"Don't Look At WikiLeaks, Fellow Jackasses! Keep Those Blinders on!"

With these constant WikiLeaks disclosures of racist and anti-Gay slurs, sexism, outright lies, cronyism and crooked dealings, the Democrats have a major problem with keeping the troop's morale up as more and more comes out.

So interim DNC chief Donna Brazile has a solution...don't look! Stay away from the eee-vil Wikileaks and remain in blissful ignorance!

She said the hack was "carried out by the Russians" (no real proof of that,by the way) and since of course Donald Trump is a Russian agent and the font of all evil, even reading or downloading this foul heresy could infect your computer with malware so insidious, so destructive that it will explode and blind you forever more.

Never mind that WikiLeaks has an international reputation for sending out accurate, malware free items and that countless people have already downloaded the items in question without their hands shriveling up from leprosy...it's get thee hence, WikiLeaks!

Full disclosure. Having heard her speak several times, Donna Brazile is far from stupid. In fact, even though we disagree on a great deal, she's smart and articulate. But she's faced with an impossible job here.

First off, a lot of the people she's trying to convince have already sinned by downloading past WikiLeaks documents without being struck by lightning. And second, the surest way to get a lot people to check this stuff out is to tell them not to do it.

Having taken over from comic book character Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz who resigned after the first WikiLeaks dump that showed exactly how the Dem established rigged the game for Hillary in advance, Ms. Brazile is already dealing with a rough proposition keeping the peons in line. And then, there's dealing with the stupidity of the organization she's trying to to run.

After the Wikileaks initial release, some bright person at the DNC figured out that maybe some of their passwords got hacked. So they decided that they best way to fix it was - wait for it - to email new passwords the already hacked accounts!

You can't make this stuff up.

WIKILeaks : Top Dem Donors Awarded Ambassadorships, Federal Posts

Pay to Play indeed! WikiLeaks Strikes again.

Aside from ambassadorships to strategic foreign countries given to people who knew nothing about them, key federal posts like assistant attorney general and FTC chairman were put up for auction to the highest bidder...



(h/t Gateway Pundit)



You might remember the ridiculous spectacle some of the 'ambassadors' made during their senate confirmation hearings...




More about these clowns at the link...and all of them got confirmed by the Senate.

WikiLeaks ASSANGE: ‘Most interesting and serious’ Hillary info yet to come

 

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was interviewed on “Fox & Friends” this morning and had some interesting things to say about upcoming information yet to be released on Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

When co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked Assange what he thought the most shocking thing that he had found out about Hillary Clinton was, he replied:

“Well, I think the most interesting and serious relate to upcoming publications we have."

“A variety of different types,” he continued. “But a lot of information that we have already published, I mean it may not be that apparent to most people who are sort of not specializing in your politics and national security.” Here's the interview:



Assange, who has been given asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London was already the target of what looks like an assassination attempt after the initial Wikileaks disclosures on Mrs. Clinton.

He had better watch his back.

Wikileaks: Obama Tried To Apologize For Hiroshima And Nagasaki - Japan Said No

This beggars belief.

Back in November 2009 President Obama visited Japan and bowed to the emperor, something no American president had ever done. Apparently the president had something even worse in mind but was saved from dishonoring himself and our country by the Japanese themselves.He planned to visit Nagasaki and Hiroshima to apologize for winning WWII with the atomic bomb.

A heretofore secret cable dated Sept. 3, 2009, was recently released by WikiLeaks. Sent to Secretary of State Clinton, it reported Japan's Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka telling U.S. Ambassador John Roos that "the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a 'nonstarter.'"

The Japanese government strongly objected to Obama's planned apology because they feared it would strengthen the opposition on the Left, particularly those opposed to the continuing alliance of the U.S. and Japan.Perhaps they also acted out of a certain compassion, realizing that the actions of a young, inexperienced and frankly stupid president would have caused a firestorm back home in the USA and likewise endangered the America-Japan relationship.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was horrific, but even most Japanese historians admit that it saved thousands of American and Japanese lives by convincing Emperor Hirohito to surrender instead of the U.S. having to invade the Japanese home islands, something that American military experts at the time estimated might have cost over a million dead and poisoned the relationship between the two nations for generations.

