Are you joking? He didn’t hand over the secrets to anyone? Then how can we read them on the Internet?
I contend he handed them over to everyone - friends, enemies, dogs, cats, and monsters under the bed. Note the news stories in which the Taliban have threatened the lives of those who cooperated with NATO military forces.
The fact that he released the classified documents with the understanding that they would cause injury to the United States seems to be the legal definition of espionage.
Assange runs a website which is essentially a public forum. If I posted classified documents on the SDMB, would you demand that Ed Zotti be arrested for espionage?
If it can be shown that he was made aware of it and didn’t expeditiously remove the content…yes.
But that isn’t what happened. Assange has repeatedly stated that he engaged in some type of review process before posting the documents on the website. He claims to have contacted the Pentagon to assist in the review of the documents, something which the Pentagon denies. He coordinated with several newspapers to effect the greatest possible coverage of his release of the documents. He apparently describes himself as the “editor in chief” of Wikileaks, and has stated that additional classified material is being reviewed and edited before it is being released.
None of those facts match up to the hypothetical you proposed.
Considering that we’re now A-OK with assassinatingour own citizens, with Obama’s blessing and the seal of indifference from the great unwashed, I’d be a little nervous if I were he.
Assange is neither American nor a member of Al Qaeda.
My personal opinion is that Julian Assange has been considered by not just the U.S. military and espionage agencies, but those of many other around the world, as nothing more than a relatively obnoxious element, like some kind of wasp that crashes your picnic.
Whether these latest hijinks will make those sundry agencies change their oppinion of Julian Assange, I don’t know. What I tend to think is that Julian Assange has not been making himself any friends anywhere. Oh, sure, he has pissed of the US, but I am sure that he has been pissing off many others, and those that he hasn’t pissed off may start to feel wary of him and his brand of vigilante “disclosurantism” (to coin a word).
If he keeps going like this, I wouldn’t be surprised if one day he woke up metabolically challenged, and with nobody with the power to do something about it actually caring about who put him in that position.
Yes. Point being, we have no apparent qualms about targeting our own citizens. Who’s gonna cry for one muckracking Frenchman?
Well, nobody, probably, although Assange is Australian.
What pisses me off is that he published the identities of the US informants in Afganistan. Those people will probably be killed by Al Qaida and/or the Taliban.
That crosses the line.
Oops. That’ll teach me to draw conclusions from surnames.
Well, we could always just find some actual French guy and plant something classified on him.
Well, Assange does sound like the name an Al Qaeda operative might use…
But seriously, the cites you linked to all pertain to whether we would kill an American who is a member of, or directly supports, Al Qaeda. Congress stated in 2001 that the President can use military force against those people or organizations who were involved in 9/11.
Trying to make the point that the government can kill Americans is like saying we can kill schoolteachers. Why on earth would the US want to attack schoolteachers? How barbaric!
That sounds terrible, until one clarifies that the schoolteacher would have to be involved with a terrorist organization that has directly attacked the United States. If there’s an American out there who is involved with Al Qaeda, actively trying to bring harm to the country or our people, hell yes, we should kill or capture him as circumstances permit.
I’m not claiming that these are pleasant people, but it should give pause that we’re blessing the practice of secretly targeting U.S. citizens for assassination—without charges, trial, or judicial oversight—anywhere in the world, since the entire world is now the “battlefield.”
Today it’s al Qaeda. Met with resounding yawns from the populace, watch as the categories gradually expand, and the definition of “enemy” and “terrorist” and “harm” grow ever more fluid as we stumble from one Presidential administration to the next.
But who cares about that boring stuff when we can talk about Chelsea’s wedding and whether Jennifer Hudson is going to shave her head?
Define “involved”. Because AFAIK right now, even sending a group like Hamas a letter asking them to please stop their current strategy would qualify as offering material aid to terrorists, and thus your hypothetical schoolteacher could be assassinated by our government at the President’s orders. She could even be at home in Ames, Iowa making cookies for her son’s Boy Scout troop when the bullet separated her brain from her body, and no laws would have been broken.
So you also feel that anyone who is trying to bring harm to the country or it’s people should be killed without a trial, hmm? Are you now advocating that all criminals, who surely are trying to bring harm to the people of this country, should be killed? Without a trial that would designate them criminals? How will we know who was really trying to harm us and who was just ratted on (falsely) by their neighbor who hates them? Remember, it’s easy to say you’re sorry afterwards, but hard for a corpse to hear it.
The 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force does not allow the military to shoot a schoolmarm whose cookies were misdelivered to Hugo Chavez.
The law allows necessary and appropriate force to be used against those who carried out or aided the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon to prevent future attacks on the United States.
Nice try to suggest that I support poisoning burglars and sniping jaywalkers. Let’s try to dial the hyperbole back to the actual discussion at hand, otherwise I will start suggesting that you want to pardon Charles Manson, and give welfare and Section 8 benefits to Osama bin Laden (he lives in a cave!)
That’s all well and good that you’re quoting the 2001 law. You’ll note that the stories don’t claim any law is being applied to murdering Americans; it’s just a presidential decision that our government will do this. And it has been ordered, as referenced in the linked articles. As it stands, my scenario only seems hyperbolic because it hasn’t happened yet that you know of.
And you did call for the murder of American citizens without trial, so I don’t think I was hyperbolic at all.
Just wanted to also point out that the whole bit about poisoning burglars and sniping jaywalkers were from you. I made no mention of such trivial offenses being used as another excuse to justify the murder of innocent Americans.
Isn’t there a specific term for mis-stating your opponents position, and then arguing against that position? I’m trying to remember what it is…
Jennifer Hudson is going to shave Chelsea Clinton’s head for Chelsea’s wedding?
How I use the term or how you use it is immaterial. When it comes to a bar on extraditing people charged with political crimes, what matters is how the courts use it.
A “political crime”, in this context, and to oversimplify a little, is a crime committed for a political motive, or an act identified as a crime for political reasons.
The UK provision which you quote is also a political crime. I dare say many, if not most, countries have similar political crimes on their statute books. You will find very few successful cases of extradition based on these crimes.
The “no extradition for political crimes” rule comes under pressure when we are faced with people charged with terrorist crimes, who claim political motives. Courts have been willing to limit the rule in these cases, and to render extradition. But for breaches of state secrecy laws? Not a chance.