MARC THIESSEN en el Washington Post:

Let's be clear: WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a criminal enterprise. Its reason for existence is to obtain classified national security information and disseminate it as widely as possible -- including to the United States' enemies. These actions are likely a violation of the Espionage Act, and they arguably constitute material support for terrorism. The Web site must be shut down and prevented from releasing more documents -- and its leadership brought to justice. WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, proudly claims to have exposed more classified information than all the rest of the world press combined. He recently told the New Yorker he understands that innocent people may be hurt by his disclosures ("collateral damage" he called them) and that WikiLeaks might get "blood on our hands."

With his unprecedented release of more than 76,000 secret documents last week, he may have achieved this. The Post found that the documents exposed at least one U.S. intelligence operative and identified about 100 Afghan informants -- often including the names of their villages and family members. A Taliban spokesman said the group is scouring the WikiLeaks Web site for information to find and "punish" these informers.

Beyond getting people killed, WikiLeaks' actions make it less likely that Afghans and foreign intelligence services (whose reports WikiLeaks also exposed) will cooperate with the United States in the future. And, as former CIA director Mike Hayden has pointed out, the disclosures are a gift to adversary intelligence services, and they will place a chill on intelligence sharing within the United States government. The harm to our national security is immeasurable and irreparable.

And WikiLeaks is preparing to do more damage. Assange claims to be in possession of 15,000 even more sensitive documents, which he is reportedly preparing to release.

Leedlo entero, y más aquí. No se trata de una cuestión de libertad de prensa: los tres diarios internacionales que tuvieron acceso a la información (Der Spiegel, The Guardian y el New York Times) hicieron lo que tenían que hacer, que es publicar una información indudablemente relevante. El problema es el del origen de esa información, que viene de una fuente que va de neutra pero que está altamente politizada. Y sesgada: por algún motivo cerca del 90% de la información que filtra va dirigida contra los Estados Unidos, con la de material que debe de haber para avergonzar a regímenes poco o nada democráticos.

Por todo ello es una fuente muy poco fiable: no hay más que recordar la increíble manipulación del famoso vídeo de la muerte del cámara de Reuters en Iraq. Y además el sistema se hace vulnerable a ataques de desinformación: nada impide que les "planten" información falsa con oscuros objetivos.

ACTUALIZACIÓN. Lara Logan, que ha cubierto para la CBS tanto la guerra de Afganistán como la de Iraq (y de forma muy crítica: en ambas renunció a incrustarse con las tropas, yendo por libre y mezclándose con la población local para poder narrar sin ataduras lo que ocurría), opina:

Each of the three publications to which the documents were leaked led with a different headline and emphasized different issues.

The Guardian newspaper in the UK focused on civilian casualties, eager to point an accusing finger at the U.S. High up the article talked of "hundreds of civilian casualties," but lower down when they gave the actual figure apparently collated from the documents: it was 195. Even lower down, almost buried and just getting a single mention, was the fact that the Taliban was responsible for killing 2,000 Afghan civilians over the same period, according to the same documents.

Leed el resto.