Platform is indeed bizarre in its lack of user-friendliness. Anyway, I remember the first days of WikiLeaks and this Assange twerp. Massive amounts of electronic ink have been spilled over this in the interim; I have not changed my opinion from day one: he compromised the safety of our military personnel by his egotistically juvenile antics. Julian so far as I can tell espouses his own narcissism above all else, and wouldn't know "truth" if it smacked him in the face. Which I hope it eventually does in a US courtroom.
I do, I do indeed understand where you're coming from. McNamara should never have written that damned book without committing seppuku at the press conference announcing his book.
There is no "financial answer" to right and wrong.
I am willing to entertain some points from veterans when it comes to Assange's actions; I am not entirely sure what he divulged was worth divulging - there are myriad ugly truths in running a government, and especially in running a war. That does not necessarily mean anything positive is accomplished by a foreign hacker breaching national security and spraying non-contextual information to the world.
As someone who survived 11 September 2001, there are very few things I would not gleefully do to any member of Al Qaeda. I wrote a book review of a few years back for The Cipher Brief of Black Site: The CIA in the Post-9/11 World by Philip Mudd, former Deputy Director of the CIA Counterterrorist Center and FBI National Security Branch. https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column/book-review/the-cias-role-in-the-post-9-11-world In that book, the people involved took every decision I would have, given the sights and sounds of that day which will never leave me and given the likely foreshortening of my lifespan from living downwind of the smoking heap of the Towers for months. The abandonment of those committed patriots by a subsequent President who erroneously said to the world, "We tortured some folks" was about as large a betrayal as I can recall in the annals of pusillanimous President poor behavior.
I am always willing to debate the relative merits and demerits of revealing secrets, but one thing I despise about both Assange and Snowden is their cowardice in refusing to accept the consequences of their actions.
Fair enough. For those of us who have known how horrible Hillary Clinton is since the 1990s, this was no surprise at all.
As for Assange, this "he gave the State Department warning" is weak tea served with thin gruel. He opened the floodgates to these releases with the mentally ill Edward Manning by hacking US government computers. It's like a coyote trafficking women between 18-21 into sex slavery in the US calling Border Control on a competitor, saying "Oh, gosh, these guys are really bad. They're smuggling 12-17 year olds and I'm just morally appalled at THAT!"
There are usually 50 sides to a story; that is why I try to stay focused on the core tenets at the heart of a metastasizing set of usually superfluous details.
He hacked American secrets and posted them to the world.
That is not covered by the First Amendment, in my opinion.
He endangered American and allied lives by so doing; if in fact he "tried to anonymize" any of the details in those cables, that is irrelevant, since no one could ever know what a hostile analyst could do with the information that remained. A good cryptologist can find names, places and dates in redacted cables using basic tools of word/letter frequency analysis and the like.
So Julian could not ever have been 100% sure his release would not put people in direct harm's way.
For that - again, in my opinion - he should face a military trial.
Larry, I find it hard to believe a US Air Force officer - current or former - thinks positively of Julian Assange.
Do not know what you mean about how I write on this platform. Just curious.
Woohooo!!! Look at you go!
Mad fan base in Croatia! I knew I was doing something right!
Larry, I find it impossible to believe a US Air Force officer would write positively about Julian Assange.
Do not understand what you mean about how I write on this platform. Just curious.
Platform is indeed bizarre in its lack of user-friendliness. Anyway, I remember the first days of WikiLeaks and this Assange twerp. Massive amounts of electronic ink have been spilled over this in the interim; I have not changed my opinion from day one: he compromised the safety of our military personnel by his egotistically juvenile antics. Julian so far as I can tell espouses his own narcissism above all else, and wouldn't know "truth" if it smacked him in the face. Which I hope it eventually does in a US courtroom.
Thank you for your service.
I do, I do indeed understand where you're coming from. McNamara should never have written that damned book without committing seppuku at the press conference announcing his book.
There is no "financial answer" to right and wrong.
I am willing to entertain some points from veterans when it comes to Assange's actions; I am not entirely sure what he divulged was worth divulging - there are myriad ugly truths in running a government, and especially in running a war. That does not necessarily mean anything positive is accomplished by a foreign hacker breaching national security and spraying non-contextual information to the world.
As someone who survived 11 September 2001, there are very few things I would not gleefully do to any member of Al Qaeda. I wrote a book review of a few years back for The Cipher Brief of Black Site: The CIA in the Post-9/11 World by Philip Mudd, former Deputy Director of the CIA Counterterrorist Center and FBI National Security Branch. https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column/book-review/the-cias-role-in-the-post-9-11-world In that book, the people involved took every decision I would have, given the sights and sounds of that day which will never leave me and given the likely foreshortening of my lifespan from living downwind of the smoking heap of the Towers for months. The abandonment of those committed patriots by a subsequent President who erroneously said to the world, "We tortured some folks" was about as large a betrayal as I can recall in the annals of pusillanimous President poor behavior.
I am always willing to debate the relative merits and demerits of revealing secrets, but one thing I despise about both Assange and Snowden is their cowardice in refusing to accept the consequences of their actions.
Technical note: the three dots near your comment allow you to Edit.
Fair enough. For those of us who have known how horrible Hillary Clinton is since the 1990s, this was no surprise at all.
As for Assange, this "he gave the State Department warning" is weak tea served with thin gruel. He opened the floodgates to these releases with the mentally ill Edward Manning by hacking US government computers. It's like a coyote trafficking women between 18-21 into sex slavery in the US calling Border Control on a competitor, saying "Oh, gosh, these guys are really bad. They're smuggling 12-17 year olds and I'm just morally appalled at THAT!"
There are usually 50 sides to a story; that is why I try to stay focused on the core tenets at the heart of a metastasizing set of usually superfluous details.
He hacked American secrets and posted them to the world.
That is not covered by the First Amendment, in my opinion.
He endangered American and allied lives by so doing; if in fact he "tried to anonymize" any of the details in those cables, that is irrelevant, since no one could ever know what a hostile analyst could do with the information that remained. A good cryptologist can find names, places and dates in redacted cables using basic tools of word/letter frequency analysis and the like.
So Julian could not ever have been 100% sure his release would not put people in direct harm's way.
For that - again, in my opinion - he should face a military trial.