Matt Yglesias

“Wikileaks is the Left’s Pentagon.”

Exactly.

Well, I suppose one could say that Wikileaks is left’s New York Times or something. But Pentagon? How is it anything like Pentagon?

Re Matthew’s comment “Congressional oversight! Of the Defense Department! We’re truly doomed. ”
————
Matthew jokes but if he looked back at some of the comments he deleted they might wipe that smile off his face.

For example, Post 9, 11,and 12 here:

http://74.6.238.254/search/srpcache?ei=UTF-8&p=%2B%22Don+Williams%22+%2B%22Melvin+Dubee%22&fr=yfp-t-974&u=http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=%2b%22Don+Williams%22+%2b%22Melvin+Dubee%22&d=4973164241815767&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=4b8d7ee5,b623f9fd&icp=1&.intl=us&sig=f4iZpqDLOjpwxJb20SSt7Q–

The full story of how Bill Clinton fucked this country has not yet been told.

Let’s consult the humankind ™.

this is good, don. from now on you should be replacing your current period rants with hyperlink citations to past period rants. this should reduce non-crank irritation levels and save some space on this blog

That is some impressive equivocation.

Wikileaks is the Left’s Pentagon.

Oh, good god. How many tanks, guns and missles does Wikileaks have? Yea verily we are drowning in hyperbole.

You’re being to harsh on the Pentagon

Because the Pentagon only fires virtual missles and bullets at enemies. They never actually kill anyone. And they have a tiny budget -they only spend a few million bucks a year!

Congressional oversight! Of the Defense Department! We’re truly doomed.

I coulda lived without seeing all that. It’s making my head hurt trying to understand the stupid.

max
['Joshua Foust is the right's Homer Simpson.']

Wikileaks is the Left’s Pentagon.

Oh, good god. How many tanks, guns and missles does Wikileaks have? Yea verily we are drowning in hyperbole.

You’re being to harsh on the Pentagon

Because the Pentagon only fires virtual missles and bullets at enemies. They never actually kill anyone. And they have a tiny budget -they only spend a few million bucks a year!

Congressional oversight! Of the Defense Department! We’re truly doomed.

I coulda lived without seeing all that. It’s making my head hurt trying to understand the stupid.

max
['Joshua Foust is the right's Homer Simpson.']

Don really has no shame, does he?

You know, it’s less the hypocritical entitlement and arrogance that bothers me about the DOD, than it is that whole killing hundreds of thousands of people thing. A few douches at Wikileaks doth not the left’s pentagon make.

Let the bodies hit the floor is my motto on releases of classified information. History is replete with people now considered heroes who undoubtedly knew that they were going to indirectly cause the deaths of their own countrymen by exchanging information with the opposing side in a conflict (see, e.g., Admiral Canaris and other anti-Nazi German officials who served as double agents to the allies).

Ways WikiLeaks is the Left’s Pentagon:

Julian Assange is the Left’s version of a General: effete snobby and weak.
With wikileaks, the left finally got to stop protesting and TAKE the other side.
The left makes heroes of traitors
The left kills indiscriminately since all killing is equally bad
Wikileaks in underfunded – and uses this to justify bad acts, rather than not acting.
Wikileaks kills US soldiers.
Wikileaks assumes it understands how to use the weapon in its hand.
Wikileaks despises power it desperately seeks.
If Wikileaks had a nuclear bomb it would use it on Western powers.
The Left looks at wikileaks and feels a profound sense of patriotism.
Wikileaks is just another James J. Lee – we’ll deal with more of them certainly.

Everyone can do what they like, but I think with the above comment Moron Wanker the Fraudster has made it impossible to take anything he says seriously.

The fact is that the left has shown far more patriotism in the past decade than the right could muster in 100 years.

Rather than impeaching the five felons in black robes who appointed the loser of the 2000 election, we put the interests of the nation and worked towards healing the wounds caused by such egregiously anti-democratic actions.

When Bush’s inaction, and moving terrorism out of the top 10 threats faced by the nation (pornography being a greater threat), led to the deaths of 3000 of our citizens we did not impeach him for gross incompetence but rallied behind the office of President so as to deny those who wish us harm any victory.

Anyone who questions the notion that the left puts country before politics is seriously deranged.

Hey, stop picking on the blogs resident Bolshevik. Every week, he provides hours of unintentional levity to provide the readers of Mr. Yglesias’ blog with some comic relief.

