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I am not sure what video proved. I don't think anyone needs a massive data leak to know that people are killed in wars, and that bombs are making "collateral damages". That's not exactly a secret. In fact the pentagon maintains statistics on civilian casualties.

I am not aware of any major wrongdoing uncovered by the diplomatic cables leak. The comments I read/heard from diplomats who reviewed the data rather implied that the US diplomatic staff is doing its job rather well, with often an accurate description of the internals politics of the countries they cover. Leaking these memos certainly resulted in a few red faces as private, undiplomatic comments made it to the front page. But I don't see the benefit.

That leak is more akin to the sort of reckless leaks where massive amounts of private, sensitive data made available by unscrupulous hackers just because they could. This is a very different animal from the Snowden leaks which did uncover major wrongdoings and were filtered responsively.



I do not disagree and am not aware of any other significant disclosures from Manning's data. However, the families of the victims deserved to know and the FOIA tequest was nefariously(IMO) denied. Stats don't tell the whole story.




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