Plumbing

If you've been musing about the Wikileaks thing, what it means, how good/bad it is, etc., I'm not sure if you'll get much distance towards your own conclusion by just watching tv or listening to the radio. Here's the best complete picture of the event I've seen. Consider how wonderfully convincing Brooks is (I think you'll find, as I did, that he seems to make a lot of sense). Then consider how, when the point of view is enlarged to include a bit more reality (history in this case), your judgment of the event changes. And consider, too, that this is not just a situation of "bbbbbut they did it too," which is about all I could glean last night from MSNBC. The dangers of collective amnesia are real, and continuing. Thank you, driftglass.

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2010/12/david-brooks-is-not-amused.html

Scott Horton, in Harpers Magazine, also makes a cogent addition to the discussion (via Digby):

"In Spain, the WikiLeaks disclosures have dominated the news for three days now. The reporting has been led by the level-headed El País, with its nationwide competitor, Público, lagging only a bit behind. Attention has focused on three separate matters, each pending in the Spanish national security court, the Audiencia Nacional: the investigation into the 2003 death of a Spanish cameraman, José Cuoso, as a result of the mistaken shelling of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel by a U.S. tank; an investigation into the torture of Spanish subjects held at Guantánamo; and a probe into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for extraordinary renditions flights, including the one which took Khaled El-Masri to Baghdad and then on to Afghanistan in 2003."

Update. Digby put up the following post yesterday.  Remarkable.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/truth-as-duty-when-did-we-decide-to.html

The unconsidered agreement by the mainstream media on certain issues is always worth searching out.  And then considering.  It's exactly the same problem we all encounter in our personal lives, and being open to such consideration is exactly what the Limbaughs work tirelessly to deter people from embarking on.  It's an indication of something (possibly a moment when the radical right becomes so radical that it meets Uncle Joe Stalin coming around the next corner) when Keith Olbermann interviews David Stockton about American economic policy.