twenty three twenty. four kilometers off shore. crashes into another vessel. four hundred and twenty three people died. russian titanic. they faced it this is not a provocation but warning of. a full of shit that we shared interests everybody is sure to suppress victory speech they have no idea about the hardships that we face. one it is this is a of them to listen for any army the life of abusing them is the most precious thing in the world. is of self-sacrifice and heroism with those who understand it fully you have to live a. real life stories from world will turn next. to true nine

hundred forty five dot r t v dot com. good to have you with us here on our t.v. half past one am in moscow these are your headlines nato and russia need to leap

from a cold war to real partnership according to russia's foreign minister he was speaking as nato chief anders rasmussen is in moscow to boost ties with russian. president obama could be facing tougher challenge pushing through his reforms including his foreign policy agenda after democrats lose their hold over congress in the midterm vote thousand representatives is now under republican control. and iraq suffering the fallout from one of its bloodiest weeks for months after at least seventy six people were killed in attacks in shia neighborhoods with u.s. forces stepping down local militias may be turning back to regional warlords and. next peter lavelle and his guests debate whether the whistleblower website wiki leaks is genuine cutting edge journalism or just a means for the people behind it to push their own agendas crosstalk coming your way in a few moments. if

you can. still get. along in welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle weiqi leaks cutting edge journalism for an opaque organization with an unmistakable political agenda what is the difference between investigative journalism and spying today and are there limits to what the public has a right to know. can. you discuss the controversy over weiqi leaks i'm joined by stephen soonest in san francisco he's a professor of politics and international studies at the university of san

francisco in new york we have joel mowbray he is an award winning investigative journalist and in washington the cross to michael bryant he's a journalist and author of america's failure in iraq and another member of our cross talk team in the hunger all right gentlemen this is cross talk and cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want all right i want to talk about the background you guys everybody knows the back on the hundreds of thousands of documents have been released into the public domain we all know the organization we all know the head of that organization let's talk about what it means and i to ask all of you to react to this a fox news comment a fox commentator called for wilkie leaks figurehead to be treated as a prisoner of war a former state department official demands that on science and his organization be treated as enemy combatants the washington times said quote the government should be waging a war on this organization in its web presence stephen if i can go to you what kind of reaction is that just because you don't say anything nice things about us you

got to shut him down how does that affect freedom of speach. is this kind of attitude is a real threat to freedom of speech or shows us underlying authoritarian mentality the this is the kind of information that americans need to hear we've been lied to and lied to and lied to about iraq we were lied to about weapons of mass destruction were lied to about al qaeda and we're lied to as we're seeing more and more clearly by some of the evidence coming out in these leaks about the conduct of the war and this idea that we are somehow supporting democracy when in fact we're supporting a regime that gauges and widespread torture and murder of political opponents this is the kind of thing that americans need to know about because in knowing about these things then and only then could make informed decisions about what kind of all says we should have all right if i can go to you joy. to disagree all right anyone want to introduce my question go right ahead if you want to react to what

steven just said go ahead. first of all i'd have to say it sounds like he's really litigating the iraq war and about weapons of mass destruction and al qaida by the way none of which is addressed by the wiki leaks document dumps so i don't know what planet he's on or why he keeps wanting to refight i didn't say was there in iraq by the way all of the certainly is certainly where you're going when you're saying all were lied to about we were never knowingly lying to you about weapons of mass destruction that's a canard that the u.s. where you were if they were not rare maybe i should source here we're starting a war that had weapons of mass destruction it. right right but no they know they were speaking out against it is saying it was a lie i would say lying you flipped a coin congratulations congratulate no intelligence i'll tell you this no one is going to. see what he's doing have ok i don't try to shout over me now it's ok well no there's no argument means we shout over no if we're not going to go anywhere are

we to move forward michael go i'll go to you how do you feel about these in the public realm i mean basically words are saying we should get rid of the head of this organization and shut it down and that's what we're hearing and i'm asking everyone for their reaction to that go ahead well my reaction peter is. you know. what did you did what wiki leaks do was it legal or illegal that's exactly where i want to go in this program keep going if if it was if it was if it was illegal it seems to me that the u.s. government would would be pressing charges i know they're talking about that but i don't see that happening and the other thing is that you know assange however p. pronounces his name i probably am saying it wrong but he doesn't have a security clearance he's not bound by any security you clearance or anything like that to not do what he did now i'm not saying what he did was right or wrong but