For President Obama to attempt to apologize for America's victory over a fascist foe in WWII and by extension, for the bringing of freedom to Japan staggers the imagination.

It not only shows his abysmal ignorance of history. It's an unforgivable insult to every American who served in WWII and to the country as a whole, and it proves beyond a doubt that we now have a president in the White House whose very morality is skewed and twisted and whose patriotism and love of country can justifiably be questioned.

I can't wait to see how the president's enablers and apologists in the dinosaur media try to spin this.

UPDATE: Yup, they're already at work. BTW, here's a link to the actual cable. The money quote is in part 5, discussing the President's upcoming visit:

"He[Yabunaka] underscored, however, that both
governments must temper the public's expectations on such
issues, as the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to
apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a
"non-starter."

President Obama obviously advanced the idea of a Hiroshima apology. Otherwise, why would Vice Foreign Minister Yabunaka mention it and advise strongly against it?

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Wikileak's Julian Assange Gets 7 Figure Book Deal On Autobiography

A new low in the publishing industry..

Wikileaks' boss Julian Assange has revealed that he's getting an advance of $502,000 (£325,000) from U.K. publisher Canongate Books Ltd. and $800,000 from U.S. publishing house Alfred A. Knopf, a subsidiary of Random House,( which is in turn owned by Germany's Bertelsmann AG) for writing an autobiography.

Assange told the UK's Sunday Times that he sold the memoir because he needs the money to pay legal fees to keep WikiLeaks afloat. "I don't want to write this book, but I have to," he said.

The book is expected out sometime next year and Knopf and Canongate are to be commended, if that's the right word, for reminding us that some people will wallow in anything for money, no matter how dirty:





(The famous final scene from The Magic Christian..unfortunately part of the sound track's been deleted because it contains Thunderclap Newman's 'Something in the Air')

Some suggested titles fopr Assange's new opus?.."Stealin' it"...."Bareback Riding"..."The Parasite King"..

Your thoughts?

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Ann Coulter: "Like A Condom, The First Amendment Can't Always Protect You"

A real gem from La Coulter this week:

First of all, I feel so much more confident that the TSA's nude photos of airline passengers will never be released now that I know the government couldn't even prevent half a million classified national security documents from being posted on WikiLeaks.

President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder will be getting around to WikiLeaks' proprietor, Julian Assange, just as soon as they figure out which law the New Black Panthers might have violated by standing outside a polling place with billy clubs.

These legal eagles are either giving the press a lot of disinformation about the WikiLeaks investigation or they are a couple Elmer Fudds who can't find their own butts without a map.

Since Holder apparently wasn't watching Fox News a few weeks ago, I'll repeat myself and save the taxpayers the cost of Holder's legal assistants having to pore through the federal criminal statutes starting with the A's.

Among the criminal laws apparently broken by Assange is 18 U.S.C. 793(e), which provides:

"Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, (etc. etc.) relating to the national defense, ... (which) the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates (etc. etc) the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same (etc) ...

"Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."

As is evident, merely being in unauthorized possession of classified national security documents that could be used to harm this country and publishing those documents constitutes a felony.

There's no exception for albinos with webpages -- or "journalists." Journalists are people, too!

Depending on the facts adduced at trial, there are about a half-dozen other federal laws that might apply to the WikiLeaks document dump, including 18 USC 641, which provides that any person who "receives" or "retains" a "thing of value of the United States" knowing "it to have been embezzled, stolen, purloined or converted" is also guilty of a felony, punishable by up to ten years in prison.

Heh! Read the rest here, and believe me, you want to.

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You Knew it Was Coming - TheTaiwanese Animated Take On Wikileaks

Hilarious as always...I particularly like the bit about Sarah Palin picking up an assault rifle to personally hunt Assange down!

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The Choices We Have On Assange And Wikileaks

By now, most of you know that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested in London over charges stemming from an alleged sexual assault in Sweden, that he’s been denied bail and is fighting extradition.

The charges themselves have some questionable (and unintentionally comic) aspects, especially when one looks at what seems to have actually happened and the background of the women involved.

