the first step is to admit you have a problem....

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On some nights I still believe that a car with the fuel gauge on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. - HST

1983 300SD - 305000
1984 Toyota Landcruiser - 190000
1994 GMC Jimmy - 203000

https://media.giphy.com/media/X3nnss8PAj5aU/giphy.gif

They didn't leak anything we didn't already know.

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2006 CL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2026 Genesis GV70
2007 Tiara 3200

Military budget and total US federal spending
The U.S. Department of Defense budget accounted in fiscal year 2010 for about 19% of the United States federal budgeted expenditures and 28% of estimated tax revenues. Including non-DOD expenditures, defense spending was approximately 25–29% of budgeted expenditures and 38–44% of estimated tax revenues. According to the Congressional Budget Office, defense spending grew 9% annually on average from fiscal year 2000–2009.[19]
Because of constitutional limitations, military funding is appropriated in a discretionary spending account. (Such accounts permit government planners to have more flexibility to change spending each year, as opposed to mandatory spending accounts that mandate spending on programs in accordance with the law, outside of the budgetary process.) In recent years, discretionary spending as a whole has amounted to about one-third of total federal outlays.[20] Military funding's share of discretionary funding was 50.5% in 2003, and has risen steadily ever since.[21]
For FY 2010, Department of Defense spending amounts to 4.7% of GDP.[22] Because the U.S. GDP has risen over time, the military budget can rise in absolute terms while shrinking as a percentage of the GDP. For example, the Department of Defense budget is slated to be $664 billion in 2010 (including the cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan previously funded through supplementary budget legislation[23][24]), higher than at any other point in American history, but still 1.1–1.4% lower as a percentage of GDP than the amount spent on defense during the peak of Cold-War military spending in the late 1980s.[22] Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called four percent an "absolute floor".[25] This calculation does not take into account some other defense-related non-DOD spending, such as Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, and interest paid on debt incurred in past wars, which has increased even as a percentage of the national GDP.

Graphic added for the benefit of the "edumacated" among us.

Attached Thumbnails

 

Nobody in the gov't classifies things for "no particular reason. " Either they are classified or they are incorrectly classified. Show me where the Pentagon said so.

I am not happy with this war, no soldier ever is, but it would be a mistake to destroy the entire infrastructure because you don't agree with current policy. That's like getting rid of all traffic conventions because the speed limit sign near your house is too restrictive, in your opinion.

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Strelnik
Invest in America: Buy a Congressman!

1950 170SD
1951 Citroen 11BN
1953 Citroen 11BNF limo
1953 220a project
1959 180D
1960 190D
1960 Borgward Isabella TS 2dr
1983 240D daily driver
1983 380SL
1990 350SDL daily driver alt
3 x Citroen DS21M, down from 5
3 x Citroen 2CV, down from 6

"Classifying documents that simply cover up someone's rear end is disgusting. "
It's more than disgusting, it's illegal.

President Ford wrote Executive Order 12958 because he wanted to undo what the Nixon administration did by collecting info on American citizens because they opposed you politically or to hide things for personal reasons because they make individuals or partisan groups look bad.

There are very specific guidelines for classifying things, that's why I put down what I did earlier in this discussion.

Take 20 minutes out and read the Exec Order, it's on the Net and has been for at least 15 years.

If you're going to disagree with someone, fine. But have the facts.

I still haven't found anyone here who admits to looking at the leaked documents in their raw format, as leaked.

Yet I still see plenty of comments.

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Strelnik
Invest in America: Buy a Congressman!

1950 170SD
1951 Citroen 11BN
1953 Citroen 11BNF limo
1953 220a project
1959 180D
1960 190D
1960 Borgward Isabella TS 2dr
1983 240D daily driver
1983 380SL
1990 350SDL daily driver alt
3 x Citroen DS21M, down from 5
3 x Citroen 2CV, down from 6

I was originally sympathetic to these guys because we live in an over-classified society, and the initial reports didn't produce any block buster headlines. But now that it looks like these clowns printed the names of foreign informants working for us who will now in all likelyhood will be tortured to death, I think they have actually succeeded in committing a crime - accessory to murder. I hope they get what is coming to them.

