It never ceases to amaze me how gullible people are. Let’s look at two examples recently in the news.
First, the case of Shirley Sherrod, the black U.S. Department of Agriculture official accused of racism. The evidence of her racism was a short, edited video clip offered up by a partisan web gadfly, Andrew Breitbart, who has a small empire of web sites. This guy knew such a controversial and inflammatory out-take would drive millions to his web sites. This huge burst of site traffic is money in Brietbart’s pocket.
What surprised me was that the NAACP and the Obama administration swallowed this hook, line, and sinker. They didn’t review the full video, interview people present at the event, or evaluate Breitbart’s motives for publishing the edited video.
Second, the leaked military documents that now appear on the WikiLeaks site need closer examination.
The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is what a judge would describe as an unreliable witness. He pleaded guilty to 25 charges of hacking in Australia; and according to the National Post, “Before he set up the website in 2006, Julian Assange spent years hacking into government and company computers, including those of the U.S. Department of Defense, as part of a group calling themselves the International Subversives.”
With Assange’s talk about “war crimes” and his background, it isn’t hard to understand that this guy has an agenda. How his agenda distorts the picture of events depends upon what documents he publishes from this large volume of previously classified material. We will never know what he didn’t publish and this creates a very similar situation to the selectively edited video clip published by Breitbart.
This is a masterfully crafted post.
The presidential administration displayed blinding, knee-slapping amateurism. Surely there was a lawyer laying around they could have consulted prior to opening themselves up to legal jeopardy. And Assange has zero credibility. WikiLeaks is, on its face, untrustworthy. Fun to peruse, but unpersuasive in its goals.
Can’t really say I agree with the WikiLeaks part of the post.
Yes, Assange has an agenda. But given the fact that government officials ‘spin’ their version of the truth to the public on a daily basis (WMD in Iraq, hmmm right) this does not make him any more or less reliable than those government officials themselves. It is a nice spin trying to discredit Assange because he has been a hacker but in a thorough intel evaluation that could even add to the credibility of his material.
And yes, apparently WikiLeaks does not publish everything it has. But again, what’s the difference with many governments that classify whatever does not suit them and stall FOIA requests wherever and as much as they can?
In my opinion WikiLeaks provides just another perspective on reality, a perspective which is not complete and possibly biased (as any perspective) but as yet there is no reason to doubt the veracity of the available Afghan Diary material on WikiLeaks.
I see insufficient reason to qualify WikiLeaks as an untrustworthy source, at least not more or less untrustworthy that the average government source in this type of cases.