only a small amount of documents have been leaked out of the total amount that they have available. inevitably a lot of them (maybe most) will be trivial, mildly embarrassing, irrelevant, etc. but there are some nuggets there that serve as evidence that not only do these diplomats and envoys gossip and say one thing in private while only serving the public pre-fabricated/pre-approved propaganda bits of information, but that they also engage in, or advocate, or officially approve illegal behaviour, i.e. illegal means of getting things done as long as it serves their own interests, international rule of law be damned. if you don't think that kind of evidence is relevant or important, i don't know what to tell you. these are the people acting on behalf of you on the international arena, but the "national" priorities they have in mind and actively pursue (by whichever means necessary) may differ greatly from what the average citizen thinks they are. the cablegate leaks provide the evidence for that.

if you want specifics, the biggest one imo is the spying and stealing info from top u.n. officials (passwords, biometric info, etc). completely illegal, but it was officially approved. there's also knowing of shipments of weapons going from ukraine to sudan, lying about it and doing nothing about it. there's the evidence that the uk restricted its inquiry regarding their involvement in iraq to protect american interests. those are the ones that come to mind right now.

saying they're only confirming stuff we already know is conformist at best. have you read orwell's 1984? remember when Winston actually holds that piece of old newspaper that proves the government engages in the re-writing of history for its own ends and how excited he becomes that he finally knows it's not just something in his mind, it's 100% demonstrable? that's what wikileaks can help bring about. not by themselves, assange is not a messiah, but he's doing his bit.

plus, you seem to forget this is not the first leak they've done. what about their afghanistan and iraq leaks? what about the stuff that's to come? assange's mentioned that their next big leak was going to be about one of the largest american commercial banks (probably bank of america). aren't you interested in that? millions of livelihoods were affected by decision makers in these institutions. i've always believed if you're getting fucked in the ass (wthout consent) at least write down the name, or take a look at that face and remember it.

these leaks provide details about the decision making process of the powers that be. those decisions affect the lives of millions of people. why would you grant the decision makers complete discretion regarding what becomes known to the public and what doesn't when they're supposed to be acting on behalf of your interests as a citizen?

in fewer words, it's about watching the watchers.

I think the argument you make supports an opposite conclusion. If the cables revealed nothing new, then how could they have "absolutely damaged the credibility of our diplomatic efforts everywhere".

This sort of reverse logic was pointed out by Assange in his op-ed, but was directed to those that say his efforts will result in "blood on his hands":

"Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: "You'll risk lives! National security! You'll endanger troops!" Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can't be both. Which is it?
...
US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn't find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published."

Theoretically, it's not the information coming out that damages US credibility, it's the fact that the cables were leaked at all. If you're a foreign diplomat, in the wake of all this info coming out, aren't you now going to be a lot more close to the vest in what you say to someone you know is working for the US? That's how it hurts our diplomatic efforts; it erodes the belief that what's being said is actually going to be confidential.

I can sort of see this point, but I think it is a tremendous stretch to say that the flow of truly important information will be hampered because of this. From what I've read (and correct me if this is wrong, I didn't verify it), this wasn't super high-level stuff. Didn't 3 million people or something have access to these cables? If nothing truly unknown was revealed, then that means that the "top-secret" stuff has remained safe. Also, as Assange himself says, leaking the cables means that governments will become more protective and insular.

How hard would it be for them, or anyone else, to plant false but damaging information in the midst of real leaked information and have everyone just accept it as reality?

False WikiLeaks story leaves Pakistani media red-faced
Reuters
By RFI

Leading Pakistani newspapers have been forced to retract a story that US diplomats dubbed Indian generals "genocidal" and accused Delhi of aiding armed Islamists. The articles were based on fake US cables which had supposedly been released by the WikiLeaks whistleblowing website.

On Thursday, The News, Daily Jang and several other Pakistani publications reported that US diplomats accused New Delhi of sponsoring Islamists in Pakistan.

"The story was not based on Wikileaks cables, and had in fact originated from some local websites such as The Daily Mail and Rupee News, known for their close connections with certain intelligence agencies,” wrote Pakistan’s The News on Friday.

On Thursday, The News ran a story alleging US cables branded Indian generals “genocidal.”

Datelined Washington, the newspaper said US diplomats thought of one Indian general as “incompetent” and a “geek,” and of another as “self-obsessed, petulant and idiosyncratic”.

The News also claimed US cables said Indian spies “were covertly supporting Islamist militants in the tribal belt and Balochistan”.

