Bradley Manning Revealed Crimes Far Worse Than Those He Supposedly Committed

I have not yet seen the outcome of Bradley Manning's sentencing, but I continue to be sickened by the persecution of Manning by the U. S. Military and the Obama administration while those who authorized and/or committed war crimes - yes, I am talking about George Bush, Dick Cheney and a number of others  - continue to go unpunished.  Apparently, Barack Obama and the U.S. military have forgotten the standard that was applied at Nuremberg to those who committed similar crimes.  I personally do not want to hear any more blather about American exceptionalism as long as war criminals go unpunished while whistle blowers are persecuted.  A piece in Huffington Post expands on this topic.  Here are highlights:

In the media world, even national security hawks like The Daily Beast's Eli Lake concede that Manning's leaks had "a lot of public benefit." But very few have argued Manning should go free.

Did Manning break the law? According to the letter, yes he did. But since when did we presume to hold people in government accountable to the law?.

The Bush administration lied to the American people in order to justify the war crime of attacking Saddam Hussein's Iraq. That crime qualified, in the words of the Nuremberg Tribunal, as "the supreme international crime differing only from other crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Trillions of dollars and the death and suffering of millions of people were the consequences of that crime.

The Bush gang also secretly ordered warrantless surveillance of Americans' domestic communications without involving the courts, a blatant violation of both constitutional and statutory law. And don't forget the setting up of a worldwide torture regime that directly violated longstanding international law as well as domestic law, specifically a Convention against torture, passed by Congress and signed by Ronald Reagan, which specifies that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever... may be invoked as a justification of torture."

Yet, nobody but the most marginal voices in our politics ever dared to suggest the Bush administration should be prosecuted according to the letter of the law.

In the U.S., there are crimes the government approves of and those it doesn't. Contrast Bradley Manning's punishment, for example, with that of the commander in charge of the torture at Abu Ghraib. Manning was subjected to abusive detention and faces more than a hundred years in prison. Col. Thomas M. Pappas, who oversaw the brutal torment of hundreds of detainees got an $8,000 fine.

Bradley Manning's leaks revealed crimes far worse than the ones he has supposedly committed. The Collateral Murder video shows the sickening slaughter of a group of people in Iraq, including journalists and rescuers.

One State Department cable revealed to the world for the first time that U.S. special operations forces raided a house in Iraq in 2006 and summarily executed one man, four women, two children, and three infants -- all shot in the head. Although Phillip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, brought the incident to the attention of then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration failed to respond.

Manning's leaks also revealed the fact that the Obama administration colluded with the Yemeni dictatorship of Ali Abdullah Saleh to execute a secret war without the consent of Congress and systematically lie about it. Yet Manning, who blew the whistle on this criminality, is the only one facing legal prosecution..

History, at least, will look very kindly on the actions of Bradley Manning and harshly on the crimes of the overlords he challenged. The real task is for Americans to get to the point where the country -- and its government -- is ruled by law, and not by men.

 Americans wonder how the horrors of Nazi Germany came to be.  If Americans do not demand that the rue f law prevail, America is well on its way towards a totalitarian government that punishes anyone who exposes its lies and worse yet, its crimes.

Bradley Manning Verdict: Not Guilty of Aiding the Enemy

Bradley Manning was found guilty of violating the Espionage Act by a military judge but was acquitted of the separate and far more serious charge of “aiding the enemy.”  Manning now “faces a possible maximum sentence of more than 130 years in military jail when his sentence is handed down.  Personally, I hope Manning receives a light sentence.  I believe that he was a whistle blower who provided an invaluable service in exposing some of the war crimes committed by American troops in the fool's errands launched by the feckless Chimperator Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney.  What I find most disturbing is that while Barack Obama has feign horror at the war crimes authorized by the Bush/Cheney regime, his administration has spent more time and effort prosecuting those who have exposed the crimes rather than prosecuting those who committed or authorized the crimes in the first place.   The end conclusion?  First, that Barack Obama is morally bankrupt and is not much better than Bush/Cheney in this regard.  Second, that a harsh sentence for Manning will be one more step towards totalitarianism which will intimidate the press.   A piece in The Guardian looks at Obama's unrelenting war on whistle blowers and, by extension, the press.  Here are highlights:

The American journalism trade is breathing a collective – but premature and, in many cases, grossly hypocritical – sigh of relief today. A military judge has found Bradley Manning guilty of many crimes, but "aiding the enemy" isn't one of them.

Had the judge found Manning guilty of aiding the enemy, she would have set a terrible precedent. For the first time, an American court – albeit a military court – would have said it was a potentially capital crime simply to give information to a news organization, because in the internet era an enemy would ultimately have been able to read what was leaked.

However, if journalism dodged one figurative bullet, it faces many more in this era. The ever-more-essential field of national security journalism was already endangered. It remains so. The Obama administration's war on leaks and, by extension, the work of investigative reporters who dare to challenge the most secretive government in our lifetimes, has been unrelenting.

