Revelations?

So what really has been revealed by the WikiLeaks? Who was unaware that Pakistan's ISI remained heavily involved in arming and directing the Taliban operations in Afghanistan? Or that the ISI did likewise with LeT, and was responsible for the Mumbai atrocities? Or that officials at the municipal, provincial and federal level in Afghanistan are ingloriously corrupt?

What is new, perhaps, is the fact that those Afghans who saw fit to align themselves with NATO forces in a helpful bid to alert and inform against the Taliban may now find themselves perilously close to being extinguished. Since some of those leaked documents helpfully name names, including parental names and village-of-origin names.

Mind, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder, insists that he has had the documents thoroughly vetted and where such information exists, the documents withheld from publication. "We have read more leaked documents than any other organization that's not a spy agency on earth. If someone can apply this policy, surely we can do it."

With his professional assurance, we can be assured on that angle, presumably.

Afghanistan itself, via its Foreign Affairs Ministry is mortified, horrified, angered and damned. "The U.S. is both morally and legally responsible for any harm that the leaks might cause to the [named] individuals... It will further limit the U.S./international access to the uncensored views of Afghans".

Perhaps what is of more troubling interest is the fact that the Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives are sophisticated enough to take advantage of the information now available to them on line. All the more so in view of the growing apprehension that not all is flowing according to plan. And that the claims of having the insurgency in hand lack credibility.

That Iran has had a sinister hand in providing arms and explosives to the Taliban and working alongside al-Qaeda has long been suspected from other sources. Perhaps it's the fact that these documents were exclusionarily withheld from public knowledge and they have abruptly become available through an illegal source represents the true story here.

And likely as not throwing the light of recognition on the persona of former Pakistani general Hamid Gul's ferocious hatred of the West and the U.S. in particular, and the hand he has played and continues to do, in planning and encouraging and directing the Taliban is of far more interest in the revelations. Rogue bull elephants are fascinating.

The documents' usefulness are only as good as the intelligence that they conveyed in the first place, and it seems that some of that routine intelligence was flawed opinion, unreflective of reality. It's the scandal-quotient of airing classified intelligence, not the quality of the data itself that has value and currency.

Just confirming what was already known, for the most part, but doing it righteously and with clamour aforethought.