First, I’ll say right out of the gate that I think the term “terrorist” applied to Julian Assange is a bit much. Jerkwad scavenger, yes. Analogous to generations of terror and murder for a faith that believes it’s OK to beat your wife so long as it doesn’t leave a bruise? No. I don’t want “terrorist” to become the new “racist.” The fallout from Wikileaks is incomparable to 9/11, the USS Cole, numerous embassies, et al.
Second, I think the focus on Julian Assange is misguided, though if he and Bradley Manning can be prosecuted (the latter definitely), do it to it. Dudes like this wouldn’t have wares to peddle in the press if people in government kept secure things secure. This is a problem because our government allowed it to become one. Wikileaks wasn’t a problem months ago because the focus wasn’t Obama didn’t lose political capital over it. Now he does.
What’s more shocking: that Assange published tabloid information on our foreign relations or that three million-plus people had access to the same classified information and it didn’t leak sooner ? Or that a 22-year-old Lady Gaga fan who can lip sync “Telephone” dumped classified information on a rewritable disc that he was somehow allowed to transport with him into supposedly secure areas?
Big Journalism’s Jeff Dunetz gave the run-down of the diplomatic cables. People are scared of Iran, Italy’s PM is a whore, Putin’s an alpha male, there are some real shockers in there, let me tell you. That Hillary Clinton wanted spies in the U.N. comforts, not shocks, me. Considering the place is a bossy cabal of women-beaters, oppressors, sex traffickers, and despots (and our membership in a group that wishes to make our law secondary to international law is a total joke), I hope the place is crawling with U.S. spies. They owe us that much and more since their ginormous headquarters amasses so much space in Manhattan and we mostly subsidize them.
The entire point is missed though with this entity and that entity haranguing the rosy-cheeked 22 year-old Gaga fan who nabbed the data over an eight-month period and snotty foreigner Assange: the Obama administration’s kabuki foreign policy theater isn’t as slick as it’s marketed. If Bill Clinton isn’t losing nuclear codes, Obama can’t get his administration to shut their mouths and not betray the confidences of foreign ambassadors and leaders.
Comical, too, is the way in which Assange broadcasted to the world what he was going to do and when. The administration, instead of focusing on Bradley Manning and tracking down who else, out of the three million, may have accessed this info, are instead sending Eric Holder to Switzerland to lobby for the World Cup.
The media isn’t asking these questions. They don’t seem at all concerned about limiting the damage – or evening discovering its extent. Three million people had access to this stuff; perhaps foreign intelligence now has classified information that Manning wasn’t able to get? No, the media is too busy crafting a cushion for the administration’s soft landing.
The lack of urgency inherent to this administration continues and the media assists.
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