The Manning verdict had plenty of bad news for the press. By finding Manning guilty of five counts of espionage, the judge endorsed the government's other radical theories, and left the journalism organization that initially passed along the leaks to the public, Wikileaks, no less vulnerable than it had been before the case started. Anyone who thinks Julian Assange isn't still a target of the US Government hasn't been paying attention; if the US can pry him loose from Ecuador's embassy in London and extradite him, you can be certain that he'll face charges, too, and the Manning verdict will be vital to that case.

The military tried its best to make life difficult for journalists covering the Manning trial, but activists – not traditional journalists – were the ones who fought restrictions most successfully.

National security journalist Jeremy Scahill summed it up after the verdict when he told Democracy Now: "We're in a moment when journalism is being criminalized."

For those who want to tell the public what the government is doing with our money and in our name, there are new imperatives. Governmental secrecy, surveillance and the systematic silencing of whistleblowers require updated methods for journalists and journalism organizations of all kinds. Americans pursuing this craft have to understand the risks and find countermeasures.

That is not enough. The public needs to awaken to the threat to its own freedoms from the Obama crackdown on leaks and, by extension, journalism and free speech itself. We are, more and more, a society where unaccountable people can commit unspeakable acts with impunity. They are creating a surveillance state that makes not just dissent, but knowledge itself, more and more dangerous. What we know about this is entirely due to leakers and their outlets. Ignorance is only bliss for the unaccountable.

Yes, I supported Obama over Romney, but in politics, often one has to pick the lesser of the evils.  Obama's persecution of whistle blowers and his refusal to sign and ENDA like executive order speak volumes and none of it good.   This portion of a piece in the Virginian Pilot on the verdict continues to haunt me:

Manning acknowledged giving WikiLeaks more than 700,000 battlefield reports and diplomatic cables, and video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack that killed civilians in Iraq, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver.

The video released by Manning showed the American military members involved exulting in the deaths of totally innocent civilians.  It makes me very ashamed to be an American.

Poll: Majority of Americans Say Snowden Is A Whistleblower, Not A Traitor

Over my vacation I read the book "In the Garden of Evil" by Erik Larson which recounts the experiences of William E. Dodd, America’s Ambassador to Germany and his family in Third Reich Germany over the four years from 1933 t0 1937.  It is an interesting read and demonstrates how a democracy can be subverted into a dictatorship by a small group of individuals.  One of the many things that was striking was how the German populace closed their eyes to growing domestic spying and ultimately terror against citizens, especially those of Jewish descent, which was justified as necessary for domestic stability and national security.  As we all know, by the time many woke up to reality, it was too late to stop Hitler and his megalomania.  I'm am by no means comparing either George W. Bush/Dick Cheney or now Barack Obama to Hitler, but the justifications for the NSA's spying on American citizens sounds frighteningly similar to the Nazi's justifications for actions that led both to domestic terror against anyone deemed non-supportive of the Nazi regime and, of course, the nightmare of World War II.  A new poll reported on in Talking Points Memo suggests that so far the America public is not as complacent as Germans in the 1930's.  Here are story highlights:

A majority of American voters believe National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden is a whistleblower, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University released Wednesday morning.

The nationwide poll found that 55 percent of voters regard Snowden, the 30-year-old former defense contractor who leaked details of top secret surveillance programs, as a whistleblower. A mere 34 percent labeled him a traitor. 

The poll suggested that a majority of the country disagrees with much of Capitol Hill, with bipartisan chorus of lawmakers — from Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) — characterizing Snowden as a traitor.

One can only hope that Barack Obama and members of Congress from both parties are listening.  The America public needs to know what the crimes committed in their name (i.e., Bradley Manning's disclosure of war crimes) and likely unconstitutional domestic spying on U.S. citizens.

Do Snowden Charges Show Obama’s ‘Vindictive Mentality’?

One of my biggest disappointments with Barack Obama is that he has continued some of the worse practices of the Bush/Cheney regime when it comes to spying on Americans and other police state tactics.  Now, apparently greatly peeved that Edward Snowden showed just how pervasive domestic surveillance has become, the Obama administration has filed criminal charges against Snowden and seemingly wants to make an example of him as is being done with Bradley Manning.   Or at least that's the view of gay journalist Glen Greenwald who helped break the story of what has really been going on in an article last month in The Guardian, a British newspaper.  Talking Points Memo looks at Greenwald's assessment of Obama and what Greenwald calls a "vindictive mentality."  Here are highlights:

The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald on Friday blasted President Barack Obama for filing espionage charges against National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, saying it reflects the administration's "vindictive mentality."

Greenwald, who broke the stories on the NSA's surveillance programs based on information provided by Snowden, told MSNBC's Chris Hayes that while the response was par for the course for an Obama administration that has aggressively pursued leakers, he rejected the notion that the 29-year-old former government contractor engaged in espionage.

“I think it’s very surprising to accuse somebody of espionage who hasn’t worked for a foreign government, who didn’t covertly pass information to an adversary-enemy of the United States, who didn’t sell any top secret information, who simply went to newspapers, asked newspapers to very carefully vet the information to make sure that the only thing  being published are things that inform his fellow citizens but doesn’t harm national security," Greenwald said in a phone interview. "That is not espionage in any real sense of the word.”

