Monday, August 2, 2010

It's worse. (Julian Assange is a clown - Part III)

I called him a clown, and I wish I could stand by that. It's now confirmed by Newsweek:

After WikiLeaks published a trove of U.S. intelligence documents—some of which listed the names and villages of Afghans who had been secretly cooperating with the American militaryit didn’t take long for the Taliban to react. A spokesman for the group quickly threatened to “punish” any Afghan listed as having “collaborated” with the U.S. and the Kabul authorities against the growing Taliban insurgency. In recent days, the Taliban has demonstrated how seriously those threats should be considered. Late last week, just four days after the documents were published, death threats began arriving at the homes of key tribal elders in southern Afghanistan. And over the weekend one tribal elder, Khalifa Abdullah, who the Taliban believed had been in close contact with the Americans, was taken from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province’s embattled Arghandab district, and executed by insurgent gunmen.

One dead, but that's one dead too many...to gauge this by Mr. Assange's standards.

I mean, that's why you did it, right? You were outraged by all the death and destruction in Afghanistan, and you wanted to do something about it.

Congratulations, your overinflated sense of self-importance just got someone killed. I really hope that all the Interviews and publicity were worth it.

Again, I will repeat. I have no truck with Whistleblowers. I'm not comfortable with them leaking stuff on National Security, but it's sometimes necessary (see: Ellsberg, Daniel). But for Wikileaks to black out everyone's names except for the Afghanis is now bearing tragic consequences, and all it is directly attributable to Mr. Assange's decision to put this nearly worthless crap out there.

I hope Mr. Assange enjoys the limelight, and burns in hell afterwards.