The Last Word
The WikiLeaks Disclosures in Perspective

The WikiLeaks Disclosures in Perspective

Gary Benoit

Many Americans view the release of secret U.S. government documents by WikiLeaks to be an attack on our country. Newt Gingrich, for example, said on Fox Business Network’s Freedom Watch that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange “is an active enemy combatant who is engaged in information warfare against the United States. What he is doing is going to have incalculable damage to this country. It is going to have a number of innocent people killed, a number of our allies killed. It is going to put Americans at risk.... This is an act of war against the United States.”

If Assange is an “enemy combatant,” as Gingrich claims, he certainly is not a stereotypical one. Not only is he unleashing information rather than bombs on a war-weary world, but the information in question, so far as we know, is authentic, not fabricated. At least, official sources have not claimed that the released cables are fabricated or altered, which presumably they would do if WikiLeaks were engaged in a massive disinformation campaign.

The same cannot be said, however, about U.S. government foreign policy, which, the WikiLeaks disclosures show, is rife with duplicity and deception.

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