or Powell's or me• • •
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August 03, 2010
I Can Find No Irony Whatsoever In These Quotes
By: John Caruso
Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Blowing Shit Up:
"Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family," Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said.
And his boss, Secretary of Blowing Shit Up Robert Gates:
On the ABC program "This Week," Gates declared himself "mortified" and "appalled" over the public dissemination of 76,000 documents that detailed military operations in Afghanistan.
"If I'm angry it is because I believe this information puts those in Afghanistan who have helped us at risk," Gates said, citing a Taliban statement that it would seek out informants and other collaborators exposed by the documents.
He said the issue involved two areas of culpability - legal and moral.
While the Department of Justice will decide on the legal questions, "there's also a moral culpability, and that's where I think WikiLeaks is guilty," Gates said.
Try as I might, I am unable to locate even the smallest hint of irony in these statements. No, the commitment of these men to the sanctity of all human life is not only unalloyed by any imaginable taint of insincerity, but is, I must say, a true inspiration to us all. Just imagine what a paradise Afghanistan would be if Gates and Mullen were allowed to ply their trade without the meddling of moral lepers like WikiLeaks!
OH, THE HUMILITY: Here's the fuller quote from the DoBSU web site:
"My attitude on this is that there are two areas of culpability," Gates said on ABC’s This Week. "One is legal culpability. And that's up to the Justice Department and others -- that's not my arena.
"But there's also a moral culpability," he added. "And that's where I think the verdict is guilty on WikiLeaks. They have put this out without any regard whatsoever for the consequences."
So Gates recognizes that even though he's obviously ideally suited to judge moral culpability, that doesn't qualify him to speculate on legal issues that fall outside that arena of his expertise. We are truly fortunate to have leaders whose vast ethical wisdom is tempered by such humility.
— John Caruso
Posted at August 3, 2010 01:57 PMJohn, I love the blog, but c'mon, don't copy my totally unique observation
Posted by: History Is A Weapon at August 3, 2010 02:28 PMSome fine documents can be found at that History Is a Weapon site.
How dare Private Manning cause possible deaths in Afghanistan!
The irony in a more confined way also struck Andrew Bacevich, who as a former military officer doesn't think highly of soldiers deciding questions on their own but noted that when the military leaked info about McChrystal's war plan to control the public debate and force Obama's hand, that didn't outrage Gates or the Pentagon so much. (But since they leaked it, that shouldn't be surprising.)
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/2/andrew_bacevich_on_afghanistan_war_the
It can be shown that exposure of war crimes leads to the intensification of war crimes. People should know the facts regarding wars yet there may be a price to pay and it is a price paid by neither the leakers or the war criminals. It was announced just this weekend that Obama is stepping up the assassination program and canning the hearts and minds garbage.
Posted by: Rob Payne at August 3, 2010 03:40 PMMullen and Gates are simply worried that their names are on some those pages. NO irony there.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at August 3, 2010 04:46 PMRob Payne: EXACTLY!
Posted by: Mike Meyer at August 3, 2010 04:49 PMQuick, call Gorden Liddy. Something has to be done to stop these leaks!
Posted by: Paul Avery at August 3, 2010 04:51 PMAssange said that he offered the DOD a chance to go over the documents and point out names of informants or other vulnerable people before the leak was released, and he was ignored.
I think when Gates talks about the "two arenas," the second, his arena, non-legal morality verdicts, means assassinations of those he deems guilty.
Posted by: marcus at August 3, 2010 06:30 PMI see a nifty model airplane entering Mr. Assange's life.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at August 3, 2010 08:38 PMPaul avery is funny!
Posted by: N E at August 3, 2010 08:42 PMJeff Huber's latest column, "Code of Military Justice", pertains to the general issue of moral and legal responsibility for harming other human beings during military operations (which are, of course, intended to harm other human beings as the proximate means of group coercion). He compares the class origins, behavior, and socioeconomic fate of Stan McChrystal to Lynndie England, the soldier who has been released from prison after serving time for her crimes at Abu Ghraib.
Just a quote (but I urge you to read the whole thing, which also has links I'm not inserting here)
McChrystal has more blood on his hands than Macbeth and his wife put together, and he is as mendacious as he is murderous. His involvement in the cover-up of the Gardez Massacre, in which U.S. Special Forces destroyed evidence of collateral damage by digging their bullets out of the corpses of civilians, made his whitewash of the Pat Tillman fratricide affair seem venial by comparison, a petty sin that might be absolved with a fistful of Hail Marys.
By rights, McChrystal should be the gaunt, smirking face of American war atrocities, but he is far, far too special to be cast as a villain. Born of military nobility – his father was a two-star general – McChrystal learned early in life how to work his decoder ring and give the secret handshake. West Point Cadet McChrystal made his reputation as a bad boy, but he always knew just how far he could push things and still land on the safety network his father’s connections provided him.
It’s little wonder that he got away with MacArthur-magnitude insubordination when he used his 60 Minutes infomercial and other media tricks to corner Obama into going along with escalating the Bananastans fiasco. And the Rolling Stone escapade was a stroke of passive-aggressive virtuosity. A diamond-studded parachute, it bailed McChrystal out of responsibility for the disaster he had created.
http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2010/08/02/code-of-military-justice/
Huber's piece is good though I don't quite buy the Obama as victim idea. For some reason.
Posted by: Rob Payne at August 4, 2010 02:19 PMmistah charley ph.d.: I havent read the article, but the excerpt sounds plausable. I say JUST from that little bit that WE got OUR money's worth. PAID WELL DID WELL. I AGREE that dissing the Prez was a move worthy of resignation. REMEMBER! WHEN WE HIRED THE SOLDIER WE DIDN'T FORGET THE CIVILIAN. I'm SURE Stan will do well as his OWN man.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at August 4, 2010 02:29 PMRob Payne
You're still funny, but is it so hard to distinguish between a victim and an innocent victim?
Along the same vein, someone can be part of a problem without being the crux of the problem.
Most apoplectically apologetically of all, setting something bad in motion is worse than being unable to stop it.
On the other hand, what a waste of words.
Posted by: N E at August 4, 2010 07:46 PMRob Payne
You're still funny, but is it so hard to distinguish between a victim and an innocent victim?
Along the same vein, someone can be part of a problem without being the crux of the problem.
Most apoplectically apologetically of all, setting something bad in motion is worse than being unable to stop it.
On the other hand, what a waste of words.
Posted by: N E at August 4, 2010 07:46 PMThanks mistah charley. Jeff Huber is a heck of a writer and a firt-rate brainiac, but I don't know why he thinks it's so hard to know what the war on terror is about. I guess all the lies and bullshit are confusing, but is it really so hard to understand that its useful for the US to be able to invade any country that assists any group that opposes US interests?
Posted by: N E at August 4, 2010 09:18 PMThanks mistah charley. Jeff Huber is a heck of a writer and a firt-rate brainiac, but I don't know why he thinks it's so hard to know what the war on terror is about. I guess all the lies and bullshit are confusing, but is it really so hard to understand that its useful for the US to be able to invade any country that assists any group that opposes US interests?
Posted by: N E at August 4, 2010 09:18 PM
