Re: You've been decoyed!
"This entire thread, with a few brief exceptions, reveals that far too many of us have fallen for the "poisoning the well" technique. Most of the comments and replies are, as far as I can see, completely off topic."
Yours certainly is. The topic (just to give you a clue) is: Bloke flees justice.
Now admittedly, there is a side-topic. Is bloke being fitted up?
There is a further topic for the amateur psychologists among us to pick over, which is: Is the guy genuinely paranoid, or is he just putting it on for PR? Obviously, as they say, paranoids have enemies too...
"The only thing about him that is really important - to all of us - is that he was instrumental (along with many colleagues and helpers) - in opening up to the public gaze a huge trove of "secret" US government communications. Many of those reveal appalling acts, intentions, and attitudes that we need to know about, whether we are US citizens or not."
Nope. The only important question here is: Is he a bit rapey?
The one thing that isn't in doubt is that he left Sweden while under investigation, and his lawyers knew about it. I don't know if anyone's proved that he knew. That's the only relevant question here, because nothing else can happen while he's in Sweden. He can't be extradited without going through the British courts, and you have to add the Swedish ones to that as well. So all thoughts of evil US machinations can be dropped - other than the idea that maybe they set up 2 Swedish women to make these allegations. That sounds a bit unlikely to me, but the only way we get any chance of finding out if that's genuine, is if he complies with the law, and goes to Sweden to face his accusers.
Finally, as for your bit about the importance of those leaks... Interesting, they certainly were. Important too. Massively newsworthy, and a good resource. Revealing? Not so much. The Afghanistan ones revealed nothing that we didn't know already. There were no incidents of civilian deaths on there that hadn't been in information revealed by NATO, even if not covered in the press. There was nothing shocking about that at all. The Taliban might have found the information on local intelligence sources useful, and may have killed a few of them, but that's pretty hard to prove either way.
The diplomatic cables were a bit more revealing. But there was nothing shocking. Unless you're surprised that diplomats and governments don't always say in public what they're thinking in private. If that shocks you, I suggest you get out more.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
