Charles Krauthammer on the damage done to US interests because of the Wikileaks scandal:
The WikiLeaks document dump is sabotage, however quaint that term may seem. We are at war - a hot war in Afghanistan where six Americans were killed just this past Monday, and a shadowy world war where enemies from Yemen to Portland, Ore., are planning holy terror. Franklin Roosevelt had German saboteurs tried by military tribunal and shot. Assange has done more damage to the United States than all six of those Germans combined. Putting U.S. secrets on the Internet, a medium of universal dissemination new in human history, requires a reconceptualization of sabotage and espionage - and the laws to punish and prevent them.
Where is the Justice Department?
And where are the intelligence agencies on which we lavish $80 billion a year? Assange has gone missing. Well, he's no cave-dwelling jihadi ascetic. Find him. Start with every five-star hotel in England and work your way down.
Want to prevent this from happening again? Let the world see a man who can't sleep in the same bed on consecutive nights, who fears the long arm of American justice. I'm not advocating that we bring out of retirement the KGB proxy who, on a London street, killed a Bulgarian dissident with a poisoned umbrella tip. But it would be nice if people like Assange were made to worry every time they go out in the rain.Why such a passive response from the Obama administration? It appears that they are torn between their hyper-ideological world view and the real politick consequences of what Assange has done to our foreign policy and national security. The left has celebrated "whistleblowers" for so long - people who have outed CIA agents, leaked vital security programs and operations, and plastered our most carefully guarded secrets all over the front page of the New York Times - that when one of these miscreants comes along and damages a liberal administration, they don't quite know what to do. They are torn between cheering for the saboteur and whining about how unfair it all is.
So they basically do nothing. And, as Krauthammer points out, unbelievable damage has been done to some vital efforts in our war against terror. Considering these facts, the administration's actions prior to the release of the documents borders on criminal negligence.
If we get hit by a terror attack because a country had stopped cooperating with us fearing exposure, we shouldn't blame Julian Assange. We should blame those who did nothing to prevent him from damaging our security.
American Thinker
