The cost of exposing the truth

In this day and age of WikiLeaks, the crackdown on those described as whistleblowers continues. Witness Peter Van Buren at the US State Department. It certainly doesn't pay to be honest and expose what governments don't want their citizenry to know.

"Peter Van Buren—a veteran US diplomat whose blog and 2011 book, We Meant Well, detail his futile experiences as a nation builder in Iraq—was formally fired from the State Department this week. Officials at Foggy Bottom say Van Buren is guilty of eight major policy violations, including linking to Wikileaks documents on his blog, leaking classified info in his book, and displaying a "lack of candor" in interrogations by State security officers, according to a statement from his publicist. (A State Department spokesman confirmed the charges to the Washington Post on Wednesday.)

But Van Buren maintains he's being singled out for "dirty tricks in retaliation" for embarassing his employer—a simple exercise of his free-speech rights. "It's hard for me to objectively look at this as anything other than revenge and vindictiveness," he told the Post.

In the book (part of which was published here at MotherJones.com), Van Buren recounts how, as the leader of two Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq, he was party to one tragicomic, Kafkaesque misstep after another: shipping trucks full of unwanted English-language books to Iraqis who promptly dumped them; distributing soccer balls that nobody would kick because they had Koranic verses printed on them; chilling out at the US embassy in Baghdad, the world's largest, playing lacrosse on a dead $2 million lawn."

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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