[yesco]

Personally as an American, I'm far more interested about the shit my government is hiding from me than getting yet another reason to hate Putin, what could possibly be leaked from Russia that would make their optics worse than it already is? This was true even pre-invasion.

The whataboutism surrounding this feels completely disingenuous to me considering much of what was leaked by Wikileaks was war crimes, media collusion with Clinton's campaign and embarrassing mistakes the government tried to cover up, that they had no business trying to cover up.

States have secrets, but that is a privilege granted to them by the people to protect national security, their abuse of this privilege has been completely unacceptable even if the reveal made your preferred candidate look bad for actions they were personally responsible for.

If Wikileaks accomplished anything, it was revealing the hypocrites and those who lack even an inch of integrity.

[sabarn01]

Its not like what wiki leaks did is new. The pentagon papers were published 50 years ago. The us government should be held to high standards and we need a press to do that. At some level however in a world of competing states if an organization is only interested in undermining one state it makes it less trust worthy in my eyes. I think Assange views the US as an evil actor and that informs what he thinks is worthy of coverage. Its why he could call Afghans who worked with the US as collaborators as in his eyes working with the US makes you evil. I think that world view is insane and naive.

However as I said there is real utility to publishing information which shouldn't be kept from the public. Which is why I think Assange is a hard case.

[CRConrad]

> If Wikileaks accomplished anything, it was revealing the hypocrites and those who lack even an inch of integrity.

It revealed some hypocrites who lack integrity. The main effect, if any, of their exposure was to pave the way for other hypocrites who lack integrity to take over the positions of power and influence of the former.

[yesco]

I was specifically talking about the ones who wanted to crucify Assange the moment he revealed something inconvenient for their side after years of praise for what he did under Bush, which likely applies to you as well considering your twisted perspective on this.

Someone with integrity supports whistleblowers no matter who they blow the whistle on, I'm sure this revelation must be a surprise for you.

[CRConrad]

> Someone with integrity supports whistleblowers no matter who they blow the whistle on, I'm sure this revelation must be a surprise for you.

What does that have to do with anything? Assange never was a whistleblower.