Skip to main content

The cost of exposing the truth

In this day and age of WikiLeaks, the crackdown on those described as whistleblowers continues.   Witness Peter Van Buren at the US State Department.    It certainly doesn't pay to be honest and expose what governments don't want their citizenry to know.

"Peter Van Buren—a veteran US diplomat whose blog and 2011 book, We Meant Well, detail his futile experiences as a nation builder in Iraq—was formally fired from the State Department this week. Officials at Foggy Bottom say Van Buren is guilty of eight major policy violations, including linking to Wikileaks documents on his blog, leaking classified info in his book, and displaying a "lack of candor" in interrogations by State security officers, according to a statement from his publicist. (A State Department spokesman confirmed the charges to the Washington Post on Wednesday.)

But Van Buren maintains he's being singled out for "dirty tricks in retaliation" for embarassing his employer—a simple exercise of his free-speech rights. "It's hard for me to objectively look at this as anything other than revenge and vindictiveness," he told the Post.

In the book (part of which was published here at MotherJones.com), Van Buren recounts how, as the leader of two Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq, he was party to one tragicomic, Kafkaesque misstep after another: shipping trucks full of unwanted English-language books to Iraqis who promptly dumped them; distributing soccer balls that nobody would kick because they had Koranic verses printed on them; chilling out at the US embassy in Baghdad, the world's largest, playing lacrosse on a dead $2 million lawn."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Palestinian children in irons. UK to investigate

Not for the first time does MPS wonder what sort of country it is when Israel so flagrently allows what can only be described as barbaric and inhuman behaviour to be undertaken by, amongst others, its IDF. No one has seemingly challenged Israel's actions. However, perhaps it's gone a bridge too far - as The Independent reports. The Foreign Office revealed last night that it would be challenging the Israelis over their treatment of Palestinian children after a report by a delegation of senior British lawyers revealed unconscionable practices, such as hooding and the use of leg irons. In the first investigation of its kind, a team of nine senior legal figures examined how Palestinians as young as 12 were treated when arrested. Their shocking report Children in Military Custody details claims that youngsters are dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, have their wrists bound behind their backs, and are blindfolded and made to kneel or lie face down in military vehi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Wow!.....some "visitor" to Ferryland in Newfoundland

Post a Comment
Read more