WikiLeaks Flap

Last week was a tough week for me and the next will be also, at least as far as keeping up with the blog. I apologize in advance for slow entries.

I have been thinking about the whole Wikileaks mess. Here is the way I see it.

Julian Assange is a scumbag. But he is not an American scumbag. We have no right to stop the flow of information by old media or new media journalists. However, a man of honor would not publish information he knows to be sensitive to eh security of his country or its allies. A man of honor would not publish material he knows or reasonably believes to be stolen.

It is hyperbole to call Assange a terrorist. He is a scumbag pure and simple, but not a terrorist. I take no position on the validity of the rape charges pending in Sweden. How could I have any opinion on that? I don't know the facts.

The bigger culprit in my mind the the person who leaked the information to WikiLeaks. I understand he was a military guy. Big punishment should await him.

The focus on Assange is misplaced.

Wikileaks

All of today's handwringing about the Wikileaks disclosures reminds me that I must refresh myself on the history of the Pentagon Papers leaks 40 years ago. I wonder what we failed to learn from history on this one.

That said, all of today's attention seems to be focused on the embarrassing and in some cases, life threatening disclosures. Personally, I am more concerned about how all those emails got into the Wikileaks hands in the first place. I suspect that as a general proposition, our State Department and and other services that gather intelligence have gotten too large and unwieldy. The larger the organization, the more likely moles will get jobs there. They need to become more lean and mean. That does not wholly solve the problem, but it is a start.

Of course, less government is always a good thing (although there are certainly other agencies that I would prefer to start with -- Education, Agriculture, Transportation, EPA, CPSC, NLRB, FDA and on and on in the alphabet soup).

The actions of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange endangering lives are reprehensible. The actions of the Obama Administration in response are anemic.