Consequences? It's called collateral damage ... don't you remember?
When my cat drops a shit it scratches around the sawdust in its tray to cover things up ... kind reminds me of our Uncle Sam here.
Amazon's Number 1 excuse for de-hosting WikiLeaks – "it’s clear that WikiLeaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights..." – is laughable. As any fool knows, a stock reason for reproducing US government content that's cited on wikipedia.org is that: "As a work of the U.S. federal government, this work is in the public domain." Etc. Duh! Well, it certainly is in the public domain now.
And as for reason Number 2, Amazon not being sure that the cables are redacted properly – when the feck did a host start being concerned or responsible for the editorial quality of the content on their servers? WTF? They're service providers, as is well established.
Any decent human being who is familiar with the subject (here's just one story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4996140.stm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri , for example) would no doubt agree the "powers that be" need taken down a peg or three.
And as for the argument that the leaks might put people's lives in danger ... ? Yes, and it's called collateral damage. Uncle Sam knows a thing or two about that one too. You can bet.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
