The information site Wikileaks has published copies of two hundred fifty thousand email messages or so that come from embassy personnel all over the world, related to US affairs. See the Guardian for a convenient overview and articles. For instance, one has messages from Saudi Arabia top government officials (the king himself apparently) wanting the US to attack Iran and destroy its nuclear capabilities. Nothing new here, but it is jarring to our government to see many (poor) calculations revealed…. So, it is not surprising to see the White House and especially Senate and House politicians reacting to this leak (extended to newspapers, some of which are by now, or have long been, opposed to the “war”) with disgust, contempt, even fury. I thought for a moment that it was to have the stupidity of US embassy personnel revealed that was causing the ulcers. But no. One of the furies is Lindsey Graham, on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who used a poorly controlled metaphor when talking to Fox News (sorry for the oxymoron) “I mean the world is getting dangerous by the day and the people who do this are really low on the food chain as far as I’m concerned. If you can prosecute them, let’s try.” Yes, we are in a war, a war on the poor, and accessorily on the Talibans, etc., convenient excuse now to play tackle with Iran and China over control of the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean. No way we can let our guard down, can we, when the whole region could easily go over to China (and will)? At war alright, but with whom?

The foodchain metaphor is revealing of the philosophy of our politicians. Very low on the foodchain, that would be plankton I suppose, which I find hard to respect. But very high on the foodchain would be sharks… Graham didn’t mean that either, did he? Perhaps he meant parasites? No, of course not: he meant “low life.” And he is eating high on the hog, isn’t he, a shark at the top of the foodchain, he thinks: a lawyer who has served as such in the Air Force and in the Reserves. He voted for the war in Iraq in 2002, and is the author of the Graham amendment, which restricts the authority of US Courts to review habeas corpus status for so-called “enemy combatants”. And now he is sticking his neck out over the parapet at Fox. Brave man.

In case I have qualms about this kind of revelations, I remind myself that the same bodies who are now angry at Wikileaks often practice the same black art. They leaked lies regarding Irak’s real military situation in 2002-3 by using our US newspaper of record (the Miller affair in the New York Times), when it was convenient and imperative to do so. Or the identity of CIA’s V. Plame to get back at her husband who couldn’t or wouldn’t find evidence of Irak’s uranium deals in Niger (the yellow cake affair). They used Colin Powell to lie about Iraki weaponry at the UN on February 5, 2003 (how willing he was to go ahead, I’d like to know) . Regarding this present leak, in preparation for months, look at how it is being used. The New York Times has an article immediately ready about Iran and the need to defang it (see today’s edition). Our own “objective” New York Times itself calling the US to more action? It was not enough to do this job on Irak in 2003 and inescapably transform Iran into the default regional power? How intelligent.