While that may actually be true, I’m curious why you would trust that statement from the US Government (the “indictment”) while ignoring the other (that’s “classified”).
If you trust that there’s doubt as to why things were classified and that they may have been hiding things, why would you also trust that they claim people have been endangered? Again, not saying it’s not true, just that blindly taking the word of US prosecutors seems short sighted.
If this was a tradeoff between "not expose abuses by the US government" and "name these civillians", I think your point would be reasonable. But there was no tradeoff. Wikileaks was just lazy about it.
Due to the limited time window for release, the choice was either to release as-is or to never release at all.
Calling Wikileaks lazy is myopic. They didn't have the resources to redact the documents in the time window they had to work with, and they asked for help. The US govt knew exactly what would happen if they refused to help. It was a calculated move to maximise collateral damage and help drive the narrative that you now subscribe to. They didn't give a single fuck about the collateral damage, their response was focused on discrediting and prosecuting the source of the leak to send a message to anyone else considering exposing their wrongdoings.
The US govt acted like a bunch of insidious cartoon villains, and gaslighting its citizens about how this situation played out.
Which, specifically? I have heard that claim before. Would you mind linking to the specific leaks that endangered civilians? WikiLeaks is online and searchable, but I have not seen them.
Maybe those were helping (unknowingly) US troops to kill other people...
The situation to me seems to be only a few steps removed from something along of the lines of $government outright taking some civilian hostages and threatening to execute one of them every time someone reports on any of $government's wrongdoings. In a scenario like that, would you also say that the act of reporting is immoral because it endangers civilians - and hence cheer on $government's long hand punishing the reporter?
Can you point us to any evidence of this, other than e.g. a general or politician making vague claims with no specifics?
I'm not saying that no one in the various nations that USA has invaded haven't been hurt by those invasions, but can any of that be directly attributed to leaks?
There's also a statement from the spokesman for the Taliban saying they will go after the people named: https://www.newsweek.com/taliban-says-it-will-target-names-e...
...WikiLeaks had tried to comply with a private White House request to redact the names of informants before publication, but the US authorities had refused to assist.
Thanks, Obama. Whatever, let's forget about that. The main point is, this material was released a decade ago. If anyone in USA military or intel had learned of a collaborator harmed as a result of the leaks, they would have crowed about it ad nauseam. Instead, crickets. Therefore, this didn't happen. Linking decade-old fear-mongering about "risks" supports the point rather than contradicting it.
As addressed in sibling thread, it has been a decade. The USA military-industrial complex is highly motivated to manufacture more reasons to silence Assange. If this had happened once in that decade, we would have heard about it.
Kosovo for one would disagree with you
This is objectively wrong. Operation unified response in Haiti in 2010, Operation Continuing Promise in the Caribbean and Latin America in 2011. Then Enduring Promise back in Latin America in 2018. Operation Tomodachi after the Japan earthquake in 2011.
Then of course there is the Cold War which lead to the breakup of the Soviet Union and the chance for political self determination of over a dozen countries.
Your convenient 60 year boundary just excludes the Korean War which led to the prosperous and democratic country of South Korea.
The issue is that laws not ethics matter now. So IMO the rape accusations have nothing to do with the ethics of his job.
What is the difference between Russia where journalists are killed and "the west" where journalists are tortured and pushed into suicide.
EDIT: Quoting from Assange's indictment:
"After agreeing to receive classified documents from Manning and aiding, abetting, and causing Manning to provide classified documents, the superseding indictment charges that Assange then published on WikiLeaks classified documents that contained the unredacted names of human sources who provided information to United States forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to U.S. State Department diplomats around the world. These human sources included local Afghans and Iraqis, journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates, and political dissidents from repressive regimes. According to the superseding indictment, Assange’s actions risked serious harm to United States national security to the benefit of our adversaries and put the unredacted named human sources at a grave and imminent risk of serious physical harm and/or arbitrary detention."