At that, a nice Swedish jail for a few months might end up being the safest place for Assange at the moment.

But what I found most curious is some of the inane suggestions here in America on how to handle Assange.

For instance, Senator Dianne Feinstein(D-CA), normally pretty level headed for a Democrat proposes that we prosecute Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act.

She’s by no means alone in suggesting that.

But not only does she somehow conveniently forget that Assange is an Australian citizen and thus not subject to this law but that the law itself is a tool grown rusty from disuse, even if Assange were subject to it.

We haven’t prosecuted anyone seriously under the Act since WWI, although there are a number of people who certainly could and should have been tried and even convicted under the statute. Even if he were somehow to be tried under the Espionage Act, Assange’s lawyers could make the case that using the law in his situation constituted special and unreasonable prosecution, especially since the Act specifies that it applies “when the United States is at war” and we’re officially not at war with anyone right now.

That last factoid aside, one thing Senator Feinstein lacks the intellectual honesty to mention is that while Assange may not be subject to it there are US citizens who could be prosecuted under the law. Feinstein asserts the Act makes it a felony for an unauthorized person to possess or transmit “information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”

If that’s true, then is there any reason the editor, publisher and responsible parties working at the New York Times haven’t been arrested and charged? After all, CNN was offered the same material that the merry souls over at Pravda-on-the-Hudson published and declined it.


Of course, that’s not exactly a place people on the Left like Feinstein want to go, although Senator Joe Leiberman was courageous enough to suggest it. And that kind of treatment for the seditious souls at the Times is long overdue,in my opinion. It’s far from the first time they’ve endangered the lives of far better men and women simply to push their political agenda.

Now, when it comes to Assange and his friends, it seems we really have two choices. One is simply to terminate them with extreme prejudice, as the saying goes. The other is to pull an Eichmann…kidnap them, bring them to US jurisdiction and try them under our laws.

When the Mossad kidnapped Adolf Eichmann from Argentina and brought him to Israel for trial, both Argentina and Germany made token protests but moved on to other matters when the Israelis simply ignored them and pursued long overdue justice.

Julian Assange is not Adolf Eichmann, and it would remain to be seen how this would affect our relations with Australia and other naations, which might weigh in consideration on how we handle him and his friends at Wikileaks.

But I think those two choices are the choices we have.

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Assange Arrested - For Not Wearing A Condom?

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was arrested today in London over charges stemming from an alleged sexual assault in Sweden.

He said he plans to fight moves to extradite him to Sweden after he was refused bail at a court appearance in London.

During the hearing, high-profile Left wing supporters of Assange - including film director Ken Loach, journalist John Pilger and socialite Jemima Khan - offered up a total of £180,000 in bail, which was refused by the court.

After the court appearance, Assange's lawyer Mark Stephens ( who also has done a lot of work for George Soros' Open Society) said he would be applying again for bail. He said: "I have described this Swedish process as a persecution and not a prosecution."

He also claimed the charges were "politically motivated" and that Wikileaks would continue to publish material: "We are on cable 301 and there are 250,000 secret cables."

So, what are the charges? According to Gemma Lindfield, the representative for the Swedish authorities, Assange has been accused of four counts of sexual assault for actions that occurred in Sweden last August.

Lindfield told the London authorities that the first complainant, Miss A, said she was victim of "unlawful coercion" on the night of August 14 in Stockholm, when Assange is accused of using his body weight to hold her down in a sexual manner.

The second charge alleges Assange "sexually molested" Miss A by having sex with her without a condom when it was her "express wish" one should be used.That's odd on th eface of it, because if she was being held down against her will, it's rape..and rapists are notorious for not bothering about condoms.

The third charge claims Assange "deliberately molested" Miss A on August 18 "in a way designed to violate her sexual integrity". Another rape on a totally separate date? Hmmm...

The fourth charge accuses Assange of having sex with a second woman, Miss W, on August 17 without a condom while she was asleep at her Stockholm home.If true, that's definitely non-consensual sex, although you have to have at least a little sympathy for a a man so inept sexually that he was unable to rouse his partner during the act.

Assange will appear in court again December 14th. Right now, jail is probably the safest place for him.

