Talk:WikiLeaks/Archive 2

Scope questions
There are a lot of questions about the appropriate scope for this article. I've aimed to make my draft a reasonably complete account of WikiLeaks, and I think I have it about right. However, there's certainly room for discussion, perhaps even debate.

My outline is noticeably different from that suggested by the Managing Editor at the top of the Talk:WikiLeaks page. I do not think most of the differences are particularly important; it is just that I've used a structure appropriate to the particular topic. However, other opinions are needed on this.

On one point, I differ significantly from an ME suggestion. He had

As for the current sections, I suggest to move most of them to more relevant articles: "Cryptome and John Young" should go to Cryptome and a suitably disambiguated John Young, linked from a short summary in the history section Similarly, "Secrecy News and Steven Aftergood" should go to these two articles, linked from a short summary in the history section "Daniel Ellsberg" should go to that article, linked from a short summary in the history section

I have not done that, and do not think it should be done. I kept all of Howard's text on those, and expanded the Young and Ellsberg sections. To me, his seems essential background on WikiLeaks, an important part of the history. I did move them down the hierarchy of headings, though, making those three the subsections of a "looking for support" head which in turn is under "development".

Howard suggested on the same talk page "The two really large leaks, perhaps, should be linked subarticles." He may be right, though my guess is that both are large and important enough to have their own standalone articles eventually. However, I feel there should be at least a brief summary here because it is important to understanding WikiLeaks. I've done such a summary for the Afghan War logs and started one for the diplomatic cables. One of Martin's objections to Howard's original version was that it "has failed to mention the most outrageous revelations of the US government that have emerged from the leaks". I think these sections should answer that.

Comments? Sandy Harris 09:31, 12 December 2010 (UTC)


 * We are in violent agreement about "subarticles". I didn't mean subpages, but only things that are subarticles via Related Pages.


 * I don't see how anything starting with "outrageous" can possibly be objective or neutral. Most charitably, it's my opinion that Martin tends to judge things by a relatively recent (i.e., 1950-1980) concept of international law, and also assumes that said international law is accepted by and governs all countries. My view is more operational, both considering history, and considering military and intelligence activities. It is not for nothing that intelligence is sometimes called the "second oldest profession", certainly with espionage being discussed by Sun Tzu circa 400 BCE.


 * While I've probably read more of the military than the diplomatic documents, shall we say that (Claude Rains voice) that I was shocked, absolutely shocked, to find nations spy on each other, and that their diplomats say different things in public than in private? It is not unique to the US that diplomats provide support to the intelligence collectors; I can easily come up not with only US examples, but Soviet, Israeli, Cuban, UK, and French. Indeed, there were substantial disclosures of such things by Philip Agee, decades ago; the media impact of Wikileaks distinguishes it. Agee's, in fact, fairly clearly got people killed.


 * So, yes, there probably is a summary of the global impact of disclosures to be written, but, just as much, the specific topics belong in specific articles. The Arab reaction to an Iranian nuclear threat, and pressures on the US to take action, belong in Iranian nuclear program, as they are not specific to Wikileaks. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:17, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Related articles?
I have started Julian Assange, Cryptome, John Young (cryptome) and Anonymous (group) to eliminate red links here. All are pretty stub-ish so far. Any volunteers to expand them?

What else is needed by way or related articles? Cablegate and Collateral Murder should likely be redirects, but to what? Sandy Harris 10:17, 12 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I would hesitate to title anything "collateral murder", but use a more neutral, descriptive title: "(date) U.S. helicopter fire on civilians." Murder is a legal term and would be very hard to prove here, and I don't think Wikileaks would like "collateral manslaughter". See fratricide; perhaps we need collateral damage, which is more correct.


 * This may even be worth more discussion, because the earlier incident where they released the "collateral murder" accusations is an isolated case where it's very hard to claim objective journalism rather than activism. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:39, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Introduction
Sandy, I am sorry that I am late in joining this discussion.

I have not yet read much of the article, but my first impression is that it lacks an introduction, a brief summary reporting the basic facts, without any quotes.

