0 Votes
You Never Needed To Know
… the harsh treatment of Bradley Manning has not prevented other brave people with a conscience coming forward to tell us what we need to know.
You really don’t think it was leaked from the White House for political purposes, on the foothills of an election campaign where the democrat party typically needs to show their swing voters they’re “tough on defense” and have a backbone? If this was really us, its one of the greatest successes in non-violent action for achieving a goal … and should have been one of those that nobody ever knew. That party has always been weak in the defense area and touting successes like this and releasing the kill list are entirely political moves to show toughness. Both of which have weakened military processes by exposing techniques – especially the kill list which now lets insurgents know what steps of the approval process they can subvert to operate with impunity. These kinds of releases are orders of magnitude more damaging than Manning (not embarrassment wise but professionally with regards to ongoing operations and tactics) that the leaker should be put to death.
On that note, what’s the bravery in exposing it that you allude to? And why “do you need to know”? This was clearly a case of a positive accomplishment occuring – denying the Iranians nuclear weapons and preventing the Israelis from executing a preemptive military strike. This is the perfect case of that ironic statement where spooks get burned for making mistakes and never get credit for succeeding. But in this case, the campaign wants credit.
And before you go saying, Iran is doing this for peace … you don’t need centrifuges like that, let alone the sheer number of them, unless you’re weaponizing material. And read the article, think about how deep this software penetrated. You think they might know what Iran’s real intentions are whereas you only know what regular media reports?
… but it is hard to avoid the charge that they are cowardly and dishonourable.
So you’d prefer the military strike is what you’re saying? When the “perfect” military weapon was used to deny the enemy a capability with absolutely ZERO bloodshed and ZERO injury, you call it cowardly.
At the very least we should tone down our rhetoric about our enemies being like that.
I do agree with this. It was only last summer and fall that the White House released its guidance on operating in the cyber domain (I think the poster linked to those) where we declared this type of thing was considered a hostile and aggressive act. For the White House to turn around and say, “and we did it to you … booyah!” is absolutely bullshit.
RE: You Never Needed To Know by Occams
I don’t see that a cyber attack like this conveys the meaning that this Administration, is tough on Defense. To me it says we tried to spy on another nation using methoids that we describe as computer crime, but we botched it, and we can’t protect our secrets. Nothing but shame there for the White House.
I think we do need to know when the Administration is making war on another country. That is pretty fundamental, constitutional, and obvious isn’t it?
The bravery in exposing it is that extremists like you will want to kill him: not to mention the US government and all its agencies.
I think Iran wants nuclear weapons for precisely the same reasons that the USA wants them. Iranians do not see us as a benign trustworthy power interested in promoting world peace, but as a heavily armed and aggressive heathen nation that hates them and their most sacred religion. In their mind the USA is the last country that should be trusted with nuclear weapons, so a deterrent is essential. THere is evidence for that because the USA has used nukes late in a war when it was no longer directly threatened.
We know now that the nuking of Japan was necessary only to keep out the Russians, who would very soon have occupied Japan without any help from the USA. The bombing was done in anti communist panic, and not to reduce casulties in an imminent US invasion. Seventy divisions of battle hardened red troops were on the western frontier of Japan. Stalin had expressed an intention to invade. That story about saving American lives was propaganda: so good for our conscience that most of us still want to believe it.
UAV strikes are certainly not a military weapon [was] used to deny the enemy a capability with absolutely ZERO bloodshed and ZERO injury. They do prevent American deaths and they are probably more cost efective than alternative means. But, their use is the essence of cowardly super power conduct in war and there is no way of hiding that fact from the enemy or the world. American pride is not important: the charge really matters because it helps them in recruiting insurgents and martyrs.
If the cyber attack had been really effective we would have heard about it as boasting of a victory. But it did not come out like that, so it was probably ineffective.