Major points in Glenn’s piece:
- Although Wikileaks’ 2010 document releases have revealed breathtaking “corruption, deceit, brutality and criminality on the part of the world’s most powerful factions,” the reaction in the U.S. press and among media pundits has been “outrage” directed, “not to the crimes that have been exposed but rather to those who exposed them: WikiLeaks and (allegedly) Bradley Manning.”
- The major U.S. news organizations have overwhelmingly signed on to the Obama administration’s claims that Wikileaks’ actions have endangered lives — a “reaction [that] has not been weakened at all even by the Pentagon’s own admission that, in stark contrast to its own actions, there is no evidence — zero — that any of WikiLeaks’ actions has caused even a single death.”
- The Wikileaks releases have exposed a profound authoritarianism in the public at large and, even worse, in the “free” press that is supposed to expose abuses of power, not endorse those abuses and dutifully repeat the government’s excuses for them.
Here is a sampling of the “high-level political corruption and criminality” exposed by Wikileaks in 2010 (from Glenn’s piece):
- The killings of two Reuters journalists and 12 civilians in Baghdad in 2007.
- A deliberate policy during the Bush administration of ignoring atrocities and serious human rights violations committed by Iraqi police.
- Thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths that the Pentagon knew about but did not include in its listed figures.
- Hillary Clinton’s 2009 authorization of spying activities on United Nations officials.
- Joint efforts by Obama administration and Republican leaders to quash independent investigation of torture and other abuses committed by the C.I.A. and authorized by top Bush administration officials.
- Yemen’s president assuring U.S. diplomatic officials that Yemen would continue telling its citizens that U.S. air strikes were being carried out by Yemen.
- The United States’ “open and shut” analysis concluding that the Honduran coup that overthrew Pres. Manuel Zelaya was illegal and violated Honduras’s own constitution.
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