Wikileaks, that organization which released over 100K US war documents (here), is at it again.  This time, they have released US diplomatic cables (here):

…WikiLeaks released thousands of State Department documents that disclosed candid impressions from diplomats and other world leaders about America’s allies and foes. The memos also unveil occasional U.S. pressure tactics aimed at hot spots in Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Korea….

& now the stories begin – depending upon which story you read, their basic slant, and their ability to search quickly for specific keywords to make their points while ignoring the vast majority of information available, reports vary.  For instance, from Salon we see the US helping Yemen attack AQAP resulting in civilian casualties (here):

…confirms that the Obama Administration has secretly launched missile attacks on suspected terrorists in Yemen, strikes that have reportedly killed dozens of civilians….

From CSMonitor we have reports that Israel is vindicated with its policy towards Iran (here) as the cables contained:

…candid assessments from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt that Iran posed the biggest strategic threat to regional stability. The assessments even stressed the need for considering conventional attacks on Tehran before its nuclear program becomes operational….

From Bloomberg, we get news about North Korea selling weapons to Iran (here):

Iran obtained 19 advanced missiles from North Korea, potentially giving the Islamic nation the capability of attacking Moscow and cities in Western Europe, according to embassy cables posted by WikiLeaks.org and provided to the New York Times…

From eWeek, news about China’s cyber-warfare against privay (here):

China’s government was indeed behind the hack on Google’s Gmail system earlier this year according to a cable captured by the controversial Wikileaks organization….

& this is just the beginning.  With the number of documents and their contents, there is likely many more “reports” to come, but most coming this early are little more than attention seeking headlines, as all are without context.

This isn’t to say anything being reported is inaccurate, only to say that no one individual fact can be said to be indicative of any specific trend nor should it be used to shape overall analysis.

Irregardless of what reports are now stating, without question this is another serious blow to the security apparatus of the US by Wikileaks (here):

WASHINGTON – Hundreds of thousands of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables, posted online Sunday by WikiLeaks and made available to other media, are sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment and could strain relations with some countries, influencing international relations in ways that are impossible to predict.

The cables, most of them from the past three years, provide an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats….

Realitically, we’re a long way a way from knowing the true impact, assuming it can ever be known.  For instance, not only could frank assessments damage relationships by revealing less than positive views the US has about their allies, but this leak could also work to reduce open discussions in the future.  (more…)

Update:  Yesterday in a DA post, F*$k North Korea, I noted from Stratfor about North Korea’s attacks on a South Korean island that:

…the sustained shelling of a populated island by North Korea would mark a deliberate and noteworthy escalation…

For those unfamiliar with Stratfor, they are a professional intelligence gathering organization and not simply another media outlet for international news.  With that in mind, phrases like “deliberate and noteworthy escalation” are very serious (unlike standard TV media where everything will kill you and everything is horrendously worse than it ever has been).

DA further noted, that while there were open questions, the facts….. are not open:

…A soverign and free nation, was just attacked and had its citizens murdered by a bully,a terrorist sponsor, an illegal weapons supplier, a despotic and opressive human rights abuser, all run run by an idiot who propagandizes others in his divinity….

Now there has been an increase in the level of rhetoric and threat response from the US (here).  Speaking of normal media’s rethoric, the title: Obama sends U.S. warship to Yellow Sea in show of strength as two Koreas teeter on the brink of all-out war is instructive.

Either way the US response has gotten better:

…Mr Obama earlier issued a statement condemning the ‘outrageous’ assault and underlining America’s close ties with Seoul.

…The White House called on North Korea to end ‘its belligerent action.’…

And:

…President Obama has ordered a U.S. warship to Korea in a shetow of strength to prevent an escalation of one of the most serious confrontations in the region for decades….

I say gotten better, because we should stand by our allies and in cases like these, even stand with countries who aren’t necessarily strong allies if they are a free people being attacked by a despotic country.

The open question however is: Will this matter?

As North Korea is just bully and a coward, there’s reason to think this isn’t the end.  Stratfor noted in an update on the situation today, that North Korea does indeed (more…)

Early yesterday afternoon (local time in South Korea), North Korea began shelling a South Korean controlled island with artillery (from Stratfor here):

…Though details are still sketchy, South Korean news reports indicate that around 2:30 p.m. local time, North Korean artillery shells began landing in the waters around Yeonpyeongdo, one of the South Korean-controlled islands just south of the NLL. North Korea has reportedly fired as many as 200 rounds, some of which struck the island, injuring at least 10 South Korean soldiers, damaging buildings and setting fire to a mountainside. South Korea responded by firing some 80 shells of its own toward North Korea, dispatching F-16 fighter jets to the area and raising the military alert to its highest level….

What’s interesting to note, is that North Korea has murdered South Koreans before, such as the recent sinking of the ChonAn, but as Stratfor puts it (emphasis added):

…While the South Korean reprisals — both artillery fire in response by self-propelled K-9 artillery and the scrambling of aircraft — thus far appear perfectly consistent with South Korean standard operating procedures, the sustained shelling of a populated island by North Korea would mark a deliberate and noteworthy escalation…

(more…)

An excellent publication overall, the Economist, is using their online debates to ask a question which doesn’t seem to have any useful answer (here):

This house believes that America’s political system is broken.

The current debaters are Matthew Yglesias, defending the motion and Peter Wehner arguing against.   In their second round of the debate, the house is winning with a full 75% agreeing to a broken US political system.

I say it doesn’t seem to have any useful answer as the most likely result from such a poll will be based mainly upon emotions.  Since most lay people don’t typically sit around and try to analyze political systems, the answers from the majority of respondents will have to fall back on other knowledge and human behavior demoonstrates this is likely to be emotions.  IE – if I like what’s going on, no fixing.  If I don’t like what’s going on, it needs fixing.

