This Raises Some Interesting Questions About US Intelligence Gathering

With all the other stuff coming out on WikiLeaks that is compromising our security as well as embarrassing the Administration, while minor, in some ways the story about US Inteligence expecting the next Pope to be from South America is an interesting little side story that is making the rounds.



I will admit that this does raise some very important questions. Like if they missed something as obvious as this, what else did they miss & are they missing? OK, I know the obvious answer, Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction. But I am talking about much more than that.

Listening to Laura Ingraham discuss the leaks on Monday & the Obama Administration reaction brought some other thoughts to mind.

1st of all, I wonder how many of the same people who are now pushing to shut down WikiLeaks as a terrorist organization would have screamed if Nixon made a similar threat against the New York Times for publishing The Pentagon Papers? I suspect they would have been decrying Nixon for attacking freedom of the press.

Which raises some interesting questions about the threat to shut down WikiLeaks. In fact it gets to the heart of the long running debate of when does National Security override freedom of the Press? Or does it ever? I am not going to get into depth in that debate here. I am just going to say to release something just because it is classified may be within the letter of freedom of the press, if there is no overriding need for us to know it at this time (like what is being done is illegal, etc) & it does compromise American Security, then it shouldn't be published. Freedom isn't license to do whatever you want, esp if it endangers others. At the point where it puts national security at risk, leaking something can & does cross over to treason.

Obama's threat to declare WikiLeaks a terrorist organization does raise some Free Speech/Freedom of the Press concerns with me. If Obama can shut them down, what is to stop him from shutting down any talk show, any news organization or any blog that disagrees with him?

While I am not big on conspiracy theories, part of me wonders if this isn't intentional on the part of the Obama (mis)administration. & that he is setting things up to curtail free speech, just like he is using national security to justify the TSA violations of our 4th Amendment rights.* Did someone in the Obama administration intentionally leak them to WikiLeaks? is this the next prong in an attack on our freedom by an administration that is more comfortable with dictaors than democracies. Maybe those documents about Obama looking East rather than to the West, while true, were intentionally leaked to misdirect us.

I honestly hope I am wrong. But regardless of whether it is intentional on the part of the Obama administration or not, I still think that Obama will follow the Rahm Emanuel dictum "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste, and what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you didn't think you could do before." & the WikiLeaks crisis is a perfect opportunity for Obama to shut down as much of the opposition as he can. & use our desire for national security & preventing leaks like this from happenning to do so!

(Added @ 2:28 am) Was watching Red Eye on break & they raised an interesting point about what the reaction would be if this had been WWII & it was the names of the French underground that had been released. Like I said, just because you can release something doesn't mean you should.

__________________
*BTW where are all these pro-aborts who talk about privacy rights to justify abortion? Why aren't they screaming about this? Oh yeah, it isn't about privacy, its about murdering the unborn & making money off of it.