The downside comes if anything released places our troops (or civilians) at greater risk than they already face. Perhaps I don't always trust government or military officials to draw that line in the right place, but I probably trust some activists like Julian Assange operating on their own agenda even less.

From what I "researched" online about Wikileaks online most of their leaks come from hackers but the Afghan war documents came from a Army Intel soldier.

Right - but that's the downside more to the leaking than to a general increase in transparency and accountability, isn't it?

It feels like changes to that end as a result of this activism would lead to a better armed forces, and less power for activists/leaks of this sort. Win/win.

^^^ True. I was reading more into what you said than what you actually said.

there are some things that the general public shouldn't be privy to.

Of course. In fact, I'd say there are large swaths of information that could be considered "mission-critical" - I'm not challenging the concept of classified information.

However, vastly more information is kept confidential than the amount that needs to be, and the guys making the decision have a self-interest in keeping literally everything quiet.

There are many, many things the general public should be privy to.

Exactly what is Assange's agenda? He leaks anything he's given. This is just by far one of his more high profile leaks.

If nothing else, this whole episode tells us what B.S. government secrecy is. With much of the stuff being released, there's no real reason why any of it should be secret.

With the embassy leaks (which I think are a bigger deal), I think those can be very embarrassing. But maybe they should be.

I've heard nothing to really substantiate that any of these leaks will place our soldiers in harm's way, so I'm assuming that as usual, the military and their mouthpieces are full of s***. Fool me once and such.

That is his agenda as far as I can tell: The public should have access to everything.

Just because you haven't heard anything to substantiate it means it not so?

I won't say I've heard anything specific either that these leaks will place troops in greater risk, and maybe they won't.

But I do see the potential with leaks of this kind, and I see no reason to think that Jullan Assange or anyone connected with Wikileaks will be a better judge of that risk than the military is.

Well, the Wikileaks website claims their mission is to expose governmental and coporate corruption. Does that qualify as an agenda? I don't believe that the man has a personal vendetta against anyone or any Corp or gov entity, but that doesn't mean a hacker or a submiter of info doesn't. Look at who hacked into Palins email account and submitted it to Wikileaks and tell me there wasn't any political motives involved.

When the first documents came out, it was reported on the news (and I didn't read all the thousands of pages leaked because I just don't want to support that site in any way, shape or form) that they did include names of people in Pakistan and Afghanistan who were helping us which does put them in grave danger.

^^^ to what Dee said, that was my biggest complaint with it.

Then ultimately, this is a good thing. Government without the threat that its actions will be exposed in a very public way is bound to misbehave. WikiLeaks literally means that any corrupt behavior by anyone high profile enough cannot be guaranteed to occur in private. There's always the specter of a leak which is discussed ad nauseum on CNN.

I'm fine with that. I don't care about the agenda of the individual submitting the data. I like that the threat exists whether you are a Swiss banking exec or a military officer authorizing international-law-violating black ops in Afghanistan.

I really think this is dumb.

i think the concept that "strained diplomatic relationships" don't affect national security is dumb.