Secret Gov't Documents Will be Declassified 12/31

mozzwald writes "This New Year's Eve, at midnight on the dot, hundreds of millions of pages of U.S. government secrets will be revealed. Or at least they'll no longer be official secrets — it may actually take months or more for the National Archives and Records Administration to make those pages available for public consumption."

It's nice to see they've solved the problem

[MarkusQ]

I was recently pleased to discover that our leaders have hit upon an ideal solution for the perennial problem of that pesky public eventually getting their hands on documents like this. It's so simple, I don't know why they didn't think of it sooner.

Don't produce the information that will make you look bad in the first place.

For instance:

• After a government report showed an increase in terrorism around the world, the administration announced it would stop publishing its annual report on international terrorism.
• A rule change at the U.S. Geological Survey restricts agency scientists from publishing or discussing research without that information first being screened by higher-ups at the agency. Special screening will be given to "findings or data that may be especially newsworthy, have an impact on government policy, or contradict previous public understanding to ensure that proper officials are notified and that communication strategies are developed.
• The Treasury Department stopped producing reports showing how the benefits of tax cuts were distributed by income class.
• After the Bureau of Labor Statistics uncovered discouraging data about factory closings in the U.S., the administration announced it would stop publishing information about factory closings.

Of course, the old trick of covering up / reclassifying things is still in use as well:

• The FBI attempted to retroactively classify public information regarding the case of bureau whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, including a series of letters between the Justice Department and several senators.
• President Bush issued an executive order limiting the public's access to presidential records. The order undermined the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which required the release of those records after 12 years. Bush's order prevented the release of "68,000 pages of confidential communications between President Ronald Reagan and his advisers," some of whom had positions in the Bush Administration.
• The Federal Communications Commission blocked access to a once-public database of network outages affecting telecommunications service providers. The FCC removed public copies and exempted the information from Freedom of Information Act requests, saying it would "jeopardize national security efforts."
• The Federal Communications Commission ordered destroyed all copies of an unreleased 2004 draft report concluding that media consolidation hurt local TV news coverage, which runs counter to the administration's pro-consolidation stance.
• ...and so on.

Still, I think the new approach is much more elegant and will probably save the taxpayers a lot in the long run.

--MarkusQ P.S. Sources and many more examples here [tpmmuckraker.com].

Re:Can't wait...

[TheNinjaroach]

Why exactly did you draw that comparison? They're two unrelated events.

Those two events are closely related. Nobody would have supported our "War on Terror" or the invasion of Iraq had we not been attacked on 9/11.

Re:Can't wait...

[theskipper]

But, per President Bush himself, one event (9/11) was directly responsible for the second (attacking Iraq).

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20 030319-1.html [whitehouse.gov]

Seems black and white, no?

um.....

[ClioCJS]

A lot of us "conspiracy theorists" think that that's exactly what they did. Hire those terrorists. Bin Laden has been paid by the C.I.A. in the past, and the C.I.A. has not proven itself to be a trustworthy agency.

http://del.icio.us/ClintJCL/911 [del.icio.us] http://clintjcl.wordpress.com/?s=911 [wordpress.com]

Re:Can't wait...

[Malfourmed]

57,617 MAX Iraqi deaths in this war.

The Iraq Body Count website only tallies deaths on an incident-by-incident basis that are reported in reputable media. A minimum of two independent agencies need to publish a report before they are willing to add it to the count.

There are many deaths that are never reported for a variety of reasons (eg lack of journalistic coverage in many areas), let alone twice. As such, even the "max" number on the website can be considered to be a "minimum" actual number.

Re:Can't wait...

[FrostedChaos]

Ok. I know that this issue has been discussed to death, and it's hard for people to think rationally about it. But bear with me for a moment.

Sadam killed everyone in Iraq...everyone that stood against him. Terrorists, Muslims, Christians, football (soccer) players, left handed people, right handed people, . So what exactly is your point?

Saddam Hussein was a secular leader who kept a lid on the power of the religious radicals in the country. He fought a war [wikipedia.org] against the Islamic fundamentalist government of Iran. During this time, he received funding and military backing from the U.S. government.

Whatever other terrible things he did, Saddam was NOT a terrorist or Islamic fundamentalist. That's the point.

Bush never said Iraq was behind 9-11, he said that Iraq had weapons of mass distruction like 50 million times and said places like Iraq were part of the Axis of Evil (Iraq, Iran, and North Korea).

According to president Bush himself, 9/11 was the justification for attacking Iraq. [whitehouse.gov] (Thanks to theskipper for finding this.)

Bush lumped together many unrelated countries in his "axis of evil." The Big Lie of the Bush administration is the idea that the war in Iraq somehow advances the cause of national security. Do you remember Bush repeating this lie over and over throughout the last 7 years?

It's become obvious even to the average voter just how silly it is to keep pissing away resources in Iraq. I think the people who opposed Iraq from the beginning deserve at least an "I told you so." Too bad we can't get that trillion dollars back, though.

If you want to know why Bush really brought us into Iraq, read up on "The Project for a New American Century." This is the stuff that makes some people hysterial-- the "neoconservative" ideology. Generally speaking, neocons favor U.S. military hegemony, free trade, and the establishment of western-style republics throughout the world.

Ironically, the US is the country with the most to lose in any war, because we have the most money and the most political power. By overextending ourselves, we have actually weakened our position across the board. Try as they might, China, Afghanistan, or Iraq could never have done the United States a more grievous hurt than G.W. Bush has in the last decade.