WikiLeaks is holding US global power to account. The Guardian UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-embassy-cables-us-global-power

Official America's reaction to the largest leak of confidential government files in history is tipping over towards derangement. What the White House initially denounced as a life-threatening "criminal" act and Hillary Clinton branded an "attack on the international community" has been taken a menacing stage further by the newly emboldened Republican right.

WikiLeaks' release of 250,000 United States embassy cables – shared with the Guardian and other international newspapers – was an act of terrorism, Senator Peter King declared. Sarah Palin called for its founder Julian Assange to be hunted down as an "anti-American operative with blood on his hands", while former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has demanded that whoever leaked the files should be executed for treason.

Not much truck with freedom of information, then, in the land of the free.

when, instead of facing (never mind dealing with) the criticisms levelled against them by an individual (the latest being Red Ken Livingstone, the former, very successful Lord Mayor of London), they complain that the individual concerned is (implicitly) arbitrarily hostile to the US. A personal thing, and nothing to do with its geopolitics, past or present? Absolutely weird. As if the US were the centre of the universe and the touchstone of all truth and rectitude.

A quote from today's Daily Mail, very similar to an earlier complaint reported, concerning someone else:

"His position, however, should be seen in the wider context of his anti-American positions on many issues and his cosiness to the likes of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro."

He could have been referring to the Pope or to his predecessor.

The author of that little gem was responding to Livingstone's attempt to make the US Embassy pay the congestion charge, and his branding the Ambassador to London, Robert Tuttle, as a "chiselling little crook"

It could be that Wikileaks has served a vital service; which ultimately may save the United States from itself.

Thanks for the thread, go west young man.