For the past week, Julian Assange, the proprietor of the whistle-blower site, WikiLeaks, has been tossing buckets of sensitive, secret and classified material out onto the web, for all to see.
We’re of two minds here: First, releasing classified material is illegal and could be considered giving assistance to the Enemy. That would be a near-textbook definition of treason in the US. Except there is no declared “Enemy” unless you count the American people as one. Ask Homeland Security about that will you?
At the same time, it is illuminating and entertaining to see, in their own words, what the diplomatic corps has to say about various players and countries, as well as how the various departments work together.
It isn’t as if WikiLeaks is publishing the nuclear launch codes and the dial-in number to start World War III, nor are they releasing real-time troop dispositions, as that isn’t the kind of data they seem to have. What WikiLeaks does seem to have is more than 250,000 diplomatic cables from around the world, wherein dips and other wankers speak what little they have left of their minds.
Yes, the revelations are embarrassing, (“Putin lets the Russian Mob run the country” or “Hugo Chavez is crazier than a shithouse rat”) but the revelations themselves are not what one would call “new”.
There are some leaks that demonstrate that things really are as bad as we feared. For instance, US private security firms in Afghanistan hiring ‘dancing boys’ to entertain the workers. We’re willing to bet a nickel that the cost of the dancing boys was billed back to the Afghani government and the US State Department at four times what was paid and accounted for under ‘sund. explns’ on the invoice.
What seemed to really press the buttons wasn’t that foreign contractors were buying children, but that the revelation might ‘endanger lives’ by embarrassing the Afghan Interior Minister, to the point where the Interior Minister was begging the US Embassy to quash the story. So far, one can’t quite tell how contractors buggering children will cause American soldiers to die, other than the Interior Minister will be so shocked that the truth has come out, that he loses it and sells US troop distributions to the Taliban.
Perhaps the simpler answer is that the contractors start to behave like grown-ups. No story, no threat to lives, move on.
As for the candid comments about world leaders? The illumination by WikiLeaks is almost entertaining. This is what is known as diplomatic shame and the more the dips go red-faced, the happier we should be. It shows us regular folks that the diplomatic corps are such bald-faced liars and reality stylists that we should check two watches and call the speaking clock to confirm what any dip says if we ask them for the correct time. Incidentally, do you think these diplomats are making $5.65 an hour? Do you feel like you’re getting your money’s worth now?
Absolutely, the WikiLeaks are showing the diplomatic corps and their various subjects to be corrupt, venal, intellectually deprived, morally vacant, thieving, power-mad, douchebags who have to be physically restrained from trying to either buy or fuck the crack of dawn.
All WikiLeaks is doing is confirming exactly what we’ve suspected for years. Our leaders haven’t a clue and they don’t care about anything except their own image and fattening their wallets.
It isn’t news and it isn’t new.
RoadDave 
The major problem I have is that among the documents is a full list of units deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, I understand it isn’t real-time, and that no locations are given, but if Al-Qaeda (or whatever group of terrorists/insurgents) sees BBC News report the whatever-eth US Infantry regiment just lost 6 soldiers and is in a funk, guess who they’re going to go after? As to the diplomatic cables, if anybody out there actually believed that ambassadors are open and honest, I’ve got some ocean front property in Az to sell you (due respect to the country song). The “revelations” about foreign leaders are hardly news – I think we’ve all gotten the idea that Chavez is round the bend, and that Putin has his arm further up Medvedev’s butt than Jim Henson ever did with Kermit the Frog. As long as Wikileaks doesn’t drop military information, they can “embarrass” the ambassadors all they want. Maybe that is the way to world peace – turn the world’s ambassadors into Jim Carrey in “Liar, Liar”, stop the BS lying, and finally work together in open honesty. (Yeah, right, fat chance!)
Or alternatively, the leaks demonstrate what a huge waste of money the diplomatic services. Millions and Billions are spent on receptions and parties to gain information that everybody knows. It makes sanctions against Iran look productive.
I think the biggest problem (IMHO) is that the whole ambassador concept has turned into an industry unto itself. Rather than be “facilitators” (a word I loathe from corporate America) to the existing government, the whole world has entered into this artificial world with a language all its’ own. Our people can’t talk to your people directly; we have to talk to our ambassadors, who talk to your ambassadors, who talk to you. And everything has to be translated from our language, into “ambassador-ese”, then translated into your language. It’s a level of middle management, salesmen in what should be a factory-direct-to-you world. Ambassadors used to simply be messengers, but today, the message has to go through dinners, receptions, coalitions, councils, and a seemingly infinite number of useless steps, none of them adding value to the original message. Let the ambassadors of the world be spokesmen, and let the true message pass directly between governments. Maybe that way we could end the Korean war!