Comments on Richard Miniter, Facebook: An excellent Washington Times editorial today

An excellent...

The United States Congress retains the ability to issue a "Letter of Marque or Reprisal." Place a bounty on Mr Assange, and with a substantial bonus if he is delivered alive for trial. Offer another bounty for proof of substantial disruption to any electronic system used to harm the United States. Turn the private market loose and see what they can deliver.

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(in reply to Richard Miniter)
Look it up, the US did not sign the Paris Treaty, or Declaration, of 1856. Also it is questionable as to whether that would be a valid use of the Treaty power by the Senate and the Executive to override the Amendment power of the House and the States, if we had joined that effort, which again we did not. Generally speaking I am not a supporter of Ron Paul but he is correct on this issue. The power of the Congress to issue these documents remains intact.

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(in reply to Alex Boyle)

        The European snatch and grabs of terror suspects in places like
        Italy may make rounding up a little shit like this problematic.

The Euro police history may work in favor of an American op. People disappear all the time over there. It provides plausible deniability. Who knows who is after Assange? The people who hunt him may not know who they are working for. Assange is a crazy and paranoid jerk and he is lost in his own wilderness of mirrors. Those outside have to be protected from him. Who will protect him?

He is a citizen of Australia but will they give him sanctuary or stop an American operation? If the US pursues him in Sweden or Italy then the host nation may object but that would be an issue between the US and that country or between Australia and that country or Australia and the US. When you commit crimes or attack a nation other than your own you must realize that legally you have no claims or rights as an individual, except as a host country chooses to grant them to you.

There are Conventions protecting stateless individuals and people traveling from genocide and human trafficking and other crimes. They provide little protection to a criminal engaged in actions against a foreign country contrary to the Laws of War. International Law is the Law of Nations. If Mr Assange in his actions on behalf of those at war with the United States was not acting on behalf of the government of Australia, his place of citizenship, nor of Sweden, his place of residence, then he is no better than a pirate or unlawful combatant. He could be killed or hauled off to GITMO.

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(in reply to Alex Boyle)

        I see this as an act of possession of stolen goods, than making war

Dealers in classified documents survive in the cracks by proving themselves useful to both sides. Once Kruschev proposed to Kennedy, who was complaining about the waste of resources fighting the Cold War spy game in Berlin, that they pool their resources and form a cartel. That way they would only have to buy the worthless paper once.

We will have to agree to disagree about whether to consider Mr Assange as a mere Fence or as an active hostile agent. The war is real, it is a fact. By dealing with the combatants or knowingly giving them aid, which he has been informed he is doing, Mr Assange and his confederates have placed themselves in the position of injuring not a private party but participating in an attack on a sovereign country.

Mr O'Brien has written well researched and entertaining books. My taste for the genre was formed long before I went to sea myself. starting with E.M. Forster's Hornblower novels.