Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Walken
I understand your opinion of war, i've read it, and largely agree with it, in other threads.
What I don't understand is, in an invasion that has lasted the better part of a decade that has seen countless civilian deaths from disgusting tactics and circumstances used by both sides, your outrage is over a guy who published previously unreported (and some potentially fabricated instances) of conduct, misconduct, misappropriation and fraud, amongst other things that perhaps lead to the death of one man.
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I've made it a point in the past and as I review these documents that there is a seperation between civilian deaths and the public publication of the names of informatants and civilians in Afghanistan working for the NATO forces or the Afghan government.
I've said in that past that civilian casualties are a tragic by product of war.
But there are two things that come to mind.
I don't see anywhere in the rules of engagement that the military is to effectively and intentionally target civillians. The intent of the militaries over there is to try to preserve lives and not take them.
By releasing these documents with little care and consideration for the lives that it effects is callous, cold and to me criminal. leaking or releasing classified documents is also a crime.
I need to ask again, if anyone can show me where the names of these informants were released on purpose or by accident by the allies or the Afghan government?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Walken
Your relativism is not there in this argument, and this is nothing at all personal.
Heck, the guy who apparently targeted him was someone who was previously in custody. I've seen you rail on enough in other threads about Canada's judicial system to know this relativism is there in other circumstances.
If you ask me, this is just a further indictment to a lot of the information contained in those documents. The military is being careless with lives here, to an infinite extent more than Assange could dream of.
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The fact that the Taliban leader was in hand and transferred back to Afghanistan to me was a bad mistake. The next mistake was putting him back in the hands of the Afghans who have shown themselves to be fairly incompetant in policing and security. While I understand that closing down the prison system in Cuba was a political decision and in a lot of ways a improper one its something that we have to live with.
Have there been far to many civilian deaths, absolutely, but is that due to the general rules of engagment? Probably not.
The difference here is that Assange has publically published a death list and left those names available, when the right thing to do when he realized that mistake would have been to take the documents down until he could filter them.