The WikiLeaks dump comes in an age where diplomatic insults are common. Hence, nothing so dramatic as war is likely to result.
Still, this is a diplomatic disaster of the first order.
For what it reveals is that the world’s last superpower cannot be trusted with diplomatic confidences or secrets. Try to help the Americans, and what you tell them may wind up on page one of their tabloid press.
Some 250,000 documents — thousands classified as confidential, secret and “no foreign” distribution — were thieved.
Who was in charge of securing those secrets? Why have heads not rolled? What has happened to the idea of accountability?
A few years ago, a leak of the name of a single CIA analyst, Valerie Plame, had the national press in an uproar, with a grand jury impaneled and a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, named to investigate the leak right up to and into the Oval Office, if necessary.
