Brace yourself DakkaDakka... Wikileaks alert

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**Wolfstan**

I imagine it could get a little bit boisterous around here soon with Wiki-Leaks posting all those nice comments made by US Ambassadors. Gauntlets at the ready gentlemen! You Cad Sir!

**sexiest_hero**

Nobody has anything to worry about if nobody did any wrong. One war is over (mostly) the other is winding down. I don't need big brother hiding facts from me.

**Wolfstan**

Think you might want to Google it this time

"The leak is expected to include documents covering US dealings and diplomats' confidential views of countries including Australia, Canada, Israel, Russia, Turkey and the United Kingdom."

**Mr Mystery**

OH NOES!

People have their own opinions! ARRRGH! KILL THEM ALLS!

Meh in my case I have to say. Even if they say horrendous things, like seriously racist, it's just one blokes opinion.

I really wish Wikileaks would just bog off.

**Kilkrazy**

It is hardly just "one bloke's opinion'.

In most cases it will be a candid assessment by diplomats or security officers of another country's situation.

That said, all governments send these internal memos, and many of them would be embarrassing if said in public. Real diplomats and officials know this, and have the sense to keep up a friendly face to allies whatever they may think in private.

Leaks live this have happened before, and caused ructions. The difference this time is that a huge volume of material is going to be leaked, and it is going to be seen as USA vs their allies.

I don't agree with this Wikileak. There is a difference between whistle-blowing of things which the public has a right to know about, such as wrong-doing by public officials, and what they are doing here.

**Ahtman**

So no links, summaries, or nothing? Are we just supposed to guess what was said? What kind of world is this. *crosses arms*

**Chibi Bodge-Battle**

Thought that said "I wish Wikkileaks would just Blog off!"

Definition of Wikkileaks: A pagan member of the allium (onion) family?

**olympia**

Evidently some bad stuff about a british royal. No details yet. Popcorn time.

**Chibi Bodge-Battle**

There has been dirt to dish on the royals since Brutus arrived.
it was ever thus.

**Kilkrazy**

Better there should be dirt on the royals, than there should be royals on the dirt.

**Nurglitch**

Ructions?

**Kilkrazy**

Red faces and short term coolness of relations.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
It always blows over in the end.

**olympia**

Good catty gossip about leaders

n late 2008 the Moscow embassy wired back about the relationship between Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev and the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, remarking that Medvedev, officially the senior partner, "plays Robin to Putin's Batman".

Kim Jong-il, the ailing dictator of North Korea fared no better, with diplomats quoting sources who described him variously as a "flabby old chap" and someone who had suffered "physical and psychological trauma" as a result of his stroke.

The Paris embassy remarked on the "thin-skinned and authoritarian personal style" of French President Nicholas Sarkozy after it reported his tendency to repeatedly rebuke his team and the French prime minister.

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was "feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader", according to Elizabeth Dibble, US charge d'affaires in Rome. Another report from Rome recorded the view that he was a "physically and politically weak" leader whose "frequent late nights and penchant for partying hard mean he does not get sufficient rest".

Key allies in the war on terror are not spared either. A dispatch from Kabul reports the view that the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is "an extremely weak man who did not listen to facts but was instead easily swayed by anyone who came to report even the most bizarre stories or plots against him".

In Yemen, the power base of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, President Ali Abdullah Saleh was "dismissive, bored and impatient", during a meeting with John Brennan, Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser.

Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, is simply branded "the crazy old man" by Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa's international relations and cooperation minister, according to a cable from Pretoria, while Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, is "just strange" according to an adviser to Sultan Qaboos of Oman.

Israel's prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is "elegant and charming" but never keeps his promises, according to a cable from Cairo recounting a meeting with President Hosni Mubarak, who added: "I have told him so personally".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/wikileaks-us-embassy-cables

**Maelstrom808**

I'm all for whistle blowing on the US gov for illegal, malicious acts, but just putting information out there for the sake of putting it out is criminal in my opinion. Since Wikileaks can't seem to be able to distinguish between the two, or more likely don't care, they need to be shut down.

