I couldn’t help but think, as much as want to blank it out of my mind, former President Bill Clinton’s defining moment of his presidency when he said, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.,” when I reviewed the media coverage of the WikiLeak second disclosure of some 250,000 + classified information documents from the State Department, much of which was known and disclosed in the media, that what appears to be is not what it is.

The facts: US Army Pfc Bradely Manning. 22, a gay, dual US and British citizen, and obviously a computer operative, one of some three million persons that would have access to US classified information, passed it along to one Julian Assange.

Julian Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks, the organization that obtained the classified documents from Manning, the first of which was released in August of this year and the second released yesterday to The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel the German newsweekly.

The New York Times printed the classified information received as their lead story on the front page.

Assange is an Australian citizen, and believed to be in the United Kingdom today.

On both incidents the US Government called the release of these documents damaging and putting US operatives at risk as well as those cooperating with intelligence agents.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ‘strongly’ condemned the release of the documents today, President Obama while proposing a freeze of Federal workers pay for 2 1/2 years today, refused to comment.

Now, I can’t emphasize  in the chain of command a Pfc is in the Army.  It’s about two ranks higher than a civilian.  It is hard to believe, as the administration would like us to accept, that he is one of those with a need to know.

Nevertheless he had access to this classified information. He has been arrested on several charges of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  Secondly, the first salvo was fired with warning as was the case in the second by Julian Assange, and the government did nothing in the interim.

You can bet there are more involved in this disclosure than Pfc Manning.

Now what was disclosed that we didn’t already know:

Iran smuggled arms to Hizballah?

Israeli leaders made it clear that the Palestinian leadership sought Israel’s destruction?

Arab states constantly urging the US to attack Iran?

Iran and North Korea cooperated to provide Tehran with long-range missiles that were shipped to Hizballah?

Israel has been warning the US about how Iran was obtaining nuclear weapons and would destabilize the region?

US officials in Turkey think that the current government is in fact an Islamist one, but the US believes it is some kind of democratic reform-minded centrist regime?

The US government ignored repeated pleas from Israel to press Egypt to block smuggling of military equipment into the Gaza Strip?

This information was published in the media and was known before the release by WikiLeaks.

What we didn’t know was that the diplomatic corps called French President Sarkozy, ‘the emperor with no clothes’ or Afghanistan President Karzai ‘paranoid’ and North Korea’s Kim ‘fat.’

While all of this is going on – a distraction – the US is in debt to the tune of $13 trillion, there is the forthcoming collapse of Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands and the State of California and the economy is in a state of uncertainty and the job picture is bleak.

There is nothing new in the WikiLeaks leaks that we didn’t know – but it does point to Obama’s incompetent handling of this breakdown in intelligence leaks.

The State of the Union, which President Obama is about to deliver, is one that the late Saul Alinsky would applaud as he wrote in ‘Rules For Radicals’, the collapse of the system, redistribution of wealth and a new world order.

Yes, this is a think piece, and something to think about is, what it appears to be is not always what it is.  As former President Clinton said, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”!