WikiLeaks: World Leaders Are Real People, Too

Diplomatic experts the world over are still busy analyzing the Wikileaks documents, as is our Mo Rocca:


It'll take a while to sort out what the release of a quarter-million classified messages between American diplomats overseas and the State Department means. But two things seem clear:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will win Neil Patrick Harris his first Oscar; and

Foreign leaders know how to party.

Kazakhstan's prime minister enjoys trendy nightclubs, drinking and dancing solo on an elevated platform.

Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi rarely travels without his "Ukrainian nurse," a "voluptuous blonde."

The disclosures read less like an issue of Foreign Affairs and more like a copy of Us Weekly.

World leaders, they're just like us!

They're feckless and vain, like 74-year-old Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose non-stop partying have left him "a total mess"

They've got "a chip on their shoulder," like the nation of Canada.

What's more interesting and worrisome is the real impact of these leader's foibles and flaws.

Berlusconi's bromance with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is a problem, not because of that "blow-out party at Putin's dacha." It's charges he profited from Russian-Italian energy deals that could cost Berlusconi his job.

Putin, meanwhile, is "disengaged," maybe because the mafia state he helped create barely answers to him anymore. So that explains all the overcompensating.

YES - they're just like us … in all the worst ways.

The words "insecure," "weak" and "volatile" come up over and over.

"Erratic" Afghan President Hamid Karzai flies into paranoid anti-American rants and can't "grasp the most rudimentary principles of state-building." And yup, it's all on our dime.

And how's this for vanity? Qaddafi was apparently so upset that he couldn't set up a tent in Manhattan on a visit to the U.N. that he tried backing out of a promise to return enriched uranium to Russia.

Thank God his Ukrainian nurse is keeping him on his meds.

[cktirumalai]

Qaddafi has had things his way for decades, Berlusconi for quite a few years but he may now be checked by popular revulsion in Italy and lose his political power.
Candadai Tirumalai

[Reddbird]

This is what happens when the intelligence community falls asleep at the switch. We thought we'd never have to worry about this kind of activity after the Cold War ended. We were blindsided.

[palmas07]

I concur, I vaguely remember seeing Silvio trying to crash "Janet Reno's Dance Party" Salahi style...

[dhartm]

Goodbye, serious journalism. This is really bad, CBS.

[Reddbird]

CBS happens to be owned by Viacom Entertainment Company, and ABC is owned by the Walt Disney Company. This is proof that deregulation isn't without it's shortcomings either. It was a huge mistake when both Cronkite retired and the Cold War ended. The journalism industry has lost it's way.

[dhartm]

Goodbye, serious journalism. This is really bad, CBS.

[j_flood]

Dull reading to be sure....

[incog-nito]

Well, it's rather easy to know how to party when you have access to billions of dollars of other people's money.

[larrryshrine]

by Cowcharge December 5, 2010 12:00 PM EST
This is a news article? Wow, journalism really is dead.
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As a former newspaper reporter who covered some pretty grim news on the cop beat, I can assure you that all this tough, hard news is, and should be, balanced by some lighthearted, or feel-good stories. If you don't like that, don't read it, but don't slam the source.

[random_radar]

World leaders are real people, too. People who think they are superior to you and ought to be your slave masters.

[case10000]

You have to understand the person and his habits to define what a person might do in different situations.