Wikileaks - Iraq

[Kulapops]

The wiki site went down just before the release. still lots of stuff being reported in th MSM. Icelandic government, royal family... you name it it's here !

Very interesting... and if this is covering something else... would love to know what that is !

Maybe some true form of disclosure for a change? Wow !


One MSM example

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...s-Britain.html

[Banshee]

How about that Italian/US govt threat to Karzai.

[Kulapops]

Quite a useful link on the Guardian website for those getting up to speed on this breaking news.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/wikileaks

[JoshERTW]

Thanks for the link K - some good bedtime reading.

[Teakai]

Posted by Kulapops (here)
The wiki site went down just before the release. still lots of stuff being reported in th MSM. Icelandic government, royal family... you name it it's here !

Very interesting... and if this is covering something else... would love to know what that is !

Maybe some true form of disclosure for a change? Wow !


One MSM example

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...s-Britain.html

Ah, look. Could this be 'real' news from the mainstream media?
Did Jay Rockefeller's heart felt cries for 'real' news and his threats to the media work?

I don't think so - I think they've just got their scapegoats sorted.
Winning back the viewers. Now they have no need at all to go to alternate and independent media sites.

[morguana]

WikiLeaks sparks worldwide diplomatic crisis
Christopher Hope
Last Updated: 7:19AM GMT 29/11/2010

[The King of Saudi Arabia privately urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear weapons programme, according to diplomatic cables leaked by the whistle-blowing website, WikiLeaks.

The first tranche of more than 250,000 classified cables released by the WikiLeaks site says American officials were also told to spy on the United Nations’ leadership and get biometric information on its secretary general Ban Ki-moon.

The cables detail claims of inappropriate behaviour by a member of the Royal family and criticism of Britain’s military operations in Afghanistan and David Cameron.

The cables include requests for “specific intelligence” about British MPs. The communiques last night threatened a global diplomatic crisis and put America’s relations with Europe and the Middle East under a cloud.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ic-crisis.html

[Sabrina]

Julian Assange is teasing Barack Obama over drip, drip Wikileaks releases
By Toby Harnden World Last updated: November 29th, 2010
Daily Telegraph blog
After all the ballyhoo before the fact, the Wikileaks revelations thus far are pretty underwhelming. Although we’ve been seeing figures like 2.7 million and 251,287 for the number of documents released, so far there have been, er, 220 posted on the Wikileaks site.
The rest of the 250,000+ have it seems, been given to the New York Times, Guardian and Der Spiegel so we’re getting little snippets filtered through these news outlets, such as taking a Guantanamo Bay inmate would be “a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe” and this gem revealed by my colleague Christopher Hope:
American diplomats were also asked to compile a profile of Alan Duncan, the homosexual former oil trader who is now the international development minister.
The Americans particularly asked for information on the relationship between Mr Duncan and William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, with whom he used to share a flat, and also Mr Cameron.
The problem is, we can’t yet read the the overwhelming majority of the original cables.
Out of the 220 Wikileaks has published, there are plenty of juicy titbits but most of the news stories are of the dog-bites-man variety. Few will be surprised to learn, for instance, that Saudi Arabia was pretty keen for the US to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities or that the Americans spy on people at the UN (frankly, I’d be worried if they didn’t).
Though I must say, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia’s suggestion that Guantanamo Bay inmates be implated “with an electronic chip containing information about them and allowing their movements to be tracked with Bluetooth”, noting that “this was done with horses and falcons” was pretty good.
In the same cable, the Saudi king certainly knew how to push the right buttons with the Obama administration:
Brennan said President Obama looked forward to seeing the King at the G-20 summit in London. “Thank God for bringing Obama to the presidency,” the King answered, which has created “great hope” in the Muslim world. “May God grant him strength and patience, Abdullah continued, “May God protect him. I’m concerned about his personal safety. America and the world need such a president.”
Clearly delighted with such a golden opportunity to suck up to the big boss, the diplomat who drafted the cable headed this section: “THE WORLD NEEDS OBAMA” (though how this went down with the Secretary of State alas remains unrecorded).
As for Assange’s protests that no one’s life would be put at risk, check this out. The name of the source has been redacted. But how many UK-educated engineers from prominent Pre-Revolution Isfahan families who once owned a large factory in Iran and are former national fencing champions of Iran, former presidents of the Iran Fencing
Association and former vice-presidents of an Azerbaijan sports association do you think there are out there?.
Overall though, there is little to justify the screaming headlines of American foreign policy in crisis or being turned upside down. Instead, it’s a case of so far, so blah.
But you can see here the tantalising dates, subjects and places of origin of tens of thousands of other cables.
It seems to me that Assange is teasing Obama. Whereas the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs could be largely dismissed as Bush era material that didn’t really reflect on Obama, the State Department cables are different.
They go up to 28 February 2010, offering a potential window on Obama’s foreign policy which may well not show it in the sainted light he would prefer. It seems to me that Assange is teasing Obama, letting him know what WikiLeaks has and making him sweat.
Today was round one and the action was pretty tame. But there are plenty more rounds to come and Obama is on the back foot.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/to...eaks-releases/

