“bizarre request”

This isn’t the NY Times at its most objective:

“LONDON (AP) — Ecuador’s embassy in London said Saturday that ambassador Anna Alban was scheduled to travel to her country’s capital for talks on the bizarre request for political asylum made by Wikileaks chief Julian Assange.”

What’s so “bizarre” about it?

I don’t know what really happened in Sweden, but I don’t see why Assange as a journalist was under any obligation to protect U.S. military secrets. Even if he’s guilty as charged in Sweden, he might reasonably worry that that could be used as leverage for something else that has nothing do with it.

Or is the supposed bizarreness that fact that he chose Ecuador? I don’t see that as remotely bizarre either. Ecuador is one of the first countries one thinks of as taking alternative positions on the order of things.

We need good leak sites.