Supporters of Terrorism; Takes One to Know One, I Reckon

Rep. Peter King is advocating that Wikileaks be designated as a "terrorist organization".*

That seems like a stretch to me. Wikileaks has taken up arms against nobody. There is not a shred of evidence that they have done anything other than air the dirty laundry of the U.S.

In fact, one can make the argument that much of what Wikileaks has done has been helpful to the U.S. Wikileaks has put out in the open the muttered innuendo about the corruption of the Afghan government. It has laid bare the fact that Pakistan has been supporting the Taliban all along.

Nobody should be surprised to learn that Silvio Burlusconi, the Prime Minister of Italy, is pretty much a clown, or that Russia is a kleptocracy. Anyone who is astonished that the Arab nations despise Iran hasn't been paying much attention. If someone is shocked that one of the functions of diplomats is to gather intelligence, then they need to have a custodial guardian appointed for them. Is it astonishing to anyone that South Korea is doing contingency planning in the event that North Korea implodes? Does anyone not understand that Iran has been in bed with North Korea, or that North Korea will sell anything to anybody for cash?

From what coverage I've read, most of the cables consist of telling people shit that anyone who was paying attention should have already known, such that Robert Mugabe is basically power-mad, paranoid and arguably insane. It's pretty much known that Hugo Chavez is nuts, as well. Some of it is interesting social information, such as attending a wedding in Dagestan.

My sense of it is that this latest data dump will be more of a flash in the pan than anything else. Which won't stop the blowhards in our government from hyperventilating about it, just as they did for the previous two data dumps, where they predicted all sorts of Bad Things Will Happen, none of which did.

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* But maybe we should look at Mr. King's argument. After all, he was a supporter of the Irish Republican Army during the Troubles, when the IRA was engaged in planting bombs and killing civilians. He had no difficulty with allying himself with a terrorist group back then.