He was an arrogant man as well and treated some of his staff like crap. Can't see them lasting too long.

Yeah. Though it is funny how those who point out the ills of others, often get labelled as criminals themselves.

Is he really a bad guy? or is labelling him as one detrimental to his character, thus making him and his website "Wikileaks" less credible?.

With how corrupt US politicians have become it was pretty obvious that this would happen, can't go bad mouthing the US banks, they line the pockets of pretty much every person sitting in congress.

US banks hold way too much power, any president that gets elected just becomes their pawn.

Not just the US GOV.

A good point indeed. Our society is no where near perfect. While we hope that our government officials are looking out for our best interests, content will ALWAYS be covered up for what they deem as the best interest to the public. Also given the amount of hidden corruption where gov't officials benefit, they definitely would protect US financial based firms from such information exposure.

Another point to note is this. Let's say Osama Bin Laden was caught alive, and the military wanted to extract info from him, it's very unlikely that he would give up information in a court room basis, so they may turn to torture to get it out of him. The information could be vital in stopping a terrorist attack against a city, but on the flip side it would mean exposing the US government as hypocrites for conducting torture practices. It depends on how people want to look at it and they take a greater good approach when it comes to those things. I guess the bureaucracy also forces them to do unethical things in the name of trying to get something done quickly.

In short, a site like Wikileaks would put dents in their plans.

They have the right to provide or deny their service as they see fit. It's their FREEDOM of choice.

Also, some secrets I neither want to know nor do I have any business knowing. I'm not in the military so military affairs should be just that.

I'm not against WikiLeaks, but I'm certainly critical to a lot of what they've done. First of all Wikileaks can be very tabloid.

While they do shed light on secrets that shouldn't be secret a lot of they're announcements have been attention seeking that might do more harm than good. For instance - the ambassadeur cables - US ambassadeurs talking crap about other countries, because they were giving their exact, unadulterated opinion of other countries's governments back to their superiors. The superiors need this honest feedback, and if the ambassadeurs have to start sweet-talking to their own government because they're afraid of being exposed, the government could get the wrong idea.

Free flow of information is one thing. That doesn't mean you have the right to know what Obama thinks of Sarkozy. That is a private matter. His political agenda is a public matter. Sometimes exposure can lead to situations being handled with less honesty, less trust and, ironically, less openness. So while I think WikiLeaks is important and that they're doing a lot of important work, they should steer away from being every hacker's tabloid pbublisher, and carefuly choose news that people need to know about, not just the gossip they want to hear about.