Reminds me a little of an argument I’ve seen a number of times in the health care debate.  Invariably, someone will put up a poll telling me how many people think their health care costs are too high.  & my retort stays the same, with some variation of Socratic questioning like… ”So?  Did you expect to see a poll that said most Americans want to pay more for anything?”

But I digress, the question has been asked and for Mr. Yglesias, things aren’t going well.  His baisc argument starts something like this:

American political institutions are in a period of crisis. The source of the crisis is relatively simple. Our institutions work only when leaders can reasonably expect broad bipartisan co-operation, but the emergence of more ideologically rigorous parties makes such co-operation extremely unlikely…

Which might make for a good thesis, assuming you can prove that broad bipartisan co-operation is indeed a requirement (hell, prove it’s useful…) as well as proving that more ideologically rigorous parties have come into existence.

His proof?  In the short, yet varied history of the US, he points to the last few election cycles – excluding all information about 9/11 and two wars and the nominal fact that the higher the consequence of any legislation the more ferocious the public debate – he starts his historical research by going all the way back to President Bush the younger; who entered the presidency with:

…an unprecedentedly weak electoral mandate. More voters marked their ballots for Al Gore than marked their ballots for Mr Bush. The median voter in the election supported Mr Gore. But thanks to a combination of litigation, stubbornness and the perversity of the electoral college, Mr Bush succeeded in prevailing and becoming president….

Just a quick note here – is it a little odd to start an arguement to theoretically prove that idealogically rigirous institutions are harming us, by being idealogically rigid… but whatever.

He contends that the result of the weak mandate  and an inability to overcome a Senate fillubuster worked well:

…This led to a fair amount of legislative co-operation in the first Bush term. A series of important changes to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act were approved; an extremely costly new prescription drug benefit was added to Medicare; income taxes were steeply cut—all on an at least somewhat bipartisan basis….

Somewhat bipartisan?  Like idealogically rigirous, “somewhat bipartisan” is undefinable in any concrete terms, but a quick look on just the tax cuts seems to indicate consistent partisan fighting.

What we know?

The cuts themselves were passed in two bills.

1. Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 &
   1. Senate vote here, House vote here
2. Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003.
   1. Vote totals here

In 2001: only 1 Republican voted against it in the Senate out of 33 nay votes (the other nays were Democrats), and in the House, all but one of the 154 nay votes were cast by Democrats.  & of course out of the yea votes, while less one sided, still doesn’t appear to be bipartisan.  In the Senate, 12 of the 58 yea votes were cast by Democrats and in the House 28 votes our of 240 yea votes were cast by Republicans.

& 2003?  I guess Mr. Yglesias would also be surprised to learn that in the 2003, the tax debate was even more lopsided (more…)

Bjorn Lomborg, author of the book “The Skeptical Environmentalist” (Reason review here), now has his own movie, “Cool It”:

The movie’s specific goal (here):

Amidst the strong and polarized opinions within the global warming debate, Cool It follows Lomborg on his mission to bring the smartest solutions to climate change, environmental pollution, and other major problems in the world.

& Considering the only other major films such as “Inconvenient Truth” are nothing more than fear inducing propaganda, Mr. Lomborg’s rational style and willingness to deal with the reality should make for a good film.

DA Posts on Bjorn Lomborg & The Copenhagen Consensus here & here

FAILURE When your best just isn't good enough.

It’s not a complete measure of how effective terrorists are as a whole, but when they start taking credit for massive failures, it’s something to note (here):

A Yemen-based al Qaeda group is claiming responsibility for the international mail bomb plot uncovered late last week….

& in this case, not only are they taking credit for failures, but Al Qaeda has even taken credit for a bombing they didn’t do (here):

WASHINGTON: Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen was not behind the Sept. 3 crash of a UPS cargo plane in Dubai and falsely took responsibility for the incident, according to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security….

& to add insult to injury, one of their own provided the intelligence needed to prevent the plot (here):

Yemen has revealed that a former Guantánamo Bay detainee who fled to the country from Saudi Arabia after his release by the US tipped off authorities about the plot to send bombs on cargo planes….

Of course it’s hard to take credit for successes when none exist, but it’s interesting to note that their power has been reduced to such an extent, that failures are the only things for which credit can be taken.

& for some, looking at a terrorist group as you would any other political organization, might be unseemly,  but it is instructive nonetheless.  Recall just 9 short years ago, how everyone was certain we would be hit again. How we were warned about continuing policies.  How we were being pulled into quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq just like they wanted.

& now – admission of failures and fake admissions of success.  How time changes things.

Disclaimer:  None of this is intended to signal that I think vigilance isn’t necessary for our security successes to continue.

There’s an interesting research paper on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by the Journal of Judgement and Decision Making (whole thing here):

The paper extends research on fixed-pie perceptions by suggesting that disputants may prefer proposals that are perceived to be equally attractive to both parties (i.e., balanced) rather than one-sided, because balanced agreements are seen as more likely to be successfully implemented. We test our predictions using data on Israeli support for the Geneva Accords, an agreement for a two state solution negotiated by unofficial delegations of Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 2003. The results demonstrate that Israelis are more likely to support agreements that are seen favorably by other Israelis, but — contrary to fixed-pie predictions — Israeli support for the accords does not diminish simply because a majority of Palestinians favors (rather than opposes) the accords. We show that implementation concerns create a demand among Israelis for balance in the degree to which each side favors (or opposes) the agreement. The effect of balance is noteworthy in that it creates considerable support for proposals even when a majority of Israelis and Palestinians OPPOSE the deal.

Or restated, it seems our sense of justice prefers balanced deals over seemingly one-sided deals, even if the balanced deal is opposed by the majorities of both interest groups.  Seems intuitive.