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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

The US actually came out of this looking pretty good. For example, everyone was convinced that the diplomatic office was strong-arming various allies in the middle east to take action against Iran, specifically their nuclear program. But the cables show that those allies were actually strongly in favor of action against Iran, sometimes even taking the initiative. In general, as Gates said, there is a "lack of any significant difference between what the U.S. government says publicly and what these things show privately", which as a US citizen, I am very relived to know :-)

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Um, the leaks show the US government strongly pressuring european governments not to prosecute CIA officers who kidnapped and tortured completely innocent european citizens. We've suspected that all along, but now we have evidence that:

- The CIA kidnapped innocent people in Europe

- The CIA tortured those people

- The CIA abandoned them

- The US government will not tolerate even a symbolic condemnation of this behavior

And you think that looks pretty good? What?

there is a "lack of any significant difference between what the U.S. government says publicly and what these things show privately"

I must have missed the press conference where Sec Gates publicly announced that the US government kidnaps innocent people from our allies and tortures them and then refuses to even admit it let alone make restitution. In which press conference did the government publicly admit that? Because if you can't think of any, that suggests Sec Gates is a liar.

    european citizens...people...people...them...innocent people...them

Why are you using plurals? Where did the cables discuss anyone fitting this description other than Khaled el-Masri?

Good point. The cables only provide evidence that the US government captured and tortured this one particular innocent guy in Europe using their network of black sites, European prisons, and secret prisoner transportation networks. There's a ton of circumstantial evidence that they in fact used this infrastructure to kidnap and torture a whole bunch of other innocent people, but the current batch of cables doesn't prove that by itself.

I highly recommend Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side for putting together all the public information we have on the black sites and the prisoner transport network though: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Inside-Terror-American/dp/03...

I completely agree... I don't understand politically why the US is making such a fuss about this whole situation. I can tell you that there are only three groups of entities hurt by this: 1) Despotic regimes who are coming off as bad via the US intelligence leaks, and who are now trying to circle the wagons because they are afraid their citizens will feel empowered since the 'world's greatest superpower' has a compromising leak. 2) American lawmakers and media who are overreacting about so very little. 3) Hillary Clinton, who can now forget about ever becoming president.

I'm guessing there are a million tiny problems which now have to be papered over. Example: there was a public insult to the President of France, which no doubt then obliges the US Ambassador to Paris to bend over backwards to make nice with Mr Sarkozy all over again.

Meanwhile, a similar scene will be played out in every embassy across the world as the State Department is forced into damage control mode across a hundred or so different fronts.

It is, however, not nearly as disastrous as it was made to sound prior to the actual leak.

"Meanwhile, a similar scene will be played out in every embassy across the world as the State Department is forced into damage control mode across a hundred or so different fronts."

Perhaps, but that's really just opportunism by the various governments. After all, they know that they often turn around and criticize/mock/denigrate the Americans they meet.

This sort of behavior by diplomatic staff has been going on since before the invention of "diplomatic staff". And they all know it.

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