WikiLeaks and the U.S. Gov'ment's reaction

The concept is simple: submit something your boss/government wouldn't want the public to see so the public can see it. That's right, WikiLeaks.org makes whistle blowing fast and easy.

A really interesting component of the site comes with a video of a U.S. Helicopter mistaking some Reuters journalists and others for Iraqi combatants in 2007 (be careful, it's graphic). That's what got WikiLeaks into the headlines and that's how I found out about it.

More interesting still is the U.S. Government's resistance to releasing the video, and it's resistance to WikiLeaks (I'll talk about that later). Shortly after the killing, Reuters filed a Freedom of Information Act suit to access the video, which the government has resisted to this day. They didn't even investigate the

killings until requested by Reuters.

That poses the question: what should the government keep from us? If you ask me, I will always always always say "absolutely nothing." A democracy can't fully function without all its components in the know and passing judgement (hence newspapers, read one!). That's how a democracy should work, but then again, what we have in the U.S. isn't a true democracy.

Anyway, the government shouldn't keep stuff like this from us. It's important. The people who actually fight wars aren't the suits in Washington playing games with Reuters. The people who fight wars are the (mostly poor, mostly young, mostly with nowhere else to turn) common citizens. To keep them sheltered from what happens in war is vile, manipulative, and propagandizing in the worst sense of the word.

Furthermore, the government tried to ban WikiLeak in 2008. Ironically, their plan was posted on WikiLeaks about a month ago.

The government report included this in their reasoning:

“Several foreign countries including China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe have denounced or blocked access to the Wikileaks.org website.”

Excuse me? China? Russia? North Korea? Did we not go to war with North Korea to "protect man's basic human right to democracy and freedom"? Did we not spend the better half of the 20th century in an arms race with the "commie bastards" in Russia to, again, "protect democracy and freedom"?

If our government is seriously trying to use the fact that communist countries block access to to this site as a justification for why we should, I'm throwing my hands in the air and promptly moving to Canada.

This goes so contrary to to the ideals of democracy and freedom. It's horrifying. What else have they kept from us? It also raises questions as to whether or not we went to war with Russia (kinda) and North Korea. Was it really to "protect democracy"? Or was it to ensure Russia wouldn't get too powerful and threaten our handle on the world. I'm leaning towards the latter. Maybe it was something else. I mean, hell, there's no way we can know if the government never told us.

In any case, what the government did is disheartening at best. WikiLeaks, however, is not.