Oh, it appears the two women have an interesting background as well...

Assange may definitely have picked the wrong places to put his dipstick into, if you get my meaning.

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SNL Has Some Fun With Wikileaks

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One Of The Best Things I've Seen Written On Wikileaks

And it comes from the pen of Christopher Hitchens, who considers Julian Assange 'an unscrupulous megalomaniac with a political agenda' and calls for him to turn himself in:

The moral "other half" of civil disobedience, as its historic heroes show, is that you stoically accept the consequences that come with it. Then there is diplomacy itself. One of civilization's oldest and best ideas is that all countries establish tiny sovereign enclaves in each other's capitals and invest these precious enclaves of peaceful resolution with special sorts of immunity. That this necessarily includes a high degree of privacy goes without saying. Even a single violation of this ancient tradition may have undesirable unintended consequences, and we rightly regard a serious breach of it with horror. We found out everything we would ever need to know about Ayatollah Khomeini and his ideology when he took diplomats as hostages.

The cunning of Julian Assange's strategy is that he has made everyone complicit in his own private decision to try to sabotage U.S. foreign policy. Unless you consider yourself bound by the hysterically stupid decision of the Obama administration to forbid all federal employees from downloading or viewing the WikiLeaks papers, you will at the very least have indulged in a certain amount of guilty pleasure. In a couple of major instances, the disclosures are of great value to the regime-change die-hards among us. More Arab regimes want Washington to take on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and more urgently than anyone had guessed; I would very much rather know this now than 20 years later. Iran was able to acquire some missile capacity from North Korea; so would Saddam Hussein have been if we had left him in his so-called "box." We already know that his envoys were meeting North Korean missile dealers in Damascus before the threat of the coalition's intervention caused the vendors to return hastily to Pyongyang. The latest leaks complete an important part of an important case. {...}

And that, of course, prosecution or no prosecution, is what he really ought to do. If I had decided to shame the British authorities on Iraq in 1976, [ ed. note - Hitchens is referring to his actions during his own 'Wikileaks' moment, when he came across a classified British diplomatic memo approving of Saddam Hussein coup in Iraq] I would have accepted the challenge to see them in court or otherwise face the consequences. I couldn't have expected to help myself to secret documents, make myself a private arbiter of foreign policy, and disappear or retire on the proceeds. All you need to know about Assange is contained in the profile of him by the great John F. Burns and in his shockingly thuggish response to it. The man is plainly a micro-megalomaniac with few if any scruples and an undisguised agenda. As I wrote before, when he says that his aim is "to end two wars," one knows at once what he means by the "ending." In his fantasies he is probably some kind of guerrilla warrior, but in the real world he is a middle man and peddler who resents the civilization that nurtured him.

Spot on, Mr. Hitchens. That's exactly what he is - a sordid peddler with an agenda and an exaggerated sense of his own worth and importance.

However the walls may be closing in on Mr. Assange and his playmates. His Swiss bank account has been closed, and Scotland Yard now has full arrest papers to apprehend him in the South of England, where he's reportedly hiding out.

Assange, like most thugs and blackmailers has reacted with threats - he's promised a document dump of everything he's stolen thus far if he's arrested.

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Pentagon: We could have shut down Wikileaks but chose not to

Well, that's certainly good news, but then the question remains...why didn't you?

SeDef Gates' spokeshole doesn't really answer the question directly except to say that a decision was made (obviously by the Obama Administration and likely directly by the president) not to pursue that option of shutting down Wikileaks at this time.

So...what was going on? Why not shut down the site and, er, terminate the activities of Assange and his pals? For that matter, why not simply tell Assange that he had a window of 12 hours to turn over all of the classified documents he had to the nearest US embassy or face severe and life changing consequences?

I'll go back to what I wrote earlier.Either the Obama Administration really didn't know quite how to handle this or deep down, the president actually approved of the US being taken down a peg and saw this step towards his cockamamie ideal of a multi-polar world where America is just another country subservient to the International Community.

Or maybe it was a mixture of the two. But frankly, either one amounts to us being in real trouble.