--Peter Schmitt 20:33, 15 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I am going to be somewhat late in responding. Busy with other things, will not look seriously at this until at least Sunday, possibly a few days later.


 * I'd encourage more comment, especially from Peter, in the meanwhile. Sandy Harris 02:51, 16 December 2010 (UTC)


 * No problem with me, Sandy. There is no deadline for us. On the contrary, since I also have other things to do, I may also be not too busy here. --Peter Schmitt 09:50, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Comments
I feel that the mention of allegations against Assange here is inappropriate, as it's nothing to do with WikiLeaks, unless it is explicitly mentioned in the context of possibly being part of the campaign against WikiLeaks; the awards to Assange should move to that section on Assange as the awards clearly relate to WikiLeaks. I think the whole section on "Looking for support" should go; in context this is pretty trivial stuff. The Methods section is technical and should be trimmed - its really a technical footnote. Don't regard the internal dissension as particularly worth mentioning. The article is dominated by US perspectives, but the key issues are global. I think the use of quotes is excessive, they sometimes get in the way of any coherent flow. But that's a style issue - the balance issues are removing Assange allegations or putting them in the context of suggestions that these are part of an attempt to discredit WikiLeaks, cutting the trivial detail that detracts from the major issues, and removing the US-centric approach. I'd go from an introduction (without quotes, as Peter suggests) to the account of the major exposes (Notable Leaks, and then to separate discussions of the key issues (Freedom of the Press; Rights to Privacy vs Public Interest; National Security issues vs need to hold Governments accountable; Importance of secrecy in diplomatic affairs vs Freedom of Information). These issues can be illustrated by various specific examples. Then at the end, a short section on Assange and finally an account of the attacks on WikiLeaks. Gareth Leng 09:38, 16 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Gareth, several people have complained about US-centricity. I would ask that they clarify very carefully whether they refer to the actual activities of Wikileaks, and the indeed more global issues that are addressed in freedom on the Internet and government secrecy. So far, I see a great deal of confusion between the messenger (Wikileaks) and the message.  In other words, when you cite (Freedom of the Press; Rights to Privacy vs Public Interest; National Security issues vs need to hold Governments accountable; Importance of secrecy in diplomatic affairs vs Freedom of Information), you are NOT referring to things specific to Wikileaks.  The Wikileans aspects go into proper context in articles on those subjects.  Trying to put them into Wikileaks is to turn Wikileaks, essentially a publisher, into a forum such as the United Nations or even Davos or the Shanghai Cooperative Organization.


 * Wikileaks is an admittedly activist organization that operates internationally, but, so far, has targeted US materials, quite possibly through a single primary US source with SIPRNET access. The US responded. I don't think that's especially US-centric, Forget the recent large disclosures and go back to the helicopter firing incident, the targeting by US counterintelligence, etc. While the information has international implications, do the actions of Wikileaks?  If tens of thousands of Russian documents had been the major release, and Russia had taken action to shut down distribution, would discussing that be Russian-centric?  Now, if Wikileaks had disclosed French, Japanese, and American primary documents, and only the American response was discussed, I'd call that biased. If said documents had subjects of many nations, and the article dealt with responses from France, Japan, and the US, I would consider that appropriate -- and the specific documents be discussed in articles on the subject.  For example, it's not American-centricd or Iranian-centric to say that the discussion of the general Middle East response to Iranian weapons development belongs in Iranian nuclear program, with only bibliographic references to Wikilieaks.


 * Sorry, but I don't think the exposes themselves should be more than bullets and links. They don't form any coherent grouping other than they came from the US; Wikileaks relation does not unify them in any meaningful way.


 * In the diplomatic disclosures, take the Lebanese material. That certainly deal with US-Lebanese relations, and the Middle East generally. That material, however, is most relevant to articles on Lebanese politics and US-Lebanon relations, rather than on Wikileaks -- to say that it's Wikileaks or US centric is to say that this week's New England Journal of Medicine blog article, "Safety and Effectiveness of a 2009 H1N1 Vaccine in Beijing,"is US centric because it was published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. THAT is international, or perhaps Sino-centric. It would be silly to put that in a general article on the NEJM.


