International espionage makes my head hurt.
“Everywhere there’s a U.S. post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed,” Manning wrote. “It’s open diplomacy. World-wide anarchy in CSV format. It’s Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth. It’s beautiful, and horrifying.”
The article also says "a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing “almost criminal political back dealings.”" ( http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/ )
I think it's real, and I think it's bad. Time will tell though.
Random dumps of four hundred thousand random government documents, however obtained, don't cut it.
Well it might be tricky politically for Germany to get behind the US if the leaks contain plans for a 'final solution' to the problem of muslims living in America.
Mostly it's just lots of governments that have opposed torture in public statements are going to be embarrassed when it's detailed how their security services stood there while the person was electrocuted then asked their questions. The UK just made a big payout to lots of Gimto inmates to avoid this coming out in court.