[irishspirit]

Iran's president has dismissed as propaganda the leaking of US cables detailing Arab calls for Washington to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the release by the Wikileaks website of thousands of extracts from US diplomatic messages was simply psychological warfare against Iran.

He said the release would not affect Iran's relations with other countries.

The US said the release was "reckless" and put the lives of diplomats at risk.

The Obama administration has been scrambling to make sure similar leaks do not happen again.

Government agencies have been ordered to tighten their procedures for handling classified information, ensuring that employees only have access to such documents as they need to do their jobs.

The Pentagon said it was making its computer systems more secure to prevent future leaks.

And Attorney General Eric Holder said there was an "active and ongoing criminal investigation" into the release of the documents and anyone found responsible would be prosecuted.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11860435

[Celine]

"..on going investigation.."

wonder what the tab's gonna be on that one...

This is just another step in creating doubt.

Confuse the people that are waking up...

[Fredkc]

Saudi king urged US to attack Iran: leaked US documents

by Staff Writers
Paris (AFP) Nov 28, 2010
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme, according to US documents leaked by WikiLeaks and published Sunday by daily newspapers.

According to a leaked US cable, published by the New York Times, King Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz made the call during an April 2008 meeting with US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and US General David Petraeus.

"He told you to 'cut off the head of the snake'," Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, told the US embassy in Riyadh two days after the high-level talks, according to the State Department memo.

"The King, Foreign Minister, Prince Muqrin, and Prince Nayif all agreed that the Kingdom needs to cooperate with the US on resisting and rolling back Iranian influence and subversion in Iraq," the memo said.

"The King was particularly adamant on this point, and it was echoed by the senior princes as well. Al-Jubeir recalled the King's frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program."

But the memo goes on to say other Saudi officials were more cautious about the need for military action, with Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal and intelligence chief Prince Muqrin bin Abd al-Aziz pushing for sanctions.

"The Foreign Minister, on the other hand, called instead for much more severe US and international sanctions on Iran, including a travel ban and further restrictions on bank lending," the memo said.

"Prince Muqrin echoed these views, emphasizing that some sanctions could be implemented without UN approval. The Foreign Minister also stated that the use of military pressure against Iran should not be ruled out," the memo.

The leaked memo could prove embarrassing to Saudi Arabia which, while known to be nervous of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme, has not publicly called for Western military action against its powerful neighbour.

This is why I love the whole idea of wikileaks.
Someone needs to blow the stink of duplicity off of our foreign policy, and may other players.
Fred

[norman]

Posted by Céline (here)


This is just another step in creating doubt.

Confuse the people that are waking up...

........and crack and crumble National Governments..............turning confused and disillusioned people towards 'the solution'. If people are finding out that everything as been lies from truth workers who believe in personal sovereignty and who believe passionately in resisting one world tyranny, the one world tyrants will do something about it, like having people find out that everything has been lies from people who are willing to help funnel the population into a one world tyranny.

After all, The destruction of national governments isn't a problem that they will worry about. At a manageable pace, it's actually part of the plan.

The objective right now is to fool the population into thinking they are gaining and winning something by this process.

[Banshee]

.....................................

