Isn't the 'crime' that Assange purchased/published stolen material?
In the end, does any of this really matter? has there been anything on Wikileaks which exposed mass injustice and therefore we can attempt to overlook the fact that this man published confidential gov't information which was received illegally.
I'm surprised that all the media is focused on Assange, who is really just a distributor of the data gathered by Bradley Manning.
At the same time, the whole thing is very sad. Manning is in a whole heap of trouble and I suspect will spend much of his remaining life in a US military prison. Assange has people threatening his life and governments after him. And in the end, for what? This isn't Watergate (unless I'm missing something). They aren't Woodward, Bernstein and DeepThroat, even if that was their initial goal.
They should have looked at the materials they received, measured the influence those materials would have had to make the world a better place, and then decided on an action.
Instead they bragged to the world that they had managed to gather all this 'confidential' material, and possibly ruined both of their lives in the process. I'm sure we'll all remember Assange, Manning seems to have already been forgotten by most, and the only thing that will change is the intelligence community will get smarter about hiding their 'secrets'.
In the end, does any of this really matter? has there been anything on Wikileaks which exposed mass injustice and therefore we can attempt to overlook the fact that this man published confidential gov't information which was received illegally.
I'm surprised that all the media is focused on Assange, who is really just a distributor of the data gathered by Bradley Manning.
At the same time, the whole thing is very sad. Manning is in a whole heap of trouble and I suspect will spend much of his remaining life in a US military prison. Assange has people threatening his life and governments after him. And in the end, for what? This isn't Watergate (unless I'm missing something). They aren't Woodward, Bernstein and DeepThroat, even if that was their initial goal.
They should have looked at the materials they received, measured the influence those materials would have had to make the world a better place, and then decided on an action.
Instead they bragged to the world that they had managed to gather all this 'confidential' material, and possibly ruined both of their lives in the process. I'm sure we'll all remember Assange, Manning seems to have already been forgotten by most, and the only thing that will change is the intelligence community will get smarter about hiding their 'secrets'.