Wikileaks Produces Another Yawn of Classified Documents

Wikileaks prides itself on being a secure website for whistle-blowers to do their thing. Lately, it has started to look like a vehicle for founder Julian Assange's ego trip in taking on the US and allied militaries. For all the fuss over this week-end's dump of 400,000 or so classified documents dealing with the war in Iraq-Nam, the unvarnished truth is disappointing. These documents are not worth classifying, don't tell the public anything it didn't already know (although they do provide gory details) and their value in forcing changes in policy are immeasurably small. When it comes to collective nouns, it seems there is a herd of sheep, a fleet of ships, a coven of witches, and now a yawn of documents.

Peaceniks and anti-American agitators seem to think that every document that shows an innocent died, or even was served an unhealthy breakfast in custody, is going to shock the public into demanding accountability. The public has no such desire. If the American people were unwilling to impeach George W. Bush for launching a war of aggression, why should they act against a soldier in that war?

"The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 'friendly' (coalition forces)," WikiLeaks said in a statement coinciding with the documents' release. "The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60 percent) of these are civilian deaths. That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six-year period." To which one wants to say, "So what?" Whether the number is 66,081 or 68,061 or 80,661 makes little difference in policy terms -- people get killed during wars. The leaks will do nothing to end the violence.

On the other side of the fence are the paranoid shadow warriors from the CIA, DIA, and every other intelligence agency who claim that these leaks put lives at risk. By revealing certain actions, they argue, the opposition can parse out who the Americans' allies in Iraq-Nam are and kill them; they can figure out US tactics and plan ambushes. At the margins, this just might be within the realm of possibility. However, is it more likely to find a US operative by reading these documents, or by watching the behavior of anyone under suspicion? And given how the opposition acts, if they have suspicions, they will simply act. They are not going to wait for incontrovertible proof. These leaks are tertiary concerns for the security of pro-American operatives. Besides, being in a war zone puts one at risk from the start.

Reports have come out of Wikileaks that internal dissension is rising against Mr. Assange's crusade against US-led military actions. The submission wing of the site is out of commission and has been for 4 weeks. He claims it's routine maintenance; others say it's a shortage of manpower caused by people leaving the project. Mr. Assange also faces charges in Sweden of alleged unwanted sexual attentions directed at two different ladies.

Whatever the case, this latest yawn of documents illustrates very little, and the inability of Wikileaks to take on new data in other situations diminishes its overall value. The only thing the latest dump has shown is that the US military classifies far too much information and writes too many reports. And it has porous security for those reports. But the world knew that, too.

As an old editor once said to a young journalist, "This is every impressive material. But it isn't news."

© Copyright 2010 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.

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