 * The technical details perhaps belong in a separate article with amplification, but I hardly think there is too much -- there's actually too little on the alleged "cyberwar". It probably should be clarified that in comparison with major disruptions such as Slammer (malware) or NIMDA (malwar), this is a tiny, tiny leel of Internet disruption. As far as I can tell, as an example of hacktivism, this is unusual only in that there is an attempt to keep moving the servers, as a fairly simple-minded defense. There is Server location anonymization, imposed partially because Wikileaks has chosen to use a Wiki format &mdash; had they used, for example, BitTorrent, they would be far more resilient. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:39, 16 December 2010 (UTC)


 * There's a serious philosophy behind WikiLeaks; see here and here. What WikiLeaks claims to be revealing through its leaks is the mismatch between what governments say and what they actually do; they argue that the more repressive/authoritarian/dishonest the Government, the more it has to lose from openness. I do not think that you can write a balanced article about WikiLeaks without addressing this philosophical rationale. It's an idealistic enterprise, not a commercial enterprise, and whether you think the ideals are misguided or not, that's the context in which it must be discussed. If this article is not structured to address the fundamental issues that WikiLeaks claims to be addressing and was established for - then it will never be neutral and objective. It will be about the mere facts, the superficial phenomena, and not about the ideas, the ideals, the context, and it will miss the real importance. It will be crude reporting without the expert synthesis that we are aiming for.


 * On UC-centricity - first, WikiLeaks has not particularly targetted the US Government - the disclosures of 'Climategate' and BNP membership were UK based for example; both of these raise issues - the BNP release about privacy of personal information: is it legitimate for example to reveal that an individual police officer is a member of an extreme right wing organisation; - the Climategate disclosure raises issues about the privacy of e mails but also about how journalists can competently evaluate context in these cases - e mails between individuals cut out the context of assumed common knowledge/understanding, so evaluating their meaning as a third party becomes very difficult.


 * But the US centricity is that the disclosures of Government information are arguably in the global public interest, and their global impact needs to be addressed - i.e. the disclosure of US material have international implications; whether they are in US interests is one thing, whether they are in the global public interest is something quite else. The broad political/ethical/legal issues have an international context, but the specific leaks also all have global significance. The issue of whether it is legitimate to publicise details of diplomatic exchanges is not one that can be addressed objectively by simply reporting US views and reactions. How the US Government works is of global importance, and revealing exactly how it works is arguably in the global public interest - what the US thinks about WikiLeaks is arguably unimportant compared to its potential impact on global politics (except insofar as what it thinks is translated into authoritarian repression of global freedom of expression). The mechanics of what it does, all the technical details, are ultimately irrelevant to the core issue of what WikiLeaks is doing, why it is doing it, and what the global consequences are.Gareth Leng 17:16, 16 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Wikileaks is only doing something that's been done before, without the Internet enabling it. It's a little frustrating to hear people talk about global public interest of information disclosure in the context of Wikileaks, as if Wikileaks has suddenly uncovered this issue. I certainly would not try to address the global significance of diplomatic exchanges in terms of US reaction OR Wikileaks contributions. Take, for example, the Iranian nuclear program. The existing CZ article, well before the Wikileaks diplomatic disclosures, dealt with international efforts to control nuclear proliferation. Wikileaks, by revealing the actual views of Arab powers, enhances that discussion, in the sense that they seem to be opposed and are appealing for US intervention. The complexity of that includes that the "street" won't be happy that Iran concerns their governments more than does Israel, with much more WMD capability.


 * BY ALL MEANS DISCUSS THE SPECIFIC LEAKS, BUT IN ARTICLES RELEVANT TO THEM. To attempt to put them into the Wikileaks articles is biased. It ignores things that have been around in the strategic literature but haven't gotten the publicity. It ignores the use of open source intelligence by competent analysts.


 * As another example of the need to address things in terms of the impact, not the leaker, is Mordechai Vanunu the core of discrediting Israel's policy of "strategic ambiguity" about its nuclear capability, and Dimona just being a research station? Or is the Israeli nuclear program really the issue? If Wikileaks is the core, than Vanunu was more important than what he had to say.


