Hopefully Nothing Leaked From Imus or Jake Tapper's Noses While Discussing Wikileaks

After a few minutes arguing over who was more ill today, Imus and Jake Tapper, the White House Correspondent for ABC News, reached what was undoubtedly a foregone conclusion: Imus had the worse cold, the higher fever, the more persistent cough.
 
Of greater concern to the country, I think, was the more than 250,000 cables, many of them confidential, leaked this weekend by the website Wikileaks. “Obama administration officials are very concerned about what this is going to mean,” Tapper said. “I think the big immediate concern is that no foreign government will trust that things they tell the United States will remain in confidence.”
 
For instance, one leak described the President of Yemen and David Petraeus, then the head of CENTCOM, discussing U.S. military operations in  Yemen against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
 
“That’s the biggest Al-Qaeda affiliate outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Tapper said, noting its involvement in planning the failed mail bomb threat just last month, and in 2009’s failed Christmas day bombing. “The concern is now you’re going to have the President of Yemen pushing back on the U.S., and pushing back on cooperation with the U.S. on AQAP, and what is that going to mean for the safety of the American people?” Other cables showed that Middle Eastern countries provided the U.S. with information about Iran’s nuclear program, knowledge that is all but vital to our security.
 
Imus was not terribly surprised by the developments described in Wikileaks, namely that world leaders say one thing and often do another. “The problem is the names of officials, the names of dissidents, the names of American diplomats,” Tapper explained, referring to the most damaging leaks.
 
Rep. Peter King wants to prosecute the New York Times and other media outlets for publishing the Wikileaks documents, but Tapper said the White House is still debating what kind of legal action, if any, it can take, and against whom.
 
The Times cited “public interest” as its rationale for reporting the leaks. “Is it in the public interest for American citizens to know, for instance, that the U.S. has been engaged in an effort for years to convince our purported ally Pakistan to contain its enriched uranium?” Tapper wondered. Surely the New York Times would argue yes, but critics are less certain. 
 
There is, however, in Tapper’s view, a big difference between the actions of Wikileaks and those of the Times, which legally published illegally obtained information. In the end, the fallout from this scandal might not suit anybody’s goals at all.
 
“The head of Wikileaks says that his goal is to stop unjust wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there are policymakers that say that what he is doing is actually hurting the cause of peace,” Tapper said. “Because he is hurting tribal elders in Afghanistan, and human rights activists, and diplomats who are trying to end wars, and trying to avoid wars.”
 
On similarly depressing subjects, Tapper defended his objection on Twitter to people using the term Nazi a bit too freely these days, saying, “I just thought it was disgusting, and I said so, and I guess this is now some bone of contention whether it’s appropriate to make fun of victims of the Holocaust.”
 
No bones of contention here. Also, no turkey bones, since the Imus family, vegans all, enjoyed something in the tofurkey genre on Thanksgiving instead of the real thing because, as Imus put it, “I don’t eat live animals.”
 
He was in good company. “I don’t eat them when they’re alive,” Tapper clarified.
 
-Julie Kanfer