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What The Arab Papers Are Saying About Wikileaks

An interesting overview, courtesy of the Economist.

Tarek al-Homayad, editor-in-chief of al-Sharq al-Awsat, a leading Saudi-owned, pan-Arab daily, portrayed the leaks as a crisis for America and called into question the accuracy and relevance of the reports:

" We must take care that not everything written by the American embassies is fact; some of these reports have been taken out of context. Some contain analysis and reporting while the rest merely express points of view, not actual policies. Negotiations between countries before they take important political decisions are usually frank, especially behind closed doors."

On the subject of Iran, Mr al-Homayad avoids discussing the remarks reportedly made by Saudi Arabia's King Abdulaziz calling for American military action against Tehran, noting:

"The region does not need any documents confirming or denying that Iran is source of concern […] Tehran knows, even without these reports, that it lives in an ocean of mistrust."

Writing in the London-based daily al-Hayat Hossam Aitani argues that the leaks show America's anxiety about Iran, which helps explain its strategy in the Middle East:

"The correspondence between American envoys and diplomats shows that the United States sees, in Tehran, the only party with a comprehensive plan [for the Middle East] to compete with American designs [for the region]. While this analysis may please those who support Iranian influence in the Middle East, it also points to the fact that the Arab world, her people and problems, simply aren’t on America's radar. With some “reverse engineering” we can start to understand that American strategy in the region is based on the containment of Iran. "

Satie Nour Eddin, a columnist for Lebanese daily al-Safir, described what the leaks revealed as “a scandal in the fullest sense of the word”, slamming America for the damage the documents have caused to its allies:

"So far, what has been made available online does not reveal any secrets or solve any mysteries. It just gives a vivid, spontaneous and honest image of America's sense of superiority over others. It unveils the mask American diplomats wear in their talks, which is removed the instant they start writing reports to their superiors."

In the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Watan, Ahmed Yousef al-Daeej expressed some suspicion about America's role in the leaks:

"No one knows the truth of this WikiLeaks thing. Is it plausible that the United States with all its greatness, power and valor, cannot stop WikiLeaks and its millions of documents? Or have these documents been leaked by the Americans themselves to achieve a particular goal? Or has America simply turned a blind eye to the leak?"

Omar Kallab, writing in al-Dustour, a Jordanian newspaper, was defensive of the Jordanian role in the region as portrayed in the cables, emphasizing the difficult situation Jordan finds itself in, sandwiched between Iraq and Palestine.

"The documents prove, once again, that Jordan's role is faithful to our nation and our heritage. It’s a role that holds true to the nation’s principles and identity and which supports the country’s interests. I don’t think anyone can say to American politicians what we say to them in Jordan, at least according to what the documents say."

And Qatari commentator Nawaf al Thani, writing in al-Raya, predicts a new sense of caution in diplomatic discussions with America following the Wikileaks cables:

"It is certain that any future meetings between American officials and their Arab counterparts will, more than ever before, be filled with silence and courtesies, as people keep their cards close to their chests."

That last comment is probably the truest of the bunch.

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Wikileaks Proved Obama Lied Repeatedly About Middle East Policy

Doug Ross has a superb break down on one of the conclusions we can draw from the Wikileaks deluge - Obama lied repeatedly to the American people about Iran and Middle East policy:

Anyone remember that exactly one year ago President Obama's original deadline for Iran expired?

Back in the halcyon days of hopeychange, newly minted President Barack Obama articulated his master plan for dealing with Iran....

But -- as the Wikileaks disclosures make clear -- Israeli concessions have (and had) nothing at all to do with stopping Iran. Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries wanted Iran crushed -- as King Abdullah put it, "cut off the head of the snake" -- period.

Let me repeat: Obama knew all along that Israeli concessions had nothing to do with stopping Iran's march to nuclear weapons. Yet he persisted in linking the two, even though it raised the risk of an atomic conflagration that could engulf the world.

I'd like to know: does it get any more irresponsible than that?

Well,no, it doesn't..but to be fair, Obama was certainly no more irresponsible on Iran than his predecessor George W. Bush was.Bush simply talked a better game without doing anything.

