The US Air Force has backed off of its puzzling threat to prosecute members of servicemembers’ families for “espionage” if they read WikiLeaks today, insisting that the “guidance” they released was actually not sanctions by headquarters and was not in keeping with official policy.
The guidance was dated Friday but only became public knowledge yesterday, and insisted that anyone who read the documents faced prosecution under the Espionage Act, warning members of the Air Force to make sure their families in particular didn’t attempt to read the cables.
Later, a spokeswoman for the Air Force sought to justify the guidance, insisting it was meant to “give guidance to military and civilian servicemembers and employees to control their young’uns,” because apparently having young people reading about foreign policy was a big problem.
But the threat, like so many before them, was illusory and immediately abandoned when people began to question it. The Obama Administration has still not reversed its ban on millions of federal employees reading the documents, and the Air Force has still banned websites which contain information related to the cables from their computers.
"because apparently having young people reading about foreign policy was a big problem."
hahahahaha….nice, Jason!
I suppose the Only Foreign Policy the airforce wants "young uns" to know is that the USAF can bomb anyone they want to, anywhere they want to.
I guess you haven't seen the ads on the TeeVee then? Didn't you know that if you join the airforce your job is going to be making sure space trash doesn't hit a satellite? And the Army ads are even better- know what the Army does all day long according to their recruitment ads? hands out MRE's to little brown people all over the globe.
Have you seen the current NAVY ads? A Global Force for Good. Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.
If this policy is democracy in action America has truly lost all hope.
What is it with the Air Force? First they want to turn the organization into a Christian only air force and now they want to browbeat their members by threats of intimidation and prosecution for READING what their government is doing behind the red, white & blue curtain.
"There's is not to say why just to do and/or die".
They say 100,000 people in the Military had access to the docs before they were leaked, so it seems like a vacant threat. Who has need to know and need to share really a mess when you add the leak factor, then go to court with that one and get laughed out.
What a scary outfit the US military is now. Raise kids in that environment? Ugghhh. Live with polite lies and fictions amongst each other? What did you do in the war daddy? Shhhhhhhhhh. Here's a dollar- go to the subsidized PX and get yourself your a soda.