The report is “the first case of Wikileaks being exploited for propaganda purposes”, The Guardian writes.

The English-language newspaper The Express Tribune also published a front-page retraction, saying it “deeply regrets publishing this story without due verification and apologises profusely for any inconvenience”.

Billions more tax dollars are going to go to further securing information because of this.

If diplomats do not feel confident they can communicate privately or if our our partners in the war on terror don't feel that we can keep their communications secret, it risks the lives of our fielded soldiers because they will think twice about communicating with us.

There is also the argument that the release of things like us saying "Putin is a thug" could push people who are on the fence about supporting US initiatives around the world.

I'm still at a loss for why this guy is someone to be revered. He's a "reformed" computer hacker. He's the equivalent to a guy who throws rocks into windows and steals jeans. Not Deepthroat. Now he's publishing internal memos so we can officially put faces and names to information we already had through FOIA. It just makes us feel like we are getting something special because it was "leaked."

No new really revealing information has come out in any of these Wiki leaks.

Is it really shocking that Saudi Arabia is concerned about Iran? Is it really revealing that the British Government would trade a terrorist for comfortable oil rights and then blame it on Scotland?

This is how governments do business. No shit it's shady, Politics make strange bedfellows.

Other than getting actual people killed because these are "official" proof of goings on instead of rumors and innuendo I'm not sure what is all that interesting about these leaks.

He just made public things we already knew were going on. He doesn't give a shit who dies or suffers because of it, he just wants to know a "secret" anything labled classified gives people hard on's that's why there are so many people still concerned about "what happened in Roswell NM." It's salacious. He's the tin foil hat wearing Messiah. A lot of "classified information" is only classified anyway because officials are paranoid. They don't contain anything really revealing at all.

Generally anyone "leaking information" is a person with an agenda or vendetta anyway and that person needs to get reamed.

This guy is a joke.

If he was in China or something and going against completely state run media I can see him as a champion. The press is a lot more free than people give it credit for here and in many countries.

if you want specifics, the biggest one imo is the spying and stealing info from top u.n. officials (passwords, biometric info, etc). completely illegal, but it was officially approved. there's also knowing of shipments of weapons going from ukraine to sudan, lying about it and doing nothing about it. there's the evidence that the uk restricted its inquiry regarding their involvement in iraq to protect american interests. those are the ones that come to mind right now.

That's a lot of action for stuff everyone already knew. I'm curious what you thought the effects of the prior war leaks (Guantanamo handbook, the war diaries and video) would be, since those, to me, were more damaging.

"Wasn't it once considered patriotic to stand up to government when it's wrong?"

I like that question in many ways because it seems that a lot of Americans have forgotten that. I always get disheartened when my friends jokingly tell me the FBI will be knocking on my door for bitching about all the things I think government is doing wrong. Has it really come to that? Where we fear to step out of line because the ones in power will eventually come for you?

I'm all for informed dissent, but I question wikileak's presentation of the information they receive. Is that all of it? Is the information filtered through some political view so that what is released doesn't contradict a certain message?

the only way to be sure is to create a government agency that investigates the matter

WikiLeaks cables: Sinn Féin leaders 'were aware of' Northern Bank heist plans

Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness held lengthy negotiations with the former Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern to save the Northern Ireland peace process in the full knowledge that the IRA was planning to carry out the biggest bank robbery in its history, according to leaked US cables passed to WikiLeaks.

Ahern, who was instrumental in drawing up the 1998 Good Friday agreement, judged that the two Sinn Féin leaders were aware of plans for the £26.5m Northern Bank robbery in 2004 because they were members of the "IRA military command" with a deep knowledge of its operations.

The US cables also reveal that:

• The Irish government believed Britain had a "valuable source of information" at a senior level in the republican movement.

• Adams argued that the IRA would have to be "taken out of the equation" during negotiations which led the organisation to declare a formal end to its armed campaign in July 2005.

The revelations are published as Adams seeks to broaden Sinn Féin's appeal in the Irish Republic. The Sinn Féin president is abandoning his Westminster seat to stand in the forthcoming general election amid hopes of a breakthrough as voters register anger with Ireland's mainstream political parties after the country was forced to apply to the EU and IMF for a bailout.

Ahern's concerns about Sinn Féin and the IRA are highlighted in cables which describe a challenging period in the peace process as London and Dublin sought to restore the power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland. Unionist suspicions about the intentions of the republican movement were fuelled when the IRA robbed the headquarters of Northern Bank in Belfast in December 2004.

