The total number of cables that I have read comes to 30. I started to get involved with the actual raw cable reading exercise on Friday. I decided to go through the list of 75 or so cables and just assign quantities to countries in order to see what pattern if any resulted. I read through a few cables if the subject sounded interesting, but at that point I was not committed to reading them all. Here a few things that strike about the cables so far:
The flow of cables that are being published has slowed down considerably. To date only 1344 have been released.
On top of redactions, news articles are selective of information within the cables that is "fit for print". The selectivity also includes obviously which cables are being vetted and, within the daily cable cluster, which cables warrant a story.
The cables have been generally characterized as either dangerous to US foreign policy or trivialized as being simply common knowledge. After reading through it is quickly obvious that there are a variety of viewpoints being expressed along with a number of different interfaces. Any assumption that the cable's authors are US ambassadors writing to Condoleeza or Hillary about their conversations with foreign leaders does not really capture the scope of the cables.
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