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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@aol.com href="mailto:tanstl@aol.com">David Sladky</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=undisclosed-recipients:
href="mailto:undisclosed-recipients:">undisclosed-recipients:</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Friday, April 09, 2010 4:35 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> The New York Times fingers whistleblower
WikiLeaks</DIV></DIV>
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<H4>Following exposure of military massacre in Iraq</H4><A
href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/wiki-a08.shtml"
target=_blank>http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/wiki-a08.shtml</A><BR>
<H2>The New York Times fingers whistleblower WikiLeaks</H2>
<H5>By David Walsh <BR>8 April 2010</H5>The release of video footage Monday
showing cold-blooded murder committed by US military forces on the streets of
eastern Baghdad in July 2007 has evoked widespread outrage and horror. The video
has been viewed more than 4 million times since its posting, offering a
worldwide audience a first-hand glimpse of the real character of the US
occupation of Iraq.<BR>It has also provoked the liberal newspaper of record in
the US, the <EM>New York Times</EM>, to zero in on WikiLeaks, the web site that
exposed the crime, as a dangerous source of opposition that should, if things
worked out to the <EM>Times</EM>’ liking, be put out of business.<BR>The
chilling July 2007 video, made available to and posted on WikiLeaks, records an
attack by US helicopter gunships on a crowd of a dozen or so men, including, as
it would become known, two Reuters news agency employees, Namir Noor-Eldeen and
his assistant Saeed Chmagh. The two Iraqi journalists were among 10 to 15 Iraqis
killed in the massacre, which is no doubt typical of innumerable such incidents.
(See “<A href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/iraq-a07.shtml"
target=_blank>Leaked video shows US military killing of two Iraqi
journalists</A>”)<BR>The video footage posted by WikiLeaks reveals that—without
making any attempt to determine the identities of the individuals—the helicopter
gunners receive permission to kill everyone in the group and set about their
murderous work with enthusiasm. When a local man stops to aid the wounded, his
van is fired on, wounding two children. The helicopter pilots gloat about the
carnage.<BR>One or two of the Iraqis in the group appear to be carrying weapons.
Civilians are permitted to own firearms in Iraq, and many do. Neither the
gunship nor any other US forces are in danger at any point.<BR>According to
reporters present nearby, the American forces were firing on everything that
moved that day. This is the nature of a colonial war. The occupiers, confronted
with a hostile population, come to view everyone as the enemy. In the present
conflict, the extraordinary firepower available to US forces increases the
likelihood of fatalities. As many as one million Iraqis have died as the result
of the illegal US-led invasion launched in March 2003. The video in question
makes the immense death toll somewhat easier to comprehend.<BR>The Pentagon
attempted to prevent Reuters from obtaining the video of the 2007 murders and
covered them up. All the troops involved in the killings were exonerated, and
the army declared that the incident was conducted according to its rules of
engagement. Various experts have demonstrated that this is false, even on the
military’s own terms.<BR>The <EM>New Yorker</EM> posted a piece April 5 by Raffi
Khatchadourian which points out that the operation contravened the army’s rules
of engagement on at least four grounds: proportionality; positive identification
of the targets as combatants; “command culture” (the helicopter crew falsified
the situation on the ground, exaggerating or inventing threats, and their
commander accepted their claims without question); and the firing on the
wounded.<BR>All this may be very well, but the <EM>New York Times</EM> has other
concerns. Its article is headlined, rather ominously, “Iraq Video Brings Notice
to a Web Site.” It might be entitled, “<EM>New York Times</EM> Fingers a Web
Site.”<BR>The piece begins by identifying WikiLeaks as a web site “that posts
classified and sensitive documents.” It notes that “Somehow—it will not say
how—WikiLeaks found the necessary computer time to decrypt” the video in
question. All in all, the article suggests, this was clearly a dubious or
illegitimate undertaking.<BR>The <EM>Times</EM> reporters note that “the site
has become a thorn in the side of authorities in the United States and abroad.
With the Iraq attack video, the clearinghouse for sensitive documents is edging
closer toward a form of investigative journalism and to advocacy.” As opposed to
the <EM>Times</EM>, of course, which practices nothing but objective
journalism.<BR>The <EM>Times</EM> is particularly concerned about other
potential exposures of the crimes of the US military, writing, “WikiLeaks
claimed to have another encrypted video, said to show an American airstrike in
Afghanistan that killed 97 civilians last year, and used the opportunity to ask
for donations.”<BR>The article refers several times to the regrettable fact that
WikiLeaks is difficult to shut down. It notes, for example, “Where judges and
plaintiffs could once stop or delay publication with a court order, WikiLeaks
exists in a digital sphere in which information becomes instantly available.”
