BlackFive

I understand that Wikileaks probably thinks it is doing the right thing, and that they have an internal ethic that says they are on the side of the angels.  We can sort that out in the traditional manner, and may God defend the right.  

Yet there is someone else whom we need to attend to, and that is the person who passed them this information.  A "leak" requires a leaker; and it requires, in this case, a leaker with a SECRET clearance.  Many of these things may be -- one might argue, in some quest for ultimate fairness -- of small matter, but not the documents that named those who have worked with us in assembling our intelligence picture in Afghanistan.  I hope this will prove to have been done by a civilian, who may merely be without honor.  It is far worse if he is a servicemember, and bound by the oaths of honor.

Whoever leaked these documents has largely sentenced those men to death, which betrays the duty of a soldier to take risks unto himself in order to protect the civilian population.  That leaker has betrayed more than his duty, though:  for he has destroyed the intelligence network that protects his fellow servicemembers, and he has made it vastly more difficult to recruit a new such network.

That is a betrayal of the brotherhood.  If this was indeed done by a servicemember, it merits the firing squad.  Only in that punishment do we cast you out and recognize you as the enemy you have elected to be:  and then allow some riflemen to perform their natural function toward enemies.  

I don't think we do firing squads anymore, but perhaps there is time to repair the law.