While Wikileak stories seem to be focusing on Russia today, another story from late last night caught my attention. The Guardian reports (with my emphasis):
British and American officials colluded in a plan to hoodwink parliament over a proposed ban on cluster bombs, the Guardian can disclose.
According to leaked US embassy dispatches, David Miliband, who was Britain’s foreign secretary under Labour, approved the use of a loophole to manoeuvre around the ban and allow the US to keep the munitions on British territory.
Unlike Britain, the US had refused to sign up to an international convention that bans the weapons because of the widespread injury they cause to civilians.
The US military asserted that cluster bombs were “legitimate weapons that provide a vital military capability” and wanted to carry on using British bases regardless of the ban.
Whitehall officials proposed that a specially created loophole to grant the US a free hand should be concealed from parliament in case it “complicated or muddied” the MPs’ debate.
So how do they justify keeping this one secret? Well obviously this leak hurts the US government’s position on cluster bombs, because now we have the opportunity to close the loophole. And since the US think cluster bombs are so important to their military efforts this compromises national security (in their view).
Calling this story a danger to national security would be like saying that telling the truth about WMDs would have also compromised national security. I mean, it might have undermined the argument to go to war. And then where would we be?