Feds Say It's Classified Info To Say Who We're At War With
from the why,-we've-always-been-at-war-with-eurasia dept
Back in May, we noted the oddity of the charges in Bradley Manning's trial, in which he was accused of aiding three different "enemies," with the last one being classified. Specifically, he was accused of aiding Al-Qaida, Al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP, which is different than AQ itself) and... mystery enemy. Back at the beginning of July, the government quietly dropped the charge against the classified enemy, so that's no longer in play in that case. That said, apparently this concept of classifying who we're at war with wasn't just limited to the Manning trial. ProPublica has the ridiculous and frightening tale of finding out that the answer to the simple question of who the US is at war with, is apparently classified as well.At a hearing in May, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., asked the Defense Department to provide him with a current list of Al Qaeda affiliates.The Pentagon also went on to tell ProPublica that revealing who we're actually at war with would do "serious damage to national security." The main reason? They think those groups would use the info as good publicity and allow them to recruit more. But that's ridiculous, since those groups are already being targeted by the US:
The Pentagon responded – but Levin’s office told ProPublica they aren’t allowed to share it. Kathleen Long, a spokeswoman for Levin, would say only that the department’s “answer included the information requested.”
Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law who served as a legal counsel during the Bush administration and has written [6] on this question [7] at length, told ProPublica that the Pentagon’s reasoning for keeping the affiliates secret seems weak. “If the organizations are ‘inflated’ enough to be targeted with military force, why cannot they be mentioned publicly?” Goldsmith said. He added that there is “a countervailing very important interest in the public knowing who the government is fighting against in its name."It really goes beyond that when you think about it. This lack of transparency out of some silly fear that these groups would use it to build up their own reputation is just wacky. It leaves open such massive loopholes for abuse by the government.
Every time we talk about things like this, people trot out the same old joke: it really means that "the public" is "the enemy." That, obviously, is an exaggeration, but the level of secrecy around all of these kinds of efforts -- in the mistaken belief that letting anyone know who you're fighting and what you're doing will somehow undermine the whole campaign -- is entirely antithetical to the kind of example we should be setting around the globe. And, of course, it's doubly ironic that the very same people who are defending this lack of transparency are the ones who trot out the "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide." The obvious response, then, is that we should be asking exactly what our government is trying to hide, because it sure sounds like they've done a lot of things wrong.
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Filed Under: classified, enemies, national security, war
Reader Comments
The First Word
“sad
Even Orwell didn't go so far as to write:"We've always been at war with [REDACTED]."
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The way the US have behaved over the last 15 years is already doing its job in that front.
Every time we talk about things like this, people trot out the same old joke: it really means that "the public" is "the enemy."
Silly joke or sad truth? I'd go further and assume that in their megalomaniac paranoia everyone is the enemy, citizen or not.
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Re: Re: @ "rw": you didn't read all, and are contradicting Mike!
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You can now imprison anyone you want. For as long as you want. With zero due process. And say the reason is classified if asked.
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How about actually asking that question?
Most likely that is classified too.
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sad
"We've always been at war with [REDACTED]."
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Re: sad
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Yeah, and the surface of the sun is a little warm.
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Aliens?
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Re: Aliens?
O-SPAN : (Classified) Bill Defends Against Flesh-Eating (Classified)
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Good publicity, ehhh...
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Remember the Bush Administration
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The Ministry of Truth
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Treason
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Re: Treason
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Re: Treason
I have been an Obama voter and fan all along, so it is completely beyond me to understand how he has ended up in charge of this Kafkaesque government we seem to currently have.
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Re: Re: Treason
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Funny, ha ha
Only in this case it's not a joke.
They're deadly serious.
We are the enemy to the government.
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Re: Funny, ha ha
Be careful: you might be arrested for treason for revealing that classified information!
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The US government has lost touch with reality. It is paranoid beyond repair.
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Isn't a Secret War illegal?
Or is "war" being redefined as "opposing groups we don't like"? Unfortunately, under that redefinition, the Public indeed does fall. ~_~'
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Why?
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Why?
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Why?
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Classified Allowed in a List
I know, I know, it will never happen...but!
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Re: Classified Allowed in a List
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Headline...
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a) when the time comes and things are so bad, how ill people know who they have to fight?
b) if things get so bad and people are expected to fight, this unknown enemy, is it an enemy that is worth dying for?
i think the answer to that is going to be debatable. if we are not 'good enough to know who the enemy is', how can we 'be good enough to fight against it?'
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You will not be told who to fight. You will be told to trust your government, who is fighting so you don't have to.
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If you want to know who we are at war with...
