such as the fact that the Wikileaks dump shows the US was blindsided by the election of Ratzinger.<\/a><\/p>\nA state department that clueless does not bode well for knowing what\u2019s going on in other departments of foreign affairs.<\/p>\n
As to the rest of the dump, who knows? All these insta-responses to 250,000 pages of gossip and diplomatic cattiness are being screamed about as \u201ctreason\u201d but until I\u2019m shown that somebody\u2019s life is endangered and it isn\u2019t just embarrassed politicians like Hillary and Obama angry over being made to look stupid and venal, I\u2019m loathe to buy the \u201cthis is terrorism!\u201d line.<\/p>\n
The thing is: every time some state actor wants to take away your rights, put his hands down your pants, or scare you into obeying him, he shouts \u201cterrorism!\u201d Wikileaks has, in the past, recklessly endangered people in the field by not even bothering to blot out names before their data dumps. But when Hillary orders her staff to snoop into some diplomat\u2019s sky miles account or a functionary says something catty about Karzai, I don\u2019t think anybody\u2019s life is in danger.<\/p>\n
And when Israel and Saudi Arabia are urging us to attack Iran, I like to know about that. I have this notion that a free self-governing people should have some say about whether our sons and daughters should be sent, yet again, to go die because some foreign power is telling our leaders what to do instead of doing it themselves if they think it so bloody important. I figure if we don\u2019t have a clue that Ratzinger is the obvious successor to JPII, we might also be flying blind if we obey the pressure from Israel and Saudi Arabia and launch yet another war against Iran with\u2026 unexpected results.<\/p>\n