"...once you stop acting like a civilian, you've voluntarily forfeited the protections thereof."

Exactly, but don't expect the idiot PC crowd to jump on the bandwagon.

This "albino" as I hear him called who is leaking all this info...who gave it to him? Did he hack into computers or is there a bunch of deep throats out there feeding him. If that is the case, shouldn't we be going after them, first and then this creep.

Soros and Assange expect a feather in their hat to take down the super power America, best watch out that feather isn't shove some place else other than their hats. What disgusting people. Our gov't is bad, but remember the others are so much worst.

PS: Didn't Soros turn in other Jews to the Nazis? Is that true? If so, I can see it when he dies (he is old so it may happen soon)walking a gauntlet of victims of the holocaust as he is headed toward the the 9th circle (save for betrayers) to hell.

I mostly agree with you, except for this bit of nonsense:

Intellectual property pirates assault the economy of nations.

There is no way that people who download mp3s of the top ten list are anything like the drug smugglers who are threatening to take down the Mexican government, or with Wikileaks releasing state intelligence documents. The argument is ridiculous on its face.

Let me just head this off and be done with it:

Jay Tea,

this is the most insane thing I have ever read in my entire life. And that includes everything that I have ever written.

So if you don't mind - and even if you do - I'm going to scrawl this on the wall of my room with the big fat purple crayon I stole from the art room here at the hospital, and take credit for it myself.

fafaroo

/snark

matt, that was disgusting and uncalled-for and inappropriate and just plain wrong.

Next time, put up a spoiler notice.

You done ruined faparoo's fun!

J.

Never would I thought that the Foggy Bottom a place normally held in contempt, as the lowest circle in Dante's hell, by conservatives even here, could be now be defended so feriously.

Most conservatives were probably sympathetic or least tolerated Pat Robertson, when he sugggested something far worse for the State Department than having a batch of low level documents released.

Robertson made the comments during a series of interviews on his "700 Club" (October, 2003) television show with journalist Joel Mowbray, author of a new book, Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Endangers America's Security."

Robertson founded the Christian Coalition in 1989 after running for U.S. president as a Republican in 1988.

Introducing Mowbray on his show, Robertson said that a reader of his book could conclude that the State Department needed a nuclear explosion.

"I read your book," Robertson said. "When you get through, you say, 'If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer,' and you say, 'We've got to blow that thing up.' I mean, is it as bad as you say?" Robertson said.

"It is," Mowbray said, although his book never suggests that the State Department should be blown up with a nuclear device.

Indeed, Pat Robertson was heavily courted by a number of 2008 presidential candidates -- most notably Hucklebbe and Mitt Romney, before choosing Guliani. Hucklebee is now asking for the death penalty for the wiklileaks founder without a trial.
Robertson suggests we blow up Foggy Bottom, (that's funny) and he gets feted, and courted; Julian Assange, the death penalty by the same crazies for releasing low level documents from a body that they think is a joke or dangerous to our national security to begin with. It is the Roman coliseum! Palin should win the nomination in a landslide unless Hucklebee, who has seen the light asks that Assange be strangled and burned at the stake as well.

Jay Tea, there is an obvious factual error in the first paragraph if this post. Wikileaks did not steal the documents it published.

I'm sure you will be correcting this error shortly.

Steve, you will go far before you find someone with more contempt for Pat Robertson than me. But that being said, let me introduce you to this little geographic feature called "the water's edge."

It's one thing for us, as Americans, to kick around our government. They work for us, not the other way around, and every now and then we need to remind them just who's the boss.

Plus, the water's edge is where domestic politics should stop. There is a HUGE difference between Americans bad-mouthing our representatives, and outsiders actively working to subvert and sabotage our relations with other nations.

Or, to put it another way: yes, most of the State Department is pathetic. (P. J. O'Rourke once said the only reason we should keep it around was to give us something to do with our surplus of Ivy League twits.) But they have a very important and very difficult job to do, and there is absolutely no reason why we should tolerate outsiders complicating the matter (and, consequently, making the world a less safe place).

Or, to put it bluntly, Steve, there are some things that should transcend partisan politics. This is one of them. So kindly take your partisan sniping and snide asides and shove them up your ass. Sideways.

I'm an American first and foremost. You, apparently, are a Democrat/liberal/progressive/asshat first, and "American" somewhere further down the list.

Not. Helpful.

J.

faparoo, you wanna get nit-picky? No, it doesn't SEEM they actually took the documents. (We may never know for sure -- the only identified thief apparently didn't have access to all the stuff that's been released.) But they certainly solicited the theft, encouraged the theft, cheerfully accepted the stolen material, and profited from its use. In the grand scheme of things, whose hands actually took the documents out of the government's possession is pretty much irrelevant.

Much like yourself, come to think of it.

J.

Oh, and faparoo, you're talking like a lawyer, looking for loopholes. That's actually another part of my thesis -- I'm not looking for things to get settled in courts. We got too goddamned many lawyers already gumming up the works.

That reminds me... how go things on the "civilian trials for terrorists" going? Or was that just another Obama promise that's passed its expiration date?

Thank god for that one.

J.

Who knew the damn enemy of GI Joe was going to become the model of modern warfare?

Sheesh! Thanks Mattel.

YO JOE!

Quite a while ago, Martin Van Creveld wrote an article (and book, I think) called "The Fate of the State" in which he suggested that nation-states are going to soon be a thing of the past. While events may not have unrolled exactly as he predicted, indeed states may be losing their position in the world.

