Scale of the revelations holds more surprises than the detail

The 90,000 US military documents published on the internet are not so much a blizzard as an avalanche.

And that is the big impact of the revelation: quantity rather than quality. Almost all of the material has been known.

We knew, for example, of the use of covert operations by special forces against Taliban leaders, that the Taliban have been helped by Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, and that shoulder-launched missiles have begun to be used by the Taliban against allied helicopters.

But it is the sheer extent of this widespread and ragged guerrilla campaign that astonishes as it now spills beyond Afghanistan into several countries. It is a very big grassroots war, and if anything it could get bigger. The huge increase in roadside bombs is shocking but then we reporters have been trying to tell the public so for some time.

The revelations through Wikileaks will reinforce positions already held, not change them. The Guardian is using it to argue the case for withdrawing from the region. Others will say that it reveals that the fight is getting too serious to be abandoned.

In a curious way these leaks strengthen the position of the new allied commander in Kabul, General David Petraeus. He says it is foolish to set artificial deadlines for handovers or withdrawals. If we are serious about Afghanistan, and its impact on world peace, we should forget about Obama-Cameron timelines for the big pull-out.

Deadlines only make sense if they match the facts on the ground, and the facts of the war can be pretty grim, as Wikileaks reminds us.