From the cables so far published by WikiLeaks, there seems to be little, if anything, that could possibly be classified as a ‘surprise’ to anyone even if their reading matter consisted entirely of the Sheep and Goat Gazette (and yes, it does exist).
That Putin is the real power in Russia – stunning piece of information. Saudi Arabia doesn’t like Iran – amazing revelation. What next? Pope believed to be Catholic.
It is also highly likely that other countries, apart from the USA, make similar assessments or remarks, it’s just that they either don’t store them to avoid the possibility of them coming back to bite them in the bum or they have a security system with less leaks than a sieve.
It would be naive to think that Putin, Sarkozy, Cameron or Ahmadinejad don’t have an opinion or assessment of Obama.
There are revelations that (oxymoron alert) government intelligence agencies are collecting personal information of political and other figures, monitoring emails etc. Come on, this has been going on since time began (apart from the emails, of course).
People always collect information on other people. And why is it such a big deal because the subject is a political figure when you look at the reverse situation with the East German Stasi, the UK Labour Party, the Russian KGB or American CIA collecting and storing every conceivable personal detail of its citizens from DNA to shopping habits.
The USA may well be embarrassed by these latest leaks, not necessarily because of the content but more because they got caught out.
A spokesman for UK Prime Minister David Cameron said:
Clearly we condemn the unauthorised release of classified information. The leaks and their publication are damaging to national security in the United States and in Britain, and elsewhere.
Describing someone as ‘a feckless, vain, and ineffective European leader whose frequent late nights and penchant for partying hard mean he does not get sufficient rest’ could hardly be described as a threat to national security. More likely just to raise a chuckle and a comment of, ‘oh, you mean Berlusconi’.
There are even some US politicians demanding that WikiLeaks be declared a terrorist organisation. They seem to be about as much of a threat as Saddam’s WMD’s.
Our so-called elected leaders might, just might, elicit a modicum of sympathy for their plight if they did not continually try to deceive us by one means or another.