**Flashman**

I just want to know what Obama's folks said about Cameron (for amusement value, not to pick a fight). I don't know why the Guardian is being so insufferably smug and not telling us.

The thing with wikileaks, is that they release so much gumph, you can't see the wood for the trees. Anything interesting gets lost amongst bland "Does anyone know how to change the toner?" memos. Can I be arsed to wade through 250,000 documents about what the Turkish ambassador spreads on his muffins? No. And I bet 99% of terrorists can't be arsed either. The 1% who bother will be lost in paperwork for the next decade and will forget what they were jihadding about in the first place.

**Asherian Command**

Damn mates. Thats good or bad? I can't tell.

**Chibi Bodge-Battle**

I was just wondering how much attention these leaks actually deserve.

Going back to the issue of opinions of diplomats, do we really take them at face value. If they are leaks coming out of the Whitehouse that the Pres thinks Cameron is or Brown was a useless pile of turd ...
even then so what.

If they are statements that are attempts to undermine a government that could be harmful, that is another matter.
For example the American Ambassador to Britain Joseph P Kennedy, did his utmost to discredit the British government and war effort in an attempt to disuade Roosevelt from providing support for the war effort.

Also Robert Mugabwe is a jolly rotten egg is hardly earth shattering!

Waste of time is what I am thinking Ash.

**WarOne**

I read a bit of the files that were sent and I have to say this:

Wikileaks is walking a tight rope here of freedom of information versus security of world.

We have minor snippets of commentary about international leaders.

Then we have secret communications wherein the United States wanted to send Guantanamo detainees overseas for the right to see President Barack Obama or millions of dollars of bribes.

Here is a news report summarizing the events to eliminate Iran as a nuclear threat:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/28/AR2010112802983.html

The treasure trove of secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks and reported Sunday by several news organizations chronicle the Iranian nuclear standoff from its genesis. The diplomatic memos disclose the extent to which many of the United States's allies in the Arab world repeatedly implored Washington to stop Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

In one such plea, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia reportedly urged U.S. officials in 2008 to "cut off the head of the snake" while there was still time.

In another, in May 2009, Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, argued that the world had six to 18 months "in which stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons might still be viable." According to a secret cable that the U.S. ambassador to Israel, James B. Cunningham, sent to Washington, Barak said: "Any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage."

In November 2009, Bahrain's King Hamad argued forcefully for taking action to terminate Iran's nuclear program, by whatever means necessary, according to one diplomatic cable.

"The program must be stopped," Hamad said in a meeting with Gen. David H. Petraeus, then head of the U.S. Central Command. "The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it."

The accounts are based on a report published Sunday afternoon by the New York Times, one of five American and European news organizations granted advance access to the cables by WikiLeaks.

According to the accounts, the United States believes that North Korea is helping Iran achieve its atomic ambitions by helping the Arab country develop more-formidable long-range ballistic missiles.

At the same time, the cables reportedly show how Israel, the Saudis and U.S. allies in the region have grown more unified in their desire to halt Iran's ascent. While those countries have been publicly cautious, for fear of retributions from their powerful neighbor, they privately clamored for strong steps by the United States, using diplomacy, covert action or force, according to the New York Times.

The cables show officials from Persian Gulf states unable to decide which would be worse: a strike against Iran and the resulting turmoil it would cause in the region, or inaction and having to live with a nuclear-capable Iran.

The cables reveal the deep distrust of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, shared by U.S. diplomats and officials from America's Arab allies. In 2005, military leaders from the United Arab Emirates said during a meeting with the head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. John P. Abizaid, that Ahmadinejad "seemed unbalanced, crazy even," according to one cable documented by the New York Times.

A few months later, the Emirates' defense chief, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi, told Abizaid that he believed the United States needed to take action against Iran "this year or next."

Yet the cables also appear to show the disparate attempts of Washington to confront Tehran. President Bush, focused on ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, struggled to put together even modest sanctions against Iran, according to the Times' report.

