Keep in mind all the crimes by US officials that Assange revealed. In my view many of those crimes committed by officials are treason, yet all have been swept under the rug.
They did publish the `Spy Files Russia` documents in 2017:
WikiLeaks publishes what they get (after verifying credibility). They cannot publish what is not leaked to them.
Also: they did publish things on Russia.
The men and women of the armed forces risk their lives over these wars. The public funds them with taxation. The wars have cost as much as 7 years of a 50% tax cut for everyone earning under $500K. That is such a large number that any social program, any infrastructure challenge is dwarfed by it. The post 9/11 wars are the biggest financial fraud in the history of the world.
We found out thanks to Assange that our leaders hid information from us so that they could continue stealing our money to wage a war that was very different from what they claimed it was.
We place a great deal of trust in our leaders, and Assange showed that it was not deserved. Still, none of the leaders who did this have been brought to justice.
You don't want a jury deciding to convict people for things that the law doesn't say is illegal. You really don't. That's way too close to mob rule, and that often doesn't get applied only to the people that you think it should be applied to. You don't want a jury deciding that what you did is treason, even though the law doesn't say that it is.
And in between, if the charges are within the law but the judge feels a reasonable jury could not convict on them, he can (and presumably will) dismiss the charges either before or after the jury verdict; judges cannot toss a jury acquittal (or convict on their own without a jury verdict), but they can and do do the reverse.
Imagine if the leaks showed that the officials wasted money in some other way such as taking gold reserves and destroying them in a nuclear explosion, or sending gold reserves to cronies in other nations. Theft is theft.
Our enemies arguably want us to waste money on unnecessary wars. The officials exposed by Assange were acting in concert with our enemies.
Giving money to our enemies would be a better way to give them aid. Or weapons. Or supplies. Or pretty much anything, really.
One thing which is not giving aid to our enemies is to fight a war against them, on whatever pretenses, which results in massive quantities of said enemy's soldiers dying. That's almost exactly the opposite of "aiding" our enemies.
You may disagree with the efficiency of our military expenditures, but inefficiency in prosecuting military action is not even remotely the same thing as providing aid to our enemies.
If we have actual enemies, we can be sure that they want us to waste as much money as possible on futile wars.
If we have actual enemies, we can be sure that they want our leaders to circumvent the Democratic process to steal money that could be spent on domestic programs or returned to taxpayers and instead spend it on pointless wars.
I’d we have enemies, we can be sure they want our leaders to spend billions making us hate, fear, and mistrust brown people, and crave strong man leaders over pluralism and liberty.
Assange revealed that our leaders are acting in concert with such enemies.
We can’t separate the lies from the theft. The lies about the war and the illegally classified info that the war logs revealed are what make the theft of resources possible.
All the lives lost are of course also a major issue but the theft aspect makes it easier to see what a sacrifice we were all forced to make to wage the wars.
People who blow up Americans are our enemies. They brag about being our enemies online and in traditional media, at least until we blow them up using very expensive bombs. These wars were authorized by duly elected legislative representatives at the behest of multiple ideologically-opposing executive administrations.
One of these presidents was a black/brown man, who spent his time in office addressing racial tensions. The other, more recent president--the one inflaming racial tensions--received political assistance from Assange, who openly admits to choosing to spread DNC leaks harmful to Clinton and choosing not to publish any negative documents about Trump, despite having access to a plethora of such documents.
Assange revealed nothing, except that he's just as petty and partisan as everyone else, and just as capable of lies as the politicians he claimed he was trying to take down.
> People who blow up Americans are our enemies.
The groups doing those things have been funded by the US government quite recently, and would likely not exist if the US government hadn't tried to meddle in the middle east decades ago.
> These wars were authorized by duly elected legislative representatives
Sort of. The wars would likely not have escalated if the information in the Iraq war logs was known earlier. The war logs showed that the US classified information about what was actually going on in the war so that the public would continue to support it. If the American people knew that it was a proxy war against Iran and that the US was abetting war crimes against former Baath party members, it is unlikely that the war would have continued.
> at the behest of multiple ideologically-opposing executive administrations.
If you think the major parties are in disagreement on war related issues you are not paying close attention. There are only minor points of disagreement.
> openly admits to choosing to spread DNC leaks harmful to Clinton and choosing not to publish any negative documents about Trump, despite having access to a plethora of such documents.
Assange's decision not to publish material related to Trump was based on it already having been widely published or based on its questionable authenticity. Do you really think that anything damning about Trump could have been kept secret? I think that sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory :)
> Assange revealed nothing
I'm not sure if you have read the war logs, but there was significant information revealed that should make the American people quite angry, both about the loss of life caused by the wars and the massive amount of money wasted on the wars.
The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have cost an amount equal to a 50% tax cut for all Americans earning under $500K for seven years in a row.
The amount of suffering caused by the misallocation of funds (which Assange helped expose) is monumental.
This is not true at all, based on an even cursory understanding of the history of tribal and religious warfare in the Middle East.
Sort of. The wars would likely not have escalated if the information in the Iraq war logs was known earlier. The war logs showed that the US classified information about what was actually going on in the war so that the public would continue to support it. If the American people knew that it was a proxy war against Iran and that the US was abetting war crimes against former Baath party members, it is unlikely that the war would have continued.
