Perhaps remorse for our conduct, rather than anger and embarrassment at its discovery, should frame our response to WikiLeaks’ disclosures. [15]What I find so funny is that Governments have no problems looking over our shoulders, listening to our phones, … but when it is done to them they squeal like a stuck pig. [8]
While it is understandable that governments don’t like to be embarrassed by the reporting of their own misdeeds and mispeaks, people who shine light into the dark recesses of government are heroes, not our enemies. Those in the west who want to persecute Assange are no different from the people who ordered the massacre at Tienanmen Square and who censure the internet in communist China. [12]
This is open and transparent government at its finest. [19]
This is not the end,this is not the beginning of the end,but perhaps,the end of the beginning… [30]
Wikileaks is just doing the job that the mainstream media should be doing but is not doing… Tell me now…who does not want to know the truth ? Who wants their opinion "shaped" by the government PR apparatus as opposed to being told what is really going on…. [42]
In my other lifetime ago [I’m 78 years old], I worked at a U.S. Army post and rec’d top secret security clearance to decode incoming messages (in those days via TWX, etc.,). Even as a young woman, I found it incredulous that these often inane messages were considered "top secret." Perhaps the value of what WikiLeaks is doing is in showing the foolishness of government "secret classifications", i.e., having to hide facts: consider how fear can be created by keeping knowledge from citizens. And now Mr. Assange must go into hiding to protect himself from threats, including that from Interpol who appears determined to stop him one way or another. Yet I wonder, will the authorities be any more successful in finding him than they have been with finding Osama bin Laden? [45]
Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time.We’re only as sick as our secrets.
A fish wouldn’t get caught, if he didn’t open his mouth.
I also like an editorial in the Times several days ago, which said, in effect — sure, it’s embarrassing to reveal the candid comments about foreign leaders and the various quid quo pro dealings we did behind the scenes, BUT the leaks also show that there was no shameful skullduggery going on, like there was in the Bush administration — the torture memos, for example. There is really nothing here that is not already assumed to be the standard operating procedures of a powerful government in the modern world.
On the other hand, I also agree that more openness is better.