These statements from Julian Assange defending his not redacting the names of Afghan informants, highlighted by Joshua Foust, are really confusing for me:
• He claimed that many informers in Afghanistan were “acting in a criminal way” by sharing false information with Nato authorities.
• He said the White House knew that informants’ names could be exposed before the release but did nothing to help WikiLeaks to vet the data.
• He insisted that any risk to informants’ lives was outweighed by the overall importance of publishing the information.
Mr Assange said: “No one has been harmed, but should anyone come to harm of course that would be a matter of deep regret — our goal is justice to innocents, not to harm them. That said, if we were forced into a position of publishing all of the archives or none of the archives we would publish all of the archives because it’s extremely important to the history of this war.”
I don’t get it. What kind of anti-war activist is as dismissive of the “collateral damage” caused by his actions as a Weekly Standard blogger might be about Israel bombing Iran?