[irishspirit]

The White House has ordered government agencies to tighten their handling of classified documents after the latest Wikileaks release.

The whistle-blower website has released more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables.

They offer candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of security threats.

Among the cables are reports that Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries urged the US to take military action against Iran's nuclear facilities.

The US said the release was "reckless" and put the lives of diplomats at risk.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11868838

[Harley]

This may be helpful to some.

Repost: How to Decipher a State Department Cable (FOIA Tip #2)

Source: National Security Archive

Harley

[Anchor]

You guys may be interested in some commentary on the latest release here - some really insightful comments (not exclusively of course, some fun too and some a-hole category)

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/11...iLeaks-Fallout

Here is one:

>Is this really a case of 'holding the US to account for its crimes' or just malice, someone's personal agenda to get back at the big bad
> Americans? So far, it's looking more like the latter. I'm starting to question my former support for wikileaks.

You've been drinking the kool aid a bit heavily. Wikileaks has been careful not to release data that could pose an immediate threat to life or safety. They've been posting things that embarrass the government and affect its public image. And you want to stop supporting them because of this? Wikileaks didn't kill a bunch of brown people in an some country with an unpronounceable name and then pretend it didn't happen. Wikileaks didn't blow away several journalists who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They weren't making comments into the mic, laughing and acting excited that they were gunning down unarmed civilians.

They just told you it happened. Which is something your government (and mine) wouldn't do, and would never do if it had the choice. And all of this has been hidden behind the cloak of "national security". National security only goes so far -- when it is used as an excuse to violate the basic social contract and principles which the government is supposed to be supporting, it is the duty of those who know about this to spread the word far and wide and bring the democratic process into play to fix such systemic problems.

Wikileaks isn't on some quest to destroy the government: It is serving the purpose of saving it from itself, before it becomes completely unaccountable to its citizens and eventually becomes destructive of its own ends.

Here is another (there is no proof of validity of source here)

I wrote some of the classified documents on Wikilieaks during my time with the military. I am a civilian now. Much of what I have written is already available to researchers and journalists from the Marine Corps Historical archive in Quantico, Virginia. The Iraq dump contained many significant events from my battalion, but lacked the commanders' comments or the command chronology narrative to tie the events together and put them into perspective. This information is actually available through official sources. What is on Wikileaks has is actually quite limited.

I have two concerns about the fallout to the leak. The first concern is the U.S. may retroactively classify documents currently available to the public, or be less likely to release documents in the future. This will result in a net loss of access to information to the general public. My second concern is the military may become more compartmentalized and soldiers at the small-unit level may no longer have access to the same amount of intelligence information as they previously had. This would be unfortunate because a lot of the young Marines or Soldiers bring a fresh perspective to looking at the raw information and can often connect the dots and find things missed by back-office analysts.

The public has a right to know what the government is doing as long as it doesn't compromise operational security. Within the government there are people pushing to declassify information and make it available. There are others who would like to make everything a secret until the end of time. This latest leak will push the pendulum towards the secret squirrels. I doubt too many service members will want to follow in Pvt. Manning's footsteps, so Mr. Assange probably won't be getting too much new information. Without people sending him leaks, Mr. Assange wouldn't have much of a web site. If the U.S. were smart, they would put up an alternate web site to Wikileaks which would provide declassified versions of government documents and explain why it is important to balance the public's right to know with the need for operational security.

And here this observation on why I think there may be a hidden agenda with WL and all may not be as it seems

Wikileaks is not an American organization. It is international. It doesn't have a duty to help the US government do anything.

One of the big disclosures in this set has been middle-eastern war-mongering against Iran. Almost all of the countries in the region have been secretly lobbying the US to attack Iran while publicly grandstanding on the opposite. Anyone in a free country that has been paying attention already knew that this was happening to some degree, but it wasn't publicly documented. Now it is and consequently the citizens of those middle-eastern countries are much better informed about what their leaders have been doing -- look at the state-controlled media there and coverage of this wikileaks disclosure has been extremely sparse - even al-jazeera which has built its reputation on being independent of government control has made little comment on the leak, presumable to protect their host government of Qatar. But the info is spreading via facebook and other social media because unlike the typical rumors and conspiracy theories that dominate middle-eastern discussion, this stuff is nearly indisputable.