The difference is in Obama's case, he's known from day one that Iran is warring against us in Iraq and Afghanistan and there's not even a pretense that they're not seeking nukes any more, a pretense Bush had to contend with.

And unlike Bush, in Obama's case time is quickly running out.

Part of what's going on, I think, is that our president has a sentimental sympathy for Islam, which explains his coddling of Iran and Pakistan and his anumus towards Israel.He sees American presence (and especially that of Israel)as provocations to the Muslim world be eliminated as part of his ideal of a multi-polar world where America is just another country subservient to the International Community and Islam is resurgent.

That, by the way, mirrors the stance of Iran, al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood on the matter.

And that's why, no matter how loudly and urgently the Arab nations called for American intervention in Iran, he ignored them.

If you feel like you may have seen this movie before,you have...in the appeasment of Hitler by Britain prior to WWII.

Wikileaks, if nothing else, revealed exactly how incompetent and dangerous Barack Obama really is.

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Wikileaked: John Kerry Says Israel Must Cede E. Jerusalem And The Golan

Senator John Kerry's solution to peace in the Middle East? Israel surrenders, moves back to indefensible borders and gives up access to Jewish Holy sites in the Old City.

At least that's what the former head of the Senate Foreign Relations committee told Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani and the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa in two separate meetings, as revealed by the released diplomatic cables.

The Emir, who is largely regarded in the Arab world as an Iranian ally told Kerry that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was a key to Middle East peace and that Kerry should focus on him. Kerry agreed with the emir, but questioned Assad's arming of Hezbollah and interference in Lebanese politics. Kerry also agreed with the emir that Israel should give Syria back the Golan Heights.

"The Chairman added that Netanyahu also needs to compromise and work the return of the Golan Heights into a formula for peace," the diplomatic cable reported.

Kerry also said told the Emir that any final agreement would have to include a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem.

"Any negotiation has its limits, added Senator Kerry, and we know for the Palestinians that control of Al-Aqsa mosque and the establishment of some kind of capital for the Palestinians in East Jerusalem are not negotiable," the cable stated, summarizing the meeting with the Emir.

Obviously Kerry doesn't understand - or want to understand - that Jerusalem is non-negotiable for the Israelis too. No Israeli government would ever accede to dividing it again.

"For the Israelis", the Senator continued, "Israel's character as a Jewish state is not open for negotiation. The non-militarization of an eventual Palestinian state and its borders can nonetheless be resolved through negotiation."

Ah, the wisdom of John Kerry...the 'Palestinians' have already stated unequivocally that they will never accept Israel as a Jewish state, will never agree to any land swaps and and still insist on being able to flood Israel with genocidal 'refugees' after any peace settlement.

What Kerry is pushing for is an Israeli surrender in exchange for things the 'Palestinians' have no intention of agreeing to.

I certainly hope some of the naive Jews who voted for this creature are paying attention.

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Sarah Palin: 'Serious Questions about the Obama Administration's Incompetence in the Wikileaks Fiasco'

Sarah Palin weighs in on the Wikileaks fiasco and asks a few obvious questions that I doubt the Obama Administration has answers to:

We all applaud the successful thwarting of the Christmas-Tree Bomber and hope our government continues to do all it can to keep us safe. However, the latest round of publications of leaked classified U.S. documents through the shady organization called Wikileaks raises serious questions about the Obama administration’s incompetent handling of this whole fiasco.

First and foremost, what steps were taken to stop Wikileaks director Julian Assange from distributing this highly sensitive classified material especially after he had already published material not once but twice in the previous months? Assange is not a “journalist,” any more than the “editor” of al Qaeda’s new English-language magazine Inspire is a “journalist.” He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?

What if any diplomatic pressure was brought to bear on NATO, EU, and other allies to disrupt Wikileaks’ technical infrastructure? Did we use all the cyber tools at our disposal to permanently dismantle Wikileaks? Were individuals working for Wikileaks on these document leaks investigated? Shouldn’t they at least have had their financial assets frozen just as we do to individuals who provide material support for terrorist organizations?

Most importantly, serious questions must also be asked of the U.S. intelligence system. How was it possible that a 22-year-old Private First Class could get unrestricted access to so much highly sensitive information? And how was it possible that he could copy and distribute these files without anyone noticing that security was compromised?

