Free Republic

We are told by careful pollsters that half of the American people believe that American troops should be brought home from Iraq immediately. This news discourages supporters of our efforts there. Not me, though: I am relieved. Given press coverage of our efforts in Iraq, I am surprised that 90 percent of the public do not want us out right now. Between January 1 and September 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed...

      WASHINGTON — It's a tough time to be a member of the U.S. armed forces. Those serving in our all-volunteer military — and their families — are stretched and stressed by more than nine years of war. Unfortunately, our commander in chief — supposedly the champion of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines — isn't doing anything to make serving in uniform any easier. President Barack Obama — fresh from his 3 1/2-hour "visit" to Afghanistan — continues to insist that the U.S. Senate act immediately to allow active homosexuals to serve in the military....

Rajendra Pachauri denies helping Washington block scientist from senior post on intergovernmental climate bodyThe US used backstage diplomatic manoeuvres to help block the appointment of a scientist from Iran to a key position on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a leaked diplomatic cable reveals.The US privately lobbied IPCC chair Dr Rajendra Pachauri, as well as the UK, EU, Argentina and Mali representatives, and had put its embassies to work from Brazil to Uzbekistan. It wanted to prevent the election of Dr Mostafa Jafari as one of two co-chairmen of a key working group.The other co-chair was to be...

To the United States, Julian Assange may now be Public Enemy Number One. Some American politicians have even called for his execution. But less than a year ago, the founder of WikiLeaks was officially entertained at a US Embassy cocktail party by one of the very diplomats whose secrets he would soon spill to the world. Mr Assange's site had already published dozens of leaks embarrassing to the US, including secret Guantanamo Bay detainee handling manuals and the full emails of Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate. The US State Department condemned the manuals' publication as "a criminal act."

The WikiLeaks dump of State Depart ment cables confirmed what practi cally every foreign-policy analyst not named Stephen Walt already knew: that Israel is hardly the only Middle Eastern country worried about Iran's nuclear ambitions. From Cairo to Riyadh to Abu Dhabi, Sunni Arab leaders have repeatedly singled out Iran as the greatest threat to regional stability -- in private. But they refuse to speak out publicly, telling US diplomats that they'd face a tremendous domestic blowback if they were seen as siding with the West against a Muslim country. Yet this is a dilemma of their own making. Even...

IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win." His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign. Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public. I grew up...

Here’s an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American television–particularly Fox News Channel and David Letterman’s Late Show–are proving to be powerful weapons against “violent jihad.” As the U.K.’s Guardian reports, uncensored satellite broadcasts of popular American shows–with Arabic subtitles–carried via Saudi channel MBC, have turned young Saudis into huge fans of Desperate Housewives, Friends, and Fox News: “It’s still all about the war of ideas here, and the American programming on MBC...

Assange is seeking supporters to put up surety and bail for him. He said he expected to have to post bail of between £100,000 and £200,000 and would require up to six people offering surety, or risked being held on remand. In recent days Assange, 39, has told friends that he is increasingly convinced the US is behind Swedish prosecutors' attempts to extradite him for questioning on the assault allegations. He has said the original allegations against him were motivated by "personal issues" but that Sweden had subsequently behaved as "a cipher" for the US. He has also said he...

It’s all a grand charade — the matinee show put on by the Theater of Science was merely being used for the Grand Extravaganza called the Theater of Politics.Wikileaks, not surprisingly, turned up some not-so-diplomatic and not-so-scientific goings-on in the political race to steer power and dollars.From The Guardian The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic...

JERUSALEM – The Jordanian government maintains a "powerful undercurrent of doubt" that the Obama administration knows how to deal with Iran, according to classified documents released by WikiLeaks and reviewed by WND. An April 2009 cable from the U.S. embassy in Jordan summarized the Jordanian leadership's attitudes toward President Obama's offer of diplomacy to Iran. "Jordan's leaders are careful not to be seen as dictating toward the U.S.," read the cable, "but their comments betray a powerful undercurrent of doubt that the United States knows how to deal effectively with Iran." The cable continued: "(Jordanian) Foreign Minister Nasser Joudeh has...

