If they raid Ecuadors embassy.

CRAZY! I doubt that a mass murderer would even get this level of attention in the same circumstance.

Look up Andrew Alderman, Victor Demborskis, or Jakub Tomczak, for example

He probably won't be sleeping with any women. In fact, thanks to the news stories questioning his conduct with women, he may never sleep with any woman ever again. (My guess. What woman would want to be the next number on his sexual balance sheet.)

I really don't understand the fanatical zeal about getting Assange.

My best guess is that he embarrassed the US diplomatic corps and our government.

Are they going to say that the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi is proof that Assange's revelations hurt people? Is that the next game? If so, the loss of an ambassador's life is not worth it. If not, there were far more reasons for Al Qaeda to attack in Benghazi than Assange's leaks. Stevens was reportedly essential in toppling Ghadafi and fighting Al Qaeda in Libya. Assange's leak brought that fact to the attention of ignorant Americans but would not have alerted the people on the ground in Libya who are so closely involved in the intrigue and revolution there.

So, I just do not understand why the excessive zeal about Assange. He has been pretty much silenced as far as I can tell. You'd think that "they" would want to keep him silenced and miserable in the embassy of Ecuador if they dislike him so much.

This story does not make sense. I don't think we know the whole story.

and they're now interested to be sure his behavior isn't regarded as normative

The Swedish authorities were in communication with Assange's lawyer to try to schedule an interrogation, but as soon as the lawyer learned the authorities intended to take Assange into custody, Assange skipped out of Sweden for the UK. The authorities then thought they had an agreement for Assange to return to Sweden for interrogation in October 2010, but Assange stiffed them on that too. Based on this experience, the Swedish authorities opposed bail in the UK, but did not prevail on that. Assange dragged out his suit for a year and a half, and then when he had definitely lost in the UK, he didn't bother with an appeal to Strasbourg but simply jumped bail and hid out in the Ecuadorian embassy

So he's a high-profile scofflaw from both the Swedish PoV and also from the UK's PoV

It's certainly not to Sweden's advantage to say, "Oh, he's too much of a pain-in-the-butt to bother with", and it's not to the UK's advantage to say that either

I don't think there is any danger that exposes like Wikileaks will become the rule.

I do think we need media to be much more aggressive about getting and reporting facts. Wikileaks demonstrated that the "news" we get is so much pablum. The idea of embedding reporters is to me incompatible with a truly free press. Reporters should have much broader access to facts, should dare to print stories that are not sycophantic, to tell the truth regardless of how it hurts the powerful -- or the weak -- for that matter.

You can fool a people with propaganda. Hitler did it. Stalin did. And they were not the only ones. But for a democracy to succeed whether in war and peace, its people have to be informed. It's people have to have access to different sources of information that represent different points of view and to critical analysis of the quality of the nation's leadership.

I just don't think we will survive as a nation unless we limit our government's ability to suppress historical information. I am not talking about military plans or truly sensitive matters. But information about war crimes or errors by troops in combat should not be withheld from voters. That makes it impossible for voters to make fully informed decisions when voting.

So I think Wikileaks was an anomaly. I think our government will protect itself from such breaches in the future -- at least insofar as the scope of the leaks -- but, I think that Wikileaks served a rather positive purpose in that it awakened Americans to the fact that the government is not just hiding strategically important military secrets but also a lot of simply embarrassing facts about misconduct and mistakes -- as well as the extent to which diplomats indulge in personal gossip.

The Wikileaks about how the State Department was trying to get confidential information from UN staff and delegates was very troubling. Frankly, I'm surprised that the UN is still in the US after that revelation. It really makes the US look like a bunch of amateur schoolkids. Ridiculous. We used to accuse the Soviets of that kind of trick.

It's stupid because it is likely to result in a lot of misinformation sent our way.

and there are folk who specialize in such matters

Your comments strongly suggest you weren't reading the news in the Bush II era:

Revealed: US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war
Secret document details American plan to bug phones and emails of key Security Council members
Read the memo
Martin Bright, Ed Vulliamy in New York and Peter Beaumont
The Observer, Saturday 1 March 2003 23.18 EST

The United States is conducting a secret 'dirty tricks' campaign against UN Security Council delegations in New York as part of its battle to win votes in favour of war against Iraq.

Details of the aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the emails of UN delegates in New York, are revealed in a document leaked to The Observer.

The disclosures were made in a memorandum written by a top official at the National Security Agency - the US body which intercepts communications around the world - and circulated to both senior agents in his organisation and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency asking for its input ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/mar/02/usa.iraq

Look at the date on that story: 2003

Wikileaks did not expose US spying on the UN: that story came out seven years before Wikileaks published any State Department cables

And the idiotic State Department cables that Wikileaks published did not show that SoS Clinton was ordering people to spy on the UN: what they showed was that some idiotic boilerplate had routinely been added to the SoS transmissions back in the Bush II era, and the professional diplomats paid so little attention to that bullshizz boilerplate, that nobody noticed it enough to remove it. It was laughably craptastic, too: whatever Bush II era moran wrote it really thought professional diplomats were gonna walk around the UN rooting through trashcans for credit card slips and such, without attracting attention

if you look closer how the words parse at face value, it starts to sound like you are investing your money in or with banks to grab Assange...

when dealing with bookies...

different knowledge base for the underlying parsing tools

It's true that Ecuador at one time did accuse the UK of threatening to raid their embassy. But the UK said Ecuador had misunderstood. A few days of diplomatic excitement followed

But about three weeks ago, Correa said "We consider this unfortunate incident over" -- which simply means that Ecuador will not be making the claim again

So you're flogging a corpse

Britain has withdrawn a threat to enter Ecuador's embassy in London to arrest WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who has taken refuge there, President Rafael Correa said on Saturday, taking the heat out of the diplomatic standoff.

"We consider this unfortunate incident over, after a grave diplomatic error by the British in which they said they would enter our embassy," Correa said in a weekly media address.

In a statement, Ecuador's government said it had received "a communication from the British Foreign Office which said that there was no threat to enter the embassy" ...

Ecuador says Britain withdraws threat to raid embassy in Assange standoff
Source: Reuters
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/08/25/uk-wikileaks-assange-ecuador-idUKBRE87O0EV20120825
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=207508

Oh, this is the 3 week old story.

Nevermind.

Sid