I’ll vote for the “aw, c’mon” party. Like, how many divisions does Wikileaks have?

I mean — there you had the Progressives in Israel and the Progressives in the USA ready to force a peace with the Palestinians by leaning on Bibi — when the fucking wheels came off.

Talk about “comic Relief” — I bet that had Bibi and the Likud rolling in the aisles.

From http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0798/jj2.html
——————–
“How Monica Lewinsky and her dress destroyed the Middle East Peace Accords

WASHINGTON — Sitting in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel here, the famously quick- tongued Yossi Beilin seemed, for once, almost at a loss for words. What, after all, do Israeli socialists know about cocktail dresses?

One thing, it turns out: that they distract Washington’s attention from urgent problems around the world.

“It’s simply surreal,” said Dr. Beilin, a leader of Israel’s opposition Labor Party.

“To think that the greatest power on earth is out of commission because of Monica Lewinsky’s dress — it’s one of the most surreal episodes in history.”

Last January, when the world first learned of Ms. Lewinsky, the presidential sex scandal triggered a sudden mood swing in U.S.-Israel relations. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had just landed in Washington, expecting to have Bill Clinton read him the riot act for what the Administration saw as foot-dragging on the peace process.

Enter Ms. Lewinsky, and Mr. Clinton was suddenly preoccupied. Mr. Netanyahu had an unexpectedly placid visit and returned to Israel a happy man.

Seven months later, Dr. Beilin was in Washington as part of a four-member delegation of Labour Party leaders. Led by party chairman Ehud Barak, they came in hopes of burnishing their image as a viable alternative to Mr. Netanyahu.

Their prospects seemed bright on the eve of departure. The Knesset had taken a key step towards dissolving itself and calling new elections, handing Mr. Netanyahu one of the worst political reverses of his tenure.

“That means we’re here as a group that could come to power in the near future,” Dr. Beilin maintained.

To their dismay, they arrived to find that President Clinton, too, had just been handed one of the worst political reverses of his tenure: Ms. Lewinsky’s decision to testify about the alleged affair and to hand over a certain cocktail dress. Nobody in Washington was talking about anything else.

“It’s depressing,” the usually ebullient Dr. Beilin said.

“The news begins and ends with Monica’s dress. It feels as though reality has been shoved aside in favor of some virtual reality.”

The Labour MS’s message was that the Administration should keep pushing for an Israeli-Palestinian deal. Washington has been pressing Jerusalem for months to give the Palestinians 13.1 percent of the West Bank in exchange for a string of concessions.

Israel has resisted mightily. A few weeks ago Washington effectively stopped pushing. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright now says the sides should work things out by themselves.

The Labour people believe the hands-off approach is a mistake.

With nearly half of Mr. Netanyahu’s own coalition favoring the US plan, plus the half of Israel that voted against Mr. Netanyahu, the proposal has far more support in Israel than the Premier’s spokesmen let on, they argue. Now is the time to push.

U.S. PRESSURE ‘UNLIKELY’

Unfortunately, said Dr. Beilin, “the United States is not available right now, because it’s somewhere else. It’s caught up in some sort of virtual reality. The fact is that there is a reality out there. It’s called international conflict.

“And right now the victims of those conflicts feel that the so-called policeman of the world can’t respond. As a citizen of the world, it’s one of the most frustrating things imaginable to see the world’s only superpower paralyzed by this foolishness.” Administration officials take sharp exception to the idea that they’re paralyzed.

“This thing’s been going on for months,” sniffed one official. “It hasn’t stopped us from being active on a lot of fronts. We’ve been active in Iraq. We’ve been active in China. If we’re less active in the peace process, it’s because that’s what the policy calls for.”

Privately, many officials concede that Middle East policy is heavily influenced by domestic politics. No one admits Ms. Lewinsky is a factor. But they do admit the question of how heavily Washington can pressure Jerusalem is, as one official put it, “very complicated right now.”

To a degree the complications aren’t new.

Jewish community leaders, though divided on how much Israel should give away, tend to close ranks in the face of administration pressure. It’s a powerful deterrent.

“There are other constraints, too,” says an official. “The Republicans in Congress, the Christian fundamentalist community — all the levers Mr. Netanyahu pulls so well when he’s here. The’re all voices the administration has to listen to.”

At the moment, the voice speaking loudest is the Jewish community.

