Julian Assange’s Wikileaks has brought the US far right out of the woodwork again, where they have been hibernating since President Bush’s days. One, Marc Thiessen, seems to be suggesting Assange should be kidnapped and renditioned by the US for revealing information. Trouble is, Mr Thiessen has done exactly the same thing himself, and boasts about it.
A conservative American bloggist has called for Wikileaks’ Julian Assange to be possibly kidnapped and renditioned…the erstwhile method of the Bush Administration for dealing with someone it didn’t like. People were plucked off the streets of cities around the world and held incommunicado for maybe five years while Marc Thiessen served in the White House.
Here’s what Mr Thiessen had to say in the Washington Post:
Assange is a non-U.S. citizen operating outside the territory of the United States. This means the government has a wide range of options for dealing with him. It can employ not only law enforcement but also intelligence and military assets to bring Assange to justice and put his criminal syndicate out of business. (underline added)
The first step is for the Justice Department to indict Assange. Such an indictment could be sealed to prevent him from knowing that the United States is seeking his arrest. The United States should then work with its international law enforcement partners to apprehend and extradite him.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/02/AR2010080202627.html
Mr Thiessen is, among other things, an author. Here’s what the website of his book, Courting Disaster, says about him:
In Courting Disaster, Thiessen reveals previously undisclosed details about how CIA interrogations of captured terrorists were directly responsible for foiling multiple follow on attacks after 9/11. For the first time ever, Thiessen introduces readers to the actual interrogators who broke Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other senior terrorists… (underline added)
http://www.courtingdisaster.com/biography
I wonder how Assange’s work is any different to what Thiessen did in his book? It seems that, if you leak on the right, it’s OK…but it you leak on the left, you’re liable to suffer the horror show of being kidnapped and ‘disappeared’ by agents of the US Administration.
Perhaps Mr Thiessen could be asked to explain his double standards…that could give him another, long, book to write.
– Bill Rowlings, CEO, Civil Liberties Australia