Today, Glenn Greenwald in Salon’s The wretched mind of the American authoritarian, documents the responses in some of the most virulent media outlets to Wikileaks and the kind of “punishment” they would like to see Assange subjected to.
In The Chicago Tribune Jonah Goldberg headlined: “Why is Assange still alive?" and asks: ”So again, I ask: Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?“. Fox News, not a medium prone to subtlety, suggests other tactics: ”Explore opportunities for the president to designate WikiLeaks and its officers as enemy combatants, paving the way for non-judicial actions against them“. The Washington Post, instead, prefers a military response: ”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“. The Atlantic’s method of extermination is, like The Atlantic itself, rather rancid: "Lincoln, and FDR as well, would have pretty much tried to hang the Wikileaks founder for treason.”
Garrote, Guantanamo, military invasion or hanging; mainstream media surely has a penchant for extreme solutions.
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