“Julian Assange's Plea Deal Is a Tragedy”, Noah Rothman, National Review
The article above is a different view on yesterday's release of Julian Assange.
I mean different from our view now which is to be sympathetic to Assange. As it appears also are people on both the Left and the Right who have welcomed his plea deal and release, and arrival back in Australia.
The article reminds me of why I was against him in the first place.
Which view I then amended because the U.S. military had itself said no one was compromised by the Wikileaks releases. And that Taliban Intelligence had many other sources apart from Wikileaks. And that I thought Wikileaks had redacted identifying information.
But: If it's true that Afghanistan tribal elders were killed by the Taliban as a direct result of being named in Wikileaks — and of Wikileaks refusing to redact names — then there's blood on his hands. Or at the very least on Wikileaks'.
Meantime: the release of confidential telegrams between embassies damaged the diplomatic effort for nothing much more than titillating voyeurism.
Here is a bit of the report, linked within the NR article above from the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point:
As noted above, the Taliban have attempted to exploit open source intelligence to gain useful information on U.S. and ISAF operations, with perhaps the best-known example being the Taliban's stated intent to search Afghanistan-related reports posted on Wikileaks to uncover possible government informants, following the failure of the Wikileaks organization to remove identifying information about informants such as their names, home villages, and family members.48 Although the U.S. military later concluded that no intelligence sources had been compromised by the leaked documents,49 numerous tribal elders in southern Afghanistan reportedly received death threats within days of the Wikileaks release.[Link]
Is this all terrible flip-floppery?
ADDED: Alan Dershowirz points out that it was Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning who broke the law, and the Oath that he (now she) took when he joined the Army, by stealing the materials he gave to Assange. And that Assange is protected by the First Amendment, and broke no law.
Some make the argument that Assange saved lives, net-net, by publishing the info. Which might be true. In any case, the Military said that here were no people killed as a result of the release of the info, in the Guilty Plea deal. Make of that what you will.
I’m going to settle on the side of what I’ve been for a while: on the side of Assange. Admitting that I was against him at the outset.
