Just the Fibs, Ma’am

It’s a sad day when working journalists condemn those who would pry loose a few secrets from the national security state. Glenn Greenwald has done an excellent job tracking the hypocrites, hacks and access addicts. His latest target is Joe Klein (right), who describes WikiLeaks’ work as a “human disaster.”

Read Klein’s full blog post here. The line that Greenwald references below is: “If a single foreign national is rounded up and put in jail because of a leaked cable, this entire, anarchic exercise in ‘freedom’ stands as a human disaster. Assange is a criminal. He’s the one who should be in jail.”

Glenn Greenwald on Salon:

Do you have that principle down?  If “a single foreign national is rounded up and put in jail” because of the WikiLeaks disclosure — even a “single one” — then the entire WikiLeaks enterprise is proven to be a “disaster” and “Assange is a criminal” who “should be in jail.”  That’s quite a rigorous moral standard.  So let’s apply it elsewhere:

What about the most destructive “anarchic exercise in ‘freedom'” the planet has known for at least a generation:  the “human disaster” known as the attack on Iraq, which Klein supported?  That didn’t result in the imprisonment of “a single foreign national,” but rather the deaths of more than 100,000 innocent human beings, the displacement of millions more, and the destruction of a country of 26 million people.  Are those who supported that “anarchic exercise in ‘freedom'” — or at least those responsible for its execution — also “criminals who should be in jail”?   How about the multiple journalists and other human beings whom the U.S. Government imprisoned (and continues to imprison) for years without charges  — and tortured — including many whom the Government knew were completely innocent, while Klein assured the world that wasn’t happening?  How about those responsible for the war in Afghanistan (which Klein supports) with its checkpoint shootings of an “amazing number” of innocent Afghans and civilian slaughtering air strikes, or the use of cluster bombs in Yemen, or the civilian killing drones in Pakistan?  Are those responsible for the sky-high corpses of innocent people from these actions also “criminals who should be in jail”?  Read more

Greenwald explains that he’s not singling out Klein, but using him to illustrate a wider trend, where advocates of war and destruction bemoan the human danger of WikiLeaks’ work. — PZS