The White House has now issued orders to federal departments and agencies asking them to take immediate steps to ensure that no more leaks like this happen again. It’s of course important that we do all we can to prevent similar massive document leaks in the future. But why did the White House not publish these orders after the first leak back in July? What explains this strange lack of urgency on their part?

We are at war. American soldiers are in Afghanistan fighting to protect our freedoms. They are serious about keeping America safe. It would be great if they could count on their government being equally serious about that vital task.

- Sarah Palin

Do you get the feeling that if a certain housewife from Wasilla was in the White House, none of these questions would need to be asked? Even if she had to hunt down Julian Assage and his pals personally?

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The Real Casualty of Wikileaks - Barack Obama's Presidency

Most presidencies have a number of moments that define them, that reveal the essence of both the man and his administration.

Barack Hussein Obama has had a number of these moments already. But the current Wikileaks scandal has to be a true 'the emperor has no clothes' moment...a truly revealing portrait of a truly failed and impotent presidency.

Here we have the spectacle of a foreign organization not only openly publishing illegally obtained, highly classified documents that strain relations with our allies, compromise our diplomats and our intel and endanger our troops and operatives in the field but taunting us by giving us advance notice of their intent to do so.

Our response to what amounted to a threat to our national security? Did we get the CIA involved to take out the perpetrators? Did we even warn them that if they even thought about publishing this stuff and didn't return it immediately, there would be serious consequences?

No,we had our State Department's lawyer Howard Koh write a letter essentially saying 'this was really nasty of you, so please give us our stuff back, OK?'

And then President Obama went off to take care of some important things..play a little basketball and pardon a couple of turkeys.

The publishing of the Wikileaks documents does deep damage to American interests far beyond what was actually revealed. Our allies and US friendly assets among our enemies are going to think twice about cooperating with us, since the confidentiality of that cooperation is no longer guaranteed. Certainly no Arab government and possibly Israel are going to risk speaking openly and bluntly to us about security matters in the future. And our diplomats and agents abroad are also going to more constrained about what they tell Washington, since it could come back to compromise their missions or even get them killed.

In view of that, President Obama's public statement on the matter is highly illuminating:

"President Obama supports responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world, but this reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal. By releasing stolen and classified documents, Wikileaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals. We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information. "

Well...that'll teach 'em, won't it? Although I have to chuckle a bit at the line about how the Obama Administration supports 'responsible, accountable, and open government'. The American people certainly haven't seen anything like that here.

Still, it's worth looking at how puerile and ineffectual the White House's response to this attack - and I can't really refer to it any other way. The two Wikileaks episodes have shown us to be a world power in name only, governed by an administration who won't even respond forcefully to our country's enemies.

That's evident not only from how we've handled the leaks themselves, but from the actual Wikileaks revelations, especially the ones dealing with our non-policy on Iran.

Are we to believe that the entire resources of the US government were unable to track down Julian Assange and the Wikileaks people, recover the data and arrest and prosecute them?

There are really only two possibilities, and neither of them is pleasant to contemplate. Either the Obama Administration really doesn't know quite how to handle this or deep down, the president actually approves of the US being taken down a peg and is making a kabuki protest. That certainly would jibe with a number of other things the Administration has done.

In either case, what we have is a sitting President of the United States of America who has allowed a major attack on US Security to go essentially unchallenged. And there will be consequences.

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USA Scrambling To Do Damage Control On WikiLeaks

The big story today is the latest WikiLeaks’ release of the first batch of about 250,000 US diplomatic cables, which expose US dealings with the rest of the world and are particularly damaging both to the Obama Administration and the foreign policy 'establishment'.

The key to how this happened is US soldier Bradley Manning, a former intelligence analyst who has been held in solitary confinement for the last seven months and is facing a court martial in 2011. He is allegedly downloaded tons of classified material while serving on an army base outside Baghdad, including Siprnet the diplomatic encrypted cable database. The leaked cables range up to the "SECRET NOFORN" level, which means they are meant never to be shown to non-US citizens.