Google for "fate of the state" and you can see it in Google Books, as well as in:

http://cantate-domino.blogspot.com/2007/03/martin-van-creveld-fate-of-state.html

Jay, I realize you were the exception and didn't care for Robertson, it's too bad that all the other Republican grandees didn' feel that way. I suppose they feel they don't want to lose the evangelical vote.

On the larger topic this patriotic groupthink on this topic is beginning to remind me of the run-up to the Iraq war. CNN as first cheerleader is leading the way again.

Sure it is slightly unethical to do what Assange did. But I think it is unethical of the State department to ask its highest diplomats even in our London embassy to contravene signed normal diplomatic conventions and snoop on not only other diplomats, but foreign business leaders etc for their credit card numbers, saliva, urine or whatever juicy 'biometric' details they could uncover. If you read the British papers, the Brits are far from blase about this, so much for the special relationship.

But I suppose we shouldn't be so shocked now, if American diplomat found his way into the British Home Office and lifted a couple of hundred thousand foreign service cables with a stolen password, and the documents mysteriously found their way on to the front pages of the Washington Post. What would Hillary do then? Censor him publically, and call this another attack on the international community, but give the diplomat/intelligenc asset a quiet promotion?

Steve:

Family may bicker amongst themselves - but they're still family, and will band together when needed.

You seem to think, as Jay said, that politcal orientations are more important than a threat from outside the family. They're not.

Guys, give Steve a break. He's not "up" on this type of "nuance".

Steve, diplomats are assumed to be spies. They always have been. The only requirement is that they be subtle about it and don't involve themselves too closely in fomenting violence. To pretend otherwise is to live in a fantasy land...

Oh, you're a Democrat, right? Never mind.

faparoo, you wanna get nit-picky?

Nit-picky? Jay Tea, no one except you, as near as I can tell, is accusing Wikileaks of doing anything other than publishing stolen documents that were given to it.

You're the only one I know of who has accused Wikileaks of actually stealing the documents themselves. This is especially surprising given that the government has someone in custody who it believes stole most of the documents that Wikileaks has published.

Now Wikileaks has a stated policy on its website that it does not solicit information. You can take that with as much salt as you want, but the fact still remains that there is no evidence that wikileaks has ever solicited, paid or otherwise supported anyone who has given it information which it subsequently published.

Wikileaks is nothing but a bunch of servers and a website. Just like Wizbang, they consider themselves a media organization. A news outlet

If you can't accurately describe what Wikileaks is and what it does, why should anyone pay any attention to your rambling argument for how to deal with it?

Speaking of which, let's look at Wikieleaks "about" page:

Publishing improves transparency, and this transparency creates a better society for all people. Better scrutiny leads to reduced corruption and stronger democracies in all society's institutions, including government, corporations and other organisations. A healthy, vibrant and inquisitive journalistic media plays a vital role in achieving these goals. We are part of that media.

Scrutiny requires information. Historically, information has been costly in terms of human life, human rights and economics. As a result of technical advances particularly the internet and cryptography - the risks of conveying important information can be lowered. In its landmark ruling on the Pentagon Papers, the US Supreme Court ruled that "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government." We agree.

We believe that it is not only the people of one country that keep their own government honest, but also the people of other countries who are watching that government through the media.

Now let's look at something you wrote not two days ago here at Wizbang:

I was reminded of that joke when I heard this story from the WikiLeaks release of confidential diplomatic cables: last year, the Obama administration was talking with Russia about the problems with Iran. We struck a deal: we would cancel the planned missile defense system we were working on with Poland, and Russia would support increased sanctions against Iran. We upheld our end, and the Russians promptly reneged on theirs.

Which puts me in mind of another joke, my favorite Polish joke. The punchline there is baed on knowing that, historically, the Russians have spent centuries screwing over the Poles -- and this is just one more example.

Two pretty funny jokes. I just can't bring myself to laugh.

You took information that you got from the Wikileaks release to form the basis of a criticism of the Obama administration.

In other words, you used the information released by Wikileaks in the exact manner in which Wikileaks hopes and intends that the information it publishes will be used: To hold government accountable for their behavior.

And yet a few days later you argue that Wikileaks should be treated like an enemy of the United States.

The trouble is, Jay Tea, that Wikileaks is indeed an media organization. If you think it's more like an enemy intelligence agency, what is your judgment of and remedy for every other media organization, including Wizbang, that published the same information?

You yourself went a step further than just repeating the information: You built a criticism of US policy based on the information, just as Wikileaks hoped you would.

But I suppose I'm just being nit-picky because without the Wikileaks info you would have made up something to criticize, anyway.

Who cares, right?

Your readers know they shouldn't trust you any way.

I'm beginning to think Obama and Clinton have set this up to drum up support for their adminstration to rally round the flag. His ratings must have shot up. Everyone has forgotten about Osama bin Laden on the lamb, Even "Alpha man" Putin is even going on CNN tonight with Larry King in the role of a wounded tyrantm to denounce Julian Assange, the world's most wanted man for leaking cables that show America knew that

Russia is a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a "virtual mafia state", according to leaked secret diplomatic cables that provide a damning American assessment of its erstwhile rival superpower.

The Czars or Stalin never had problems with such widespread revelations. But journalists in the American msn know their place; there is no fear Larry will ask a tough question, based on the wikileaks; he doesn't want Interpol or Hillary Clinton to come after him.

He made clear he was not amused by a US diplomat's description of him as "Batman" and President Dmitry Medvedev as "Robin". "To be honest with you, we did not suspect that this [criticism] could be made with such arrogance, with such rudeness, and you know, so unethically," Putin remarked.

If Larry has a box of kleenex on his desk. Putin better not use if one of our diplomats are around or is this still a state secret?