The reason is simple. In times of crisis, Presidents fall back on core constituencies.

For a Democrat, that begins with Jews. “The last thing the president wants to do at a time like this is offend his best friends,” said a Washington political activist, noting that Clinton was spending the weekend as Steven Spielberg’s houseguest. ”
———–
hee hee hee

I mean — there you had the Progressives in Israel and the Progressives in the USA ready to force a peace with the Palestinians by leaning on Bibi — when the fucking wheels came off.

Talk about “comic Relief” — I bet that had Bibi and the Likud rolling in the aisles.

From http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0798/jj2.html
——————–
“How Monica Lewinsky and her dress destroyed the Middle East Peace Accords

WASHINGTON — Sitting in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel here, the famously quick- tongued Yossi Beilin seemed, for once, almost at a loss for words. What, after all, do Israeli socialists know about cocktail dresses?

One thing, it turns out: that they distract Washington’s attention from urgent problems around the world.

“It’s simply surreal,” said Dr. Beilin, a leader of Israel’s opposition Labor Party.

“To think that the greatest power on earth is out of commission because of Monica Lewinsky’s dress — it’s one of the most surreal episodes in history.”

Last January, when the world first learned of Ms. Lewinsky, the presidential sex scandal triggered a sudden mood swing in U.S.-Israel relations. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had just landed in Washington, expecting to have Bill Clinton read him the riot act for what the Administration saw as foot-dragging on the peace process.

Enter Ms. Lewinsky, and Mr. Clinton was suddenly preoccupied. Mr. Netanyahu had an unexpectedly placid visit and returned to Israel a happy man.

Seven months later, Dr. Beilin was in Washington as part of a four-member delegation of Labour Party leaders. Led by party chairman Ehud Barak, they came in hopes of burnishing their image as a viable alternative to Mr. Netanyahu.

Their prospects seemed bright on the eve of departure. The Knesset had taken a key step towards dissolving itself and calling new elections, handing Mr. Netanyahu one of the worst political reverses of his tenure.

“That means we’re here as a group that could come to power in the near future,” Dr. Beilin maintained.

To their dismay, they arrived to find that President Clinton, too, had just been handed one of the worst political reverses of his tenure: Ms. Lewinsky’s decision to testify about the alleged affair and to hand over a certain cocktail dress. Nobody in Washington was talking about anything else.

“It’s depressing,” the usually ebullient Dr. Beilin said.

“The news begins and ends with Monica’s dress. It feels as though reality has been shoved aside in favor of some virtual reality.”

The Labour MS’s message was that the Administration should keep pushing for an Israeli-Palestinian deal. Washington has been pressing Jerusalem for months to give the Palestinians 13.1 percent of the West Bank in exchange for a string of concessions.

Israel has resisted mightily. A few weeks ago Washington effectively stopped pushing. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright now says the sides should work things out by themselves.

The Labour people believe the hands-off approach is a mistake.

With nearly half of Mr. Netanyahu’s own coalition favoring the US plan, plus the half of Israel that voted against Mr. Netanyahu, the proposal has far more support in Israel than the Premier’s spokesmen let on, they argue. Now is the time to push.

U.S. PRESSURE ‘UNLIKELY’

Unfortunately, said Dr. Beilin, “the United States is not available right now, because it’s somewhere else. It’s caught up in some sort of virtual reality. The fact is that there is a reality out there. It’s called international conflict.

“And right now the victims of those conflicts feel that the so-called policeman of the world can’t respond. As a citizen of the world, it’s one of the most frustrating things imaginable to see the world’s only superpower paralyzed by this foolishness.” Administration officials take sharp exception to the idea that they’re paralyzed.

“This thing’s been going on for months,” sniffed one official. “It hasn’t stopped us from being active on a lot of fronts. We’ve been active in Iraq. We’ve been active in China. If we’re less active in the peace process, it’s because that’s what the policy calls for.”

Privately, many officials concede that Middle East policy is heavily influenced by domestic politics. No one admits Ms. Lewinsky is a factor. But they do admit the question of how heavily Washington can pressure Jerusalem is, as one official put it, “very complicated right now.”

To a degree the complications aren’t new.

Jewish community leaders, though divided on how much Israel should give away, tend to close ranks in the face of administration pressure. It’s a powerful deterrent.

“There are other constraints, too,” says an official. “The Republicans in Congress, the Christian fundamentalist community — all the levers Mr. Netanyahu pulls so well when he’s here. The’re all voices the administration has to listen to.”

