Wikileaks Threatens the State Dept's Ability to Continuously Operate in Exigency Mode

It's no fun when bureaucrats don't even try anymore.

Publication of documents of this nature at a minimum would:

* Place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals -- from journalists to human rights activists and bloggers to soldiers to individuals providing information to further peace and security;

* Place at risk on-going military operations, including operations to stop terrorists, traffickers in human beings and illicit arms, violent criminal enterprises and other actors that threaten global security; and,

* Place at risk on-going cooperation between countries - partners, allies and common stakeholders -- to confront common challenges from terrorism to pandemic diseases to nuclear proliferation that threaten global stability.

Why? Because the information to be released is supposedly frank about bureaucratic and political corruption.

Anticipating the fallout from the latest publication, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Philip Murphy wrote a letter to the German Sunday weekly Bild am Sonntag that the WikiLeaks revelations would be an embarrassment.

"Regrettably we will soon have something new to see: alleged confidential diplomatic messages from U.S. embassies around the world, including mine. It's hard to say what effect it will have, but it will at the very least be uncomfortable -- for my government, for those mentioned in the reports, and for me personally as American Ambassador to Germany."

The newspaper reported that some German politicians were severely judged in the reports.

On Friday, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey told reporters he was worried about the documents coming out.

"WikiLeaks are an absolutely awful impediment to my business, which is to be able to have discussions in confidence with people," he said.

Just so the score is straight here, to fight people who would use violence to achieve political and economic goals, people who use violence to achieve political and economic goals have to work with other people who use violence to achieve political and economic goals, but in secret. And, with corruption. And, your money.

Otherwise H1N1 will be unleashed.

Yep

Understatement:

Once bureaucrats get the bit in their teeth they take absurdity to its logical conclusion. - Paul Craig Roberts

When is Your Birthday This Year?

Completely for national security reasons, and having nothing to do with decreasing the incidents of driving while brown, to get a driver's license the state now requires proof of birth (I'm not kidding) and two proofs of residence as indicated by bills that happen to indicate the same address.

Since I don't have a birth certificate, I was happy to see on the DMV website that a US passport was sufficient for proving birth. I grabbed my expired passport and the mail and headed off to the local branch.

The way it works here is you get in a single-file line to have your documents checked. The document-checking bureaucrat then issues you a "now serving" number. It's not as good as the appointment system in California, but it sure beats the CA method of handling walk-ins.

After standing in the document check line for an hour, it was finally my turn to spin the take-a-number wheel. First thing, the bureaucrat opened my passport and, mournfully, noted that it is expired.

"Yeah, but it's still me," I said. "I didn't expire with it."

"Yeah, but it's expired,” she explained patiently. “We have no way of knowing if any of the information has changed. Don't you have a birth certificate?"

"There's the rub. I can't get a birth certificate without a driver's license," I said. "But, how would a certificate from the '70s, with no identifying information about me, give you better information than a passport from the '90s with my picture?"

"Your name might have changed. Then we would have copies of the court order changing it."

I could see where she was going, but the route she's chosen has a bridge out. "But, I'm applying for a license under this name. If my name has changed since that passport was issued, I'm not going to give you those court orders, am I?"

Unconvinced, the bureaucrat delivered, I kid you not, the master stroke. "Well," she said in that grasping-for-justification tone, "your birthday might have changed."