Manning allegedly leaked the stolen data to WikiLeaks, a site run by Australian hacker Justin Assuage.

While these cables are intended to be read by officials in Washington up to the level of the secretary of state, the most sensitive "top secret" and above foreign intelligence files aren't part of what's been leaked, since they can't be accessed from Siprnet, which is where the current documents come from.

So, what's in the latest batch? Plenty. For starters:

The cables confirm what my own sources told me - that Saudi King Abdullah and a number of the other Arab regimes are a lot more concerned over Obama's ineffectual posture on Iran than they are over the 'Palestinians' and have continuously urged Obama to do something forceful - including the use of military force - to stop Iran's nuclear program, with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah telling Obama to 'cut off the head of the snake.'

In fact, Obama’s June 2009 meeting with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, just before Obama's Cairo speech ended with King Abdullah flying into a tirade over Obama's inaction on Iran.

And that concern extended to other Arab leaders.

This directly contradicts foreign policy 'experts' like Chas Freeman, Stephen Walt, Robert Dreyfuss, Marc Lynch and a slew of others who have continuously stated that 'delivering Israel' is the key to Mid East peace rather than dealing with Iran and now appear not to have the foggiest idea about what they're talking about.

Or perhaps they merely have an agenda more concerned with Israel than with Middle East peace.

The US was aware that both Iran and Syria continually lied to the IAEA about their nuclear programs, and did very little about it,

Iran used the supposedly neutral Red Crescent to smuggle spies and weapons into Lebanon during the 2006 war with Israel as well as afterwards, in violation of UN Resolution 1701.

Since 2007, the United States has mounted a secret and so far unsuccessful effort to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani research reactor out of fear it could be diverted for use in illicit nuclear weapons.

Iran has obtained sophisticated missiles from North Korea capable of easily hitting western Europe, and the US feels that Iran is using those rockets as a basis to build even longer-range missiles. These advanced missiles are much more powerful than anything U.S. officials have publicly acknowledged Iran has.

Of course, you read about this here on Joshuapundit first, about three years ago.

Israel told the US that they saw 2010 as a "critical year" for taking out Iran's nuclear weapons and warned the Obama Administration that time is rapidly running out. General Amos Yadlin, Israel's military intelligence chief, said to a visiting congressman in summer 2009: "Israel is not in a position to underestimate Iran and be surprised like the US was on 11 September 2001."

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barack had two meetings during the week of May 25th 2009 ( right before Obama's Cairo Speech) - one with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee led by Senator Casey, the other from the House Committee on Foreign Affairs led by Rep. Gary Ackerman. There were a number of interesting bits.

Aside from the usual blather about the 'peace process', Barack's remarks on Iran and Pakistan are of interest:

In both meetings, Barak described Iranians as "chess, not backgammon players." As such, Iran will attempt to avoid any hook to hang accusations on, and look to Pakistan and North Korea as models to emulate in terms of acquiring nuclear weapons while defying the international community. He doubted Tehran would opt for an open, relatively low-threshold test like the recent one in North Korea. Rather, Iran will seek ways to bypass the NPT while ensuring its program is redundant and well-protected to prevent an irreparable military strike. Barak estimated a window between 6 and 18 months from now in which stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons might still be viable. After that, he said, any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage. He also expressed concern that should Iran develop nuclear capabilities, other rogue states and/or terrorist groups would not be far behind.

Barak reinforced his message regarding Pakistan in both meetings. He described Pakistan as his "private nightmare," suggesting the world might wake up one morning "with everything changed" following a potential Islamic extremist takeover. When asked if the use of force on Iran might backfire with moderate Muslims in Pakistan, thereby exacerbating the situation, Barak acknowledged Iran and Pakistan are interconnected, but disagreed with a causal chain. To the contrary, he argued that if the United States had directly confronted North Korea in recent years, others would be less inclined to pursue nuclear weapons programs. By avoiding confrontation with Iran, Barak argued, the U.S. faces a perception of weakness in the region.

U.S. diplomats offered various countries incentives, such as a meeting with President Obama or even millions of dollars, in exchange for accepting detainees from Guantanamo.

There will undoubtedly be more coming.

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