The <EM>Times</EM> adds: “By being everywhere, yet in no exact place, WikiLeaks
is, in effect, beyond the reach of any institution or government that hopes to
silence it.”<BR>Once more: “WikiLeaks has grown increasingly controversial as it
has published more material. (The United States Army called it a threat to its
operations in a report last month.) Many have tried to silence the site; in
Britain, WikiLeaks has been used a number of times to evade injunctions on
publication by courts that ruled that the material would violate the privacy of
the people involved. The courts reversed themselves when they discovered how
ineffectual their rulings were.”<BR>The <EM>Times</EM> mentions the Pentagon’s
claim without a comment. In 2008 a US army counterintelligence officer wrote a
report alleging that WikiLeaks represented a “potential … threat to the US
Army.” The report recommended efforts to “damage or destroy” the web
site.<BR>The WikiLeaks site alleges that its staff has been targeted for
surveillance and harassment by the US State Department and possibly the CIA. In
a blog post, the group’s co-founder, Julian Assange, asserts that the US
government activity “includes attempted covert following, photographing, filming
and the overt detention & questioning of a WikiLeaks’ volunteer in Iceland.”
There is no reason to doubt these claims.<BR>The <EM>Times</EM>, however, like
much of the US media, identifies the main threat, not in the murderous actions
of the American military or the repressive operations of the US intelligence
apparatus, but in the efforts by honest journalists to expose the crimes of
imperialism.<BR>The <EM>Christian Science Monitor</EM>, in that same spirit,
headlines one of its articles, “Video of Iraqi journalists’ killings: Is
WikiLeaks a security threat?” The article begins: “The US military has been
warily watching for several years the group that released on Monday a graphic
video showing a US helicopter apparently killing two Iraqi journalists from
Reuters in a Baghdad suburb in 2007.”<BR>Significantly, neither the
<EM>Times</EM> nor the <EM>Christian Science Monitor</EM> questions the
authenticity of the video, or seriously disputes that it exposes an atrocity.
Rather, they tacitly acknowledge, along with the military, that the revelation
of the truth about the Iraq war represents a risk.<BR>The liberal media in the
US and liberal circles, more generally, have accommodated themselves in recent
years to the crimes of American imperialism. A massive campaign of lies by the
White House, an illegal invasion of a foreign country, brutal treatment of
prisoners of war, CIA and military torture sites—all of this has been accepted
with barely a protest.<BR>Incidents that would have drawn outraged comments from
the <EM>Times</EM> and other publications as recently as the Vietnam War era,
along with demands for Congressional investigations and the laying of criminal
charges, are met with a shrug of the shoulder, if not an approving wink. One
might say that elements in the liberal establishment have acquired a taste for
such operations. In any event, they now identify fully with the US military and
the CIA, and recognize those as among the chief defenders of their wealth and
privileges.<BR>The <EM>Times</EM>’ targeting of WikiLeaks also expresses a
persistent theme in the establishment media about the danger represented by the
Internet and alternative news outlets.<BR><EM>Times</EM> executive editor Bill
Keller, in an October 2006 speech in Ann Arbor, Michigan, warned about the
weakening of the “establishment press” in the face of growing competition from
new sources of news and opinion on the Internet. (See <A
href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/oct2006/kelle-o21.shtml"
target=_blank>“New York Times editor touts role of establishment press in ‘war
on terror’”</A>)<BR>He might have been predicting his paper’s present anxiety
about the WikiLeaks revelations, when he noted that “Legions of Internet
journalists include at least a few who would feel no compunction about
disclosing life-threatening information.” Keller noted with approval that “we
have not yet fallen into information anarchy” and praised news outlets such as
his own “that still take their responsibilities seriously,” i.e., that control
and vet the flow of information to the public.<BR>Along similar lines, in an
interview several years before his retirement in 2004, former NBC news anchorman
Tom Brokaw asserted that cyberspace should be managed for younger audiences, in
particular. (See “<A
href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/brok-d06.shtml"
target=_blank>Exit NBC anchor Tom Brokaw: a nonentity in the service of wealth
and power</A>”)<BR>“We can’t let that generation and a whole segment of the
population just slide away out to the Internet and retrieve what information it
wants without being in on it,” Brokaw declared. “I also believe strongly that
the Internet works best when there are gatekeepers. When there are people making
determinations and judgments about what information is relevant and factual and
useful. Otherwise, it’s like going to the rainforest and just seeing a green
maze.”<BR>The entire US establishment is currently considering the means by
which it might suppress oppositional voices on the Internet, which do indeed
represent a “threat” to the present social order.<BR><EM>The WikiLeaks video can
be viewed below:</EM><BR><BR>
<HR>
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