LADY GAGA, WIKILEAKS, AND THE GAY MAN RESPONSIBLE

The man allegedly responsible for getting hundreds of thousands of top secret military and diplomatic cables into the hands of Wikileaks is an openly gay man named Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is currently in military custody. Manning served as an Army Intelligence Analyst in Iraq and was able to secretly download the documents in question by burning them to a CD labeled 'Lady Gaga' and subsequently walk out with it.

Via The Guardian:

The US military believes it knows where the leak originated. A soldier, Bradley Manning, 22, has been held in solitary confinement for the last seven months and is facing a court martial in the new year. The former intelligence analyst is charged with unauthorised downloads of classified material while serving on an army base outside Baghdad. He is suspected of taking copies not only of the state department archive, but also of video of an Apache helicopter crew gunning down civilians in Baghdad, and hundreds of thousands of daily war logs from military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It was childishly easy, according to the published chatlog of a conversation Manning had with a fellow-hacker. "I would come in with music on a CD-RW labelled with something like 'Lady Gaga' … erase the music … then write a compressed split file. No one suspected a thing ... [I] listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga's Telephone while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history." He said that he "had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months".

The International Business Times has more on Manning:

Bradley Manning is a 23-year-old U.S. Army private who was working in Iraq as an army intelligence analyst when he was arrested in May this year. He was enlisted in the US Army in 2007. Half-British and half-American, he was born in a small town in Oklahoma. His parents divorced in 2001 and he went back to the UK with his mother where he attended secondary school in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire.

He posted on his Facebook page jokes about 'military intelligence' being an oxymoron. He also wrote: "Bradley Manning is not a piece of equipment." Manning is openly gay and has been active in gay rights movements.
Manning has been described variously by fellow students as a "computer geek", "hot-headed", and an "introvert". He has been under a suicide watch since his arrest.

Before his arrest he had posted on his page disillusioned comment like he didn’t "have anything left" and was "beyond frustrated". A Telegraph report pointed out that he appeared to sink into depression after a relationship break-up.

Here is a gay man who has done untold damage to the United States and could quite possibly be responsible for an International crisis ostensibly because of a bad relationship while we debate whether 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' should be repealed.

h/t Gateway Pundit

WIKILEAKS DOCS: HILLARY INSTRUCTED DIPLOMATS TO SPY

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once infamously admitted to having a lot of 'baggage.' Now she can add some more as one of the things revealed by the latest Wikileaks document dump is that Hillary instructed U.S. Diplomats to spy on other countries while in her current position as head of the State Department. This document dump is likely going to be devastating to the United States and while documents also showed Condoleezza Rice had issued similar directives, Hillary, unlike Rice, is still on the job and will have to deal with the fallout.

Via Der Spiegel:

The US State Department gave its diplomats instructions to spy on other countries' representatives at the United Nations, according to a directive signed by Hillary Clinton. Diplomats were told to collect information about e-mail accounts, credit cards and passwords, among other things.

US diplomats are alleged to have been asked by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to spy on the diplomats of other countries at the United Nations. That was the purpose of the "National Humint Collection Directive," which has been seen by SPIEGEL. The document was signed by Clinton and came into force on July 31, 2009.

It remains to be seen what this will mean for Clinton. Many have speculated about a 2012 presidential run to challenge Obama but these latest revelations may just, at minimum, render her toothless as Secretary of State and at maximum, serve as the impetus for her exodus.

h/t to Gateway Pundit

LEAKED DOCUMENTS POINT TO U.S. CONCERN OVER TURKEY, SAUDI ARABIAN CONCERN OVER IRAN

There is a touch of irony that leaked documents which show U.S. government concern over Turkey were released on Thanksgiving weekend but the concern over that country is more than a little warranted. A point of curiosity is why the U.S. concern about Turkey becoming increasingly Islamist has been such a secret. Ever since 2002, when the AKP (Islamist) Party began making huge gains in the Turkish government, Islamist influence inside that government has been growing substantially.

Via Der Spiegel:

The US diplomats' verdict on the NATO partner with the second biggest army in the alliance is devastating. The Turkish leadership is depicted as divided, and Erdogan's advisers, as well as Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, are portrayed as having little understanding of politics beyond Ankara.

The Americans are also worried about Davutoglu's alleged neo-Ottoman visions. A high-ranking government adviser warned in discussions, quoted by the US diplomats, that Davutoglu would use his Islamist influence on Erdogan, describing him as "exceptionally dangerous." According to the US document, another adviser to the ruling AKP party remarked, probably ironically, that Turkey wanted "to take back Andalusia and avenge the defeat at the siege of Vienna in 1683."

People like former Muslim terrorist Walid Shoebat have been sounding the alarm over Turkey for many years for this very reason. Back in March of this year, Shoebat explained in great detail why Turkey's move toward Islamism is so potentially dangerous. The Ottoman Empire was disbanded in 1924 and the vacuum was filled when the Muslim Brotherhood was created in 1928. The Muslim Brotherhood umbrella has many Islamic groups under it that are currently operating in the United States. Among them are the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim Students Association (MSA), and many others.

The country known today as Turkey was ground zero for the Ottoman Empire and its reimplementation would mean the end of Islamic nation states - all would be part of the monolithic Caliphate centered in Turkey.

Shoebat (pictured) appears to have another one of his arguments bolstered related to Saudi Arabia and Iran. He has long maintained that he thinks it highly likely Iran would attack Saudi Arabia before it went after Israel. Other wikileaks documents show that Saudi Arabia pleaded with the United States to attack Iran.

Via the L.A. Times:

Leaders of oil-rich Arabian Peninsula monarchies who are publicly reluctant to criticize Iran have been beseeching the United States in private to attack the Islamic Republic and destroy its nuclear facilities, according to a series of classified diplomatic cables released by the WikiLeaks website.

The cables show that both Saudi King Abdullah and King Hamed ibn Isa Khalifa of Bahrain, which hosts the U.S. 5th Fleet, are among the Arab leaders who have lobbied the United States to strike Iran. According to one dispatch, a Saudi official reminded Americans that the king had repeatedly asked the U.S. to "cut off the head of the snake" before it was too late.

Iran, being a Shiite nation, has been nurturing a stronger alliance with Turkey lately. Both nations loathe Saudi Arabia for its cozying up to the west. The Saudi Arabian monarchy is held in contempt by Iran and Turkey, perhaps even more so than their hatred for Israel. Iran is likely to view these released statements from Saudi Arabia as extremely provocative.

h/t to Weasel Zippers for the Der Spiegel link.