Martin: Enough with the Wikileaks Drama

The suspense is boring me.

Wikileaks is expected to dump up to 400,000 Pentagon documents onto the Web any day now, and the Defense Department is reported to be bracing for the largest compromise of classified material in history.

I would wager that if the Pentagon were to take those same 400,000 documents - all dealing with the war in Iraq - and post them on its own website, no one other than military researchers and historians would pay much attention. The documents are supposed to be reports of "Significant Activities" in Iraq - the details of every IED, ambush, kidnapping, air strike, etc.

There will undoubtedly be some tidbits in there - how could there not be in that many documents? - but it's hard to see how they will change our overall understanding of the war. What makes them news is that Wikileaks is doing the posting - and the fact that the Pentagon is protesting so loudly, demanding the return of the documents and urging news organizations not to print them.