So part of it may suck for the US government, but that's not the case for the rest of the human race.

[Fredkc]

An oddity in the link Witchy1 gave above...

2001-09-11 10:50:03 Skytel [005070611] A ALPHA From:Holland_F_Atkinson Rob/Tom/Dave: please call me at 16887. I'm working with the Disaster team and we need a impact assesment of our apps.

2001-09-11 10:50:04 Arch [1082685] D ALPHA From:U IFS Batch InsOwr <ifsbatch@node433>@PRUDENTIAL Subject:BATMAN error for godlpr01 on njros1un433: S<122 Body:SERVER: njros1un433 TIME: 10:50:15 DATE:

09/11/01 Not all BATMAN jobs complete

2001-09-11 10:50:04 Arch [0953463] B ALPHA MESS ONLY 00/776 ALL ROUTE SALESMEN: PLEASE COME BACK TO THE BRANCH ASAP......ALL ROUTE SALESMEN PLEASE COME BACK TO THE BRANCH ASAP.......THANKS....PAUL YANKOWITRZ

2001-09-11 10:50:04 Arch [1223363] A ALPHA THE NCC IN KANSAS CITY HAS ADVISED THAT THE SWITCH COMPLEX AT 60 HUDSON ST. IN NEW YORK CITY HAS BEEN EVACUATED DUE TO DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER TOWERS IN MANHATTAN. NEWS AFFILIATES ARE REPORTING WIDE-SPREAD

DATE: 09/11/01 Not all BATMAN jobs completed successfully for period 20010910, Please

2001-09-11 10:50:05 Skytel [0001810] A ALPHA on a one-year contract with veteran (G) Felix Potvin. Financial terms of the deal are undisclosed..>NFL INJURY: Miami Dolphins (OL) Marcus Spriggs will reportedly miss the remainder of the season because of a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left...
2001-09-11 10:50:05 Skytel [007000098] A ST NUM 567-225-6811

Anyone else wonder about the concern for NFL players, and route salemen?
And who the hell is Batman?

I found this on the page at the 2nd link in the page referenced.

[Arpheus]

Posted by Fredkc (here)
An oddity in the link Witchy1 gave above...

2001-09-11 10:50:03 Skytel [005070611] A ALPHA From:Holland_F_Atkinson Rob/Tom/Dave: please call me at 16887. I'm working with the Disaster team and we need a impact assesment of our apps.

2001-09-11 10:50:04 Arch [1082685] D ALPHA From:U IFS Batch InsOwr <ifsbatch@node433>@PRUDENTIAL Subject:BATMAN error for godlpr01 on njros1un433: S<122 Body:SERVER: njros1un433 TIME: 10:50:15 DATE:

09/11/01 Not all BATMAN jobs complete

2001-09-11 10:50:04 Arch [0953463] B ALPHA MESS ONLY 00/776 ALL ROUTE SALESMEN: PLEASE COME BACK TO THE BRANCH ASAP......ALL ROUTE SALESMEN PLEASE COME BACK TO THE BRANCH ASAP.......THANKS....PAUL YANKOWITRZ

2001-09-11 10:50:04 Arch [1223363] A ALPHA THE NCC IN KANSAS CITY HAS ADVISED THAT THE SWITCH COMPLEX AT 60 HUDSON ST. IN NEW YORK CITY HAS BEEN EVACUATED DUE TO DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER TOWERS IN MANHATTAN. NEWS AFFILIATES ARE REPORTING WIDE-SPREAD

DATE: 09/11/01 Not all BATMAN jobs completed successfully for period 20010910, Please

2001-09-11 10:50:05 Skytel [0001810] A ALPHA on a one-year contract with veteran (G) Felix Potvin. Financial terms of the deal are undisclosed..>NFL INJURY: Miami Dolphins (OL) Marcus Spriggs will reportedly miss the remainder of the season because of a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left...
2001-09-11 10:50:05 Skytel [007000098] A ST NUM 567-225-6811

Anyone else wonder about the concern for NFL players, and route salemen?
And who the hell is Batman?

