Bolt can deny it. But what's more surprising is that the ~65,000 dead figure was published by another study somewhere around a year ago. That particular study contested the methodology of the 2006 Lancet study, particularly, in that the Lancet study made use of a poll that asked something to the extent of "do you know someone who has died..." I'm not a survey-authoring statician, but the simple fact is that the figures had already been contested by others in field before Assange leaked anything.
IOW: WikiLeaks did not break that story. In fact, if I take the brief quote from Assange at face value, his interest was in pinning a name to a spot of the map, not in contradicting the Lancet study.
In fact:
Iraq war logs reveal 15,000 previously unlisted civilian deaths
Leaked Pentagon files contain records of more than 100,000 fatalities including 66,000 civilians
David Leigh
guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 October 2010 21.32 BST
Leaked Pentagon files obtained by the Guardian contain details of more than 100,000 people killed in Iraq following the US-led invasion, including more than 15,000 deaths that were previously unrecorded...
The logs record a total of 109,032 violent deaths between 2004 and 2009. It is claimed that 66,081 of these were civilians...
The data cannot be relied upon as a complete record of Iraqi deaths. IBC, for example, had previously calculated that up to 91,469 civilians were killed from various causes during the period covered by the leaked database. While detailing the 15,000 previously unknown deaths, it also omits many otherwise well-attested civilian fatalities caused by US troops themselves. Nor does the Pentagon data cover any of the initial invasion fighting throughout 2003; IBC has identified 12,080 purely civilian deaths in that year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/true-civilian-body-count-iraq?intcmp=239So now the Guardian is a Mossad front, too, I guess.
Here's another story Alice links:
Hundreds of documents outline the intelligence, of variable quality, on which the Americans have based allegations of Iranian backing for the Shia militias which fought government and US troops.
They claim Iranian intelligence officers served inside Iraq, at one point manning checkpoints with local militias, and describe a firefight on the border in which American troops shot an Iranian border guard dead and then came under prolonged attack as they returned to base.
In one of the most tantalising documents, they also hint at Iranian involvement in al-Qaeda suicide bombing.
Whether the Shia Islamic Republic has offered support to the Sunni militant group has been one of the most controversial questions in the Middle East.
American leaders have both claimed the existence of such links and backed away from them.
But a threat report in the files dated Nov 17, 2006 claims that new techniques for suicide bombing, a favoured al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgent practice in Iraq, had "surfaced" in Iran and Syria.
Both involved the use of miniature cameras to allow remote monitoring of the attack.
"Al-Qaeda remains the strongest organisation among the insurgent groups in Iraq and directs the majority of attacks that take place in Iraq," says the assessment. "Instructors at the Islamic Jihad Center in Tehran are teaching a new tactic for SVIED (Suicide Vest Improvised Explosive Device) deployment."
It is not clear how credible the intelligence cited is considered, and there are no reports of camera-equipped suicide vests being found. Islamic Jihad is a militant Palestinian group that has been responsible for suicide bombings in the past and is backed by Syria and Iran...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/8083016/Wikileaks-how-Iran-devised-new-suicide-vest-for-al-Qaeda-to-use-in-Iraq.htmlHow many hedged statements do you you see there? I can't help but notice the "of variable quality" and "not clear how credible".
Nearly three years later, American troops were still finding WMD in the region. An armored Buffalo vehicle unearthed a cache of artillery shells “that was covered by sacks and leaves under an Iraqi Community Watch checkpoint. “The 155mm rounds are filled with an unknown liquid, and several of which are leaking a black tar-like substance.” Initial tests were inconclusive. But later, “the rounds tested positive for mustard...”
The WMD diehards will likely find some comfort in these newly-WikiLeaked documents. Skeptics will note that these relatively small WMD stockpiles were hardly the kind of grave danger that the Bush administration presented in the run-up to the war.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-continued-in-iraq-with-surprising-results/The artillery-shells-with-mustard-gas story is public domain, and has been for years, having run on the wires and FauxNews. The embarrassment there is calling mustard gas a "weapon of mass destruction," or suggesting that it requires anything more than two very common compounds (that most Americans probably have under their sinks) to manufacture. The fact that diplomats under Bush reported back material in a manner that would have confirmed Bush's justifications and the fact that authority-worshiping fucktard fanboys at Wired stopped looking at iPhone porn long enough to post a "Bush Wuz Rite" story isn't exactly an Israeli psyop. Or maybe it is, but I always thought that Wired was part of the Steve Jobs racket more than Israeli dope dealers...
