There should be no need for Wikileaks

In an ideal world there should be no need for Wikileaks to publish these documents.

The Washington should have archived them and willingly made them available for public consumption itself.

The government is needlessly keeping millions of documents secret, or worse, is destroying them without ever admitting to.

The constitution needs amending to end this endless and needless secrecy. If American troops in Afghanistan are forced to reveal what they are doing then maybe they will think twice before dropping bombs on civilians and torturing people, and if they aren't killing civilians or to torturing people then there won't be any documents to reveal

Take the names of informants out by all means, but leave in the rest. If the government is spending tax payers money bribing the Taliban, or compensating the families of dead civilians, then the tax payer should be informed

Providing a valuable service

Wikileaks provides a valuable service to the world. This "supposed" crusade for transparency released how many thousand classified military documents last month? How on earth is this self promotion? The governments in the UK and the USA badly need more transparency - we are living with a massive deficit of democracy. Documents published on wikileaks have led to a much needed discussion on the morality and behavior of the occupying forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange has been a source of controversy since he started publishing the documents that make the USA and the UK (and whoever else) look bad. That he has now been implicated in this issue comes as no surprise to me. The CIA and MI6 have a long and sordid history of smear campaigns - it's a standard part of their arsenal, to believe otherwise is naive. Also, the wall Street journal is not a paper that is known for "fair and balanced reporting", by any means.

Important but annoying

Wikileaks is an important medium for information that would otherwise be suppressed. It's just a shame that, while providing a valuable service, Assange devotes so much time to behaving like a dickhead. Mostly, I find his attitude merely immature. The approach of 'information must be free at all costs' is the kind of naive tosh you'd expect of an undergraduate. I'm looking forward to the day that Assange grows up - then he'll do something really useful.

Allegations in Sweden

It is possible that the two women concerned did not actually know the name of Julian Assange until it was plastered around the world's press. Maybe it was actually having a name to give Police that made the difference in deciding to make a complaint.

However, this case should be the definition of why anonymity should be mandatory for accused and accusers in similar cases.

Prosecute?

>>"Swedish prosecutor Eva Finne is still considering whether or not to prosecute the site's founder Julian Assange..."

Wouldn't it generally be the case that people are at least interviewed, statements taken, alibis checked, etc before deciding whether to prosecute?

I'm generally

of the opinion that wikileaks is, on balance, a Good Thing.

I'm not half getting bored of that tiresome twat though.

CIA docs next?

Right, piss off the spooks.... I'm waiting for the news release that Julian Assange was killed in a "mysterious car accident".

What, no sniper's crosshairs icon?

We need Wikileaks more than ever,

now that the planning for the USA's next imperial war of aggression - that on Iran - is proceeding apace. Now that the political process in the United States has failed utterly - the man who won election as a «peace candidate» in the (deluded) eyes of many is now as president continuing and expanding upon the policies of his predecessor - sites like Wikileaks, which publish all the documents the government so desperately wishes to keep hidden, so that readers can judge for themselves, may well be our only chance to avoid a development which could put the survival of the species at risk. We need more sites like Wikileaks - and with access to more documents from more countries....

JohnG will be interested to know that here in Sweden anonymity is, in fact, mandatory in investigations like that which on-duty prosecutor Maria Häljebo - but in this case, it was «leaked» to a certain tabloid, Expressen, of predictable tendency (yes, not dissimilar to the Daily Mail). Wonder just how, who, and why ?...

Henri