At the moment, the voice speaking loudest is the Jewish community.

The reason is simple. In times of crisis, Presidents fall back on core constituencies.

For a Democrat, that begins with Jews. “The last thing the president wants to do at a time like this is offend his best friends,” said a Washington political activist, noting that Clinton was spending the weekend as Steven Spielberg’s houseguest. ”
———–
hee hee hee

Hey, SLC –can you tell me if the “Walter and Selma Kaye” listed as
AIPAC’s 2000 Trustees

are the same Walter and Selma Kaye who brought Monica Lewinsky and her thong underwear into the White House as an intern for President Bill Clinton?

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/21/hillary.funds/index.html

hee hee

Ref: http://www.irmep.org/Policy_Briefs/winep.htm

The best part is that his warped mind thinks that any of this shows that Monica engaged in and revealed her affair to accomplish such goals or in service of the Israel lobby. I’m seriously using this as a great example of the paranoid, conspiratorial mind at work for an upcoming presentation. Hee hee hee indeed. What a weirdo.

It’s a fascinating display of a sick, conspiratorial mind at work.

Julian Assange is the Left’s version of a General: effete snobby and weak.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html

With wikileaks, the left finally got to stop protesting and TAKE the other side.

No idea what this is supposed to mean.

The left makes heroes of traitors

Citation needed.

The left kills indiscriminately since all killing is equally bad

Who have we killed? Are the numbers greater than the 100k+ the DOD has killed in Iraq, including random people at traffic stops, etc.?

Wikileaks in underfunded – and uses this to justify bad acts, rather than not acting.

Assuming this were true, how does it make Wikileaks like the Pentagon?

Wikileaks kills US soldiers.

Citation needed.

Wikileaks assumes it understands how to use the weapon in its hand.

Again, no idea what this is supposed to mean.

Wikileaks despises power it desperately seeks.

Congratulations on your mind-reading powers. That decoder ring must come in handy.

If Wikileaks had a nuclear bomb it would use it on Western powers.

If Morgan had one, he’d use it on Rachel Maddow.

The Left looks at wikileaks and feels a profound sense of patriotism.

Again with the decoder ring. Morgan is sure that’s what we’re feeling because evidence of needless killing always gives him a warm patriotic glow.

Wikileaks is just another James J. Lee – we’ll deal with more of them certainly.

Sorry, too lazy to google James J. Lee, so I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.

Oh you think that’s the one, huh? Until now you completely understand why everyone here would take me very seriously.

Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.

Here’s a question for you: Do you think Obama approves of wikileaks? I’d say the old early Senator Obama would, but I think once he got the first briefing, he became the kind of person you should be.

I think eventually Obama’s two wars can no longer be chalked up to being afraid of being called a pussy (needing a “good war”), eventually you’ll have to see him as what happens when an intellectual pacifist finds out how dangerous the world really is.

And then the question falls to you… do you absorb the new information and gain a respect for the people you once disagreed with, or do you throw him over the side, as nagging proof of how easy it is to corrupt an intellectual pacifist.

Here lets try to find some agreement: http://bit.ly/9eWYWT

That guy, he’s about the same guy as Julian Assange.

AnthonyML, top of your head, blurt out your first response:

Monica Lewinsky, worth oral-anal contact when you are lonely?

http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Monica:Lewinsky.htm

Really guys? Are you really hanging your hat on some pedantry about an analogy requiring two things to be similar across all facets, rather than certain relevant ones?

If Julian Assange ever set foot in the U.S., I hope they’d arrest him for treason. A person who puts real human lives in danger to further a nihilistic agenda of “openness” for its own sake is a sociopath. Period.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixiYZ9DPk8o

When in doubt . . . like Don ever is . . . just count some Jews . . . because their presence always means SOMETHING nasty.

Wikileaks is the Left’s Pentagon

awesome. this is now the stupidest fucking thing i’ve heard all day. and i thought SyFy’s announcement to do a second BSG prequel was going to take the top spot.

Julian Assange is the Left’s version of a General: effete snobby and weak.

Actually, I’ve been hanging out at Coate’s blog and the consensus liberal notion of a great general appears to be U. S. Grant. Intelligent, moral, civilized, organized, considerate of his soldiers, deferential to civilian leadership. Also aggressive and relentless in battle, always more concerned with defeating the enemy than fueling his own ego.

