Wikileaks = Death To Dictators & America's Puppet Arab Leaders?

It's all but impossible to deny that the Tunisian CableGate revelations about the corruption of that country's ruling family did not add fuel and fire to the remarkable events that exploded into a peoples' revolution and saw 'The Family' flee for their lives this month.

From PBS :

Some of the memos, which first appeared in November, were widely available in Tunisia after the WikiLeaks document dump, according to regional experts. They were translated and disseminated through private websites and social networking sites.

One overarching theme of the cables: corruption. Many refer to Ben Ali's family as "The Family," which stood above the law and ruled the country without any control or restraint from the outside. Nepotism extended to the family of Ben Ali's wife, Leila, whose numerous siblings occupied critical government position or were the owners of media, airlines, assembly plants and distribution rights, according to one cable sent to Washington from Tunis in 2008.

A U.S. Embassy cable from 2008 stated that Ben Ali's "quasi-mafia" family lived in opulence, indulging in excessive consumption and authoritarian tactics to rule the country.

"There were a lot of specific details in the cables that the public had not been exposed to before the release. There is no question that WikiLeaks added substantial evidence to the story that people already knew," said Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland.

"The WikiLeaks revelations confirmed that people surrounding president Ben Ali were corrupt and spent a lot of money. They lived in mansions and had their food delivered to them directly from France. It was happening at a time when ordinary Tunisians were struggling to find jobs and feed their families. It's a bit of Marie Antoinette-like disconnect between the people and the top," said North Africa and Mideast expert Mary-Jane Deeb.

This disconnect is what angered the many Tunisians that took to the streets in the final days of Ben Ali's presidency, she said. For days they demanded jobs and free speech and the removal of Ben Ali, who had been in office for 23 years.

Analysts agree that Tunisians in general were aware of the rampant corruption and plutocracy of Ben Ali's family, but the U.S. cables from Tunis added definition to the problems.

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