Wikileaks promises release 7x bigger than Iraq War Logs, asks for donations

http://www.itworld.com/internet/128431/wikileaks-promises-release-7-times-bigger-iraq-war-logs

by abennett • 16 years ago

48 41 16 years ago

yequalsx7• 16 years ago

One of the most disappointing things about Wikileaks is that the release of documents about the U.S. torturing people and the war going badly hasn't had any adverse affect on the support for the war. It's proof that people just don't care. It's depressing.

The need by governments to keep everything secret is a bit irrational. People don't care.

szpindel2• 16 years ago

That's sadly true. Same goes for WL's recent policy of sensationalism; in their early years, they simply released documents. Now it's dramatic titles, commentary, expensive media deals. I have nothing against WL for this; it's simply a sign that, unless things are made dramatic - indeed, even if things are made dramatic, after the first few weeks - the public no longer care.

lhnz2• 16 years ago

You seem to care, but you sound apathetic. Would you try and do anything about it if I and others were to ask you to help?

Abid• 16 years ago

But you have to acknowledge the fact that more people are now exposed to the Wikileaks data precisely because of Wikileaks's "dramatic" release announcements.

tedunangst2• 16 years ago

I actually care less when things are made dramatic. When WL was a repository of truth, I supported it. As its mission changes to become an agent for change, I support it less.

jon_hendry2• 16 years ago

The main thing about the Iraq War Logs was that there was nothing particularly new or surprising or shocking. Details about incidents, but nothing war critics didn't already assume had happened many times.

When someone says "We've got horrible things to reveal", your imagination fills in the blanks, extrapolating from what we've already found out to even more horrible extremes.

But then what Wikileaks revealed didn't live up to that. It was pretty much more of the same things we already knew.

It's no wonder the reaction was subdued. It doesn't mean people don't care, it just means we're too burnt out to work up a rage about the sorts of things we already knew were happening.

yequalsx7• 16 years ago

What you say makes sense but it is still sad.

With regard to torture, first there was denial. Then we were told it was rouge elements of the military that did these things. Then came rationalization. We had to do it. After Wikileaks proved beyond a doubt the scope of the crimes there's apathy. The country has gotten so apathetic that Bush admits to his crimes in his memoirs and yet has no fear of prosecution.

It's sad that many Americans see ourselves as a force of good and when confronted with irrefutable proof of our crimes the nation, for the most part, just shrugged it's shoulders. I agree with your analysis. I wish reality were different though.

forza2• 16 years ago

Do you seriously believe the whole "the leak is very serious, but at the same time trivial"-story? It's a classic defense mechanism or tactic, depending on who you ask, in crisis management. I don't know any good English sources for this off the top of my head, but I it's called "trivialization", "minimization" or "disavowal". You can also google "crisis communication", "crisis management" or "image restoration" and you'll probably find something interesting like http://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/98A1/Benoit.htm

commandar• 16 years ago

This is really the key and why I've never liked the comparisons to the Pentagon Papers. Wikileaks may have changed the narrative at the margins, but overall the leak didn't reveal much about the big picture that hasn't been common knowledge for a good while.

The Pentagon Papers, on the other hand, revealed that multiple presidential administrations had deliberately lied to the public about what was going on in Vietnam. The Downing Street memo is probably the closest Iraq war analogue.

tptacek3• 16 years ago

The Wikileaks Iraq leak (apparently) predominately documented torture by Iraqis. If anything, it enhanced the US narrative, in part by documenting belligerent activity by Iran, and in part by creating a contrast between our professional military and their abusive militias.

Part of the US narrative about Iraq (a part that I completely believe) holds that however bad Iraq is now, it's got to be better than decennial waves of genocide punctuated by monthly feedings of dissidents through industrial paper shredders.

I'm not a supporter of the Iraq war, but I'm not naive enough to think that Iraq was a playground before we got there. I have a hunch I may speak for a fair portion of the "depressing" majority of people who are not outraged by this last disclosure.

yequalsx7• 16 years ago

Iraq was a mess before we invaded. Saddam was brutal. We, apparently, have been less so but not by too much. It's a pretty low standard to have that we just be better than Saddam. We should also keep in mind that in the 80's it was we who supplied Saddam. It was we who turned a blind eye when he was using chemical weapons to gas Kurds.

Our whole involvement with Iraq over the past few decades has been revolting.

grandalf2• 16 years ago

It did enhance aspects of the US narrative, and diminished others. This is a good thing, since it added to the overall truthfulness of the narrative.

US strategy has been to hide the proxy war it's fighting with Iran from the American public, while increasing the rhetoric/rancor against Iran, so that eventually if/when there is more open conflict, the American people already view the Iranian people as barbaric subhumans.

glenstein2• 16 years ago

Politico called it a "devastating portrait of apparent U.S. indifference to a pattern of murder and torture." BBC said the memos "Show U.S. 'ignored torture'". I only remember the New York Times anything that could be construed as favorable to the U.S. and I'm guessing that your impression was shaped by the NY Times article by Sabrina Tavernise and Andrew W. Lehren.

Anyway, the reports of U.S. indifference and maybe even complicity in Iraqi acts of torture is not enhancing to the U.S. image, which isn't to say misleading reporting couldn't enhance our image after the fact.

GHFigs3• 16 years ago

documents about the U.S. torturing people

Do you have a specific example of this? Every instance I have seen or heard about refers to the actions of Iraqi security forces.

hasn't had any adverse affect on the support for the war. It's proof that people just don't care.

