“9 Most Shocking Wikileaks Secrets”

The Daily Beast has an article of that title. My favorite on the list:

“7. U.S. Offers Payouts in Exchange for Guantanamo Detainees

U.S. authorities were so anxious to resettle Guantanamo prisoners abroad that they were ready to strike any deal with a foreign country willing to take them. Officials offered Kiribati, a tiny island nation in the Pacific—population 98,000—millions of dollars in incentives to shelter Chinese Muslim detainees. They also bribed Slovenian officials to take an inmate in exchange for the chance to meet President Obama. Belgium, meanwhile, was told that taking Guantanamo prisoners would be a ‘low-cost way…to attain prominence in Europe.'”

The point made to Belgium is priceless.

I’m a Wikileaks fan. There were cases where they should have edited some names out for safety purposes, and yes, there may be a bit of a robotic poke-America-in-the-eye thing going on, which is always the cheapest way to look politically serious in certain circles.

But that’s not really the point. Journalists are supposed to break big secret stories, and Wikileaks does that by the bucketload. If I were the U.S. government I’d be furious at them too, but they’re just doing their job. It’s their job to reveal secrets, not help governments protect them. And despite the “none of this is surprising” theme struck by some, I’ve actually learned quite a bit from reading their leaks.