Here is the New York Times justification for publishing the most recent Wikileaks information. In it, we get the scope of what is being released:
…The documents — some 250,000 individual cables, the daily traffic between the State Department and more than 270 American diplomatic outposts around the world — were made available to The Times by a source who insisted on anonymity. They were originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to exposing official secrets, allegedly from a disenchanted, low-level Army intelligence analyst who exploited a security loophole. Beginning Sunday, WikiLeaks intends to publish this archive on its Web site in stages, with each batch of documents related to a particular country or topic. Except for the timing of publication, the material was provided without conditions. Each news organization decided independently what to write about the cables…
A couple things:
1. I begin to doubt that it was really one, low-level analyst. This is just too much data from too many sources for one person to have obtained it all. Unless our security is completely worthless, this is the act of several people. We really need a thorough investigation of how this happened – and, unfortunately, it must be an investigation we learn nearly nothing about because we can’t fix this problem in the open.
2. The person or persons who have done this have earned a trip to the firing squad. The level of damage to our ability to operation – with its resultant certain loss of life among allied peoples – calls for the most extreme measures. Keeping in mind that I’m opposed to the death penalty – but we must instruct people that doing this sort of thing, which will lead to so many deaths in the future, will result in the perpetrator dying.
3. The world is a much more dangerous place than official, government communications make it out to be. Just in the fact that Iran has obtained missiles capable of striking Europe from North Korea – and missiles which were originally designed to carry nuclear warheads – indicates that the world is under grave threat from the tyrannical regimes of the world. We must begin to act with extraordinary force against the tyrants – they are growing too strong and too willing to play with fire.
This is the biggest intelligence mess since the Rosenberg’s gave the atomic bomb to Russia. The world will pay a high price for this.
UPDATE: Roger Simon notes that some of the documents being leaked reveal Obama’s State Department to be chock full of nincompoops. I tend to agree – if this is “smart diplomacy”, then I want some of GW’s idiocy back.
Blogs For Victory 