the fact is i don't believe in my personal opinion that he's broken any laws he's upset a whole lot of people but the fact of the matter is he's brought you put he put this information out it's information that should have been if d.o.d. didn't if the u.s. department of fence didn't want it to come out they should have done a better job of securing it they did not do that and now that the stuff is out now everybody's saying you know the main issue is what do we do with this information now that it's out ok i mean it's interesting i mean i want to be fair on this program i'm not waiving of what i know i might look i'm not waving a flag for this type of behavior i'm being very neutral and i think. if i could quote him right now i enjoy crushing bastards that's why he said he did it joe how do you react to that. so i think he's a guy who has a flair for the dramatic i actually think he's someone who maybe is part crusader and and part publicity seeker but here is setting back just for

a moment this question can you shut them down well what laws is he violated more specifically who's laws this is an amorphous international organization which i think everyone agrees is opaque no one really knows exactly who they are i mean ironically writing that the transparency organization has no transparency in and of itself ok but we don't know what countries they operate out of it what's that work they have their service and and does it matter because they can just move their servers to another country i don't think they're based in america but they just get documents out of america so legally we're in unchartered waters here no one controls the internet even if the even if the united states government wanted to shut down wiki leaks how do they shut it down maybe inside america that's a disturbing precedent but the u.s. doesn't control the internet in other countries in other continents it just doesn't you know stephen and i have to go to you again being contrarian here ok i mean. showing the world everyone from governments very very dirty laundry ok very in a very wrong way but you know a lot of people would say this organization is opaque in itself and is that it in

a way that is kind of problematic we don't know who's really in the organization except for a spokes person or maybe a few other people i mean is that is that a problem for you anyway. not particularly i think what's really i don't care particularly however given organization operates what i care about is whether whether my government is supporting death squads is supporting torture is engaged in war crimes is not telling the truth about the us going on in the war in iraq or that i'm supporting in my tax dollars and we're. losing lives and treasure over i mean this is the this is the what's really important here i mean i'm sure if i knew more and probably have some opinion some positive more some negative about about the group but you know what's important is getting that information out michael if i go to you how do you. go has got to go to

you anyway go ahead i was. i was just going to say you know i want to do something i like to say it's kind of a co a code i live by if you if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide if you've done nothing wrong you don't have anything to be afraid of and the whole wiki leaks thing to me that if the u.s. government want to go after anybody they need to go after the people that were supposed to be controlling this information. not the wiki leaks people that put it out because like i said a moment ago they're not beholden to any kind of non-disclosure agreement or a security clearance or something like that the point is though all these documents were let's go to the documents what did they show what did they reveal and as my colleagues have been saying have alluded to stuff is going on over there that you know the u.s. government is not really crazy about having its fingerprints on and that's what these documents reveal you know i have

a website america's failure in iraq dot com that's my book america's failure in iraq and i've posted several things based on news reports and one of the things for example i'll just use the say as an example just recently the new york times a couple of days ago put out a report from the wiki leaks documents about contractors in iraq i was a contractor in iraq but they're talking about security contractors in iraq and some of the stuff that was going on that has been revealed by these documents would it would blow you away and i knew about a lot of the stuff generally speaking not specifically but i knew about a lot of this stuff and i'll just say as an example the documents reveal for the american people to see in the world the use of contractors and all the negatives there are associated with the use of security contractors in places like iraq and afghanistan and it shows how is the united states fighting its wars now frankly i call these people mercenaries and they're american they're not from

a foreign country but it really gets to what what do the documents reveal that's the big issue. go to you how does this affect public policy and during the wars is it going to affect public opinion is any going to change their mind on this i mean i'm looking at the impact of it all i mean there will be there will be people who say and we just heard from michael you know people on the ground knew a lot of these things journalists knew a lot of these things isn't this just a process of connecting all the dots say oh ok now it all makes sense because i saw that we knew this i mean how many in a new things come out of it because we've heard about death squads we've heard about government corruption we've heard about torture i mean in many ways is this really a such a big story. you know look there are a lot of things that are here that are literary and i don't think it's going to change the public debate inside the united states my problem with wiki leaks is that look i'm a journalist who i was you know full disclosure i was detained at the state department several years ago for reporting classified information i am

a big believer in transparency in getting information out there but i also believe the journalist very certain responsibility of discretion you don't have to report everything you get your hands on i know i have not reported everything i've got my hands on i've used discretion to say no i think that's too sensitive and i don't think we can leaks does that so the big problem with wiki leaks is that there is there is no sense of well you know maybe something like this is too sensitive maybe we don't want to endanger lives here so let's take a pass on that so without any discretion being exercised on their part whatsoever and say anything we get our hands on we put out that's what makes the organization dangerous if they keep trying to get more and more classified information including sensitive information about troop movements about other things that are not just embarrassing or revolutionary but actually dangerous for our soldiers on the ground and that's where i think the real damage could be done by wiki leaks ok this is a good time for a break after a short break we'll continue our discussion and we can stay with thirty.

