8 Ways WikiLeaks Cables About a Tiny Country Like Iceland Expose the Dark Depths of American Empire

http://www.alternet.org/world/iceland-wikileaks-cables-expose-dark-depths-american-empire



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1. The U.S. organized a trip for foreign journalists to promote war.

According to a March 28, 2007 cable written by Ambassador Carol von Voorst, the U.S. Embassy was fretting that Iceland was losing interest in maintaining its small (but proportional) contributions toward the war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. She bemoaned the Icelandic government's plans “to withdraw its Icelandic Crisis Response Unit (ICRU) from Chaghcharan, northern Afghanistan in late April, where it has played an essential part in the region's humanitarian missions since 2004,” attributing the move to Icelandic officials being “greatly influenced by public opinion, especially in the run-up to national elections this May."

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2. US: War is the solution to Iceland's financial crisis.

When the crisis was unfolding, U.S. diplomats were privately baffled that Icelandic officials didn't do more to ask for help.

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3. NATO allies helped set up sectarian torture squads in Iraq.

In March 2006, just prior to the fulcrum of turmoil during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the head of Iceland's Foreign Affairs Security and Disarmament Division told Ambassador van Voorst that “his government had a day earlier decided to donate approximately EUR 150,000 to the NATO Training Mission-Iraq (NTM-I).” The gift came, the dispatch noted, on the heels of an equal size donation that had been doled out in February 2005.


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4. We don't trust the French.

When Edward Snowden revealed details about NSA surveillance of European allies' telecommunications, French President Francois Hollande demanded that the United States “immediately stop.” The demand was the subjection of much laughter, as FRANCE 24 explained, due to France's own history of espionage:

“Colourful stories about the lengths the French secret services would go to emerged in the early 1990s, such as the bugging of seats on Air France planes to eavesdrop on American business leaders.''