I found this on the page at the 2nd link in the page referenced.

I know Fred thats some really weird stuff isnt i?Its all coded stuff so unless you crack the code we will never really have a clue to what some of that stuff means tho.

[Fredkc]

What it looks like is, this a complete message dump from the NY area. Stuff of all kinds thrown together.
Some random messages reading down...

2001-09-11 10:55:08 Arch [1146801] A ALPHA ney I am going to collect from your life insurance policies because..if you don't call me now!! to tell me you're not dead, I am going to kill you!

2001-09-11 10:55:14 Arch [0555773] D ALPHA (9)NCC Opening: 9/11 8:00 AM CDT New York, NY 60 Hudson Switch Complex has evacuated because of possible terrorists act on the New York trade center. TEAMS tkt# 2041237

2001-09-11 10:55:14 Metrocall [1280695] B ALPHA v Sub: Txt: REPORT FROM FBI POSS HYJACKED PLANE HEADING TO SAN FRANCISCO POSS FOR A BRIDGE

2001-09-11 10:55:34 Arch [0986522] C ALPHA Tim - Michele is getting a flood of phone calls from other hospitals regarding the situation here, pt's are calling and cancelling their elective surgery

2001-09-11 10:55:34 Arch [0310113] A ALPHA 80-CALL ME ABOUT PAINTING YOUR HOUSE. HAVE ESTIMATE. WOULD LIKE TO GIVE YOU PRICE ALSO I !1/3 080

2001-09-11 10:55:36 Arch [1213631] D ALPHA 06:ABS: EMMC UPDATE: THE NCC IN KANSAS CITY HAS ADVISED THAT THE SWITCH COMPLEX AT 60 HUDSON ST. IN NEW YORK CITY HAS BEEN EVACUATED DUE TO DESTR

2001-09-11 10:55:41 Skytel [005102417] A ALPHA All teams on standby. Prepare for activation. More information later.

2001-09-11 10:55:42 Arch [0959993] C ALPHA tjauch|Thank God Mark Delia is shook but OK in NY. Pray, give blood if possible, be with your families. Tom

2001-09-11 10:55:44 Skytel [004684273] A ALPHA From:Leigh Anne Maxwell Subject:Lori and Blane, Nothing urgent, but can you please have Blane call me at 281-882-6077 or 281-932-1926 when you guys have a break in your meeting. Thanks

2001-09-11 10:55:48 Skytel [005363346] A ALPHA Andersen, This is work. You must come in to work now!Very Very Important!!!1 IT2 Childress

2001-09-11 10:55:49 Arch [0925459] A ALPHA Are you still leaving for lunch? Security is on alert and closed some gates. Some freeways may be shut down. Be careful. jr

2001-09-11 10:56:33 Skytel [005351835] C ALPHA I am not sure if you called my cell phone - I have a message but can't access it. I am still at work - too many people on the streets to leave. Our bldg has been secured - nobody comes in - nobody leaves. Love you, Jackie

2001-09-11 10:56:42 Skytel [004398828] D ALPHA Dan, is break time, where are you? call me at 6324

2001-09-11 10:56:44 Metrocall [0049728] A ALPHA John, it's Lesley - GO HOME!!! Don't bother coming back.

[Rocky_Shorz]

pager text messages are part of the wiki leaks?

[ponda]

Posted by John (here)
You guys may be interested in some commentary on the latest release here - some really insightful comments (not exclusively of course, some fun too and some a-hole category)

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/11...iLeaks-Fallout

Here is one:



Here is another (there is no proof of validity of source here)



And here this observation on why I think there may be a hidden agenda with WL and all may not be as it seems

Interesting post John


One important aspect of this whole evolving story is that whether Wiki is controlled or not or fed info or not what we have is information getting out into the public realm that normally wouldn't be there.Wiki is doing what the mainstream media should be doing but doesn't anymore.So now people are having access to some truths about their governments through the mainstream media for a change and guess what the politicians,military etc don't like it.The establishment has enjoyed a distinct lack of accountability and transparency for quite some time and look at the result of that.The world is in a terrible state.I can't help but think that this is a good thing that this info is getting out into the mainstream.