- Oh no, WikiLeaks has released 400,000 pages from the US Army’s Secret Iraqi Death And Torture Scrapbook! Julian Assange is un-American for putting these documents on his website — mostly because Julian Assange is Australian. Anyway, how does the average, Joe Six Pack Iraqi feel about this historic leak, which shows that Iraqi civilians are routinely tortured/slaughtered by Coalition Forces? “The documents, which were released too late to be in Saturday newspapers in Iraq, attracted less attention than expected among ordinary Iraqis, with many of them saying they’re unsurprised by any accounts of abuse by either Americans or Iraqis.” Meanwhile, in These United States: 400,000 documents, and almost none of them have pictures? Um, America will wait for someone to upload a MTV WikiLeaks Mashup. (Enya vs. Julian Assange. So good.) [McClatchy]
- Barack Obama is going on a “Would You Mind Voting Democrat?” road trip with Joe Biden. Only Traveling Gaffes can save us now. [The Hill]
- Karzai is receiving cash from Iran. Not sure why, we just thought you should know, though! [BBC]
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400,000 pages of war reports with NO PICTURES is supposed to be entertainment???? Can you even fit it on a Kindle?
I'll take Bristol Palin's Facebook page any day. I mean, can you really take Julian Assange's "work" seriously when he's never even been INVITED on Dancing with the Stars????
My suggestion to Assange is go back to the drawing board, lose 390,000 pages and turn this into either a videogame or pitch it to MTV as a kind of Jersey Shore Spends 6 Weeks in the Green Zone, ie. Episode 1: Snooki Finds an IED in the Shower, etc…
I think Snooki "finding" anything in the shower violates even MTV's standards and practices.
At least Biden will remember to make out with the flag before he signs it.
In Afghanistan the Iranians are competing unfairly. They need to bomb some weddings in addition to handing out cash. Then the playing field will be level again.
I gather it confirms my suspicions that making Deathsquad Negropont the US governor of Iraq had something to do with deathsquads springing up.
400,000 pages? Is that like one page per dead/tortured Iraqi?
Nailed it to floor. 1000p for this guy right now.
400,000 documents, all with lots of words. That's just too damn much. If Julian Assange were smart, he'd send off half a dozen tweets. 140 characters is about all most reporters will read these days.
I hear WikiLeaks is also planning to drop a HUGE bomb about Ken Mehlman's sexuality. Stay tuned.
Yeah, that was my response, too. Sad, immoral, horrible, yes. Surpising, no.
But you've got to remember that the Pentagon says these documents will ENDANGER THE LIVES of everybody mentioned in them who hasn't already been tortured into hating us or is already dead.
In which case, oh never mind.
It would almost restore my faith in American foreign policy if we somehow managed to trick the Iranians into taking over the Afghanistan franchise.
And say what you will, but "Julian Assange" is an awesome Bond-villain name.
and now that Mr Assange has no fixed address, he's living like a Bond villain.
I am not sure that "I expect you to let me crash on your couch, Mr. Bond" quite has that whole supervillain vibe.
That's only until his secret lair under a South Pacific volcano is finished.
Ahem.
Also, have some pictures.
Maybe I'm shallow, but I'd rather see butt-gutt's butt gutt than Krauthammer's butt face.
That picture will never get old! Did we ever figure out the sex of butt-in-the-front person?
HAS to be a man.
Or Kate Gosselin before her freebie tummy tuck…
The picture itself is proof that gender is a fluid concept.
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Well, one of the documents apparently revealed that those idiot hikers were in Iraq when Iran arrested them, and this is the only issue Americans actually care about, so there was no point in reading the other 399,999 pages, really.
You do know those were leftist hippies from Berkeley? I think once that fact came out, most of "real America" dropped them like a Jane Fonda workout tape.
Obambi will be in Bridgeport, CT this Saturday. I might try to attend and take some photographs of protesters as a "Secret Wonkette Operative." I'll let you know.
This is good news for John McCain!!!
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has acknowledged that his office has received cash from Iran, but insists it was part of a "transparent" process.
Huh, I didn't know Karzai was moonlighting at the US Chamber of Commerce.
Karzai is receiving cash from Iran. That's the same as the GOP receiving cash from Saudia Arabia. What could possibly be wrong with that?
"Obama will visit American Cord & Webbing Co., Inc., a manufacturer of cords and buckles, in an effort to show his economic policies.."
Strap yourself in for excitement, Rhode Island.
Hey it was hard to find a company that still made stuff in America. His choice was toilet paper, prophylactics, Beano, truck nutz and whoopee cushions. Rumor has it the whoopee cushion factory is moving to China soon.
