They don't forget. They leave it out on purpose because it destroys their argument.

Oh. If only he'd have done this thing that I'm telling you, without mentioning the well known reason why he is against doing that thing!

Well he became afraid of extradition conveniently at the point at which he was facing extradition. Before then he was quite happy to spend lots of time in the West apparently unconcerned by the threat. Something that is often left out...

The UK was happy to extradite him to Sweden, we extradite people to the US as long as they aren't going to be executed. So quite why the UK extraditing him to Sweden who would then extradite him to the US is a plausible conspiracy never really gets explained.

In the UK extraditions, especially ones to the US, are usually won or lost in the court of public opinion. I suspect that Assange feels he would have a better chance of resisting extradition in the UK than in Sweden.

See the case of Gary McKinnon as an example (although McKinnon had much stronger grounds to appeal on than I expect Assange would)

Particularly since he could still appeal back to the UK if Sweden tried to extradite him.

Also weird this wasn't an argument he brought up while fighting the initial extradition to Sweden.

In fairness, most people only become afraid of something when they're facing it.

As for the conspiracy theory, maybe it was the product of paranoid thinking. A more obvious conspiracy theory to me is that the US saw an opportunity to smear Assange and lent on Sweden to trump up the charges.

And yet the best they could do was 'these girls who said that he had quasi consensual ('I was sleeping') sex with them and want him to do a HIV test'?

That's a pretty low bar for a smear campaign.