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Citizens are the enemy
Our basic freedoms have all been overturned in secret courts. Education has been dummed down, we are controlled at all points of entry and exit, they want to take our only means of defense away, they've bankrupted us and shifted all our means of employement out of the country. They militarized our local police. I mean, can we get any more clues here? Oh, how about destroying our already bad health care system? Our food supply is being systematically ripped apart so now we rely on imported food from China. Then big agra is in control of the rest. Or am I paranoid? These signals mean absolutely nothing?
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Re: Citizens are the enemy
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22
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Re: Re: Citizens are the enemy
In The Know: Is The Government Spying On Schizophrenics Enough?
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That works both ways
If I was a recruiter for a terrorist organization I would use this as a recruiting tool. Hey look we're so badass the US is afraid to admit we exist.
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Re: That works both ways
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"We have met the enemy, and he is US."
Problem is that this administration believes it.
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citzen safety
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Hang on!
Since when can just any governmental department "declare war"?
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Re: Hang on!
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War, Recruitment, and Citizen Safety
Shouldn't Americans know who the C/KRT enemy is so that they next time they're at a C/KRT meeting, they don't stand up and "Hi, I'm an American", which leads to being beheaded?
We can only hope that some patriot stands and shouts "The Secret is coming! The Secret is coming!" before they knock on our door for whatever reason.
...OMG! It's the Mormon's isn't it! Of course knowing it's them will help their recruitment, they have the best marital benefits and can procreate faster than Glenn Greenwald's failings! We're doomed!
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In reality, we've always been at war with Eastasia...I mean drugs, terror, poverty, those pesky "Thinkers" always causing problems with their "Questions".
2+2=5, just accept it.
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Let's go conspiracy...
Being "At War" invokes certain executive powers that gives the president and executive branch FAR more power than the Constitution normally allows.
Not to mention being "at war" with someone who can't be named ("He Who Shall Not Be Named") does give them all sorts of justification to stomp on the shredded tatters of the Constitutional rights of citizens.
Not that they need much excuse... they have so many...
Think of the Children
Terrorism
Etc
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Coming from you ootb, that is hypocrisy to the ultimate. You who can not be bothered with so much as reading beyond the headline before firing off your worthless diatribes and rants.
Grow up.
While waiting for that, have another report vote.
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TL:DR Anyone who believes one party is better than another needs to buy a bridge from me.
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Many miss the point
The existence of the secret says nothing about how it makes us look to the general population of Earth that we are at war with these groups. The point is that people who already don't like us are more likely to then join these groups if we tell them that these are groups causing us the most problems.
If you get the basic point wrong, how can you hope anybody will listen to you?
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Re: Many miss the point
You're saying there are a substantial number of people sitting around hating the US but with no idea who to join to fight against it? And that if we declassified this information they would all run out and join these groups? I don't buy it. I just don't think the US government is the primary source of information for people who hate the US government.
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About that whole publicity thing
There are two terrorist groups: the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front. Both groups claim to be the better choice to fight "the evil West", but for the most part they're just small fry compared to everybody else.
Now if the US government announced that it was going after the People's Front of Judea and not the Judean People's Front, it would have justified the existence of the People's Front of Judea, because those "evil heathen Americans" view them as a threat instead of their rivals the JPF.
This could (theoretically) cause members of the Judean People's Front to defect and join up the cause with the People's Front of Judea instead, uniting the more competent members into a bigger, more dangerous group, instead of keeping the two organizations divided and bickering amongst themselves while the US sat back and took them out without announcing to the rest of the world which one was more of a problem.
The "increase recruitment if we talk about them" makes sense. But the bigger question is: who the hell was dumb enough to put that classified bit at the end of the charge against Manning? The charges of "aiding AQ and AQAP" were sufficiently damning. Did someone decide to just throw everything and kitchen sink at Manning in order to make sure something would work?
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Re: About that whole publicity thing
This assumes nobody in Judea would have any way of finding out who the US was fighting other than from the US government. That sounds patently ridiculous to me. It's certainly at best an unfounded assumption.
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"classified enemies"
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An alternate hypothesis:
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Look here:
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/48999
You'll notice who we are in bed with, especially since our leaders need their cooperation. However, this regime that our ruling class needs (trust me on that one) is profoundly undemocratic and antithetical to our supposed ideals. So there's the rub: we are treating all opposition to this regime as our enemy. That's what is classified.
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Umm... WAT. Isn't that kind of a reflection of people's opinions on what the government is doing?
Maybe instead you should, I don't know, make it legal to dissent so nutjobs don't strap themselves with explosives and walk into populated areas out of government-sponsored desperation?
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