Wikileaks Cables Expose John Kerry as an Enemy of Peace in the Mideast 2010 November 30 by Seth Mandel When Barack Obama became president, he finally put one issue to rest: No, the Democratic Party is not pro-Israel. But the WikiLeaks revelations have now put in doubt another claim: that the Democrats want peace for Israel and her neighbors.The question is raised with regard to John Kerry, the Democrats’ previous standard-bearer. One of the leaked diplomatic cables divulges that in a meeting with the emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa, Kerry “added that Netanyahu also needs to compromise and work...

Israelis can't be blamed for mistrusting Arabs, according to remarks by the ruler of the Arab state of Qatar released by the WikiLeaks group in the latest of a string of surprising revelations. Qatar's Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, made the comments in a meeting with U.S. Senator John Kerry on February 23. A report of their discussions, obtained by the WikiLeaks group, was filed by America's Ambassador to Qatar Joseph LeBaron.

United Nations official says US order to diplomats to glean intelligence on UN leadership may breach international law The senior American diplomat at the UN tonight defended her team after WikiLeaks disclosed a US spying operation targeting the UN's secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, and members of the security council. Susan Rice, the US ambassador appointed to the UN by Barack Obama last year, appeared uncomfortable and, at times, exasperated as she took questions from the media at the UN today. She denied US diplomats were engaged in spying. "Let me be very clear: our diplomats are just that," she said. "They...

It strikes me a bit odd that some of the original Wikileaks memos/cables at the WikiLeaks site have some names replaced with "XXXXXXXXXXXX", while the same memo when printed in the msm have the real names in them. How could this be? Why would Assange try to hide certain names on the originals, while providing them to the media? Or, did the media make up the missing names somehow? For example, this is in the news: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/204917 The Wikileaks version is here: http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/04/09BEIJING1176.html The Wikileaks version has as the subject: XXXXXXXXXXXXDISCUSSES G-20, DPRK, IRAN, AF/PAK, UNSC REFORM, TAIWAN, TIBET WITH...

Something else which has come out of the WikiLeaks dump is that when President Obama met with King Abdullah last year, he scored himself a tirade for having spent all his time bloviating about the importance of the Arab/Israeli conflict when what Abdullah really cared about was Iran and their nukes. That, again, isn’t exactly news. It does, however, indicate that the people in charge of our foreign policy are informed by left-wing pontification rather than reality. You mean the Saudis are backstabbing liars, play a double game and want others to do their dirty work for them? Quel surprise!...

Once again, Wikileaks had done a HUGH bombshell of a number a large trove of diplomatic information online. The names of individuals and nations was not only very shocking, but very embarrassing as well, and in the end, very damaging in respects to international relations.

Duke railed against France, British anti-corruption investigations into BAE and American ignorance, leaked dispatches reveal Prince Andrew launched a scathing attack on British anti-corruption investigators, journalists and the French during an "astonishingly candid" performance at an official engagement that shocked a US diplomat. Tatiana Gfoeller, Washington's ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, recorded in a secret cable that Andrew spoke "cockily" at the brunch with British and Canadian business people, leading a discussion that "verged on the rude".

An American politician has called for WikiLeaks to be designated a terrorist organisation following the release of the latest batch of leaked documents. New York Republican Peter King said the organisation was a "clear and present danger" to the US. "WikiLeaks presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States," he said. "I strongly urge you (Foreign Secretary Hillary Clinton) to work within the Administration to use every offensive capability of the US government to prevent further damaging releases by WikiLeaks." The Foreign Office said the actions of WikiLeaks risked British lives and security. "We...

A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats. ome of the cables, made available to The New York Times and several other news organizations, were written as recently as late February, revealing the Obama administration’s exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to revealing secret documents. WikiLeaks intends to make the archive public on its Web site...

Classified U.S. diplomatic cables reporting corruption allegations against foreign governments and leaders are expected in official documents that WikiLeaks plans to release soon, sources said Wednesday. The whistle-blowing website said on its Twitter feed this week its next release would be seven times larger than the collection of roughly 400,000 Pentagon reports related to the Iraq war which it made public in October. Three sources familiar with the State Department cables held by WikiLeaks say the corruption allegations in them are major enough to cause serious embarrassment for foreign governments and politicians named in them. They said the release was...