Too Many Secrets

And to say a bit more about WikiLeaks, I think that absolutely the most valuable thing the latest document dump has done is provoke so many responses along the lines of "there's nothing new here."

That raises the obvious question: if there's nothing new here, then why on earth was this all classified?

Whatever Assange's subjective overall goals are, one thing he's demonstrating beyond all possible doubt is that there's an overwhelming tendency toward overclassification in the US military. I haven't seen anyone even attempt to assert that literally every single document Assange is released contains life-threatening secrets. They don't attempt to do so because the charge is laughable. And yet, there's the United States military. You and I pay for it with our tax dollars. They go around the world purporting to represent us and to act in our names. We're entitled, in my view, to see their work product. Obviously some degree of military secrecy is necessary, but it's clearly much less than the degree we've now got. Instead a lot of stuff seems to be kept classified merely because it's convenient to stamp everything that way, or else because sparing the citizens the gory details of war is better for home front morale. Or something.