[Peace-discuss] It shows the media's lies, so WikiLeaks is hated

[C. G. Estabrook]

"The cables show the daily business of a mighty empire acting in manners 
diametrically opposite to public pretensions ... The WikiLeaks documents show 
that the picture of the international business of the United States offered by 
the major U.S. media to the public is an infantile misrepresentation of reality.

"The efforts being made by Attorney General Eric Holder to bolster secrecy and 
espionage laws show that [the Obama administration] wants the American people to 
remain in blissful ignorance of what its government is actually doing..."

"The alleged leaker of the WikiLeaks files, Army Private Bradley Manning, 
currently being held in solitary confinement in sadistic conditions, should be 
vigorously applauded and defended for exposing such crimes as the murder of 
civilians in Baghdad by U.S. Apache helicopters.

"The WikiLeaks Afghan-related files are a damning, vivid series of snapshots of 
a disastrous and criminal enterprise ... [such as] the death squad operated by 
the U.S. military known as Task Force 373, an undisclosed 'black' unit of 
special forces, which has been hunting down targets for death or detention 
without trial. From WikiLeaks we learn that more than 2,000 senior figures from 
the Taliban and al-Qaida are held on a 'kill or capture' list..."

Honor the WikiLeakers
Friday 31 December 2010
by: Alexander Cockburn

When it comes to journalistic achievements in 2010, the elephant in the room
is WikiLeaks. I've seen many put-downs of the materials as containing "no
smoking guns", or as being essentially trivial communications to the State
Department from U.S. diplomats and kindred government agents around the
world.

Now, it's true that the cables were legally available to well over 1.5
million Americans, who had adequate security clearance. But trivial? Don't
believe it. The cables show the daily business of a mighty empire acting in
manners diametrically opposite to public pretensions. The cables form one of
the most extraordinary lessons in the cold realities of international
diplomacy ever made public. Normally, scholars have to wait for 10, 20, even
50 years to gain access to such papers.

The WikiLeaks documents show that the picture of the international business
of the United States offered by the major U.S. media to the public is an
infantile misrepresentation of reality. The efforts being made by Attorney
General Eric Holder to bolster secrecy and espionage laws show that the U.S.
government, led currently by a man who pledged "transparency," wants the
American people to remain in blissful ignorance of what its government is
actually doing.

The alleged leaker of the WikiLeaks files, Army Private Bradley Manning,
currently being held in solitary confinement in sadistic conditions, should
be vigorously applauded and defended for exposing such crimes as the murder
of civilians in Baghdad by U.S. Apache helicopters. The WikiLeaks
Afghan-related files are a damning, vivid series of snapshots of a
disastrous and criminal enterprise.

In these same files, there is a compelling series of secret documents about
the death squad operated by the U.S. military known as Task Force 373, an
undisclosed "black" unit of special forces, which has been hunting down
targets for death or detention without trial. From WikiLeaks we learn that
more than 2,000 senior figures from the Taliban and al-Qaida are held on a
"kill or capture" list, known as Jpel, the joint prioritized effects list.

Julian Assange and his colleagues should similarly be honored and defended.
They have acted in the best traditions of the journalistic vocation.

The U.S. began the destruction of Afghanistan in 1979, when President Jimmy
Carter and his National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, started
financing the mullahs and warlords in the largest and most expensive
operation in the CIA's history until that time. Here we are, more than three
decades later, half-buried under a mountain of horrifying news stories about
a destroyed land of desolate savagery, and what did one hear on many news
commentaries earlier this week? Indignant bleats often by liberals, about
WikiLeaks' "irresponsibility" in releasing the documents, twitchy questions
such as that asked by The Nation's Chris Hayes on the "Rachel Maddow Show":
"I wonder ultimately to whom WikiLeaks ends up being accountable."

The answer to that last question was given definitively in 1851 by Robert
Lowe, editorial writer for the London Times. He had been instructed by his
editor to refute the claim of a government minister that if the press hoped
to share the influence of statesmen, it "must also share in the
responsibilities of statesmen."

"The first duty of the press," Lowe wrote, "is to obtain the earliest and
most correct intelligence of the events of the time, and instantly, by
disclosing them, to make them the common property of the nation ... The
Press lives by disclosures ... For us, with whom publicity and truth are the
air and light of existence, there can be no greater disgrace than to recoil
from the frank and accurate disclosure of facts as they are. We are bound to
tell the truth as we find it, without fear of consequences -- to lend no
convenient shelter to acts of injustice and oppression, but to consign them
at once to the judgment of the world."

*Alexander Cockburn is co-editor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking
newsletter CounterPunch. He is also co-author of the new book "Dime's Worth
of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils," available through
www.counterpunch.com.*

*Copyright 2010 Creators.com

http://www.truth-out.org/alexander-cockburn-honor-wikileakers66432