Massive leak of millitary documents on War in Afganistan

It's people. People are stupid and incompetent. Was that supposed to make me trust them more?

People are also smart and competent.

No, a person is smart and competent - usually. People often are not the case, collectively - again, usually.

I trust the government, it's just the people in the government I cant trust. Actually I trust them to the extent that there is someone with different interests who is able to keep them accountable- hence my tolerance for a certain level of secrets leaking. Government is a monopoly on the use of force- we have no choice but to trust it. That's why I want checks on the power of insiders- and one of those checks is an aggressive and uninhibited population of journalists, constantly seeking an inside scoop.

Yup, beauty of free speech. Keeps people on their toes.

Yeah, an "inside scoop" conveniently handed to you by someone in the government, with who knows what agenda. Handled by journalists with every bit as much of a political bias as the people they're reporting on.

Woo, boy, sign me up. Journalistic integrity, that's what we have.

Or the government populated by people with personal aims and goals and see their service as nothing more then a means to the end. Whoo sign me up.

Face it folks no matter how you slice it the government is corrupt and crappy but it more or less works.

^ Same with many large organisations to be honest.

We really, really, REALLY don't want to admit it, but "crappy yet nonetheless functional" is all too often a good assessment.

"Crappy yet nonetheless functional" is pretty much the description of the whole planet.

I wouldn't even say crappy, I'd say it's fundamentally flawed, and not perfect, much like the humans who run it.

It's a half empty/half full situation.

It could be so much worse than it is, when humans run something you can never realistically expect it to be ideal, so we actually have a pretty good deal.

edited 28th Jul '10 10:33:29 AM by Barkey

It's called the conflict of interests. Even if everyone is acting for entirely selfish ends (which, you know, isn't really true) as long as they are competing with each other, the public good is advanced. It's one of the basic principles the founding fathers relied on when they designed our system. I don't trust journalists any more than I trust government employees, but they have competing interests, so they keep each other minimally competent and honest.

I remember hearing this could have been released while Bush was still in office.

As an evil fascist who thinks Afghanistan still needs a good smack in the head, but hated Bush's policies, I wonder if that would have been a good or bad thing.

Again Courtesy of Wired.com

• Wiki Leaks Reports don't tell the whole story

And it looks like they may have crossed the line and put specific individuals at risk. But there is a difference between the appropriateness of a specific leak and how it was handled, vs. whether or not leaks should be published at all...

The thing is a lot of these reports are missing lots of data. Any one who is in the military and has filled these out knows they only a snap shot of what happened.

Some of these things need to see the light of day others need to be left in the dark.

For me its a hit miss thing.

I think that Marquis was referring to the names of various informers within the documents.

Ahh.

Still you need more then a name.

There's a couple dozen people in Afghanistan who hope that's true...

Wikileaks is practically the real-life equivalent of Chaotic Good.

... or maybe Chaotic Neutral, if their intentions aren't as good as they're made out to be.