THE REAL DAMAGE OF WIKILEAKS

What’s most important about the latest WikiLeaks dump of secret U.S. diplomatic cables isn’t what’s in the cables themselves.

Most appalling is that an Army PFC with no need to know was able not only to access these documents, but to copy them without detection, and to dispatch them to WikiLeaks.  This was an egregious neglect of elementary security for which heads should roll.  There is no evidence that any heads have.

This was the second WikiLeaks data dump.  The first, last July, was of messages pertaining to the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan.  Their disclosure endangered U.S. soldiers and Afghans who had been helping U.S. troops.

That WikiLeaks was able to make this second data dump is as appalling as the fact that PFC Bradley Manning was able to obtain these documents in the first place.  If the secrets being disclosed were Russian or Chinese, WikiLeaks chieftain Julian Assange and his confederates would have long since been dead.

We’re not as ruthless as the Russians or the Chinese.  But we wouldn’t have had to kill Mr. Assange to shut him up.

"We have the cyber capability to take down WikiLeaks, could have done it before the first dump of information, could have destroyed their operating systems," says LtCol. Ralph Peters, a retired Army intelligence officer.

At the very least, we could have issued an international arrest warrant for Mr. Assange for espionage, or at least for receipt of stolen property. (Mr. Assange is an Australian whose current whereabouts are unknown, but he is thought to be in England.)

The Justice Department took no action after the WikiLeaks data dump in July.  But Attorney General Eric Holder is considering legal action this time.

"Why is this round of leaks any different than previous leaks about the military?" asks Web logger Ed Morrissey (Hot Air).  "It seems that the release of the diplomatic cables, unlike the earlier releases which identified hundreds of informants in Afghanistan and exposed them to mortal danger, embarrasses Obama administration officials."

The combination of the fact that the documents were so easily stolen and the inability or unwillingness of the Obama administration to do much about it suggests both incompetence and impotence.   

Which foreign leader will in the future assume that anything he says in confidence to a U.S. diplomat will remain secret?

Which foreign leader will think that a United States incapable of or unwilling to take action against those who steal its secrets will come to his aid in a crisis?

It is these perceptions — which surely shall linger, at least so long as Barack Hussein Obama is president — that are the real damage from WikiLeaks.

As to the content of the cables made public, they are, as Mr. Morrissey indicated, more embarrassing to leftists in general and to the Obama administration in particular than they are harmful to the interests of the United States.

The best indication of this is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s claim the WikiLeaks documents were a deliberate psychological warfare attack on his regime.

Mr. Ahmadinejad doubtless was referring to the cables in which Arab leaders urged President Obama to take military action to halt the Iranian nuclear program.

Other cables indicate China has aided Iran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons; that Egypt is more worried about Hamas than it is about Israel; that Russia has delivered nothing in exchange for President Obama’s concessions on ballistic missile defense; that Pakistan has been encouraging the Taliban to continue fighting Americans in Afghanistan.

 "What the WikiLeaks documents reveal is not a conspiracy of any kind but a scary and growing gap between the private assessments of American diplomats and allies in the Middle East and public statements by U.S. officials," said Lee Smith, an editor at the conservative Weekly Standard.

"You can count on the opponents of progressive policies to use the WikiLeaks dumps to advance their agenda," reluctantly agreed Heather Hurlburt in the liberal New Republic.

Ms. Hurlburt admits that the current WikiLeaks scandal will damage the liberal agenda.  Sounds like good news.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.