Who Remembers Judith Miller?

I am fairly certain that this Wikileaks hysteria is just … you know… hysteria. Nothing new has been revealed… at least not anything new to anyone who has been paying any attention at all in the last seven years. We learn that we are killing civilians, alienating the Afghans, fueling a corrupt government and losing the war. Has anyone thought otherwise? Clearly the government has an interest in whining about leaks in general, because the government has spent a lot of time and effort trying to control all the information we get from over there. No surprise the Obama wants to keep as many secrets as Busch… a disappointment, but not a surprise. The best debate in the whole thing is the discussion of who should get leaked stuff and who should not. The government says no one should get it. One New York Times reporter insisted that only members of the Fourth Estate should get access. That's a funny one. The argument is that the Fourth Estate is somehow superior to everyone, and eminently responsible, and would never publish anything that was contrary to our national security interests. They being all wise and smart and everything, we should just rely on the Fourth Estate to tell us what to believe. Just like we should rely on the Pope to talk to God for us. I suspect the Times Reporter has specific notions about who in the Fourth Estate is worthy of getting this swell assignment to have the hot story and protect the people, and I'm pretty sure they are not including anyone from Mother Jones in the mix. Still, the big joke is that the Times is the same institution that put it's imprimatur on the Iraq War by making credible the lies of the Busch monkeys. Thus, on the subject of information, I am a Calvinist. Give me the raw data and I will figure it out. I don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows.