Much has been made of the exposures of wikileaks. It should also be noted that out of all of their exposures relating to the Afghan and Iraqi adventures, no new significant criminal activities have been exposed.
In both cases, the governments involved in these imperial adventures are guilty in straight-forward cases of committing the supreme international crime: planning, preparing, initiating or waging a war of aggression. The crime for which nazis were hanged at Nuremberg and Tokyo.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange states that exposures are intended to lead to “some higher level reform.” In the case of the Germans and Japanese, these reforms included letting guilty parties take a long drop from a short rope. Under international law the death penalty is reserved for criminals guilty of “only the most serious crimes.” Under the Nuremberg principles, these include the most serious crimes of state – in this case aggression. For which the guilty parties are responsible for “all of the evil which follows.”
For those unfamiliar with the principles, one need only turn to the Nuremberg archives.