[Peace-discuss] Ineptitude of US assassination squads (& Wikileaks challenges existing power relations)

[Stuart Levy]

I've wondered the same thing, but not in the terms Goldberg is using.
I *hope* he's being protected by his own fame.

For the "blood on its hands" accusation, here's Robert Fisk's take, from

    http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-shaming-of-america-2115111.html
  a.k.a.
    http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/24

    [...] And so General David Petraeus - widely loved by the US press
    corps - was presumably responsible for the dramatic increase in US air
    strikes over two years; 229 bombing attacks in Iraq in 2006, but 1,447
    in 2007.  Interestingly enough, US air strikes in Afghanistan have
    risen by 172 per cent since Petraeus took over there.   Which makes
    it all the more astonishing that the Pentagon is now bleating that
    WikiLeaks may have blood on its hands.  The Pentagon has been covered
    in blood since the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima in 1945,
    and for an institution that ordered the illegal invasion of Iraq in
    2003 - wasn't that civilian death toll more than 66,000 by their own
    count, out of a total of 109,000 recorded? - to claim that WikiLeaks
    is culpable of homicide is preposterous.


For the next ICJPE statewide meeting (in Chicago in probably late Feb.),
one suggestion for speakers is to find people who've been involved
in changing power relations, as ACORN was -- they were empowering
a lot of poor people.   It made ACORN a target for fierce opposition,
especially from the Right, that successfully destroyed them.

Who else is doing work that challenges existing power relations?
I think that's just what Wikileaks is up to. 

   Stuart

On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 06:38:10PM -0500, Ron Szoke wrote:
> JONAH GOLDBERG
> [National Review Online] 
> OCTOBER 29, 2010
> All Quiet on the Black-Ops Front 
> Why isn’t Julian Assange dead?
> 
> I’d like to ask a simple question: Why isn’t Julian Assange dead?
> 
> In case you didn’t know, Assange is the Australian computer 
> programmer behind WikiLeaks, a massive — and massively successful — 
> effort to disclose secret or classified information. In a series of recent 
> dumps, he unveiled thousands upon thousands of classified documents 
> from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Military and other government 
> officials insist that WikiLeaks is doing serious damage to American 
> national security and is going to get people killed, including brave Iraqis 
> and Afghans who’ve risked their lives and the lives of their families to 
> help us.
> 
> Even Assange agrees. He told the New Yorker earlier this year that he 
> fully understands innocent people might die as a result of the “collateral 
> damage” of his work and that WikiLeaks may have “blood on our hands.” 
> WikiLeaks is easily among the most significant and well-publicized 
> breaches of American national security since the Rosenbergs gave the 
> Soviets the bomb.
> So again, I ask: Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years 
> ago?
> 
> It’s a serious question.
> 
> <cut>  
> 
> <http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/251393/all-quiet-black-ops-
> front-jonah-goldberg>
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