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Will Heads Roll for the Stuxnet Leak?
Townhall.com ^
| June 13, 2012
| Pat Buchanan
Posted on 06/13/2012 2:10:15 PM PDT by Kaslin
Within days of SEAL Team Six's killing of Osama on that midnight mission in Pakistan, Defense Secretary Bob Gates, reading all about the raid in the press, went to the White House to tell President Obama's national security adviser pungently to "shut the (bleep) up."
Leaked secrets of that raid may have led to the imprisonment for 33 years of a Pakistani doctor who helped us locate bin Laden.
Yet, according to Judicial Watch, the White House has been providing Hollywood with details of the raid for a movie that will, we may be sure, heroize our commander in chief. More troubling are two recent stories in The New York Times.
One, by Jo Becker and Scott Shane, describes how, at meetings in the Situation Room, Obama examines "baseball cards" of al-Qaida targets in Pakistan and Yemen and decides on the "kill list" for drone strikes.
Most explosive was the June 1 story by David Sanger, who wrote of the origins and operation of a secret U.S-Israeli cyberwar strike on Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. The Stuxnet virus we introduced into Natanz put 1,000 centrifuges out of action.
These security leaks raise moral, strategic and legal issues.
Does Obama alone decide in the War on Terror who dies, where and when, whom it is permissible to terminate as collateral damage, who gets a reprieve? What are the criteria that this, our Caesar, has settled upon for who gets whacked? Do we have a right to know?
And there is blowback to actions like these. Asked why he would target civilians, the Times Square bomber replied that U.S. drones do not spare civilians in Pakistan.
Is it wise to have it leaked that President Obama is routinely ordering assassinations? Have we forgotten our history?
After John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, we discovered that the CIA had been plotting to kill Fidel Castro, and Lee Harvey Oswald had visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. The Kennedys were "running a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean," Lyndon Johnson allegedly said.
Men targeted for assassination in their countries may feel justified in reciprocating and assassinating Americans in our country.
As for the malware, or Stuxnet virus, introduced into Natanz, was it wise to use this powerful and secret weapon against a plant that is under international inspection and enriches uranium only to 5 percent?
We may have disrupted Natanz for months, but we also revealed to Iran and the world our cyberwar capabilities. And we became the first nation to use cyberwar weapons on a country with which we are not at war.
If we have a right to attack Iran's nuclear facilities like Natanz and Bushehr that are under U.N. supervision, does Iran have a right to attack our nuclear plants, like Three Mile Island, with cyberwar viruses they create?
We have now alerted technologically advanced nations like Russia and China to our capabilities and impelled them to get cracking on their own cyberwar weapons, both offensive and defensive.
After President Truman informed him at Potsdam of our atom bomb, Joseph Stalin went home and ordered Soviet scientists to replicate the U.S. success. By 1949, far sooner than expected, Stalin had the bomb.
Sanger describes how this "highly classified program," code-named "Olympic Games," was begun in the Bush years, how the worm was inserted in Natanz, and how it escaped from the centrifuges to outside computers and the world.
He quotes the president's dismayed reaction: "Should we shut this thing down?" Sanger implies that he spoke with "participants in the many Situation Room meetings on Olympic Games."
Obama seems outraged by such a suggestion: "The notion that my White House would purposely release classified national security information is offensive."
Fair enough. But presidential meetings are held in the Situation Room because they involve the most sensitive security secrets, and Olympic Games was, as Sanger relates, "a highly classified" program.
Whom did Sanger get all this from? Who leaked and why?
For this is far more serious than the leak that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA, which triggered a special prosecutor and got Dick Cheney's top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, indicted and convicted.
Pvt. Bradley Manning faces a life sentence for divulging security secrets to Wikileaks. What did he do that the leakers of the Stuxnet secrets did not do?
John McCain alleges that the leaking of security secrets -- on how SEAL Team Six got Osama, on the Stuxnet virus that ravaged the Natanz plant, on the president ordering up drone strikes on a "kill list" of al-Qaida operatives -- is politically motivated.
Purpose: Paint the president as a ruthless and relentless warrior against America's enemies.
Whatever the purpose, the leaks appear to be breaches of national security and violations of federal law, and two U.S. attorneys are investigating.
It is not improbable that officials on Obama's national security team, if not White House aides, will soon be addressing a federal grand jury.
TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: cia; dnccoupdetat; dnctreason; intelligence; irannuclear; noaccountability; nobirthcertificate; nodocumentation; notonesingleadult; nsatreason; obamatreason; sealteamsix
1
posted on
06/13/2012 2:10:25 PM PDT
by
Kaslin
To: Kaslin
2
posted on
06/13/2012 2:16:38 PM PDT
by
Paladin2
To: Kaslin
Obamah can always declassify the already leaked material and that's dat!
...especially if he's the one that ordered the leak to try to make himself look better.
To: Kaslin
No, all the leaked material will be declassified before Obamah goes home to Chicago.
To: Kaslin
5
posted on
06/13/2012 2:23:50 PM PDT
by
null and void
(Day 1240 of our ObamaVacation from reality - Obama is not a Big Brother [he's a Big Sissy...])