to. admiral. a passenger liner sailing in the black sea. this thirty first. twenty three twenty. kilometers off. crash into another that's. four hundred twenty three people. titanic.

would be soo much brighter if you knew it. from steve pressure inside. don't come. cheap. welcome back to crossfire nine people about to remind you we're talking about wiki leaks. but before let's see what russians think about censorship in the media only and publication of classified documents from anonymous sources that is what wiki leaks

is all about recently their organization released hundreds of thousands of military documents that shed light on elements a war in iraq revelations of prisoner abuse and vigilantism prompted russia to call for a detailed investigation into procedures in iraq the russian public opinion research center asked such as if mass media should be censored fifty eight percent of respondents said they should be and then another twenty four percent believe they shouldn't that's russian media consumers see value in preserving secrecy to preserve security peter. all right and we started to allude to it in the first part of the program here we can mix is this journalism joe you brought it up stephen i'd like to go to you first is this journalism and if it is what kind of journalism is it and is it the wave of the future and should we be embracing this go ahead. i wouldn't call it journalism because as you mentioned the just dumping information

out there for which journalism can do what they want they can from the here's the raw data and the journalists can analyze it or spend it or do whatever they really really want with it but i do think it is something of a wave of the future given this given the new. communications technologies that the internet provides us going to be easier if you get ahold of these kinds of documents to get them out there ok joel if i go to you i mean is this do you see cherry picking of documents as we hear more documents are on the way documents possibly on russia on china other countries i mean but it's this organization it's very and again i used the word opaque it cherry picks what it wants to release i mean that's the sense of power that and again if this is journalism it's a different kind of journalism when you think about that. well i can't it's not journalism as much as it is and it's not outside the realm of journalism either

right it is sort of this new hybrid of i think someone who again is a crusading publicity hound who also does do some journalistic value terms of transparency in getting information out there it's not that i entirely have a problem with wiki leaks but the lack of discretion i think guys we have to be so troubled by that that you don't have anyone there saying you know this probably isn't appropriate to put out because we might be endangering the lives of soldiers who are actually protecting freedom now i know that some people say well you can't make a distinction between america and the taliban i can and i'm happy doing so but you know if you look at the julian assange he's got to be careful i mean this is a very serious comment if he starts putting out documents and other countries that are say more authoritarian and they're not necessarily looking to say just arrest him be very careful for his own personal safety because you know you never know in this world michael if i can go to you there is people claim that the these leaks

can create security problems on the ground for occupiers if you want to use that word for foreign troops certainly there but if these documents are true then it doesn't make any sense because war crimes have been committed so you already got people langridge if you want the ground i mean if these reports are true then bickley name that would danger people is it's a really a nonstarter because of these documents are true then then people are going to be reacting to them so it's really a nonstarter do you think well i i i don't think it's going to necessarily i don't think these documents are going to cause any harm to people on the field soldiers for example on the field in iraq what they might do is cause harm for them in a court room back here in the united states these these are some of the things that have come out you could really if you're if you're in the military coup. pot quite possibly result in a court martial charges that the department of defense probably and i'm

a former military officer or as an officer in the army. the department of defense probably for lack of a better term want to sweep everything under the rug now with these documents coming out they might be forced to actually go after soldiers officers that may have done stuff and they just wanted to you know not worry about it but now they might be forced to do something about it and again when with with all these things all this information coming out look at afghanistan hamid karzai a. couple of months ago gave whole private international security firms four months to get out of afghanistan because he knew he saw all the problems that he was having in his own country and probably some real knew about all the problems that they were creating in in iraq so as far as it being journalism i don't i don't really know it's it's really more of nash it's national dirt is what wiki leaks is

doing it's throwing out a lot of national dirt on the united states and the department of defense who a lot of people were upset with already. all this does is add fuel to the to the fire so to speak so i don't think anybody but i really don't think it's going to buy well as i don't like a soldier with a as the arbiter as the arbiter of purity and morality if you get everyone would agree with that and oh i just i just listening to the judges in this regard is a one area these private security firms are bad all right stephen if i'd like to go to you to follow up on with michael that would be it would be a bad idea to have a lot of court martials maybe that would change behavior and i think that's what this whole endeavor is about to change behavior to stop doing these kinds of things if they are a fact factually true go ahead. it's been fairly disappointing that here in the united states people seem to be more upset at the release of the day at least of this information and then on the some of the war crimes that they have documented.