That bastion of liberal thought, the United States army (as noted in the West Point History of American Wars) has also always considered Grant the model of a good American general.

Also, we note that Grant–unlike Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee–was never a traitor to his country.

Just threw the last one in to piss off the neo-Confederates.

He really seems to believe that he’s not an anti-Semite, and that his conclusions are something more than batshit crazy conspiratorial extrapolations from a kernel of truth. I understand that this happens all the time; I guess I always assumed the people trafficking in such bullshit were cynically manipulating their audience–lying. He seems to genuinely believe this stuff. Amazing.

What’s entertaining about Morgan is seeing what topics will cause him to melt down in such a dramatic fashion. The funny thing is that Assange and wikileaks are advocates of the same techno-utopian BS of the sort Morgan is known for. Except that unlike Morgan, Assange has actually done something useful in his life.

Hey, Midland and Anthony

Did Kenneth Pollack, Marty Indyk, Judith Miller, Scooter Libby and William Kristol ever find those nukes of Saddam’s? The families of 4500 dead American soldiers would like to know.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/white-man-s-burden-1.14110

Internet liberals feel the need to attack Wikileaks because they are moral cowards who defer to authority, but are compelled to dress it up for reasons of psycbic comfort. So you get bullshit like this. The pentagon has killed hundreds of thousands of innocents; Wikileaks has killed no one.

Of course, if your career is better served by being cute and “provocative” than by having a modicum of moral seriousness, thern hey. Score.

Don, I don’t give a damn whether they were Jewish, Gentile, Agnostic, or Rosicrucian, they have to take their turn. Cheney’s the first man to the gallows and the rest can walk up the steps while he’s twitching at the end of the rope.

A person who’s actually caused many thousands of human lives to be lost to further an ideology has thereby achieved something a lot worse than anything Assange has done. I’d hope they’d arrest Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bush, etc., whose feet are firmly set in the US. Period.

hee hee

hee hee

Wikileaks has killed no one.

That can’t be said with utter certainty; even if it’s the case, it’s only a matter of time. It’s not like they give a fuck either way, so you can cut the BS about moral cowardice.

I’m more inclined to support their recent collaboration with news orgs to crunch the data, but data is not information, and Wikileaks’ fundamental amorality towards data is at odds with its assertion to be working for the public good. It’s part of a functionally autistic approach towards personal data that can be seen in the work of Google and Facebook’s engineers.

So when U.S. soldiers, through desperation or carelessness, kill Iraqi noncombatants, they are blameless. Likewise the U.S. civilian leadership that cooked up this war based on lies, knowing it would lead to massive death and dismemberment, is also blameless. But let Wikileaks pull aside a piece of the ongoing coverup, and they are fully culpable for anything and everything that happens.

Besides, Assange is both european and effete; that makes him even more guilty.

Hes Australian?

Robert E. Lee was no traitor; he was a gentleman. The very best gentleman in the States, too.

but data is not information, and Wikileaks’ fundamental amorality towards data is at odds with its assertion to be working for the public good. It’s part of a functionally autistic approach towards personal data that can be seen in the work of Google and Facebook’s engineers.

Very trenchant.

This is bullshit, and everyone knows it. What really bothers hypocritical fuckwads like this is the notion that the government might have someone exposing what it does. That is also why Matt is being such a jack-ass in this post. He is a part of the ruling government elite, and he hates, hates, HATES the idea that anyone could ever tell anyone anything about what his friends do in the halls of power.

As for the idea of civilian and congressional oversight well, that is a joke. Congress hasn’t really done proper oversight of anyone or anything in nearly 40 years and most ‘civilian’ oversight is done by people who have extremely prejudicial financial ties with the defense industry. Not that Matt will ever acknowledge either of those facts. CAP might take his car keys away.

If you can’t prove they killed anyone, then shut the fuck up and stop pretending it’s an open question. I bet you can’t prove that you didn’t murder and rape 12 girls back in 1993. Now can you?

Obviously, it’s an open question…

That was in reply to Pseudonymous up there, for some reason it refused to actually post it under his name.

I can’t believe the commenters here expressing outrage at wikileaks and buying into this false equivalency. These are seriously pathetic citizens.

Myles takes the bait and wins the pitcher of mint juleps! He even tosses in the bizarre assumption that being a “gentleman” is somehow a relevant description in the context, and that that we would all agree that the words “traitor” and “gentleman” were mutually exclusive.

