Rep. Ron Paul defends WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, asks some important questions

The news cycle has been abuzz lately over WikiLeaks, a website that publishes to the internet documents from anonymous news sources and leaks. What recently catapulted the site into headlines was the November 2010 release of U.S. diplomatic cables, after which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced the group and Peter King, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, called the site "a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States."

But Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) has taken to the floor of Congress to raise some excellent questions regarding the entire scandal. First Paul wonders if this is not a case of "killing the messenger for the bad news." He then compares the WikiLeaks situation to the Pentagon Papers scandal of the early 1970s, in which it was revealed via classified documents that the government lied about the Gulf of Tonkin attack, which led directly to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Paul then posits a series of questions:

No. 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?

No. 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?

No. 3: Why is the hostility directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our government's failure to protect classified information?

No. 4: Are we getting our money's worth of the $80 billion per year spent on intelligence gathering?

No. 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths -- lying us into war or WikiLeaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?

No. 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the 1st Amendment and the independence of the internet?

No. 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near-universal attacks on WikiLeaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed policy of empire than it is about national security?

No. 8 : Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in the time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?

No. 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it's wrong?

Rep. Paul closes his statement with this: "Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised, 'Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.'"

It's a powerful statement, one that tends to go against the opinion held by his own party. Certainly they are good questions to consider. What do you think?