Yemeni president covers up US strikes: WikiLeaks

AFP via Yahoo News ^ | 11/28/10 | AFP staff

[Enchante]

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh admits covering up US military strikes on Al-Qaeda in Yemen by claiming they are carried out by Yemeni forces, according to US documents leaked by WikiLeaks.

"We?ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," Saleh said in January talks with General David Petraeus, then commander of US forces in the Middle East, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable published by the New York Times.

[Enchante]

DAMN..... this is the kind of release that can do serious harm to fighting terrorists.... we can lose all cooperation, however inadequate, from govts in countries like Yemen, Pakistan, all over the Middle East and Asia (well world-wide!). What leader wants to be exposed to his own people and regional rivals as working with the USA on stuff like this???

We could lose just about all cooperation in many countries due to the Wikileaks crap. Julian Assange and his cohorts will have lots of blood on their hands before long, if they don't already.

btw, why was one low-level military intel guy able to access all these State Dept. cables from all over the world???? Seems like some really bad internal security and lack of compartmentalization??

[Brilliant]

Obama is a war monger.

[Cheetahcat]

How long are we going to permit this Fairy to release our sensitive material?

[headstamp 2]

This stuff will get people killed one way or another.

[sourcery]

why was one low-level military intel guy able to access all these State Dept. cables from all over the world???? Seems like some really bad internal security and lack of compartmentalization??

That's the only relevant issue. The only workable assumption is that any secrets that can be dug up by an amateur effort were also discovered by the professionals.

[himno hero]

Which one(s)?

Obama or Assange or their team?

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

The problem is the public exposure of this cooperation by the Yemeni leader. I expect that a fatwa has already been issued against him, and would hate to be his insurance man.

[himno hero]

This runs right up the pole and into Obama’s office.

[Cementjungle]

How long are we going to permit this Fairy to release our sensitive material?

However long it takes to completely destroy America.

[radu]

btw, why was one low-level military intel guy able to access all these State Dept. cables from all over the world????

I'm not so sure he's the one who released these docs. It wasn't that long ago that we were hearing about gov't. computers being hacked, and they traced it back to servers in China. Could be the Chinese who released these docs.
Unless that soldier admitted to this and I just haven't seen that tidbit of news.

[freedomwarrior998]

I can’t figure out why this piece of filth isn’t dead yet.

[Cacique]

Notice wikileaks was not one of the websites they shut down yesterday. No, music downloaders are a more serious threat to democratic party contributors than terrorists are to the nation..

[ByDesign]

This cat is out of the bag, and it’s not going back in. The lines have been drawn, and the folks behind wikileaks are not backing down.

Makes you wonder what their ultimate trump card is that they may be holding...

[TigersEye]

The CIA no longer seems to be capable of getting secrets, keeping secrets or doing anything about people who steal secrets so let’s save a large cargo ship full of money and defund it.

[KevinDavis]

Soon to be Former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.....

[TribalPrincess2U]

What were the sites shut down and why?

Thanks

[Truth29]

I wonder if the US’s totally ineffective response to WikiLeaks is, in part, because Obama is quite happy to see the further weakening of our relationships with allies and other cooperators?

[EQAndyBuzz]

Wouldn’t surprise me if the servers were located in Langley, VA.

[KevinDavis]

He has time to shut down Torrent sites, but no time to shut down Wikileaks.. I’m not surprised.. I wonder if someone in the CIA is p*****d at Obama is doing this.

[TomGuy]

The CIA no longer seems to be capable of getting secrets, keeping secrets or doing anything about people who steal secrets so let’s save a large cargo ship full of money and defund it.

Unintended consequences.

Interesting commentary in The Guardian [UK]:

Asked why such sensitive material was posted on a network accessible to thousands of government employees, the state department spokesman told the Guardian: "The 9/11 attacks and their aftermath revealed gaps in intra-governmental information sharing. Since the attacks of 9/11, the US government has taken significant steps to facilitate information sharing. These efforts were focused on giving diplomatic, military, law enforcement and intelligence specialists quicker and easier access to more data to more effectively do their jobs."

He added: "We have been taking aggressive action in recent weeks and months to enhance the security of our systems and to prevent the leak of information."

The Guardian: US embassy cables leak sparks global diplomatic crisis has an extensive background article on this whole documents issue and some expected situations when the document contents are released.