Both Grant and Lee were honorable “gentleman,” by the standards of their culture. They settled the surrender terms at Appomattox with very little fuzz or miscommunication.

I’m pretty sure Matt was being sarcastic in that sentence.

So how is that Obama/Democratic Congressional investigation of Bush/Cheney pre-war Iraqi Intelligence going, Midland and Anthony. After all,
Obama is President–has access to ALL intelligence — and Democrats have huge supermajorities in both Houses of Congresses. Should be EASY to prove that “Bush Lied –People Died” meme.

Or did Haim Saban, Kenneth Pollack and Marty Indyk –along with Bibi — suggest that subject should be dropped?

I can’t help imagining soullite with a comically overwrought scowl that has stuck, rictus-like, after years and years of forcing his/her face into it.

Amnesty International counts among those who consider Wikileaks’ approach flawed. If you think that recklessly endangering people who show up in the records is a price worth paying, then it just confirms what we already know about you.

Nice set of straw men you have there.

But let Wikileaks pull aside a piece of the ongoing coverup, and they are fully culpable for anything and everything that happens.

Either Wikileaks has some degree of responsibility towards what it releases, or its claim to be working in the public interest is bullshit. I don’t see many of its defenders saying that Assange and company are just in it for the lulz, but that’s the logical conclusion of their arguments.

(Compare and contrast Wikileaks and Cryptome.)

There’s a difference between cops (dealing with us) and soldiers (dealing for us). When the national boundaries are disposed of we can be purists it’s just us against the state…. but right now, we are at war, we have young kids (friends and relatives) dying and as such “information wants to be free” as long as it doesn’t serve to expose our national defenses.

When Julian Assange is assassinated, I hope we freely inform everyone we did it.

You need to look up the word “traitor”.

Congressional oversight might be a real benefit if we had a Congress that was actually looking out for the public interest. Name me one instance in the last decade where Congressional oversight has uncovered and dealt with some serious malfeasance at the Pentagon, waste of money, etc.

Congress itself is often the one most desirous of seeing the Pentagon waste money.

Oh, okay, sure, Wikileaks has some non-zero level of responsibility for what happens over there, but so what? It’s only a problem *if* we have soldiers occupying that country right? And the American people can’t make a rational choice as to whether or not to keep them there without accurate information right? Isn’t this especially true when we get into wars of choice?

It seems to me that if we’re worried about the wellbeing of our soldiers and affiliates, then we ought to be concerned first and foremost with the question of whether or not we should be putting soldiers in harms way to begin with. If they weren’t there, they wouldn’t be exposed to the savage danger of Wikileaks… or actual weapons for that matter.

Oh, and “…but data is not information” Wtf? I’m pretty sure “factual information” is data, and data is information.

The logical conclusion of your argument is that we mere citizens shouldn’t trouble our beautiful minds, and should let those good people at the Pentagon do whatever the f they want. Effete third parties giving independent information about the situation are horrible and should be blamed for anything bad that happens.

PS Even assuming you had any evidence that Wikileaks caused troop deaths, the fact remains that the U.S. citizenry has a right to know if the armed forces we fund and provide manpower for are committing widespread war crimes. If the Pentagon won’t be honest about what it’s doing, then it falls to people like Assange. If you don’t like what he does, then get the U.S. government to stop lying and covering up. Without that, Assange would have nothing to do here.

This is sort of a perfect example of what we’re talking about. Something that only makes sense if you already accept the fact of a Jewish conspiracy, and when challenged you’ll say “well why do YOU think it happened”, as if the onus is on us to come up with something else, otherwise your batshit crazy theory is the default. It’s really amazing to see someone who doesn’t argue like this knowing that it’s bullshit, but really has a brain that functions in this sick way.

So Anthony thinks Professor Mearsheimer and Walt were wrong when they spoke of an Israel Lobby? Although they had to go overseas to get published, as I recall.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/john-mearsheimer/the-israel-lobby

Amnesty International counts among those who consider Wikileaks’ approach flawed

I think their approach is flawed, too, but all other institutions that were supposed to offer competing models have completely failed. If wikileaks is doing such a bad job, then the NYT, the DoJ, and Congress can show the world how it’s supposed to be done, but their track record when it comes to holding the pentagon accountable is very poor.