At the risk of being mistaken for some kind of right-wing buffoon, I have to say that what I've gleaned from the Iraq war leak has had an adverse effect on my opposition to it. The sketch of what Iraq will be after the US withdraws is there and I'm not convinced it's any better. I still don't know what to do with that, but perhaps it's a sign of why many or most people don't care: there is no simple answer. That is, you can't just release a bunch of documents and end a war, because such documents will only give you a higher resolution picture of a complex reality.

I think that Wikileaks has sort of hobbled itself by relying on document bombs and overt political objectives instead of just focusing on sensemaking. They get a lot more attention this way, but much less capacity to change minds.

The need by governments to keep everything secret is a bit irrational. People don't care.

You're basing that on the mistaken assumption that the intent of all military secrecy is to withhold information from the citizens it serves and not enemies current and potential. The widespread appeal of that assumption is what WIkileaks depends on for donations but it's still bonkers.

yequalsx7• 16 years ago

Long before the Wikileaks report there was the report by Major General Taguba which included in it the fact that a man was forced to rape his son while under U.S. custody. In the Wikileaks documents we come to know that the Iraqi forces routinely torture. Our leaders knew this and yet did little to stop it. They refused to allow Red Cross personnel to have access.

One can hide behind the fact that it was Iraqis doing this but given our sway over their forces this doesn't hold water with me. We did nothing to stop these abuses. We turned over detainees to people we knew were going to torture. It makes us just as guilty as the ones who were doing the torture. Getting other people to do the dirty work is no less reprehensible.

The leaked documents show that our forces deliberately killed people while in the process of surrenduring. Our forces have executed civilians. The picture painted by these document is indeed a bleak one. It also demonstrates that we, as a nation, have no moral authority. The meme that we are good and they are bad is a false one that has been destroyed by our actions in this war in the minds of the rest of the world. It just hasn't sunk in with the average American.

I don't advocate that we leave Iraq right now. It's a mess. I do advocate that generals and former Presidents be arrested for war crimes though. It's sad to me as an American that we have sunk so low so fast.

nubian• 16 years ago

I'm not sure if you're only referring to WikiLeaks, but as for torture:

The CIA's waterboarding regimen was so excruciating, the memos show, that agency officials found themselves grappling with an unexpected development: detainees simply gave up and tried to let themselves drown.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/03/09/waterboarding_f...

"Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus."

nodata• 16 years ago

Can you recommend a good analysis of the Iraq leak?

forza2• 16 years ago

This might be obvious, but maybe it will be helpful for someone:

Wikileaks: http://warlogs.wikileaks.org/ Diary dig: http://warlogs.wikileaks.org/iraq/diarydig War logs: http://warlogs.owni.fr/

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/iraq-war-logs Der Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/international/topic/iraq_war_logs/ Bureau of Investigative Journalism: http://www.iraqwarlogs.com/ Al Jazeera: http://english.aljazeera.net/secretiraqfiles/

Video - Bureau of Investigative Journalism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUDxADbXhuU Al Jazeera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU718vXkrwY

iterationx2• 16 years ago

... In October the group released a package of almost 400,000 documents called the Iraq War Logs in coordination with major commercial media organisations.

7 x 400,000 = 2.8m documents?

You don't change people's minds by releasing 2.8 million pages of documentation, you change it by repeating your slogan over and over and over.

aw3c2• 16 years ago

Wikileaks leaking such documents makes it possible for the actual media to make fresh and truthful presentations with their data (thus maybe repeating your slogan again and again).

Eliezer• 16 years ago

> You don't change people's minds by releasing 2.8 million pages of documentation, you change it by repeating your slogan over and over and over.

Welcome to my quotes file. Do you want a name on that in case I use it sometime?

iterationx2• 16 years ago

My handle's fine, I'm just summarizing Edward Bernay's ideas from Propaganda. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)

lhnz2• 16 years ago

It amuses me that you say this... A while back I started secretly quoting people from new.yc on my tumblr when they said something intelligent.

wmf• 16 years ago

Wikileaks is no longer about the content of the leaks anyway; it's all about the process of leaking them. Given the assumption that nobody's going to read the leaks anyway, a bigger number is better. New! Now with 7x more leaks!

szpindel2• 16 years ago

I can pick up that the intent of the poster of this was to imply that this promise was simply to gain donation money. While I don't know overly much about how such issues are typically handled in these communities, I'd far rather donate to Wikileaks's "secret docs coming over, keep us strong" then Wikipedia's "look at me, I'm Jimbo Wales".

davidj• 16 years ago

I am extremely suspicious of wikileaks and its motivation. For example, they believe that WMD were found in Iraq. I won't be surprised if we find out in 15 years the whole thing was a DOD disinformation campaign.

promethean• 16 years ago

Hello kind Sers,

I am having the very good pleasure of speaking to you as Head of Wikileaks site for bad information on countries! Our previous Head has been removed for bad touching of females leaving Wikileaks with all his 2,800,000 seekrits but we cannot touch them!

All his seekrits are belong to you because our panel decided your are super most trustworthy of all on teh internets. All you must be doing to access your seekrits is by making donation first of small $10,000.00 and seekrits are in you hard drive!

lazugod• 16 years ago

What's the significance of this release being seven times larger?

Wikileaks promises release 7x bigger than Iraq War Logs, asks for donations

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