A Superpower's View of the World (Liberals Open Pandora's Box)

Der Spiegel ^ | 11/29/10 | SPIEGEL Staff

[Typical_Whitey]

251,000 State Department documents, many of them secret embassy reports from around the world, show how the US seeks to safeguard its influence around the world. It is nothing short of a political meltdown for US foreign policy.

[edcoil]

Don’t you have to actually have a foreign policy to have it exposed?

[FrankR]

It boggles my mind how this can happen. Even in the Air Force classified documents were kept in a locked safe, inside a locked building, inside a secured compound...and most of them were simply technical manuals.

How does a government allow secret docuements to be posted on the internet?

It hasn't been that long ago that someone would have been tried for treason and shot for such an offense.

My last bit of wonderment is, if these international classified top secret documents can make it out to the world, then by what power or authority is the COLB kept hidden?

There are some evil doings afoot in this country, and it's time they were stopped.

[nolongerademocrat]

How long do you think that the people who released this information will survive?

[theDentist]

Until their natural deaths.

[theDentist]

and what has their survival rate to do with a ‘gay tiff’ that you mentioned?

[Chuckster]

Anyone want to start a pool?

I'm in.

I'll take (Apparent)suicide in 90 days.

[avid]

Because Wikileaks only had one source (Manning, an American).

[nolongerademocrat]

do your own research

[nolongerademocrat]

good choice.

[theDentist]

Nope, if you can’t explain your own post, I’m not going to try and figure out your thought process. Have a good day, though.

[ichabod1]

Someone here just suggested that it is telling that it is the STATE DEPARTMENT that is in meltdown. Prolly lots of dirt on Hillary! in there. This could very well remove that man’s challenge from the left. It is right out of his senate campaign play book.

[Cheerio]

1) WHO in the Government has access to 250,000 classified documents? How is that allowed? Any access I ever had was limited to "need to know".

2) Since when does the "Freedom of the Press (1st amendment) apply to Wikileaks? They are not part of the press. Put your DoD Cyberwar capabilities to work and shut wikileaks down. DOES THE WH WANT THESE RELEASED? Is this an opening to the Bush war crimes trial?

[Cheerio]

I still something is wrong in the Government security doctrine that allows ONE person access to hundreds of thousands of classified documents for which he could not have had a "Need to Know".

The leaked cables range up to the "SECRET NOFORN" level, which means they are meant never to be shown to non-US citizens
....snip....
It was childishly easy, according to the published chatlog of a conversation Manning had with a fellow-hacker. "I would come in with music on a CD-RW labelled with something like 'Lady Gaga' … erase the music … then write a compressed split file. No one suspected a thing ... [I] listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga's Telephone while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history." He said that he "had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months".

How 250,000 US embassy cables were leaked

[DBrow]

“How does a government allow secret docuements to be posted on the internet?

It hasn’t been that long ago that someone would have been tried for treason and shot for such an offense.”

Allow is the key word, I think. This took some work and coordination to pull off.

[ExSoldier]

How long do you think that the people who released this information will survive?

This isn't the Clinton WH and I think that the F.O.B. (Friend's Of Bill) operators that shuffled over 110 souls off the planet are sitting this one out. They don't want Obozo to succeed and moreover, they know he and his cohorts are too stooooopid to get away with this stuff for very long. When the fall happens, the accompanying FALL OUT is going to be long, wet and smelly. Nobody who knows what they're doing is going to want to be anywhere near this idiot when the lids start getting ripped off. It's kind of like the reason they called the old WWII Flattops (aircraft carriers) "Bomb Magnets."

[mquinn]

> Look at all these wonderful diplomatic, and statecraft achievements on the “O” watch!!!

We should go to the Wikipedia and create an article named “List of the Obama administration’s foreign policy achievements”, and leave it completely blank. In fact, if this comes out clickable;

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_the_Obama_administration%27s_foreign_policy_achievements&action=edit&redlink=1

that will do it.

[paul51]

How long do you think that the people who released this information will survive?

Long enough to get a book deal

[wolfcreek]

Has anyone seen any info that we DIDN’T ALREADY KNOW?

[Wuli]

“It is nothing short of a political meltdown for US foreign policy.”

This could be a very true statement, however to whatever extent it is true (political meltdown) it will be due to how little foreign governments and foreign diplomats will trust that their dealings with the U.S. government will be secure, trusted, and held in the most strict confidentially - an atmosphere that invites diplomats to be more candid with each other than they can be publicly.

While publicly many will be upset about specific leaks, but more important to all of them is “how did the Obama admin allow this to happen in the first place”.

I imagine, from hear on in, Billary will get little candid cooperation from all those nations the U.S. sheeple have been told our relations have so vastly improved with under BHO-Billary.

[Anonymous coward]

Apart from the political disaster aspect...
I have been reading some of the accounts of what has been leaked and I have to say I’m unhappy about any Iraqui or Afghani operatives that may have been uncovered but.....
As for the diplomatic dance of bullsh*t- I’m glad its over. The Saudis? HaHa, watch your tent bro, it’ll be going up in smoke soon. All the European high nosed jerks? Now you know how even the U.S. leftist elite truly feel about you- Naked Emperors!
The funny thing is, to hear these dimmocrat foreign policy wonks talk in private, you’d think they were Republicans!