I think the charges against Assange are weak, but that he should face them. I don't believe he ever will, though.

I do not believe in the conspiracy theory that the US wants to spirit him out of Sweden; in fact, my personal belief is that if he himself flew to JFK Airport tomorrow, his only problem would be that we would take 8 hours of waiting in a room at customs before informing him that we wouldn't let him in the country at all. A lot of the hypothesizing about the US kidnapping or assassinating Assange makes sense only on a message board. In reality, just about the worst thing that could happen for the US is for Assange to suddenly disappear.

Meanwhile, I think things are playing out in the embassy exactly how everyone watching it figured it would, and exactly as Assange hoped: he's waiting out the charges, which grow staler and less immediate to the victim and harder to prosecute by the day. Eventually, Sweden will stop caring enough to force extradition. He'll never be able to go back to Sweden again without risking prosecution, so he just won't, and that will be the end of the story.

The comparison to Polanski is apt.

Let me just say this in advance: I am a person on the Internet who probably does not agree with you about this stuff. You need to be ok with that. I'm certainly ok with you, a total stranger, not agreeing with me!