And there you go, from the mouth of the enemy themselves. This is why I say that relative blame games are unproductive. Assange, the NYT, Speigel and The Guardian have put a death sentence on people just to improve their ratings.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- NATO announced Friday that six more U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan, bringing the death toll for July to at least 66 and surpassing the previous month's record as the deadliest for American forces in the nearly 9-year-old war.

Under international law can the founder of WikiLeaks , Julian Assange, be tried for war crimes?

Or does international law recognize unresricted freedom of speach? Does the clear and present danger clause exist in international law?

Believe none of the two. Believe those who wrote the reports - the seargeants and lieutenants in the field who wrote the majority of the leaked reports and who sit in the middle of the action seeing it with their nown eyes, risking their own olives andnthat of their subordinate crews adn troops. I do not care for a president, he is an opportunist and a liar by definition, else he would not have become president, nor do I believe Assange - but assange maikes no statements on the situation in Afghanistan, does he. All he said in a german interview was that he even holds no opinion on whether the war should be ended now, or not. He said in that interview what he was about is that the many things functioning ill, the many things going terribly wrong, the misperception of realities need to be corrected and adressed.

the Taliban may or may not try to kill informants more than before, fact is they try to do that all the time and try to intimidate villagers anyway. whether or not the leaked material makes it easier for them or not, is no question the western military and politicians or the taliban should be accepted as objective, honest sources for providing a true answers. Because both sides are engaged in a real war as well as a propaganda war and a war of intimidation.

the question is only this - once this war has come to an end with Western withdrawel - will the extension of the war have costed more or less lifes than any possible and maybe real acceleration of earlier withdrawal, or not? In the end, no matter how long we stay anymore, we will not have left behind a stabile, democratic regime or state that is immune to the regional islamists and conspirating regional powers taking it over. Taking it over they will - sooner or later. The Kabul government throughout the history of Afghanistan was always extremely corrupt and extremely weak, it means nothing to the country. The political realities get forged by local tribe leaders and warlords, patriarchalic chieftains and Islamic jihadis. and neither democracy nor freedom wetsern style is high on their agenda. It is about power, weapons, money, drugs, and islamic regime.

Every Western soldier losing his life there - is giving his life for just this, and nothing else. Is it worth it? I say loud and sounding: NO. It never was worth it, it still is not worth itl and it never will be worth it. It's a dirty little hellhole on this planet, but it is not in our power to enforce it to become a better place and bypass several centuries of own-made evolutional history and developement.

So isolate them, shoot off their head and hand when the aim a terror bomb at us beyond their own border, and beside this - leave them alone. It is not in our reach or power to force them to do it differently and in accordance with our ideas of how they should do things.

Do you want to imply there is a causal link between both sentences? that this is the most lethal month for US troops, because the wikileak publication? That would be absurd. The youngest news in that material is more than half a year old since thehn a whol chnage of strategy has taklen place by presidential order, and the leaked reports got released just two days ago, so how could they influence the events of the past weeks and month? The rise in violence there is taking place since several months now, and according to some of the leaked material, the general violence level is much higher than what the public in the West gets told anyway.

And trying Assange for "war crimes"? We are a bit emotional and thus irrational now, aren't we...? On war crimes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crime

Calm down, I would recommend, Assange is not even close to committing "war crimes", and volume is something different than argument.

Name the war crime?

Why woud that be absurd? Why wouldn't Her Assange, an admitted anti-war zealot, not give the info to the Taliban/Al Queda, before releasing it world wide? Is this such an outrageous idea? I think not.

I don't have one to name. I am just asking the question.

Evidence or STFU, as with everything.

As to the rest of this leak thing, it is not right in my book, some people need to be held accountable for what they have done, but not crucified for what the could have done.

Wow. After being excluded for ten days because of my signature on this forum, to be told STFU is a shocker. I can only hope that justice is served equally on this forum.

What he did is not a war crime. A war crime is not the same like just any "crime committed in times of war". It even is questionable that the publication is a crime in itself - the legal status of the act is being hotly debated, and the moral status is hotly debated as well. For the legal status, it next would depend whose nations' lawcode you want to base on. What the american government may base on in laws can be something different than the German law. The british law. The laws of other nations the leaked reports comment on. the americans can only legally claim to prosecute the original source of the material, the whistleblower that is, if he is american and/or violated american institutions or procedures when copying the material. The crime, imo doesnot lie in the publication, but in the copying and steakling of the material. That that theft was illegal, imo is beyond doubt. Morally, I weigh this against the bigger crime of misleading the public, mismanaging the war since many years, deception over the political incompetence and the military probelms that have caused much bhigher deatzh tolls then admitted, and come to a result that compared to the government's big guilt the thief's guilt is absolutely minor only, a fromality that got violated in order to shed light on a much more severe and lethal crime that happens on and that governments conspirate over to betray their own people.

It is not a war crime what Assange did. Not more or less than it was "sexual harassement". The term war crime is a legal term defined in international treaties. Have a look at the Wikipedia link I gave for a first brief summary. Assange may be a narcisstic egocentric guy, he may crave for publicity or not, and may dream of more support for Wikileaks or not, but of all the four perpetrators - governments, military, the thief of the material, and the publisher - Assange is the one with the smallest guilt, if any at all. The overwhelming share of guilt lies with the governments.

And now for the insane-dreamland-pull-stuff-out-of-my-butt-with-no-basis-in-fact-truth-evidence-or-reality portion of our show....

So after approving the surge, and designating/senate approved, GWB's general it would be A-OK for Mr. Obama to declare surrender and leave Afghanistan with his tail between his legs?


I'm playing devil's advocate and asking you to either support the war or Barack Obama.

Thank you for your reply but it doesn't seem to answer the question. Under international law can the founder of WikiLeaks , Julian Assange, be tried for war crimes? Too much opinion not enough law. A good lawyer could argue what he has done is a war crime for the many who have died in Afghanistan since he was in posession of the classified information..

You are free to report my post if you were offended by it. If the mods see this as a breach of rules on my part, they will pass out appropriate punishment. Personally I see it as an appropriate acronym to use given what you effectively accused a person of without any evidence.

Which from my reading happens regularly on this forum without the invective you used toward me. I consider it unacceptable.