 * If one goes back to a pre-Internet major disclosure, the Pentagon Papers as released by Daniel Ellsberg, there was a great deal of impact on France, the Soviet Union and China, as well as other countries, and the NATO alliance -- before the US involvement in the Vietnam War began. The Papers gave some embarrassing disclosures about multiple countries in Geneva in 1954. I could go back before that to the Oslo Report in WWII, the provenance of which has come out only recently.


 * I'm afraid, Gareth, that what people are calling "US centricity" are buying into the activist line of Assange and Wikileaks, not considering it in the context of other major disclosures, and allowing Wikileaks to control the discussion of what has been a long-established issue among strategic specialists. This is wrong. Government secrecy is a legitimate issue, as well as the implementation details of classified information. Indeed, if one tries to read many of the leaked documents, one had better know a good deal about security classification markings for them to make much sense -- especially the military ones.


 * Steven Aftergood and the Federation of American Scientists -- an internationally oriented group -- have been addressing government secrecy, not just US, for decades. They are not alone. There is, however, far more discussion of security classification in the US than in most other countries. Wikileaks seems opportunistic -- there is reason to believe that much of their US material came from a single source. I'd be more impressed if Assange, an Australian, had made previous disclosures about what goes on at Alice Springs, and the proper Australian interest in that joint facility, and what it tells the involved governments about Chinia. Indeed, I'd be more impressed if there was investigation of the UKUSA Agreement or ECHELON. What about the European Parliament disclosures and recommendations about ECHELON, perhaps ten years ago?  Do you suggest this doesn't have global significance?


 * While I don't agree with every aspect Nick raises, I'm getting concerned that there is both bias, and also a lack of familiarity with the field in which these disclosures have taken place. I think it's entirely appropriate to mention US reaction to leaks, just as it would be entirely appropriate to mention Israeli reaction to Vanunu.


 * I'm a little frustrated -- hell, a lot frustrated -- that I've written a great deal about Iraq and Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation, etc., from multiple perspectives, yet those detailed articles haven't gotten remotely the collaboration that Wikileaks has gotten. I'm frustrated that when I have written in some of the specialized areas, such as fratricide, the expert term, I got a great deal of argument over the title -- just whether it should be called fratricide (military) or "friendly fire". Come on, people -- when was the last time you saw a headline of one biological brother killing another described as "fratricide"?  There wasn't any substantive contribution on the definition of military fratricide, and the relevant point here of how it flows into inadvertent civilian casualties, usually called "collateral damage" in the professional literature. To buy into Wikileaks labeling it "collateral murder" is, again, to let the activists control the discussion.


 * PS: from Murphy's Laws of Combat:
 * Friendly fire isn't.
 * When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.


 * Howard C. Berkowitz 21:14, 16 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, I first contributed to US Congressional testimony on government secrecy, by the Ripon Society, in 1970, and debated Tom Charles Huston about the Nixon Administration domestic surveillance plans about the same time. I was a participant in political policy discussions including the Pentagon Papers, Shanghai Communique, and national technical means of verification in 1972. I did not appreciate the tantrum accusing me of being US-centric, which blocked me from the article. The area of government secrecy, not limited to the US, has been an interest of mine for several decades -- and the very nature of the subject is such that it doesn't necessarily get published.


 * Consider how a tantrum removed me from the article, without a fair hearing of whether I was being biased or not. Ironically enough, one of the few compliments, (I think) ever given me by He Who Has Departed, when he was accusing us all of bias and supporting biased and inaccurate articles on extrajudicial detention, U.S. by George Swan, both claiming that "Americans needed to be educated", was MBE's comment "But Howard, I don't think of you as an American."


 * Yup. Some of us USAians actually do research on what both our and other governments do, and are aware it's a connected world. Some of us even turn away from Fox News and pay attention to Chatham House, International Institute for Strategic Studies, International Crisis Group, etc. Some of us pay attention to things like the Durand Line and don't just think Pakistani foreign policy is concerned only with US opinion and Afghanistan. Some of us wonder why we are chasing al-Qaeda where it isn't, but do differentiate among the interests of the Quetta Shura and Tehrik-e-Taliban (which needs updating) and the Haqqani Network.