This is even less true. The Iraq war was not a legitimate war, but had popular support from most of the electorate because 9/11 just happened. However, Afghanistan was a legitimate war, with popular support from both parties and the electorate, because Al Qaeda was actually located in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda was not, and never was, a proxy for Iran, nor was ISIS. Both groups were violently opposed to Iran on ideological grounds (and I mean "were" because they're both dead now).
Don't conflate one group of brown people with another. That's how the Iraq War happened.
If you think the major parties are in disagreement on war related issues you are not paying close attention. There are only minor points of disagreement.
I volunteered with a number of congressional campaigns of legislators opposed to the Iraq war and the subsequent extended occupation. I opened letters containing death threats targeting the candidates from budding alt-right idiots.
The disagreement between the parties over the war and the occupation was not minor. It was a wide gaping maw in many places where the two sides could not agree due to fundamental ideological differences. Hell, in 2008, the parties ran presidential campaigns with completely different positions on continuing the war. Obama intended to shift the war from Iraq to Afghanistan, McCain intended to continue the war in Iraq without moving into Afghanistan. Obama followed through--and was pilloried by the right for it until US special forces killed Osama.
Assange's decision not to publish material related to Trump was based on it already having been widely published or based on its questionable authenticity. Do you really think that anything damning about Trump could have been kept secret? I think that sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory :)
No, it was based on Assange's declared support for Donald Trump's presidency, and there is substantial evidence that Wikileaks coordinated its release of the DNC files with the Trump campaign to maximize political effect. Wikileaks was also known to have received leaked copies during the campaign of documents related to Trump's many scandals and refused to publish them until after Trump was sworn in.
Are you claiming that with no US involvement, Al Qaida would have received training and ammunition?
> This is even less true... <etc>
You are correct about the start of the wars, but keep in mind that cost estimates by GWB of the wars were a tiny fraction of what the cost turned out to be very quickly after the big statue of Saddam toppled. With every day that went by the gap between what was promised and what was delivered widened. This was the motive for concealing (through classification) information that would have made it obvious that the war had been sold on false pretenses and that it would turn out to be a much, much larger undertaking than anyone who supported it had been led to believe.
To some of your other points, if one assumes that the war will be effective and cost the lives of, say 1 US soldier and cost $1, then it would be a no brainer. When you increase the death toll, cost, blowback, or any other negative externality, the ROI changes and easily becomes negative. It was not just the post-9/11 hysteria that led to the war, it was the dramatic underestimation of the time, cost, outcome, and of course the utter falsehood of the nation building narrative.
> Al Qaeda was not, and never was, a proxy for Iran
I did not claim it was. Saddam was linked by the Bush administration to Al Qaida if you recall, and Iran had significant interest in what would happen with Iraq.
> Don't conflate one group of brown people with another
I have not done that, see above.
> I opened letters containing death threats targeting the candidates from budding alt-right idiots.
In a large population there will be extreme and largely incoherent views on both (all?) sides, and of course you would open some such letters. The letters have no connection to what the parties actually wanted/supported during that time.
> Obama intended to shift the war from Iraq to Afghanistan, McCain intended to continue the war in Iraq without moving into Afghanistan. Obama followed through--and was pilloried by the right for it until US special forces killed Osama.
The key word here is intended. Obama also intended to close Gitmo and stop some of the more egregious excesses of the Bush administration but actually did very little to remediate it, until just before he left office toward the end of his second term. Any Democrat would advocate a left of center position, any Republican a right of center position, both knowing that the centrist position was just fine and that the rhetoric would help win the election and nothing more. Obama's conduct in office is a case in point. Don't confuse the political fray and left vs right accusations with what is actually happening (or not happening).
> No, it was based on Assange's declared support for Donald Trump's presidency...
Assange stated that he found both candidates abhorrent, so I'm not sure how you can claim that he supported Donald Trump's candidacy. I think you are potentially getting some false information about Assange's sentiments about Trump. I followed his conduct closely during the 2016 campaign and while he did maximize the PR impact of the leaked emails, I view that as a budget PR strategy since he'd already had his organization decimated and needed to drum up some PR to get the material noticed by the rest of the press.
If you have followed Assange for a while you will know that he has no political interest in any nation -- he may have had a grudge against HRC after she joked about assassinating him, who knows -- but his conduct as a journalist is beyond reproach, especially considering the attack that he was under during most of it.
If, for example, the NY Times had continued working with him and providing support, the PR strategy would not have been necessary, nor would the hastily released (sub-optimally redacted) items have been released. But instead the NYT decided to act as an arm of the US Government and help spread the "Assange is a rapist" meme.
While I doubt Assange is a violent person, I don't know him personally. But I also care a lot less about his character around people he's sharing a bed with than I do about the information he revealed.
(And yes, Assange is highly biased and anti-American, which is not good, but publishing leaks shouldn’t be a crime.)
The burden of proof is on the accuser.
Assange is under federal indictment meaning that a grand jury was presented evidence and decided that it was enough to file charges. However, the parent comment claims that Assange is innocent.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_S...
With the Mueller investigation effectively over, it's time to turn the tables. Assange is a valuable asset in this endeavor.
This was according to Seymore Hersh, you can find audio of him describing Rich's involvement and other discussion on the topic.
To be clear, Rich's murder could have been a total coincidence and he could have possibly not been the source of any published leaks. Given that, it was not weaponization but a reasonable assumption on the part of Wikileaks to conclude that Rich had probably been assasinated.
This is the definition of fake news disseminated by the Russians and the Republicans that want to cover for them.
Source from the other link: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/01/540783715/lawsuit-alleges-fox...