Sarah Palin is demanding the world hunt down the director of Wikileaks “with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.”

On her Facebook site, Palin described Julian Assange as “an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.”

Assange, who created the non-profit, whistle-blowing site to expose government secrets, has made no appearance recently. On Sunday, Wikileaks began the release of a quarter-million U.S. diplomatic messages from embassies around the world.

“What steps were taken to stop” Assange? Palin asked. Why haven’t NATO, the EU and anyone else been asked to disrupt Wikileaks?

“Shouldn’t they at least have had their financial assets frozen?”

The blame, she said, lies with “the Obama administration’s incompetent handling of this whole fiasco.”

Assange, 40, has refused to disclose the source of the leaked documents although it’s believed to be U.S. Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, who has been in custody since May because of an earlier leak.

Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly thinks whoever leaked the embassy memos should be executed. Wikileaks, he noted with a knowing nod, is “based in Sweden.”

The Republican congressman most likely to take over the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, King of New York, said he wants Wikileaks designated a “foreign terrorist organization.”

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said “WikiLeaks and people that disseminate information to people like this are criminals.”

As for legal action, he said, “We are looking at a whole host of things and I wouldn’t rule anything out.”

The Associated Press on Tuesday quoted an unnamed government official as saying U.S. lawyers were poring over legal manuals to see if Assange could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.

Sweden, where Wikileaks is based, has been investigating Assange because of accusations of sexual assault that were dropped and then renewed. Sweden has also refused him residency. On Tuesday, Ecuador offered residency to Assange, who is Australian.

In an interview with Forbes magazine on Nov. 11, Assange said his next target will be international banking. The private sector, he said, covers about half of the documents sent clandestinely to Wikileaks but not yet published — over and above the current U.S. diplomatic cables.

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“It could take down a bank or two,” he told Forbes.

Earlier this year, Wikileaks revealed more than a half-million military documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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