by: Bill Quigley, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis, Dec 20, 2010
Human rights advocates have significant new sources of information to hold the United States accountable. The transparency, which WikiLeaks has brought about, unveils many cover-ups of injustices in US relations with Honduras, Spain, Thailand, UK and Yemen over issues of torture at Guantanamo, civilian casualties from drones and the war in Iraq.
US Government Is Two-Faced Over WikiLeaks
The US government has twisted itself into knots over WikiLeaks. It routinely disregards the privacy of citizens while, at the same time, trying to avoid transparency for itself.
The US claims broad authority to secretly snoop on the lives of individuals inside and outside of the US. It also works tirelessly to prevent citizens from knowing what is going on by expansively naming basic government information “state secrets.” The government says it has to have the right to keep things secret in order to prevent crime.
But when it comes to revealing evidence of illegal acts by the US government it seeks the most severe sanctions against any transparency.
The most glaring example of the twisted logic is on display within the US Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ is searching for creative ways to criminally sanction WikiLeaks for publishing US secrets. But the same DOJ solemnly decided it should not prosecute the government officials who brazenly destroyed dozens of tapes of waterboarding and torture by US officials. So, DOJ, destruction of evidence of crimes is O.K. and revealing the evidence of crimes is bad?
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