Meanwhile, President Obama was determined to not appear weak to the Iranians despite his promise of "engagement." The cables reportedly show how Obama's advisers rolled out a plan to encircle Iran with economic sanctions and antimissile defenses. Although the Obama administration expected this outreach to fail, it believed the effort would help build support for tougher measures.

And as the government obtained new intelligence about Iran's growing missile program, the Obama administration maneuvered to win Russian support for sanctions. It replaced a Bush-era plan for a missile defense site in Poland with one closer to Iran's coast. The cables also apparently reveal a successful U.S. plan to get the Saudis to offer China an increased supply of oil to wean it from energy dependence on Iran, which resulted in a commitment from China to join in sanctions against Iran.

The cables show that the Obama administration is doubtful that a military strike would keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb in the future. One cable earlier this year revealed that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates delivered a stark assessment to Herve Morin, the French defense minister. Any strike against Iran, Gates apparently said, "would only delay Iranian plans by one to three years, while unifying the Iranian people to be forever embittered against the attacker."

**Kilkrazy**

Flashman wrote:I just want to know what Obama's folks said about Cameron (for amusement value, not to pick a fight). I don't know why the Guardian is being so insufferably smug and not telling us.

The thing with wikileaks, is that they release so much gumph, you can't see the wood for the trees. Anything interesting gets lost amongst bland "Does anyone know how to change the toner?" memos. Can I be arsed to wade through 250,000 documents about what the Turkish ambassador spreads on his muffins? No. And I bet 99% of terrorists can't be arsed either. The 1% who bother will be lost in paperwork for the next decade and will forget what they were jihadding about in the first place.

A clever bit of Unix shell scripting will solve that problem for you, and filter out the good stuff that mentions names and interesting adjectives.

**Nurglitch**

Kind of odd to see Iran being referred to as an "Arab" country, but I suppose it is the Washington Post...

**Chibi Bodge-Battle**

Well Iran is a very little bit Arabic

The CIA World Factbook estimates that approximately 1% of Iran's 66,429,284 citizens are Arabic-speakers , with 3% ethnic Arabs .[2]

source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ir.html

edited for coherent syntax.

**Monster Rain**

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Well it a very little bit Arabic

They are Persians, infidel!

Anyway, OT:

feth Wikileaks. feth them in their histrionic faces. Blowing the whistle is one thing, but they seem like they just do this to be donkey-caves.

After they released the names of people who helped the US in Afghanistan, I really can't wish anything but death and subsequent hellfire for them.

**Lint**

This latest "leak" is like watching "TMZ: World Leader Edition."

**Chibi Bodge-Battle**

Read the stats Monster and enjoy the irony

Sorry Lint what is TMZ please?
me no know

**Monster Rain**

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Read the stats Monster and enjoy the irony

Not to argue with you (as I prepare to do exactly that

) but I don't think that the Language you speak necessarily has any bearing on your race, does it?

**Chibi Bodge-Battle**

No there are ethnic Arabs that are citizens of Iran
does Iran even have citizenry?

but yes it is a very small percentage of the population
3% but only 1% of the population actually speaks Arabic.

And yes I am an infidel according to the meaning without faith but
LET'S NOT GO DOWN THAT PATH

**Monster Rain**

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:And yes I am an infidel according to the meaning without faith but LET'S NOT GO DOWN THAT PATH

What... what have you done?!

**WarOne**

Monster Rain wrote:
Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:And yes I am an infidel according to the meaning without faith but LET'S NOT GO DOWN THAT PATH

What... what have you done?!

What hasn't he done?

**Monster Rain**

WarOne wrote:
Monster Rain wrote:
Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:And yes I am an infidel according to the meaning without faith but LET'S NOT GO DOWN THAT PATH

What... what have you done?!

What hasn't he done?

Climbed Mount Everest?

**WarOne**

Monster Rain wrote:
WarOne wrote:
Monster Rain wrote:
Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:And yes I am an infidel according to the meaning without faith but LET'S NOT GO DOWN THAT PATH

What... what have you done?!

What hasn't he done?

Climbed Mount Everest?

Everest Mount Climbed?