We have a moral duty to prevent war crimes and to reveal war crimes by publishing information about them. Both men have done that. They truly deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Others do not.
We held the Nuremburg Trials to punish government officials who summarily assassinated and slaughtered innocent civilians. There will always be casualties of war. But when we fight a war that is intrinsically illegal and then try to hide the brutal way in which we treat the civilians in the war zone once we are fighting an illegal war, we deserve to be outed.
The Germans understand the importance of respecting international laws and conventions regarding when and how wars may be fought. They were held to account.
And here, the US, instead of apologizing for the excesses and errors of our military when confronted with a video of them, accuses the messenger, the publisher of the video, Julian Assange.
Yes. The US is entitled to secrets, but when those secrets hide possible war crimes, the US has no more right to hide them than any common criminal has to hide his violations of law.
This persecution of Assange has to stop. Why would anyone be so persistently concerned about this one topic? I wonder. Certainly not an advocate for international law and human rights. Perhaps a member of the military fearing prosecution at some future time? It's peculiar in my view.
I support human rights. My view is pretty consistent on this. I oppose the illegal war in Iraq. I believe that those who ordered the invasion of Iraq should face war crimes trials in which what they knew and when they knew it is determined in a court of law.
I read Paul O'Neill's book on his tenure as the Secretary of the Treasury during GWB's first year. Bush and his allies were discussing Iraq in their first meeting on foreign affairs. Early on before 9/11 they had reviewed a map of the oil fields. Read the book, The Price of Loyalty, and then decide what you think about Assange.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_O%27Neill_%28Secretary_of_the_Treasury%29
I appreciate the importance of the US government's right to secrecy about military plans, but I believe that the secrecy and espionage prevention laws are abused when they are used to protect the government from political embarrassment. And that is certainly the case in the Assange matter. The secrecy and espionage laws would be misused if the US tried to prosecute Assange. Those laws were intended to protect our troops and personnel in the field while conducting legitimate actions in the defense of the US. They were not intended to protect our government actors from prosecution for war crimes.
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