Friends or enemies, it's all the same to Washington
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin's belated response to the leaking of dozens of "sensitive and highly classified documents" of his department at a news conference of the State Department on Tuesday has at last confirmed the authenticity of the documents, exposing loopholes in the management of the Pentagon.
One day earlier, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby refused to confirm the documents' authenticity, saying "It has no business — if you don't mind me saying — on the front pages of newspapers or on television. It is not intended for public consumption, and it should not be out there."
These Pentagon documents, dated Feb 28 and March 1, appeared on the internet days before Austin was first briefed about them on April 6, as he said.
The documents reveal the horrible extent to which it has tried to coerce Kyiv to prolong the Ukraine crisis and to which it has been eavesdropping on its allies.
They appeared, to the Joe Biden administration's embarrassment, when it was trying to portray itself as a true peace broker on the Ukraine crisis and hosting visiting president of the Republic of Korea, who is also bugged by the US according to the documents.
It is clear that bugging others while pretending to be a victim of others' bugging, as evidenced by its groundless charges against and attacks of such Chinese corporations as Huawei and TikTok, has become a habit of the US.
People have enough reasons to believe that the US has never stopped taking advantage of its technological advantages to play dirty tricks under the table, citing safeguarding national security once exposed, under programs with different names for different periods of time.
The brazenness with which it is trying to brush aside the nature of the practices the documents have detailed, and mislead the people to believe the documents are irrelevant to their interests, fully demonstrates the hypocrisy of the US hegemony — its interests are above those of any other country and any country is expendable should the US think it necessary.