the talk about killing the messenger i mean this is this is what's what's really important and i'm afraid have to take issue joel said about defending freedom it's not they're not defending freedom when they they did they hand over people to be be tortured and murdered by the by a brutal regime that's not defending freedom that i think those that refuse to really for fees to release these documents should be prosecuted for obstruction of justice not those who who make them make them public ok gentlemen i will i will i'll tell you i had when we continue so you're saying you're saying you're saying you're saying that america you're saying that america despite having despite having some some warts and some problems is not any better than the taliban or is maybe worse than the taliban because dad i just can't countenance i don't say i didn't say that i meant with a no i said ashen ality what you're saying that there that i never said and there are sad and out course they are ok joe like you just said they were not out there

defending the way that lead to rescue are i was listening if you want to fly steve in the iraqi go this is the u.s. government freedom they told us we learned as he will they rig a lecture and part. i think i was talking about the workings of the thread was not necessary and there was a lot of noise from i don't know don't get me as the united states supports dictatorships in saudi arabia it's more dictatorships and the more dictatorships around the world don't tell me that's about freedom i'm not saying there's any moral equivalency into the taliban clearly they're for their far far worse and i'm very proud of our freedoms here in america but the invasion of iraq was not about freedom it was about empire and oil and don't don't don't try to make things up like people were saying why don't lie about freedom like people lied about weapons of mass destruction or lied about ties to al qaeda ok. michael i'd like to go to you and the coverage of this story in western media and i did some research on how

it was covered in western europe it was britain australia canada but it was very interesting difference in the coverage in the united states and i'm looking in the networks songe would people focus in on are these alleged charges against him. sexual assault charges which seems to kind of blend them together and i haven't seen that in other foreign media that at least i could understand they stay focused on the leaks but there seems to be an assassination character assassination attempt going on now particularly american media do you think that's true. why do i think that american media all too often follows the path of least resistance it's a story with the wiki leaks documents came out and the u.s. government got completely fear arius and it seems to me that the american media is going that that's that's the route we're going to take we're going to we're going to we're going to follow that track the anti assad assange track and follow

anything that any kind of dirt that comes up on him i think frankly to for good news instead of really focusing on the you know if the guy's got character problems or personal problems ok you know that that's another issue that's another story but in america especially as opposed to any other country in the world we need to be focusing on what these documents say we need to compartmentalize our arguments in other words one on one issue is the with the leak of the documents that's one thing but you can ignore what the documents say themselves that's that's that's a big deal that's a major major issue and then another issue another compartmentalise piece of this is a saying himself in any problems he may or may not have but blending them all in together doesn't make any sense to me i think the american people are being a disservice by the media going after the guy when it's just you know innuendo or rumor but these documents for better or for worse they are real and they say they

are real life accounts by soldiers on the ground of what's going on and has gone on in iraq ok joy of like to go to you what do you think about this is this a character assassination attempt against him in the united states kill the messenger instead of the message i'm saying that parasite it a bit of i certainly haven't seen it i that i have not seen any broad based campaign to go after him or his character assassination i think of their of the geneva questions about his character people have a right to know given that he has held himself out there. as sort of the mouth piece and figurehead of wiki leaks and he's probably an actual head too but he puts himself out there as the face of wiki leaks and that's what goes the territory me just ask any celebrity in the united states if you put yourself out there as a celebrity as someone seeking publicity which he clearly does then yeah you will you put yourself in the crosshairs i don't feel any pity for him but i don't think it's taken away from any of the attention paid to the leaks i think people in the

american media have seen it is two separate issues ok stephen you have your last word to go assassination a character assassination attempt twenty seconds go ahead. i think there's certainly been efforts to discredit him and i don't know that i there may be many things negative about him personally but i think he has done a real service by exposing criminal misconduct by the united states and its allies we need more people like him because that's so what we we need this kind of information and order to make informed decisions as a democracy about our policies ok gentlemen i'm sure this story still has legs here and maybe you'll come back and talk about it many thanks my guest today in san francisco new york and washington and thanks to our viewers for watching us here in r.t.c. unix time and remember crosstalk. can .

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