WikiLeaks cable warns of 'widening crime war' in Israel
...Entitled "Israel, a promise land for organized crime?", the cable notes that while organized crime has "long-standing roots" in Israel, certain factors indicate that a "widening crime war" has begun to spiral.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/wikileaks-cable-warns-of-widening-crime-war-in-israel-1.328383I'll note that next to nothing portrays Israel as "victim" of crime in that piece. The article lists the title of the cable not as "Evil Russians and Secular Israelis Aiding Global Muslim Threat By Having Established a Strong Drug-Trafficking Industry in Israel"--I'm going to kindly note that Soviet-era news services ran nearly identical stories back when there was a USSR.
And about the missile story, as soon as I slip out of the surly bonds of the New York Times, I find out that they don't even print the most exciting part.
At issue are 19 missiles that Iran allegedly bought from North Korea. It's hard to know how definitive this evidence might be. (There are likely many secret documents pertaining to Iraq's WMDs that proved to be entirely incorrect; because something is secret or confidential does not mean it's uniquely candid or truthful.) The Times does not seem at all skeptical about the story, but there's one thing they won't do: publish the actual cable:
At the request of the Obama administration, The New York Times has agreed not to publish the text of the cable.
So the paper will publish a story that reiterates the most explosive allegations in the cable, but not the cable itself. This is curious.
Luckily WikiLeaks did publish it. And the most interesting thing one learns is that the Russians were deeply skeptical of the U.S. allegations about these missiles [The actual cable says]:
Russia said that during its presentations in Moscow and its comments thus far during the current talks, the U.S. has discussed the BM-25 as an existing system. Russia questioned the basis for this assumption and asked for any facts the U.S. had to provide its existence such as launches, photos etc. For Russia, the BM-25 is a mysterious missile. North Korea has not conducted any tests of this missile, but the U.S. has said that North Korea transferred 19 of these missiles to Iran. It is hard for Russia to follow the logic trail on this. Since Russia has not seen any evidence of this missile being developed or tested, it is hard for Russia to imagine that Iran would buy an untested system. Russia does not understand how a deal would be made for an untested missile. References to the missile's existence are more in the domain of political literature than technical fact. In short, for Russia, there is a question about the existence of this system.
In other words, not only were the Russians not convinced that Iran had purchased these missiles, they weren't sure that these missiles even existed.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/hart291110.htmlAnd Gawker's "whew, that's a relief":
Well, at least the logs don't show our own troops torturing anyone.
Gosh, sure is a good thing no one has leaked photographs of prisoners being held under severe movement-restriction and sensory deprivation, that would only make the Israeli cause even stronger. And man, it's a good thing that Iran was able to intercept the Mossad-CIA-Disney agent who was going to drop Lyddie England's camera on the press.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/2006/02/15/1139890768970.html?page=3 (WARNING--GRAPHIC)
2004 Taguba Report documenting torture by US forces at Abu Gharib AS PUBLICIZED BY THE PENTAGON--It definitely must be a psyop!
See, the funny thing is, you've already made up your mind. I'm not sure if it's just intellectual laziness or intellectual dishonesty or monomania or all of those. It doesn't matter that Gary McKinnon hasn't been extradited from the UK after almost a decade. It doesn't matter that released cables paint a different image when someone beside the NY Times and FauxNews write the commentary. It doesn't matter that pop-mind-control site Gawker is too amnesiac to remember gory pictures and a headlining story from five years ago that contradict what they say directly that dimes to donuts says that most people outside the US remember. If it's anything besides "The Mossad did it" or "it's a hoax by Republicans to unseat Obama" or "it's a plot to clamp down on the internet", it's impossible.
Besides, somebody's gotta play the heel.