False Equivalence is false, as the saying goes. And the comparison isn’t just false: it doesn’t even make rhetorical sense. It just sounds like a typical Fox News whine.

This is what I’m talking about. How does that at all demonstrate your suggestion about why Obama isn’t prosecuting Bush-era war crimes? It’s the same with Zionism and Nazi anti-Semitism, with Monica Lewinsky—some extrapolation from something related is taken as a supported fact. As I said, I’ve never before encountered anyone whose brain actually seemed to work this way, rather than using such dishonest argumentation in the service of cynical manipulation. It’s just amazing. The existance of influential lobby on behalf of Israel, plus the fact that the people you referred to are Jewish is enough for you to conclude that Obama hasnt’ prosecuted Bush-era war crimes becuase of said Israel lobby, rather than the Occam’s razor answer and in absence of any evidence. You really are sick.

Hahahah

You are an idiot.

According to Lee’s own conception, he fought because he understood his loyalty, as loyalty then was sometimes understood, to lie with his home state, Virginia.

He was a gentleman and patriot of Virginia. A traitor to the United States, perhaps, but at that time many did not understand the loyalty to the Union to override the loyalty to the individual States.

Re Anthony’s comment “The existance of influential lobby on behalf of Israel, plus the fact that the people you referred to are Jewish is enough for you to conclude that Obama hasnt’ prosecuted Bush-era war crimes becuase of said Israel lobby,”
————–
Actually, it seems to me that the dishonesty is all on your side — that you twist any criticism of the Israel Lobby’s malign influence upon the Democratic Caucus into a claim of anti-semitism.

The people I cited actively worked to drag the USA into an unnecessary war that killed 4500 of our soldiers and cost us $300 billion people.

You resolutely IGNORE that fact and argue that criticism of anyone who is Jewish is anti-semitic , regardless of what the person does.

While I can see how that stance is convenient for whores of the Democratic Party and of the Israel Lobby, it is anti-semitic itself. Because it implies such whores represent the views and wishes of the Jewish American community.

Neither the White House nor anyone in the Democratic Caucus will stand up to AIPAC and demand that Israel make peace with the Palestians — or lose our protection and $3 Billion per year in aid.

Because the Democrats fear that a number of their major donors will defect to the Republicans. They sent 4500 men to their deaths to keep those donors.

This is so fucking obvious it should not even need to be stated —
yet those who point it out get nothing but evasions, deceit and false
accusations of anti-semitism. Which , in my opinion, is just the bald-faced lies that Democratic Whores hurl to cover up their back-stabbing corruption.

I doubt that you are even Jewish — I think you are just some Democratic hack dealing with criticism of corruption in the usual dishonest way.

What’s your vague “Occam’s razor answer”, Anthony? Why did Obama and the Caucus refuse to investigate how 4500 soldiers could have been killed chasing nukes that did not exist?

Must have been because of the Israel lobby, right? Nothing else comes to mind as at all plausible?

You’re sick, and you discredit yourself over and over. I honestly can’t believe you still post here, or that you really believe that the things you cite are evidence for your conclusions. I’ve stoked you a bit to see how far this goes and now have some great examples to teach about conspiratorial minds in politics. I’m done with you (and I mean it this time!).

Any evidence that Obama declined to prosecute based on this, besides “it seems plausible, Jews are involved, must be true”? You start with your conclusions about Jewish conpsiracies, and that’s the only way your evidence *almost* suggests your conclusions. it’s the same with everything else I’ve probed your thought process on, and it’s sick.

So?

Saying that Lee was a traitor is not a very descriptive and illuminating way of understanding what he actually was. It’s like saying the IRA in Northern Ireland were traitors to Britain. What does that even mean?

Yes, Wikileaks is “the Left’s Pentagon,” because Wikileaks, too, is slaughtering tens of thousands of people across the Middle East and Central Asia and threatening the rest of the world with a stockpile of nuclear bombs?

I provide citations to specific acts and statements — you , on the other hand, provide NOTHING but unsubstantiated slurs. over and over. Why should I –or anyone else — care what scum like you think?

You’re not getting it, jheartney. Yes, the U.S. military has murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people – but that’s their job.They’re our there, killing people, to defend our rights! Specifically, our right to send them out to kill people.

But Wikileaks – they let people know that the U.S. military has been killing people. And that’s bad, because that could make other people upset – upset enough to kill them back! So you see, telling people that someone else has been killing people is really, when you don’t think about it, much worse than killing people.