In a cable on 4 February 2005, two months after the robbery, the US ambassador to Dublin, James Kenny, reported that a senior Irish government official told the embassy of the taoiseach's concerns about Adams and McGuinness. The cable claimed the official in the department of justice told the ambassador "that the GOI [government of Ireland] does have 'rock solid evidence' that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are members of the IRA military command and for that reason, the taoiseach is certain they would have known in advance of the robbery".

In another cable on 1 June 2005, six months after the robbery, Kenny reported that Ahern had raised his concerns with Mitchell Reiss, the US envoy to Ireland. The cable says: "The taoiseach … believes Sinn Féin leaders were aware of plans to rob the Northern Bank even as they negotiated with him last fall. Publicly, he has been unprecedentedly critical of Sinn Féin and, until recently, greatly reduced private contacts as well."

The cables indicate that in private Ahern and officials used language which was slightly blunter, though consistent, with the public pronouncements of the former taoiseach, who told the Irish parliament, the Dáil, he believed Sinn Féin had negotiated in bad faith. Ahern told the Dáil on 2 February of a meeting with police chiefs on both sides of the Irish border. "They believe that a number of operations which took place during 2004, not just the Northern Bank robbery, were the work of the Provisional IRA and would have had the sanction of the army council and be known to the political leadership."

Sir Hugh Orde, the former chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland who met Ahern, accused the IRA of carrying out the robbery. In what was then the largest cash robbery ever carried out in the UK, a group of armed men held the families of two bank officials hostage while the officials were forced to hand over sacks filled with millions of pounds in cash to terrorists at the bank.

Nobody has been convicted of any offence in relation to the actual robbery. Ted Cunningham, a Cork-based financial adviser, was found guilty last year of laundering more than £3m connected with the robbery.Adams has consistently denied being a member of the IRA. McGuinness has admitted being a member in the 1970s.

A Sinn Féin spokesperson said: "There is not a shred of evidence that has ever linked the IRA to the Northern Bank robbery. The theories put forward by the British at the time regarding republican involvement were disproved in court. No link has ever been made, other than by opponents of Sinn Féin, that the IRA was involved. All the republicans arrested in connection with the Northern Bank robbery were released without charge."

The cables also suggest:

• Adams was a powerful voice in arguing that the IRA had to stand down during negotiations in the run-up to the Provisionals' historic statement in July 2005 of a "formal end to the armed campaign". In the cable on 1 June 2005, the US ambassador to Dublin quoted Adams as saying: "The IRA must be taken out of the equation."

• Michael McDowell, the former Irish deputy prime minister, said after the murder in 2006 of Denis Donaldson, a British informant working for Sinn Féin, that he believed Britain had a more senior mole. In a cable on 31 May 2006, a US diplomat wrote: "McDowell believed that the outing of Denis Donaldson as an informant was a clear message from the British government that it had another, more valuable, source of information within the republican leadership. He reiterated the taoiseach's point, however, that Sinn Féin leaders appeared to have had no connection to Donaldson's murder."

• An intriguing Anglo-Irish role reversal in which Dublin, normally regarded as the guardian of republican interests in the peace process, felt that Tony Blair had gone too "soft" on Sinn Féin. The cable sent by the US ambassador on 1 June 2006 says: "GOI concerns about UK 'softness' represent a role reversal. Usually, it is the UK that is concerned Ireland will be too accommodating to Sinn Fein."

• Brian Cowen, the current taoiseach, claimed in 2005 that Adams had played a "double game on criminality". In a cable dated 8 March 2005, the US ambassador to Dublin James C Kenny wrote: "Cowen [then finance minister] ... believed that, after the May Westminster elections, Sinn Féin would attempt to convince people of its seriousness about criminality through actions designed to back up the party's recent positive rhetoric on the subject. Cowen related his impression that Gerry Adams was playing a 'double game' -- taking a hard public line against criminality, but avoiding definitive action in order to retain maneuverability for final negotiations with unionists."

A Sinn Féin spokesperson said: "Brian Cowen is a political opponent of Sinn Féin. As a former finance minister and now as taoiseach he has brought the country to its knees."

It seems to send the message to women in the UK and Sweden that if you ever want anyone to take sex crime against you seriously, you had better be sure the man you accuse of wrongdoing has also happened to embarrass the most powerful government on earth."