 * Frankly, I wish some of the people insisting on US bias look at their own -- and what they contribute to the specialized articles, not just what is fashionable. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:34, 16 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not going to respond to the many irrelevant tangents in the above. Just to repeat, my problem with the article is not pro US bias, but its US-centricity - addressing the topic primarily in the context of how it affects the US and evaluating it through US reactions to activities affecting the US. WikiLeaks is a European based global organisation, founded by Chinese dissidents, led by an Australian currently in the UK. The site recently provided US-sourced classified information information to media in Germany, France the UK and the USA who have published it, but past sources have been from all around the world. The site has a clear philosophy and mission, and rational evaluation of its activities requires some synthesis of what it has done and the consequences, and there are major criticisms even from its supporters (Open letter to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange: ‘‘A bad precedent for the Internet’s future’’ (Reporters Without Borders). Looking at those will give a complex picture; the Climategate release of e-mails for example was damaging  in reducing public trust in climate science, and this was the consequence of taking private e mails out of context; however it also had the effect (through the consequent reports) of reinforcing the principle that all scientific data should be made fully and openly available after publication. The 2007 leaking of the Kroll report which revealed corruption in Kenya's government  is claimed to have affected the subsequent election results removing many involved in that corruption from office. The video released as  "Collateral murder" made visible how the US Rules of Engagement in Iraq were interpreted, revealed the mismatch between official accounts of the incident and the facts of that incident, and showed that the Rules of Engagement permitted soldiers to decide to kill unarmed people who were understood by those soldiers to be attempting to rescue/evacuate injured people. The merits of the Rules of Engagement, or of Climate Science are not the point; this article isn't the place for discussing their merits, but it should be the place for discussing what WikiLeaks does, why it does them, the issues involved, and their consequences. The release of information that may pose risks to specific individuals is widely condemned and hard to see any justification within WikiLeaks' mission. But I've said my bit and deeply appreciate what Sandy is doing here; I'm just here explaining the ways in which I think the present text is weak and unbalanced. I'd rather not see this article as a drop bag of detail. WikiLeaks is one of the big stories of the century, the impact of its activities is enormous. Freedom of the Press is not a new concept, there have always been leaks and whistleblowers, but WikiLeaks has taken the issues to a quite new level.Gareth Leng 10:55, 17 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Gareth, it serves no one here to exchange comments about irrelevancies. We disagree on some fundamental aspects, and some of them, for me, are in areas where I have spent a few decades of effort. Again, I say that the proper place for your global issues are in, at least, articles such as government secrecy and freedom on the Internet. These should contextualize Wikileaks, and other unofficial sources of information. Indeed, a conventional news organization, or a publisher such as that of Mordechai Vanunu, can have just as much impact as a massive, essentially unorganized document dump -- the helicopter incident was quite a different matter of specificity.


 * Yesterday, there was a disclosure of Fox News orders to its reporters on how climate matters were to be presented, and, if I may dare say so, slanted. Along with Climategate, that belongs in an article about the effects of media, conventional and unconventional, on obviously global climate issues. The discussion must not be framed by Wikileaks, but by Citizendium, not from the activist positions of Fox or of Wikileaks.


