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I've personally never read the leaked documents from Chelsea Manning, but from what I understand, it exposed a lot of what was going on at Guantanamo Bay, also
by CoryG89 10y ago
I've personally never read the leaked documents from Chelsea Manning, but from what I understand, it exposed a lot of what was going on at Guantanamo Bay, also including videos of truly horrifying air strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I don't know if you would classify this as merely 'somewhat interesting' confidential information, but personally I am glad it was released and I think the public has a right to know about these things.
- ameister14 10y agoI'd be more inclined to accept that if those weren't just a tiny part of the thousands of seemingly random documents she released. It certainly makes it appear that the exposing of air strikes was a by-product of the release, not its intent.
- secfirstmd 10y agoThe first leaks where the collateral murder videos.
- tunap 10y agoSorry for the downvotes, secfirstmd, but I believe the readers are looking for a more substantive post. Explaining how civilians and BBC reporters were mistakingly targeted as insurgents, then the Admin's resistance to FOIA requests by the BBC and the families of the victims would help. A link to the wiki can't hurt. You know the drill, perhaps a rushed post? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrik...
- cm2187 10y agoI am not sure what video proved. I don't think anyone needs a massive data leak to know that people are killed in wars, and that bombs are making "collateral damages". That's not exactly a secret. In fact the pentagon maintains statistics on civilian casualties. I am not aware of any major wrongdoing uncovered by the diplomatic cables leak. The comments I read/heard from diplomats who reviewed the data rather implied that the US diplomatic staff is doing its job rather well, with often an accurate description of the internals politics of the countries they cover. Leaking these memos certainly resulted in a few red faces as private, undiplomatic comments made it to the front page. But I don't see the benefit. That leak is more akin to the sort of reckless leaks where massive amounts of private, sensitive data made available by unscrupulous hackers just because they could. This is a very different animal from the Snowden leaks which did uncover major wrongdoings and were filtered responsively.
- tunap 10y agoI do not disagree and am not aware of any other significant disclosures from Manning's data. However, the families of the victims deserved to know and the FOIA tequest was nefariously(IMO) denied. Stats don't tell the whole story.
- secfirstmd 10y agoYep, was just sitting down on a plane before a flight. Thanks for giving the wider context I didn't have time to add.