Had Assange not sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, he would have been on his way to the kind of American torture pit Chelsea Manning had to endure.
This prospect was obscured by the grim farce played out in Sweden.
"It's a laughing stock," said James Catlin, one of Assange's Australian lawyers. "It is as if they make it up as they go along".It may have seemed that way, but there was always serious purpose. In 2008, a secret Pentagon document prepared by the "Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch" foretold a detailed plan to discredit WikiLeaks and smear Assange personally.
The "mission" was to destroy the "trust" that was WikiLeaks' "centre of gravity". This would be achieved with threats of "exposure [and] criminal prosecution". Silencing and criminalizing such an unpredictable source of truth-telling was the aim.
Comment: See also: Celebrating the multibillion arms deal: Trump & Tillerson awkwardly join in Saudi sword dance