No, you don’t. You do what conspiracy theorists do–you cite unrelated things that *could* suggest your conclusion if one were already convinced of it, but in now way support your conclusion. It’s just extrapolation that depends on already believing in your conclusions. It’s just like with your Zionism/Germany example: *nothing* you’ve posted above serves as evidence that Obama didn’t pursue prosecutions because of the Israel lobby. Nothing you’ve posted comes close to suggesting that. It doesn’t matter what I post–the onus is on you to demonstrate these paranoid claims, and whenever you post a piece of evidence that you think does that, you embarass yourself further and further reveal that you really are possessed of this sick, conspiratorial mind that you can’t think outside of.

Nope.

Let me make this easier for you: Democrats have donors; a Democrat did/didn’t do something in no way proves that this action was taken or not based on the will of those donors. It only works for a given specific case if you already believe anti-Semitic conspiracies theories. The onus isn’t on me to show why a thing happened–this is a weird view of yours, that you can propose some unsubstantiated bullshit and it stands unless proven otherwise; sorry, the onus is on you. And you think that this convoluted series of interests and outcomes is not only the most likely explanation, you think it *demonstrates* the veracity of your claims. You’re really sick. Again, you’ve discredited yourself and really should stop showing your face around here.

They are BLAMELESS. They are ours. They represent US. Our country. Our voters.

If there is blame. We ALL eat it.

It isn’t a question of whether important information needs to be published – it DOES, it is a question of enemies.

Someone is acting against our soldiers, that makes them an enemy. Period. If you are so dumb as to think this is about “information” you are retarded. Someone is ROOTING to see our guys killed.

The question is this: Is there a way for crucial information we need need to know about to make its way to US, and not be dumped en total through Al-Jazeera on our enemies?

If someone was most concerned with our soldiers, they’d have acted another way. And we have a responsibility to value the lives of our soldiers over other innocents enough that we make wikileaks approach criminal.

Should Afghanistan end? YES. There is no oil there, last time I checked.

But that is not this question.

Re Anthony’s comment ” Let me make this easier for you: Democrats have donors; a Democrat did/didn’t do something in no way proves that this action was taken or not based on the will of those donors. It only works for a given specific case if you already believe anti-Semitic conspiracies theories. ”
————–
Or if you believe that Democratic politicans obey those who fund their campaigns and prefer to not have their careers destroyed the way S Daniel Abraham destroyed Howard Dean’s in the 2004 Iowa primary. That they prefer not to have a massive flood of money from Hollywood and New York flowing into their district the way Cynthia McKinney saw happen.

It seems to me that you are the one making up “conspiracy theories” in order to duck reality. AIPAC has never made a secret of the fact that it tries to destroy those who don’t toe its line.

And where is the evidence that this had anything to do with Obama not prosecuting Bush-era war crimes? Oh, it’s all just from your conspiratorial logic? Well, that’s just as good as evidence I guess, especially in light of the lack of any simpler, more likely explanations.

Sick.

Simpler explanations that you seem unable to give, Anthony.

You don’t seem bothered by the unnecessary deaths of 4500 soldiers. Why is that?

Holy non sequitur, batman!

And I’m not offering simpler explanations to make a point: your batshit crazy cart-before-the-horse extrapolation doesn’t stand until someone else offers a real, evidence based explanation. That’s not how this works. The burden is on you to demonstrate your theories, not to show things that logically *could* suggest the explanation you propose without any actual evidence that they *do*. Doing that and saying “well, show me another reason” is fundamentally dishonest. Again, I always assumed that everyone who argued like you did it knowingly and dishonestly, but you are evidence that this paranoid mode of thinking really takes some people over: you show that everytime you triumphantly post some evidence that doesn’t come close to demonstrating what you say it does, and then saying “well why do *you* think it happened.” You realise, you’ve shown nothing that demonstrates the connection your make to anyone who doesn’t already accept that it must be true and then goes looking for things that could suggest it, right? You’re truly sick.

Yes, well you present your case to the jury and I’ll present mine and we will let them decide. Except you apparently don’t have a case.

In the meantime, I have made it plain that I hold you in contempt so I don’t understand why you think I will flee in terror from your disfavor. You are just some asshole on the Internet who can evidently produce nothing of substance.

It is quite fascinating to see Morgan melt down in such dramatic fashion.