HBG

The first release is not exactly shocking, but has made headlines across the world. Yet, most of the revelations are already in the public domain.

The big one, Arab neighbours willing the US to bomb Iran is hardly surprising, questions over William Hague’s sexuality have been around for years, and Prince Andrew is a well-known oaf.

It will harm the US, anyone still in doubt about the insincerity of the US towards the rest of the world will have those doubts removed.

I suppose what is shocking is that all the somewhat buried truths are now under one roof. We’ve got four more days of revelations to come. The bombs may start falling when the dust has settled.

bil

I just see it as the logical extension to freedom of information.

I have no objection to the really, genuinely secret stuff staying secret, but this is abused by governments left right and centre. It was 30 years before we were allowed to know which tobacco the then king of England smoked.

If governments break the law, especially wrto war crimes, there should be a legal obligation for anyone who can to disclose it at once.

We try and claim the moral high ground in these matters, so it obliges us not to go down the roads so often trod by opressors.

Dick Dasterdly

The mind boggles at how such a huge can of worms could be opened so easily and simply to the whole World, by one young guy in the army.
No hacking,intricate spywork or hi tech required.

bil

Still, at least there's not a chance in hell that those really responsible will ever have to pay for it all eh?

HBG

The Prince Andrew story has taken precedence over China and Korea today. I can understand that, some places are just too far away to bother about.

It seems the Prince managed to halt the Fraud Squad enquiry into the corrupt arms deal with the Saudis, despite the evidence being overwhelming. Blair said the enquiry was against the public interest and stopped it.

It’s easy to get angry, but paying some daft Saudi princes bribes did provide jobs for British people.

What’s better, being piss poor and totally honest, or bending the rules a bit for a better life for your family?

I’ve got no idea, but I did the best I could for mine.

bil

Fair comment. Personally I see bribes in a country where they are effectively ligitimate as nothing more than paying comission and should be claimable against tax.

Blair wouldn't know what the public interest was if we had it tattooed on his forehead. What the lying little shit meant was that it was against the State's interest as if we didn't know that full well.

HBG

I agree with every word, Bil. To slightly change the topic, it seems that the Wikileaks have caused the pound to rise against the Euro. Does the world consider our tiny little currency to be a safer bet against the mighty Dollar or the mighty Euro?

Both of them are being rubbished by the leaks in a big way, whereas we’ve had an easy ride so far, just some nonsense about Prince Andrew and Gordon Brown being a bit unstable.

I hope the leaks continue along those lines.

bil

God knows what they will do. I remember Soros making a mint on instability. I just rely on getting parity for my pounds, and anything over that is a bonus.

I don't watch the news if I can avoid it. It reduces my stress levels if I can't see what's going on.

HBG

I’m lucky because I’m not too bothered by stress, especially here in manana Spain, but the Wikileaks today made me very angry.

It appears the Yanks and the Afghan government think that we were too cowardly to leave our barracks in the Helmand province to do the job we were sent to do. They say that all we did was build a giant fortress outside of towns and stayed there.

If that’s true, where the hell did all those soldiers bodies paraded down our streets on a daily basis come from?

If I was in charge I would leave those bearded ****ers from another age to it.

Mitzyboy

Have you seen the (Wikilieaks) horrendous tape of the US helicopter killing a load of people soing ... well ... not a lot, and also managing to shoot a Reuters cameraman as they thought his camera was a gun .... and then taking out a van with two children sitting in the front seat?

bil

HBG, you are making the mistake of thinking that the yanks are our friends. Trust me, we aren't their frieds. Or, if we are, we are the friends they turn to when there is no-one else to do their dirty work. I bet they do talk us down, and we should just leave them to get on with butchering and torturing civilians and then getting all precious when it gets leaked by someone whose moral compass still functions.

No wonder there's an arrest warrant out on him. He should be lucky there isn't a shoot of sight tag on his file. Mind you, if he fell under a train or something I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Mitz, how many of thos incidents do you suppose never gets out? The Yanks have a god awful longstanding reputation for killing civilians when they aren't shooting their own allies in so called friendly fire incidents.

After one such incident in the gulf war, they had one old boy on there who had been a soldier in WW2, and he laughed out loud. He explained that they were always told, never get in front of the Yanks as they were trigger happy and couldn't tell friend from foe.

HBG

I have, and similar ones. We don’t kill as many innocent civilians and perhaps that’s why we are considered to be cowardly?

I forgot to mention the deputy Afghan prime minister being stopped at Dubai airport with 54 million Dollars in his suitcase, which he was allowed to keep. Is that what our soldiers are dying for?

The Taliban are bound to take over in Afghanistan as soon as the West leaves, it’s what the Afghan people want. We went in there because of 9/11 and rightly so, but we now have all the intelligence we need and our satellite systems will tell us every time a new training compound is built so that we can bomb it immediately.

We can’t use diplomatic means to negotiate with people from another age and a religion at war with ours.

I don’t know if the ambassadors confidential cables have now been exhausted, but by Christ they’ve put us straight over a few things. I see that the original American intelligence officer who provided the leaks is now in solitary confinement and probably waterboarded every hour, the Wikileaks founder is wanted on an American warrant and the server has been shut down – that’s democracy, isn’t it?

bil

Well, the good thing about democracy is that we have at least heard about it all, and the people involved haven't simply been disappeared.

OK, marginally better.

I don't think the majority of the Afghanis want the Taliban. Most people would quite like to move away from the restrictive society they insist on imposing on people. However, they sure as shit won't support us unless they are damn sure that we will win and the taliban won't come back an start shooting those they see as 'collaborators', and at the moment they don't see us as capable of winning.

HBG

Like most of us, I’m in total favour of democracy, there’s no alternative. The hapless grass being waterboarded in solitary confinement will undoubtedly be sentenced to at least 200 years in prison, perhaps reduced for good behaviour to 100 years.

How long did that Madoff get at the age of 70? It was well over a hundred years, wasn’t it?

I’m against capital punishment for various reasons, and I’m also against cruelty, but if I was Madoff or that intelligence officer, I would prefer execution to unbounded cruelty.

I feel that I should add that I’m not anti-American, no way, I nearly emigrated to the land of the free several times. It’s the best democracy in the free world with a constitution us Brits could die for. It’s just got a bit twisted recently, with religious extremists getting into power. And Obama has been the biggest disappointment in my life.

bil

I always say that I'm not anti-american, I'm just anti idiot, and sometimes it can get confusing.

Best democracy? I don't know. The absence of a national health service and so on is great when you are healthy, but not so funny if you aren't. I had an american friend that were it not for his military links would simply not have been able to afford health treatment for his problems, and so it goes.

They are also a tad right wing for my tastes. Obama, well, at least he isn't Bush. Hell, we used to think Reagan was dumb, but bush made reagan look like Einstein on a good day.