US forced to shake up embassies around the world after WikiLeaks revelations

[maddezmom]

US forced to shake up embassies around the world after WikiLeaks revelations
By Guy Adams and Kim Sengupta

Monday, 6 December 2010

Battered by a scandal which seems to provide a fresh wave of embarrassment with each passing day, the US government is being forced to undertake a major reshuffle of the embassy staff, military personnel and intelligence operatives whose work has been laid bare by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.


The Obama administration was yesterday facing a crisis in its diplomatic service, amid growing evidence that the ongoing publication of a tranche of supposedly-confidential communiqués will make normal work difficult, if not dangerous, for important State Department employees across the world.

A mere 1,100 of the roughly 250,000 secret documents obtained by the website have so far been published, leading to fears that the unhelpful revelations will continue for months to come, destabilising US relations with almost all of its key allies and inflaming tensions with already-hostile governments in the Middle East and beyond. "In the short run, we're almost out of business," a senior US diplomat told the Reuters news agency, saying it could take five years to rebuild trust. "It is really, really bad. I cannot exaggerate it. In all honesty, nobody wants to talk to us ... Some people still have to, particularly (in) government but ... they are already asking us things like, 'Are you going to write about this?'"

The Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department are reported to be identifying which members of staff have been named as the authors of the most unhelpful memos to have been published by WikiLeaks. They will need to be removed from what are among America's most strategically-important postings.


more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/us-forced-to-shake-up-embassies-around-the-world-after-wikileaks-revelations-2152167.html

[struggle4progress]

1. This was a rather predictable outcome of a massive diplomatic cable leak, so

I think it may be reasonable to ask again whether we believe a lowly PFC was behind the leak or whether it might have been engineered by someone who deliberately intended to sabotage the President's ability to conduct foreign policy

[JDPriestly]

2. I have been posting on this. The leaker could have been

a Bush leftover in the State Department or the CIA or some other such branch of the government. Could also have been someone who in the State Department who wanted particular information to be exposed but did not want to draw attention to himself by just disclosing that limited piece of the information. It is also quite likely that this information came to Assange and Wikileaks from some foreign country, possibly via some poor soldier's computer or someone unknowing person's computer. There are so many possibilities.

I have also thought that a diplomat may have left a computer or drive with the information or just enough of it on it somewhere, lost it or maybe just left it in a hotel room for a couple of hours in some country in the world. Maybe a maid or repairman in some foreign country downloaded the information from an embassy computer somewhere in the world. The possibilities are endless. Could have been a lowly soldier. But that is only one of the possibilities.

[bemildred]

4. Mr Manning did deliberately intend to sabotage the President's ability to conduct foreign policy.

So does Mr Assange and Wikileaks. The essential dispute or difference among those who support Wikileaks and those who think it is the Devil is whether they consider the US government the "good guys" or not.

[struggle4progress]

5. That's premature, since we don't know who released the diplomatic cables

[bemildred]

6. Eh, I'm not out to get Manning.

I was just pointing out that it does look like it was done with the deliberate intent to gum up the works of US foreign policy, Mr Assange has as much as said so.

But you can believe what you like, it's hard to tell much out here in TV land, this could go on for quite a while, we could have a permanent new situation.

[Demeter]

3. Anything to Stop the Endless War Machine Is Good

The EVIL done in our name must be stopped,and rest assured, it's evil, because IF the US State Department were doing anything good for the world, it would hit the MSM like a ton of bricks in an infinite propaganda loop.