 * I find it interesting that you comment on the Rules of Engagement (ROE) in the attack helicopter incident. I simply don't remember: did Wikileaks actually disclose the relevant ROE document? In U.S. military practice, ROE documents in effect are usually classified at the SECRET, or rarely CONFIDENTIAL level, but are never unclassified, for what should be understandable tactical reasons. ROE are distinct from the Laws of Land Warfare that establish justifications for firing in a manner that may injure or kill civilians. Simple question with a yes or no answer: did Wikileaks actually disclose the ROE in effect with the non-neutrally named "collateral murder" report?  Have you actually read them when you say The video released as  "Collateral murder" made visible how the US Rules of Engagement in Iraq were interpreted, revealed the mismatch between official accounts of the incident and the facts of that incident, and showed that the Rules of Engagement permitted soldiers to decide to kill unarmed people who were understood by those soldiers to be attempting to rescue/evacuate injured people. If you don't have the primary document, and have not seen quite a few ROEs, what basis are you using to interpret these? War is dangerous for children and other living things, but many countries' ROE reflect some brutal truths of battlefield survival. In a different incident in Iraq, forces were under rocket fire from a hotel balcony. A news reporter raised a long telephoto lens from a different balcony, and was immediately killed, reflecting the combat reality that it's impossible to tell the difference, in seconds, through the actual viewing systems in use, between a long tube of a lens and a long tube of a rocket launcher. Unfortunately, with the technology of that time, someone was going to die.


 * So far, I read a certain lack of understanding with ROE, their use and their misuse. ROE are used in a fairly standard manner by NATO, Commonwealth, and other allied forces such as Japan, so while some might have started in the US, they are the practice of many industrialized nation. I'm bothered by your speaking of "irrelevancies" when I hear you making what I consider sweeping generalizations representing a particular political view. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:39, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Response
Howard asks (rather aggressively, as its easily answered for himself) "Simple question with a yes or no answer: did Wikileaks actually disclose the ROE in effect with the non-neutrally named "collateral murder" report?" Answer yes

See also
 * The WikiLeaks Video and the Rules of Engagement''New Yorker 2010 ("The video raises a number of interesting questions about the treatment of casualties during an ongoing military operation.")
 * Rules of Engagement Newsweek 2010
 * WikiLeaks posts video of 'US military killings' in Iraq BBC News (mismatch between official statements and facts)
 * Protecting Civilians…or Soldiers? Humanitarian Law and the Economy of Risk in Iraq Thomas W. Smith International Studies Perspectives 9: 144–164.
 * Wikileaks: reaction to the Collateral Murder videoGuardian("The Wikileaks investigative website opens a can of controversy with its shocking video expose of a 2007 US attack in Iraq")
 * Combat Video: The Pentagon Springs a WikiLeak Time ("After decrypting the Apache video, WikiLeaks posted it on Collateral Murder, a site whose name indicates its assessment of the attack. U.S. military personnel, speaking privately, have a different view. "Sounds like propaganda to me," a Central Command official said. Unfortunately, propaganda can also turn out to be true")
 * Iraq Video Brings Notice to a Web Site New York Times("By releasing such a graphic video, which a media organization had tried in vain to get through traditional channels, WikiLeaks has inserted itself in the national discussion about the role of journalism in the digital age. 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.")
 * Not ‘Collateral Murder’ but Tragedy of Mistaken Identity The American
 * Military's Killing of 2 Journalists in Iraq Detailed in New Book Washington Post account of book 9The Good Soldiers) by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter David Finkel
 * Leaked video reveals chaos of Baghdad attack CNN("What matters in the end is not how we as colleagues and friends feel; what matters is the wider public debate that our stories and this video provoke," statement by Reuters spokesman)
 * Is Bradley Manning a hero? CNN
 * Baghdad families to sue US Army over deaths in 2007 airstrike 'mistake' Times ("Mark Taylor, an expert on international law and a director at the Fafo Institute for International Studies in Norway, said the evidence indicated that there was a “case to be made that a war crime may have been commited”.")
 * Wikileaks – Rules of Engagement, Rules of Empire, Self-righteous Apologetics, and Collateral Murder Foregn Policy Journal 2010 (aggressively critical piece)

The issue of what the Rules were is not the point, nor is it an issue whether the soldiers observed them or not (if they weren't following the Rules why weren't they prosecuted). The issue is a political one, if the soldiers were following the Rules, then WikiLeaks exposed the reality of those Rules and raised worldwide concern about their nature - this article doesn't need to discuss the Rules or whther this was a breach, but does (I think) need to engage the political issues raised by the release. If every serious news source has expert commentators discussing how the WikiLeaks disclosure of the helicopter attack raises questions about the conduct of the war, for the life of me I don't understand why Citizendium shouldn't also report that; it is key to WikiLeaks that they claim that disclosures are in the public interest, and that can't be discussed in a vacuum but needs clear examples. It's not for me (or us) to judge whether release of that video, which was requested by Reuters under the Freedom of Information act but denied, was in fact in the public interest - but that issue is for everyone to decide for themselves Gareth Leng 12:48, 18 December 2010 (UTC)


