Quantcast
Published On: Thu, Jul 29th, 2010

Liberty Today: Wikileaks – Transparency or treason?

Tags

 Wikileaks: Transparency or treason?

From the Wikileaks website: “We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies” and “All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information.”

In pursuit of this goal, the Wikileaks organization publicly released more than 91,000 classified military field reports from the Afghan war yesterday. Received several weeks ago, many were shared with other more mainstream news organizations such as the New York Times, who today published a series called ‘The War Logs’, a collection of several articles based on the leaked documents. Also included were the British ‘The Guardian’ and German ‘Der Spiegel’ publications.

Also from the Wilikeaks website: “The reports, while written by soldiers and intelligence officers, and mainly describing lethal military actions involving the United States military, also include intelligence information, reports of meetings with political figures, and related detail.”

“The reports cover most units from the US Army with the exception of most US Special Forces’ activities. The reports do not generally cover top secret operations or European and other ISAF Forces operations.”

Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, said in describing the documents: “It shows not only the severe incidents but the general squalor of war, from the death of individual children to major operations that kill hundreds”.

National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones expressed outrage Sunday evening at the publishing of the files. In a statement released by the White House, he alluded to an act of treason by saying:

“The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security,” adding “Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents, the United States government learned from news organizations that these documents would be posted.”

Article III, Section 3 of the United States Constitution describes “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”

Read more of the Examiner article here: http://www.examiner.com/x-53966-MiamiDade-County-Libertarian-Examiner~y2010m7d26-Wikileaks–Transparency-or-treason

For all of Larry Warrick’s articles on Examiner: http://www.examiner.com/x-53966-MiamiDade-County-Libertarian-Examiner

Larry’s older blog can be found here: http://www.nolanchart.com/author87.html

On the DISPATCH: Headlines  Local  Opinion

Subscribe to Weekly Newsletter

* indicates required
/ ( mm / dd ) [ALL INFO CONFIDENTIAL]

About the Author

Leave a comment

XHTML: You can use these html tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

like_us_on_facebook

 

The Global Dispatch Facebook page- click here

Movie News Facebook page - click here

Television News Facebook page - click here

Weird News Facebook page - click here 

DISPATCH RADIO

dispatch_radio

THE BRANDON JONES SHOW

brandon_jones_show-logo

Archives