To: Kaslin
By releasing info about Osama’s raid 10 minutes after it happened, the idiot Prez dramatically diminished the quality of the intel we got. Dumbass couldn't keep his mouth shut even for 2 weeks.
6
posted on
06/13/2012 2:34:25 PM PDT
by
Tex-Con-Man
(T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII 2012 - "Together, I Shall Ride You To Victory")
To: Kaslin
No. Heads in Iran will roll, however. Between disclosing OBL’s doctor and ‘W.S.-friendly workers’ in Iranian Nuke sites, THE UNITED STATES WILL NEVER AGAIN GET ANY FOREIGN AGENT TO HELP US AND THAT IS OBAMA’S MISSION HERE, TO CASTRATE UNCLE SAM AND SEVERELY IMPACT OUR FUTURE INTELLIGENCE GATHERING CAPABILITIES. Well done, Obama! /s
To: Kaslin
This movie, by the time it comes out, will not change a single vote.
8
posted on
06/13/2012 2:39:17 PM PDT
by
radioone
To: Tex-Con-Man
- Disclose OBL's doctor, HURTS U.S. = YES!
- Disclose STUXNET source, HURTS U.S. = YES!
- Disclose OBL death photos, HURTS MUSLIMS = NO!
Follow 0bama's ACTIONS, not his words.
To: Kaslin
Wouldn’t surprise me if Biden is the leaky faucet rat, and not Donilon. Biden ‘outed’ that is was SEAL Team 6 that did the raid and knowing 0bama, Biden probably finds out everything he asks about, cleared or not. I’d look at Biden because he’s already proven himself to eagerly want to sell out the United States for his own 15 friggin’ minutes of fame. He should be in Levenworth along with 0bama and Holder.
To: Kaslin
11
posted on
06/13/2012 3:01:17 PM PDT
by
Hoodat
(Because they do not change, Therefore they do not fear God. -Psalm 55:19-)
To: Hoodat
Even worse who the hell is going to trust us and become an agent
12
posted on
06/13/2012 3:05:35 PM PDT
by
uncbob
To: Kaslin
And what about the deaths of all those SEAL team 6 operators on a helicopter that was shot down? And let's not forget the (I believe it was a Saudi) double agent who brought in the "new" underpants bomb... Thanks to that news report, you can bet LOTS of people have been tortured and/or killed, as well as losing an ally's important intelligence asset, making sure we'd never get anything else from his or her.
But then, Obama would rather kill terrorists than actually try to gain intelligence from then when captured.
It's really frightening how cavalier the Obama regime is when it comes to national security!
Mark
13
posted on
06/13/2012 3:48:42 PM PDT
by
MarkL
(Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
To: MarkL
[And what about the deaths of all those SEAL team 6 operators on a helicopter that was shot down?]
Defense Secretary Robert Gates: Frankly, a week ago Sunday, in the Situation Room, we all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out bin Laden. That all fell apart on Monday, the next day.
14
posted on
06/13/2012 4:33:04 PM PDT
by
Brad from Tennessee
(A politician can't give you anything he hasn't first stolen from you.)
To: Kaslin
Nothing will be done because that would require a spine and cajones that only a microscopic few of the DC Republicans have. The majority will be complicit in Obama’s treason.
To: Kaslin
who wrote of the origins and operation of a secret U.S-Israeli cyberwar strike on Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. What's this about? Is it the secret U.S. operation to make believe the U.S. developed and let Israel use the Stuxnet virus that Israel itself conceived/developed/deployed?
16
posted on
06/13/2012 4:51:54 PM PDT
by
C210N
("ask not what the candidate can do for you, ask what you can do for the candidate" (Breitbart, 2012))
To: Kaslin
We may have disrupted Natanz for months, but we also revealed to Iran and the world our cyberwar capabilities. And we became the first nation to use cyberwar weapons on a country with which we are not at war.
Somebody is conveniently forgetting that China and Russia and other countries have been hammering away at our infrastructure. Sure they were mostly trying to get secret information (which should never have been accessible to the internet anyways) instead of trying to actively manipulate systems tied to things like our nuclear systems, but it's really not a big leap from trying to crack our computer security to actually doing something with it.
If we have a right to attack Iran's nuclear facilities like Natanz and Bushehr that are under U.N. supervision, does Iran have a right to attack our nuclear plants, like Three Mile Island, with cyberwar viruses they create?
Three Mile Island has nothing to do with US weapons production. Bad analogy. Plus there are no "rights" in open warfare as far as whether one side is allowed to target certain facilities but the other side isn't. When you go to war with somebody, you should automatically assume they are going to target your country if they can.
It's very dangerous to assume that they can't reach you. We have grown very soft because we have two oceans on either side, and a nation to the north that is just as interested in keeping the baddies out, but God help us if somebody made a serious effort to get something into Mexico and then on into Texas or California. We have a lot of Coast Guard and Navy ships operating up and down the coasts between the US/Mexico border and South America, doing interdiction, but they can't catch everything.
I'm honestly surprised nothing serious happened after we went to war with Iraq, but Iraq was a shell of itself compared to 1991. Eventually we're going to have a President get us into an undeclared war with somebody who is going to strike back at the mainland US.
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