(Yes, this also applies to the poorly planned and poorly executed occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. government doing stupid shit in a war is not a justification to leak unrelated diplomatic cables that risk getting good people killed for no good reason)
At least provide some evidence of a great increase in risk that people will be killed.
I've heard of few to no claims that people are now at a high risk of death due to these cables from anyone other than the Sarah Palins and Congressman King's of this world. Sec. Def. Gates stated that the consequences for U.S. foreign policy will be fairly mild.
Once such inflamed rhetoric is removed form your comments, I can't see how your position holds water.
Further, I fail to see a gap between Wikileaks stated goals and the results. The results you claim (potential consequences related to Pakistan nuclear activity, protection of dissidents), even assuming they are valid and therefore in opposition to Gates concern level, are relatively minor in comparison to the stated goals: much higher degrees of government transparency brought about by the constricting of secret communication. That being the (summarized) stated goal of Wikileaks, the reality is it is long term. If this is step 1 of 100 that leads to a government that cannot maintain the levels of secrecy necessary to fabricate a path towards something like the Iraq War, then the results align perfectly with the goal.
However biased / inaccurate they may be, sites like http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ claim ~100k documented, civilian casualties in this past war. Lets divide by 100. If a leak prevents an action which would kill 1,000 civilians, and ends up causing a couple, is it worth it? Is it morally correct? Do the ends justify the means? Is not leaking something you believe could save 1,000-x lives morally correct?
I'd say slowing down an aggressive empire could be classified as a "good reason" likely to save many lives.
It takes some imagination to suggest that what Wikileaks has has done has cost lives. Approximately 3 million people have access to SIPRnet. It seems unlikely that Wikileaks could compromise it, yet foreign state intelligence would be unable.
There is nothing in what you say that constitutes a critique of the project management going on at Wikileaks. You're saying their schedule is slipping, or that the goal is succumbing to yak shaving? Look at what site you're on.
You can't always plan the outcome and/or the effect of a project. It is the nature of the entrepreneur to execute on their idea and let the chips fall where they may, and indeed the very site that you've spent enough time on to earn a five-figure karma has a culture and a tradition that glorifies the MVP: minimum viable product. What of WL in that light? How is it that your judgement comes down so squarely against such a central concept of the HN world this time? I don't think politics is a good enough reason here, and Assange cannot be faulted for not being able to predict the future. Shorter: let's look at YouTube's original plan, shall we?
Maybe the lesson you're teaching is that the best MVP is an appropriate MVP? An MVP that has a known outcome and thus is the perfect project: one with a known need and no competition, a pure niche?
The above may be blunt, and I don't mean to raise a One True Scotsman specter, but I think it's appropriate to question why WL is not given the conceptual-outcome leeway generally allowed to MVPs, or whether they need it at all.