Let's be serious. He wasn't going to get a fair trial by any means whatsoever, absolutely zero chance of that happening. Yes if things were as they should be he shouldn't have fled and he would have had a fair trial with the guarantees it implies etc etc. But that wasn't going to happen.
> Let's be serious. He wasn't going to get a fair trial by any means whatsoever, absolutely zero chance of that happening.
We'll never know that and there is no way to know. What we do know is that instead of surrendering to the justice process of several countries, he sought asylum. Any claim that his justice process wasn't speedy has to factor that in.
His fear was not reaching the Swedish courts. Sweden has a habit of colluding with the CIA to illegally kidnap residents off of the street at night, and flying them to foreign prisons that have a more lassiez faire approach to torture.
Britain in contrast makes it's former colony follow it's actual extradition process as a matter of honor. The closest the CIA has gotten to extraordinary rendition in British territory is occasionally allowing a CIA rendition flight to refuel in a far off territory, but even that was a huge scandal.
>He wasn't going to get a fair trial by any means whatsoever
You state your very arguable opinion as some kind of fact. It's not. It's your opinion. The US is a country with rule of law, and this would have been a very public trial with tons of people coming to his legal aid. Even Manning got a fair trial, for a crime that Assange coaxed and encouraged him to commit by the way.
For criminal contempt of court, in a very scrutinized and controversial decision that is freely debated and will be settled case law when it's through the process.
>USA has refused to extradite Warren Martin Anderson
Citing lack of evidence.
>You chance of going to jail is inversely proportional to how wealthy you are:
You ability to hire good lawyers is proportional to how wealthy you are.
It's unclear what these tidbits are supposed to illustrate. Failing to effectively remedy inequality with pro bono legal aid means your country's judicial system is flawed, and judges make arguable and controversial decisions. This does not mean the country is not governed by law.
How about the case of Posada Carriles, a terrorist and CIA operative that blew up 73 people on Cubana de Aviación Flight 455, was there also lack of evidence?
Do you believe that USA is fair and impartial when it comes to international affairs? If USA blatantly violates international law it claims to uphold, do we have rule of law?
"your country's judicial system is flawed... This does not mean the country is not governed by law."
Thats exactly what it means, at some point the system is so flawed you are not governed by law.
We could debate how flawed it is, but it seems to be getting worse.
"For the first time, the United States fell out of the top 20 countries for adherence to the rule of law in an index compiled by the World Justice Project."
Remind me, when were the people who shot at a van that was trying to carry wounded from the collateral murder video tried, again? And how much priority it had over some leaker?
A context-free video purposefully edited to remove, for example, the presence of weapons[0]. Guess what? Mistakes happen in war all the time. There are sometimes clear cases of criminal behaviour, such as in Abu Ghraib, but most of the time the ultimate responsibility lies with whoever orders the troops into the combat zone where they will inevitably mistakenly kill civilians, not with the troops themselves.
It's Baghdad, everyone has AKs. It's not highlighted because it's completely orthogonal to the topic at hand. The mere presence of AKs has never been carte blanche for use of force in Iraq.
>Gabriel Schoenfeld, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, said of the airstrike:
>It is precisely the presence of weapons, including RPGs, that goes a long distance toward explaining why cameramen for Reuters—pointing television cameras around corners in a battle zone—were readily mistaken by our gunships for insurgents. The video makes plain that in this incident, as in almost all military encounters in both Iraq and Afghanistan, our soldiers are up against forces that do not wear uniforms—a violation of international law precisely because it places innocent civilians in jeopardy. Responsibility for civilian deaths in such encounters rests with those who violate the rules of war. The Wikileaks videos also do not reveal the hundreds upon hundreds of cases in which American forces refrain from attacking targets precisely because civilians are in harm's way.
> It is precisely the presence of weapons, including RPGs, that goes a long distance toward explaining why cameramen for Reuters—pointing television cameras around corners in a battle zone—were readily mistaken by our gunships for insurgents.
There weren't RPGs, and even if there were, the presence of RPGs have never been a valid cause for use of force under any Iraq ROE. It's not just international law that was broken, but internal US military regulations on the matter as well.
> The video makes plain that in this incident, as in almost all military encounters in both Iraq and Afghanistan, our soldiers are up against forces that do not wear uniforms—a violation of international law precisely because it places innocent civilians in jeopardy. Responsibility for civilian deaths in such encounters rests with those who violate the rules of war.
The other side committing war crimes is not carte blanche for you to do so as well.
> The Wikileaks videos also do not reveal the hundreds upon hundreds of cases in which American forces refrain from attacking targets precisely because civilians are in harm's way.
'We should get a pass on war crimes because of all those other times we didn't commit war crimes (or didn't get caught).' I don't think they even tried that specious of an argument during Nuremberg.
Just because something is morally/ethically sound doesn't mean it's legal. The part of 'choosing the break the law to expose things for the public good' that makes it heroic is 'choosing the face the consequences of breaking the law'.
So by your logic the guy that exposed 2TB of videos of rapes and tortures in Russian jail recently should have stayed in Russia so that he can face the music and get some first-hand experience? After all he broke laws in Russia and exposed 'secret government data'?
I mean, maybe, if that guy wanted to stay around to try and improve his country. Maybe not if he valued his life.
But that doesn't change the fact that it was a crime, does it? Remember, the comment I replied to was saying that Chelsea Manning did not commit a crime when they leaked secret American military information while a serving member of the US armed forces.
You might - and I would - argue that Manning did something that is a good thing for the world, but that doesn't mean saying that it was a crime is 'post fact'. 'Post fact' is redefining the idea of 'illegal' to be 'only things I don't personally agree with', which is not a definition that survives contact with the real world.
Three Requirements for defence of necessity: (1) Urgent situation of imminent peril or danger (2) No reasonable legal alternative (3) Proportionality between harm inflicted and harm avoided
What if the bread my family needed was millions of dollars in cash from a bank... It was (1) urgent, (2) hard to do get any other way, (3) its not like anybody got hurt anyway.