 * That which bothers me, Gareth, is that you seem to be suggesting that there have been no discussions about Rules of Engagement before Wikileaks or Iraq. Nonsense. To suggest otherwise, and put it other than in the Rules of Engagement article, is allowing Wikileaks to frame the discussion.


 * As a quick example, the ROE for the US invasion of Panama were widely considered, among soldiers of several countries, to be quite thoughtful and intended to avoid collateral damage. Nevertheless, there was one significant case where even following the rules, given that war is not perfect, led to significant civilian damage.


 * I'm citing from memory but, as I remember, the use of indirect fire ground weapons (e.g., artillery) had to be preauthorized by a lieutenant colonel or higher, and air strikes from a general officer. These rules were followed in probably the fiercest fighting, at the Comandancia, the Panamanian military headquarters and a legitimate target by most standards. Now, I can't give you the exact ballistics from memory, but the key building in the facility was eventually taken under heavy weapons fire. Unfortunately, as I remember, the roof failed, and several shells tore through it and into a large slum next to the Comandancia wall, and started extensive and unexpected fires.


 * Let's go back. I see no functional difference between Rules of Engagement and targeting strategies. Sir Arthur Harris specified the RAF Bomber Command doctrine of "dehousing" against Germany, which does have some complex nuances, but essentially was a deliberate targeting of the residential areas in which German industrial workers, but not exclusively industrial areas, lived. Had the war crimes trials gone the other way, a good argument might have been made for hanging Harris by the neck until dead. The bombing doctrine against Japan, however, was considerably more complex, because while there were quite separate factory and residential areas in Germany, many Japanese industrial facilities were comingled with housing.


 * I have absolutely no problem discussing, in a comparative manner, rules of engagement and their predecessors, and I am the first to call the United States wrong if I think it was wrong. Nevertheless, this is not a new issue, and, as far as I can tell, you are treating it as an essentially new issue and allowing Wikileaks to frame the terms of discussion. You mention a CNN article about how the stories make world opinion, a very good point. CNN is a news organization, which has used material from Wikileaks and other sources.  Sometimes, it's been very wrong, as with its own reporting on the purported Operation TAILWIND in Southeast Asia, which caused the dismissal of Peter Arnett.


 * Now, I just tried to go to Wikileaks for the ROE, and, not surprisingly, the site was down. That's not the issue. The issue, in part, is the distinction between leak source and the news organizations that publish it, and Wikileaks has essentially been a source to news organizations. Let's take, for example, one of the iconic photographs of the Vietnam War, Saigon police chief Nguyen Nuoc Loan shooting a civilian Viet Cong prisoner in the head. Do we speak of that incident as dealing with Vietnam and summary execution, or do we allow Eddie Adams, the photographer, to do the assessment?


 * I will continue to object strenuously if you keep relevant discussions in the context of Wikileaks alone, rather than in something that considers other relevant sources. Take the Wikileaks disclosures of private Arab governmental policy about the Iranian nuclear program. Those were significant Wikileaks diplomatic disclosures, but I see the appropriate treatment as in the subject-specific article, along with many other sources and assessments.


 * While I haven't yet decided on a good place to have coverage here, let me observe that some of the field reports in the large batch of military disclosures are both much harder to interpret than the diplomatic ones, yet some, which I read in the New York Times, shocked me -- there was blatant military incompetence if one knew how to get through the cryptic language. Literally, Gareth, I shook when I read a radio message saying BONE WINCHESTER, which told me quite a bit -- yet it wasn't one of the phrases the Times explained. Please don't take this as more sympathetic to soldiers' than civilians' lives, but it angered me that soldiers had been put into a position when the best support they had -- or didn't have -- was indicated by BONE WINCHESTER.  How do we explain this sort of thing in context? I'm not sure. Briefly, a small outpost was put in a sufficiently exposed position that when they were attacked, the most powerful available air support ran out of ammunition.