If charges were deemed in order, what dept would handle it, assuming it was a Pentagon military or civ. employee who was the leaker? Dept. of Justice or the DOD? Whose ball park and for whom?

DoD doesn't have any authority over civilians unless they work for DoD. And even then, the circumstances are limited.

Everyone else is potewntially chargeable by DoJ, because they represent and work for the Attorney General of the US.

__________________
Strelnik
Invest in America: Buy a Congressman!

1950 170SD
1951 Citroen 11BN
1953 Citroen 11BNF limo
1953 220a project
1959 180D
1960 190D
1960 Borgward Isabella TS 2dr
1983 240D daily driver
1983 380SL
1990 350SDL daily driver alt
3 x Citroen DS21M, down from 5
3 x Citroen 2CV, down from 6

just seems like a modern version of daniel ellsberg.

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"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

One of Oklahoma's Reps (it was Primary day here yesterday) was on TV here commenting on the political races and he was asked about this. He has seen much of what is out there and described it as 'a very large haystack with a very few needles'.

I could not tell if he was downplaying the whole thing because he though it made Bush look bad or if he was just actually unimpressed.

I am sure if anything big comes out of this we will hear about it, but so far all I have heard is speculation about how bad it might be.

As far as informants being in danger I don't think they are in anymore danger now than they were. The Taliban is not choosy when they are knocking off suspected informants and if they are unsure about just who is who they kill everyone big enough to die.

I heard that out of the 92,000 only 70,000 were truly classified. Only 70,000? It seems to me that by the time you would get to, say, 15,000 you would think it was a lot even if 4,000 of those turned out to be nothing.

One big difference in this and Elsburg's Pentagon Papers is that all of these documents were written when Bush was Prez and now he is gone. So far none of them that I know of were written since Obama took office, so there is really no political price to pay like Nixon was facing.

As far as Obama stepping up and doing something about this... That is what the FBI is for.

Wouldn't a better analogy be the "Pentagon Papers" as we know the documentation was stolen and published but we don't know the name of the criminal perpetrator as of now?

I had fun reading them here: http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/
Mostly attack logs and other reports regarding ground forces. These are all roughly seven months old and I doubt it has any functional value to the operations over there.

However, why does most of this need to be hidden? Why hide the facts? If the war is going so well who cares if this came out? Why change the dead counts from civilian to insurgent?

After the leak of the Reuter's photographer killing, there's no reason to trust any "official" report coming out of Washington (then again was there ever?).

And finally who cares if there is some "executive order" about what can and cannot be classified. Haven't you seen what has been classified? That executive order has been repelled and changed multiple times by every presidential administration. Even by Big Obama. There are new rules in effect under order 13526.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13526


The leaker won't be found thankfully and those in power will be kept honest.

Wikileaks founder doesn't even live in the United States. Since he's a public figure I doubt he'll conveniently disappear.

@Billybob, thanks for the correction

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-Typos courtesy of my mobile phone.

When he was on NPR the other day and was interviewed, he did not seem to think so. The interview should be at www.npr.org.

__________________
Strelnik
Invest in America: Buy a Congressman!

1950 170SD
1951 Citroen 11BN
1953 Citroen 11BNF limo
1953 220a project
1959 180D
1960 190D
1960 Borgward Isabella TS 2dr
1983 240D daily driver
1983 380SL
1990 350SDL daily driver alt
3 x Citroen DS21M, down from 5
3 x Citroen 2CV, down from 6

That graph should not include SS and Medicare as they are funded by their own taxes. Once those 2 are out of the pie, the military budget becomes a much larger slice.

I would like to see exactly how our tax dollars are being spent on this war.

And to have accurate reporting of what is happening, or has happened.

Hiding things like waste, incompetence, and murder behind a top secret sign does not change the facts.

It only serves to keep us from learning from our mistakes.

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When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
Jimi Hendrix