The ethics of this are, at least, peculiar.
> But leaking 260,000 state department cables just seems like leaking for the sake of leaking.
The original leak was probably just a leak for leak's sake. They already caught that guy. However if any of these cables point to any embarrasing stuff that is secret just to avoid the govt. from appologizing, and Wikileaks picks it up after it was already exposed, then this becomes a whilstleblower issue.
I know legally they've sent the dogs after him because "if it is classified it is classified and we are not the department to ask why it was classified", but everyone else should automatically side with the govt.'s point of view if the data points to some serious moral and ethical problems inside Pentagon.
I have no idea, I haven't seen the leaked stuff. But where diplomacy is concerned the line between "embarrassment" and "risk" is pretty thin, especially where the embarrassment is to another country. There could easily be things like candid discussions of personal weaknesses of foreign dignitaries, diplomatic tricks played to fool other countries into doing things, invoices for the hookers they hired to entertain the Saudi ambassador... if these sorts of things become public they could turn allies into enemies, and that's not good for anyone.
On the other side, that guy is not American, and he is not responsible for U.S. national security. Is he obliged to cooperate with Pentagon? And if he refuses, can they do him (legally) something bad?
I think we need to show some healthy amount of skepticism towards Wikileaks as well, it is also in their interest to generate as much noise as possible before each release, they have successfully done so the last time and they will most likely use the same recipe over and over again.
Does the nature of their leaks makes them immune to criticism and valid skepticism of their intentions and motives?
