British Government Backs State Dept. On Nuke Secrets Story
Via Jake Tapper comes this short confirmation from a British official of the State Department’s response to the Telegraph Wikileaks story:
A knowledgeable source with the British government, speaking anonymously because his government has a policy of not commenting on Wikileaks, says his understanding of the policy conforms with that asserted by the State Department.
So, that would appear to be that.
Yeah, well, Obama still hates Britain or something. On to the next outrage!
Mr. Mataconis: Next time a boilerplate “Obama loves our enemies and wants to destroy our alliances!” story comes along (and it will), please keep this episode in mind. Before you pass along such a story, you should ask yourself “Why would Obama do such a thing?”
In your original post on this faux-controversy, you never suggested any viable reason that Obama would have for “selling out” the UK. You seemed to believe it plausible that Obama would turn on our allies just for the sake of being a snake. That’s silliness.
When you pass along the story without considering the motives, you’re just furthering the far-right meme that Obama is a foreign, alien, “other” who wants to destroy the US. While you disagree with Obama on many things, I don’t think you truly believe that meme. I hope not, anyway.
Why is the British government conspiring with the President to undermine British security? #sarcasm
The story still doesn’t add up. The U.S. asked U.K for permission to disclose X and was denied. U.S. goes ahead and discloses X anyway. U.S. is found out and says it was under a previous obligation to disclose Y to Russia, seeming to point to previous administrations. U.K. agrees. All of which seems to beg the point of what the U.S. was denied permission to disclose and why.
“The story still doesn’t add up.”
Well duh… Thats because the story that you read, the outline of which you repeat here, was full of crap.Don’t you understand – when a story is debunked, that means that some or all of the building blocks of that story are false. Some or all of the things you repeat here are simply not true, or exist in a context wholly different than the one provided to you.
This alleged “controversy” is of the same piece as the president’s other supposed acts of disrespect shown to our British ally, like the return of the Churchill bust, the iPod gift to Queen Elizabeth, the gifts of DVDs to Gordon Brown, etc…and just like those previous “incidents”, this turns out to be a lot of hot air over absolutely nothing…well, nothing except getting the usual suspects riled up at the president…
Tano: Where is this statement from the Telegraph “debunked”?
“Washington lobbied London in 2009 for permission to supply Moscow with detailed data about the performance of UK missiles. The UK refused . . ..”