Blake Hounshell on Wikileaks

By John Ballard

Blake Hounshell, managing editor of FP Magazine and co-founder of American Footprints, is one of the sharpest knives in the drawer. His take on the latest Wikileaks release is "what's new?"
And I agree.
He also raises the question "Is Wikileaks growing up?"

one prominent advocate of government openness who has previously been critical of Wikileaks sees the organization as behaving more responsibly with its latest document dump. This time, Wikileaks gave three reputable news outlets weeks to review, verify, and contextualize the documents, and says it is withholding (for now) about 15,000 reports "as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source."

"After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits," the site says.

He received an interesting email from Steven Aftergood with the Federation of American Scientists which noted in part...

"...the latest dump deals with a perfectly newsworthy topic and -- judging from my initial glances at the news coverage -- Wikileaks itself has acknowledged the necessity of withholding certain portions of the documents that might endanger individuals who are named in them. If so, that is commendable."

"I also appreciate the fact that Wikileaks has provided the documents to others for independent assessment and reporting and has mostly refrained from heavy-handed propagandizing about them (along the lines of 'collateral murder')." [Note: "Collateral Murder" was Wikileaks' name for a video it posted purporting to show U.S. airmen negligently killing Iraqi civilians.]

"Wikileaks is not the solution to our secrecy problem -- that requires a change in our own policy -- but I think it can serve a useful purpose as long as it exercises a modicum of editorial responsibility."

Seems to me Julian Assange has become more important than Robert Gibbs. (Bob Woodward, eat your heart out.) Assange is the new Daniel Ellsberg.

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Question: Will this be the tipping point when US public opinion finally gets it?

I hate to say it but the answer to that question depends more on the political opposition than the administration. The PR ball in in that court. Will the spin be to shine a light on the flaming failure of the Afghanistan adventure or will it be contorted into yet another bloody shirt?

There is no shortage of bloody shirts, but there are many more with Afghan blood, both Taliban and civilian, than belonging to US forces. The time has come to break it to the public: It's time to end this war and bring our people home. Peace Corps with humvees, helicopters, drones and guns has proved to be a failure.