Solvent Contra Nugget

Re: “Here’s why Wikileaks is wikiweak” – Peter Worthington (The Nugget, July 29, 2010)

The corporate media is scrambling to demonize Wikileaks after the release of 92000 top secret documents pertaining to the conduct of the war in Afghanistan.  As a mouthpiece for conservative interests, Sun Media columnist, who is also published in The Nugget, is a part of that effort.

Worthington, in his column, claims that the leaked documents are embarrassing but not damaging, and focuses on the revelation of the facts that the Afghanistan government, under Hamid Karzai, is corrupt, and that Pakistan intelligence is aided the Taliban, as though those are the only things that were revealed by the leak.

He says that the corruption of the Karzai government is old news, and doesn’t even matter. That is quite interesting. If Canada is in Afghanistan to promote freedom and democracy, why wouldn’t it matter that Karzai was not elected democratically, and is in fact the corrupt representative of drug dealing warlords? Why are we letting our men and women in uniform get killed to strengthen a corrupt leader’s hold on power in that country? The answers to those questions matter.

He goes on to say: “Name one middle east regime that is not corrupt”.

Well, how about naming one corrupt middle east regime, in a geo-politically important country that was not installed by the United States government?

Worthington writes: “WikiLeaks also reveals (…) that Taliban have infiltrated Pakistan’s Intelligence Service. (…) So what else is new? That’s been written about and commented on so often you’d think it hardly worth mentioning.”

Hardly worth mentioning? Well, these documents reveal that the United States KNOWS that Pakistan’s government is working with the Taliban insurgents. Is that not new news? Is that not alarming? Hillary Clinton was just on TV last week announcing $7.5 billion in new aid for Pakistan, and gushing about how excellent an ally Pakistan is. Perhaps Mr. Worthington writes a syndicated column without paying attention to what is happening in the world? I suppose that would help if you have to ignorantly prop up a weak argument on command…

“Documents now available on WikiLeaks.org seem mostly to be old and, if not exactly outdated, events have moved on to other phases” says Peter.

I guess that events that happened in 2009 in a war that has been going on since 2001, are ancient news, and hardly relevant to what is going on in that war now. For example, if war crimes were being committed last year, under the Obama administration, there is no reason to believe that those same war crimes are being committed now, one whole year later.

And make no mistake about it, those documents reveal war crimes. There are details of civilian deaths that were covered up. There is evidence that the Canadian government is lying about the cause of death of at least 4 of our soldiers, who although officially died as a result of insurgent activity, were in fact killed by our American allies. This stuff matters Peter Wortington, and if you are right that the Wikileaks documents are not damaging, it is because every right wing hired pen in the world is scrambling to mitigate the damage the truth can do to the warmongers of this world.

- Bob Kismet

Worthington’s article is here…