 * I urge you to reconsider how the discussions should be framed, and that Wikileaks is new only in volume and speed. I greatly recommend H.R. McMaster's book on US policymaking in the Vietnam War: Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. This was McMaster's doctoral dissertation -- I should note that he is a serving US general. He was able, through a mixture of diligent academic research and military connections, to get access to source material that had not previously seen daylight. When, for example, I discovered Lyndon Johnson had announced an unnecessary airstrike, but still with pilots for whom he was responsible, was announced on TV on its way to the target, so he could make the news deadlines but jeopardizing the forces, I muttered to myself "it's just as well LBJ is dead." Just out of curiosity, Gareth -- do you have a sense of how contrived, confused, and manipulated was the Gulf of Tonkin Incident as the casus belli for a massive escalation in Vietnam?  If you don't, I suggest that we are dealing with much broader historical and policy issues than Wikileaks alone. If you do, how did you find out abut it, and certainly OPPLAN 34A as well as the Desoto Patrols, without Wikileaks?


 * I am quite prepared to give many non-US ROE and debatable war crimes examples; I just don't have as many memorized as I do US examples. Some US examples, such as No Gun Ri, are coming to light after fifty years or so. Other atrocities variously came to light because they were committed by the losing side, as at Manila or Malmedy, so we didn't need Wikileaks. Deir Yassin preceded Wikileaks by a fair bit. It's still not clear if British forces used smallpox in the French and Indian War, although Japanese biological warfare in China is fairly well known -- but not well enough. There are also charges that can be cleared, such as the North Korean accusations of US biological warfare in the Korean War -- but for many years, I could not discuss the reason that the allegations were nonsense without using now-declassified information.


 * That last example, incidentally, is one in which it can be difficult to explain why a Freedom of Information request may be denied. Sometimes, it's simply coverup. In other cases, the reason itself may legitimately be classified. Sandy is aware of why the advisory committee to the US Senate Intelligence Committee would not say why NSA refused to discuss the details of why the Data Encryption System algorithm was partially classified. Years later, we discover they were right that there was no back door -- but the classified details covered a previously unknown technique, differential cryptanalysis.


 * Are we going to be expert-guided, Gareth? Than I suggest that you pay a little more attention to opinions in the military and historical areas, not just curent political opinion. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:31, 18 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't think you're listening. I've said nothing about attacking the US (I don't see where you get that idea from), and explicitly said this is not the place to discuss the Rules of Engagement. The issue has nothing to do with what the rules are,; all that is relevant is that the military endorsed the actions of those soldiers. Given that, the issue is to do (for example) about whether we, whose governments conducted that war (and the UK was in Iraq too) would have supported that war had we known that this was how it was going to be conducted - that's the importance of information; it changes the nature of politics. I have no idea why military opinions should be regarded as particularly relevant to this article, any more than geoscience opinions would be by inclusion of Climategate; this is in my view exclusively a Politics article, but unfortunately we don't seem to have a Politics editor here with relevant expertise. However it is an article on which many members of Citizendium will have views. However, look at the opinion, published in Time, NYT, the Times Telegraph, BBC, Newsweek, New Yoryer etc etc and you'll see that what they consider that WikiLeaks is significant for. And that, I think, is what should guide the article - i.e. what it has done, why it did it, and what impact it has actually had. That is what I have said from the beginning, and I have suggested that these things should be illustrated by specific examples to show exactly the nature of the issues raised by WikiLeaks. I don't particularly care which examples are chosen, but it's natural to choose from some that have been particularly well covered - like the Kenyan revelations,(Wikileaks receives Amnesty International's New Media Award)the Climategate e mails, the "collateral murder" video, the BNP list, the Scientology documents, - and of course the diplomatic cables (subject of the Sam Adams award, from former US military officials and intelligence advisors) Gareth Leng 18:21, 18 December 2010 (UTC)