Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore offered to post bail for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, putting up $20,000 of his own money.
Assange was granted bail today by a London judge.
Moore, a liberal documentary filmmaker who won an Academy Award in 2002 for Bowling for Columbine, the story of the aftermath of the deadly Columbine High School shooting that claimed 12 students and one teacher, wrote an extensive editorial on why he was one of several people who made personal money available for Assange's bail in The Daily Beast.
Moore also offered his website, servers and domain names to help keep WikiLeaks alive as it "continues its work to expose the crimes that were concocted in secret and carried out in our name and with our tax dollars."
He suggests the war in Iraq would never have been authorized had WikiLeaks existed, sparing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. He also claims had the whistleblowing site existed in 2001, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks may have been avoided.
How?
If a document that indicated Osama bin Laden was determined to strike the United States and other information suggesting the method would be hijackings was released, Moore asks, "What would Congress or the FAA have done? Was there not a greater chance that someone, somewhere would have done something . . . "
On Iraq, Moore asks, "If a WikiLeaks had revealed at that time that there were, in fact, no weapons of mass destruction, do you think that the war would have been launched . . . ?"
Moore acknowledges the leaks to date have "perhaps" caused the U.S. unintended harm to diplomatic negotiations, but he argues that's the price you pay "when you and your government take us into a war based on a lie."
You can read his statement to the London court here.
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