most effective way of dissent is to ridicule and embarrass them. Why bother with challenging or "debunking" their lies when you can just make fun of them.

sadly Assange was not a "funny man" and totally lacked the gift of humor. So the only tool he had was his rightousness coupled with his will to embarrass.

Sadly for him he is a self obsessed and attention seeking cretin. Would he have had any charisma or the gift of humor the outrage of what was done against him would be a lot bigger. One can only dream of the damage that could have been done against these criminals in the US and Britain (and the EU) by somebody who knows how to package these things into better. The raggedy Wikileaks outlet was never going to be capable of this. A shame because anyone who believes in civil rights all over the world deserves better.

You know that's not true because if the US govt were what you seem to allege (extradites and arrests mere critics) then you wouldn't be safe to post this here.

It's also a national pastime to crap on the government. Are you not aware that thousands of reporters and millions of people embarrass the US government every day?

You appear to have a different definition of "embarrass the government" than I do. Embarrassing a government is an action that they are willing to kill people over (like reporters). There's a big difference between leaking state secrets that materially harms the government and poking fun at them. One will get you disappeared and tortured-not-tortured, the other is a useful distraction.

Lions don't attack every animal that sets foot on their turf.

The release of "Collateral Murder" damaged public opinion of the US invasion of Iraq and US foreign policy in general. If journalists embarrass the US government by telling them their nose looks funny, Assange embarrassed them by pulling their pants down at the half time show at the Superbowl.