Us Investigators can find no link between Manning and Assange. What excuse will the US manufacture next to get?

[New Formula CAt in the Tin Foil HAt]

Assange?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-...-wikileaks
Read the question Harold, they can't prove it.
The only spy here is Manning, a US Citizen.
@ "NOTHING GOOD came out of what Assange did"

I think the people of Tunisia might disagree with you.

[Harold Balz]

Espionage is all they need to hang him, posession of Top Secret documents is all the evidence necessary

[colossalbeam787]

He had the stuff, he released it, really, no rocket science here.

[Hawkeye]

Did you read the story??

So we've established the Assange doesn't PERSONALLY check the email at wikileaks.... and nothing else.

What they already have CLEARLY established is that Manning committed acts of espionage. The materials resulting from that espionage were transmitted to Wikileaks.

The founder and CEO of Wikileaks.... and the person who determines what gets "leaked" is Assange.

So... he isn't the author of the story... he's the editor.

But... conspiracy laws in the U.S. are sufficiently broad to hang Assange. And I hope he spends the rest of his miserable life in prison.

NOTHING GOOD came out of what Assange did... and continues to do. And people who think that "free nations" don't need to keep secrets..... are.... frankly mentally handicapped. That is an asinine argument.... with no support in logic or fact.

EDIT #2: If you think that WIKILEAKS is primarily responsible for what is happening in Tunisia.... I need to know where you buy your drugs. Because that's retarded frankly.

That's the equivalent of stating a murder investigation CAUSED the murder in question..... it is logic in reverse.... and it makes NO SENSE.

The people of Tunisia were aware of government corruption because they EXPERIENCED IT..... the fact that the United States KNEW about the corruption for the last 5 years or more..... is NOT what caused REVOLT.

Unless you want to make the case that people around the world react not to what they PERSONALLY experience.... but rather what the government of the United States KNOWS about (because that includes the internal affairs of just about every nation on the planet).

Typical Eurotrash (Yes I know where New Zealand is... you are still European in attitude...i.e. let others sort out your problems and cast stones at the mediators)...... you blame the U.S. for what is going on in outside Europe's back door..... and do not even BEGIN to understand the nature of the issue.

[MikeGolf]

The US does not have to prove a link to Assange to convict Manning. And the fact that Assange abandoned Manning to his fate the moment Manning could not help him with anything demonstrates Assange's cynical attitude towards the people he uses.

What I cannot figure out is why anybody would support Assange. There was no 'smoking gun' in any of the stuff he released and the most serious thing release was a gun-camera video that Assange edited so as to present a misleading picture.

Besides the claims that Wikileaks is responsible for the events in Tunisia are nothing more but hot air and attempts at self-promotion from Assange:

"Ben Wedeman, probably the best TV reporter employed by an American channel (he works for CNN) when it comes to the Arab world, is in Tunis and had this to say about Ben Ali's stunning fall yesterday, the WikiLeaks theory, and the public fury that amounted to the first succesful Arab revolt in a long time: "No one I spoke to in Tunis today mentioned twitter, facebook or wikileaks. It's all about unemployment, corruption, oppression." "

Notice how the people reporting from inside the country disagree with you?

[peetr]

It's amazing the amount of misinformation that's out there regarding the wikileaks disclosures, that could be easily answered by reading wikileaks own mission statement or by reading the documents yourself. The major news outlets are either not doing a good job on these stories,or are participating in the coverup, by misstating the facts and misrepresenting their significance. Unfortunately the US public is confused by the coverup, and unaware that the US government is actively trying to undo our freedoms, such as the freedom of speech and the right to expect journalists to have access to sensitive stories, and report on them accurately. The majority of the leaks show massive deception on the part of the politicians, military and diplomats, sometimes at a level that should be prosecuted as fraud or treason.

Regardless of whether one views manning as a spy today, in a few years hopefully he will be applauded for bringing facts to the conjecture we've all had about lying by politicians and diplomats.

As far as the attempt to criminalize what wikileaks does, again, it's pretty clear that they have been helping whistleblowers around the world for a few years, and this is only different because of the shear amount of documents leaked. Wikileaks is only doing what journalists have forgotten to do, or are too hampered by their ties to the organizations they are supposed to be reporting on.

As for Tunisia, it's widely reported that the revolution there was not just helped by the wikileaks disclosure, but that Twitter and Facebook were instrumental in helping the Tunisians become aware of the atrocities that were being committed in their country. Facebook even had to reroute their servers to avoid a concerted effort by the government of Tunisia to hack into Tunisians facebook accounts to delete references to the murders of citizens, and to collect the names and addresses of those who were posting criticisms of the regime. Communicating by Facebook was almost entirely responsible for the people living in the Tunisian cities to find out about the murders, and to begin to topple their fascist/dictatorial government.

The article referenced by another poster here, actually does say that wikileaks disclosures may have helped the revolt, although the reporter downplays the significance, he doesn't refute it. And it's only his editorial opinion that it wasn't significant, while his source for the info obviously thinks that it was a factor. Clearly a bias showing.

I just heard an interview with Facebook, where they described the scope of the hacking, it was country wide, and was going on nearly 24 hours a day, in a way they had never seen done before. As a result of the news about the hacking, Tunisians were signing up for Facebook in record numbers even as the government was trying to stifle their free speech and hide the crimes. .

This type of behavior is typical of fascist governments, and unfortunately is also typical of the US government response to wikileaks. To try to remove the leaker, instead of addressing the frauds and deceptions disclosed.

Manning unfortunately made a big mistake, and contacted a hacker who was an FBI informant (as a way to avoid prosecution for hacking) who then turned him in. Wikileaks did not abandon him, he just f'd up and got himself caught because even though he'd been warned not to, he couldn't help but talk about what he did. Wikileaks couldn't help him once that happened, and they have a fund to help with his defense, whenever that happens. This whole thing would have gone much differently had he not opened his mouth to a snitch.