In the fullness of time we got Fullilove

People in Australia want to know about the activities of Monsanto and the AWB, although with respect to the latter, they never heard of government involvement because of the need for confidentiality, in this case to protect Howards back side; just as it was with weapons of mass destruction, children overboard, Hicks, Habib and Haneef.

Fullilove refers to Wikileaks operating on the basis of a personality cult, its method of operation as incoherent and,” just sort of calling open slather on information in the way that WikiLeaks does I think is dangerous.” What open slather would that be, exposing the extent of corrupt and dirty deals with respect to defence procurement, the corrupted market in water, insider trading on the stock market, oil and banking cartels?

The extent of Fulliloves evil consequences turned out to be, “Careers have been damaged; people have been humiliated and embarrassed for doing their jobs.” And for that Fullilove wants Assange to face the full wrath of US justice.

How does that stack up against the consequential hate campaign of the Tea Party and Sarah Palin?

Extending notions of balance and understanding Fullilove told Tracy Bowden that, “but you would have to say that security services who are not as fussy about human rights as, say, the FBI or the Justice Department will be able to look at that information and work out who some of those sources were.”Really!

Just this week the Justice Department sought to subpoena client records from Twitter of persons they deem of interest to their hitherto secret WikiLeaks investigation.

Fullilove demonstrated a willingness to use WikiLeaks when it suited the purpose of his strangled and tortuous defence of US interests, but Bowden rightly picked him up when he claimed that “China, Russia and Iran are saying they are finding it harder to encourage people to talk to them honestly and openly...”

As a Lowey Institute foreign policy analyst can Fullilove believe that the aforementioned countries trust that the US speaks to them openly and honestly and they do the same in return? Spare me.

Finally, “And yet whereas American diplomats are out there every day trying to resolve these problems (the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs), other governments might egg them on privately but publicly won’t do so.” Any foreign policy analyst worth his or her salt would see that as nothing more than US self interest.

Is Fullilove the Australian face of the US desire to crush Assange and WikiLeaks because of public humiliation over their ineptitude? From his interview with Tracy Bowden it would seem so.

Secrecy, intrigue, dishonesty and double dealing are the natural bedfellows of diplomacy, they will, as always, survive.

Fullilove argues not a case for the conduct of diplomacy but a case for saving US face and avoiding further embarrassment; shame on him and the Lowy Institute.