We make lots of plastic crap with toxic side effects, too, all over the midwest and south. Caskets, too.
What, those don't make a good photo-op?
Would you mind if I just watch that Gilbert and Sullivan thing again because the fantasy that we have a President who can save the world and clean up stinky, doggy poop while never losing his cool is so much better than the reality that we are mired so deeply in shit that we are never getting out?
Since it was a BBC piece on Karzai playin' pitch with Ahmadinejad, how's 'bout some Kipling in memory of Shylock Holmes' buddy Dr. Watson who wuz wounded in the second Anglo-Afghan war…
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier ~of~ the Queen!
You watched Mystery! last night, didn't you?
Re: The Iraqi leaks… It's sorta like how the "Secret War" in Laos wasn't really a secret to the Laotians.
Or how Columbus didn't exactly discover anything from the Tainos point of view. In all cases, our historic myopia is rather disconcerting.
Anything with the word leaks in it make the average teabagger self conscious and angry.
If that 400,000 page tome had a cover it would be a smirking Saddam Hussein and in bold, "Miss Me Yet?"
And the answer is yes, but only for the porn 'stache.
Also in today's news, the sky is reportedly blue and ice remains cold.
How are we supposed to get worked up about all this if nobody slurped a Jell-O shot off someone's rectum?
Hey, there may be a few hundred thousand dead and tortured Iraqis, but Bush has got his cool trophy gun from Saddam and got to avenge his daddy issues, so it was all worth it.
Yes, but he's still all broken up about being unable to "reform" elder care back to the Middle Ages.
Karzai's taking cash from Iran? I'm glad the ways and means of our democracy are truly being embraced in Afghanistan.
Only if the cash is being funneled to the Contras in Nicaraugua
Yeah, but wait for the movie version when his rough edges get smoothed off and he's played by Matt Damon or some shit.
Pretty much throughout time the idealistic crusaders have been unpleasant assholes up close. It takes a lot of self-righteousness and isolation to carry on like they do, with their idealism trumping all regular associations/feelings/pangs of regret. If they are lucky they manage to get immortalized in soft light, preferably by being martyred in some horrific way. If not, they slowly turn into Ralph Nader or William Jennings Bryan, still screaming to an ever decreasing audience.
I have always thought that Ralph Nader could be helped by a serious rug-fucking.
It better be made of rug-burn resistant material and have a safety belt, or he'll start an anti-rug-fucking movement.
I always thought William Jennings Bryan discovered white nationalists and changed his name to Ron Paul.
You notice how other than that brief moment calling for "credit" about the end of combat operations, the GOP isn't making an issue of foreign policy? That's how fucked up the Iraqi situation is – even the neocons don't want to talk about it.
These leaks are as shocking to the Iraqis as the tape of the Rodney King beating was to African-Americans. The sad part is that Wolfowitz,Bremer,Cheney,Bush, and the rest will not even go to court.
Thanks for making me even more depressed.
WikiLeaks is just after the page views. They put the ads in deathsquADS!
The 400,000 pages of documents should be bound and released as a book entitled War and War and War and War and Peace.
A real scoop would be to find someone who Karzai is not taking money from.
Wikileaks should print the salary of every Xe/Blackwater employee after the atrocity he committed i.e. "15 Iraqi civilians shot dead at birthday party by Xe driver ($250,000)."
Meh. Let me know when Wikileaks gets AutoTuned.
At this point, Assange's slow-motion reveal is about as tantalizing a leak as the R. Kelly sex-tape.
Step up your game, Julian. Maybe your time on the lam as a cinema verite take on "Trapped in the Closet"?
I have to admit, I can see how it could affect a personality if people told someone that they were a bigger asshole for releasing the footage of soldiers murdering civilians than the soldiers that murdered the civilians were for, well, murdering folks.
Sweden would have worse weather than a South Pacific volcanic island, but it won't be troubled by occasional eruptions or raising sea level from global climate change. Bravo, Assange, fine choice. Now they all need white camo outfits and skis to race across the countryside, though.
It slays me…why do supervillains always have the buildings with the glass roofs? That's like saying, "Special ops assault teams, please repel down through my ceiling?"
Looks like CTU HQ from 24. Needs more irritated Chloe. "Yeah, I'll get you your WikiLeaks as soon as I revise the protocols, set up a perimeter and download the coordinates to Jack's PDA!!"
Given that 24 has run its course — & I havn't heard anything of the supposed feature-length that is supposed to follow — I fully expect Mary Lynn Rajskub (sounds foreigny, huh?) to pop-up on Mad Men as one of the new receptionists/mistresses.
I bet John Slattery would love to hit that.
NEW ELITIST!!1!!
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