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Subscribe to RSS“Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Thursday denounced the disclosure this week of 75,000 classified documents about the Afghanistan war by the Web site WikiLeaks, asserting that the security breach had endangered lives and damaged the ability of others to trust the United States government to protect their secrets,” the New York Times says. “Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, Mr. Gates portrayed the documents as ‘a mountain of raw data and individual impressions, most several years old’ that offered little insight into current policies and events. Still, he said, the disclosures — which include some identifying information about Afghans who have helped the United States — have ‘potentially dramatic and grievously harmful consequences.’”
The New York Daily News on Obama’s appearance on “The View”: “For 47 minutes, he took a two-year time trip, radiating the relaxed charm and reassuring ease that swept him into the White House just 21 months ago. He was the guy who was going to be different then, the man who was going to change the tone of America's public and political dialogue from sharp and nasty to respectful and even civil. Yesterday, around the warm hearth of ‘The View,’ he got to be that guy again.”
Howie Kurtz’s take on the appearance: “Anyone who scoffed at the president's decision to hang with Whoopi and the gang was out to lunch. That includes you, Rosie. The appearance was good for him, good for ‘The View’ and, incidentally, good for the audience.”
The Times on Obama’s education speech yesterday: “Saying that reforming education is perhaps ‘the economic issue of our time,’ President Obama went before a major civil rights organization on Thursday to defend his main education program against criticisms from some minority and teachers groups.”
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Bushbaby Gates needs to get over the wikileaks. On the one hand he says that the data is old and unimportant then he whines about it being such a big breach of security. Finally someone made Obama's broken campaign promise of more transparency real and now Obama wants to whine about it. The data shows just how incompetently War Criminals Bush and Cheney ran the show in Afghanistan because they declared Mission Accomplished prematurely and then cut and ran to invade Iraq on a big pack of known lies.
While I would never waste time watching The View it was smart of Obama to make the appearance to get his message out to the public, especially women who are the backbone of the Democratic Party.
Eric, get a grip... Name and locations of Afghans who worked WITH our troops are listed in the leaked documents. These brave individuals now have huge targets on their backs, and will be brutally murdered in the near future - perhaps even public torture just to show the Afghans what happens to anyone who works with the US in any way. Releasing documents with such information, should be considered treason. Once again, someone stepped over the line - and innocent people will die.
The leak of 1000's of secret military documents was a huge mistake. I appreciate transparency but, contrary to what extremists may think, a certain level of secrecy in the government and the military is absolutely necessary. To think otherwise is absolutely foolish to the degree of slitting one's own throat.
The fools who threw all of this information out on the web should be held accountable and suffer the full penalty of the law. The perp's of these leaks will likely cost many lives of informants and their friends and families because you know that is how the terrorists work. These informants trusted us and this is how they are repaid?
There is already a lot of scuicides among the ranks of our soldiers and yet the leaks will also further degrade the moral of the troops who are stuck in the middle of what is fast becoming one big f'n mess. Who's to blame for this mess? The governments involved to a large degree, sure. But the civilian morons who are "just trying to help" are making things much worse.
Now that it's pretty plain to see that the US is incapable of keeping ANY secrets, who in their right minds would be willing to risk life, limb or property to help with any endeavor the US is working on?
Finally, Wiki Leaks is likely going to make some big cash off of this "disclosure"...Did any of the "transparency at all cost" types consider this? And that money will be made standing on the bodies of the innocent and the broken back of US military moral that this naive at best and down right malicious at worst.
Either way, the perp's should be payed back for their crimes in full.
Exactly!
I mentioned this the other day: there's a time and a place for everything. This includes the leaking of classified info.
Leaking the Pentagon Papers was the right move (exposing a fraud perpetrated by the government on the people of the US); the War Logs [this document set] is the wrong move (...what have we gained from this knowledge?)
FR, can you tell us what the ACTUAL amount of documents leaked is? I've seen, 92,000, 120,000, 80 something thousand and now 75,000.
Just curious...