Greenwald argued that the Obama administration is notorious for "overcharging," and that the charges filed against Snowden reveal an "extreme zealousness" and "vindictive mentality."

Sadly, I am inclined to agree with Greenwald.  In the case of Bradley Manning, huge efforts have been made to punish Manning while little or nothing has ever been done to hold those accountable who engaged in the murder of civilians and other atrocities.  Obama seems obsessed with keeping the truth about American misdeeds and government actions that may well be unconstitutional hidden from view.   It's very, very disappointing.

Bradley Manning Trial : A Black Eye for Obama

One of the issues that has disturbed me greatly about Barack Obama's administration is its insistence on making an example out of Bradley Manning for the release of documents that disclosed war crimes by U;S. military personnel while failing to do anything to prosecute most of those who committed atrocities.  Seemingly, Manning's real crime was to expose the truth about America's crimes - crimes for which America would demand prosecution and consequences if done by any one else.  The hypocrisy is stunning.  Yet Obama continues the quest against Manning while allowing murderers and war criminals a pass.   Much of America's history has severe ugliness - Manning apparently sought to let Americans know what horrors were being done in their name.  A piece in The Advocate looks at this warped situation.  Here are excerpts:

On Saturday, women from the activist group Code Pink strung the gates of Fort Meade, Md., with Nobel Peace Prize emblems for Bradley Manning. The demonstration was one of many scheduled throughout the coming week to call attention to Manning’s court-martial trial, which began Monday at Fort Meade, about 30 miles north of Washington, D.C.

Manning, 25, has been in prison for more than 1,100 days — since he was arrested in Baghdad May 26, 2010. He has spent three birthdays in prison. He was held in indefinite detention and solitary confinement for much of that time under extreme conditions that included not being allowed to lie down or close his eyes except during certain nighttime hours; not being allowed a pillow, sheet, or blanket; being forced to be naked and searched every morning; and not being allowed out of his windowless cell. 

 

Because of his extreme treatment and the crimes of which he is accused, Manning has been deemed a prisoner of conscience by human rights groups worldwide. Amnesty International has called his treatment "torture" and has called for his release. He was nominated for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. 

[M]ake no mistake: Manning’s is the real trial of the century. Manning is essentially being tried for treason. One of the charges against him is "aiding the enemy," which is treasonous (and a charge he categorically denies). Another is larceny — meaning he stole the documents he is alleged to have distributed to WikiLeaks.

 

The Obama administration and the Department of Justice have referred to Manning’s case as "the largest security breach in U.S. history." 

 

Manning is not a spy, but he’s being treated like one, prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917. In fact, emails in the months leading up to the release of the documents between Manning and Adrian Lamo specifically state that Manning knew he could have sold any of the documents he handled daily or given them to a foreign government. But, in his own words, he said the documents were "public data ... it belongs in the public domain ... information should be free."

 

That’s the real story here. What did the American people have a right to know and when did they have a right to know it? How much influence did the publication of these documents have on ending the combat portion of the Iraq war? How much transparency did they force in an administration that the American Civil Liberties Union has called "the least transparent in U.S. history"? Manning has already been credited with influencing the Arab Spring, which has thus far toppled five dictatorships. And Vietnam War leaker Daniel Ellsberg has said on several occasions that Manning’s actions have "saved tens of thousands of lives."

What hasn’t been discussed in the mainstream media is how much Manning’s treatment and trial have to do with the consistent repression of whistle-blowers and investigative reporters by the Obama administration. 

 

Journalists have had to file suit to have access to Manning’s trial. In a complaint filed in federal district court last week, a group of journalists asked for a preliminary injunction to compel the judge to "grant the public and press access to the government’s filings, the court’s own orders, and transcripts of the proceedings."   That’s how difficult it is to get the real story about Manning’s trial.

 

The Obama administration could have accepted that plea deal and agreed to sentencing. Those charges carry a two-year maximum sentence each but could have added up to 20 years in prison had Manning received the maximum.

 

The Obama administration, however, is making an example of Manning. His trial is a classic show trial of the sort usually seen only in countries that are not democracies. Manning’s trial is meant to dissuade any and all whistle-blowers from coming forward. It is also intended to act as a deterrent to any dissidence within the military, Pentagon, State Department, CIA, FBI or any other government agency — or beyond. 

 

What’s more, many question whether Manning will — or can — even receive a fair trial, given the attitude the administration has already taken toward him and the treatment he has received thus far with no intervention from President Obama or any other member of the administration.  President Obama could pardon Manning; other leakers have been pardoned, even during other wars.

 

There's much more, but the message is that the Obama administration is engaged in shameful conduct the goal of which is in my view to cover up atrocities and make it harder for others to expose American military misdeeds.

 

Bush/Cheney Betrayal of America: China Is Reaping Biggest Benefits of Iraq Oil Boom

Remember how dim witted Chimperator George Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney claimed that Iraq would repay America for the costs of the fool's errand known as the Iraq War?  Ironically, on the same day that Bradley Manning's trial for allegedly releasing classified information, a New York Times story reveals that America threw away over $1 trillion and threw away thousands of American lives so that China, not America, could be the big winner in the aftermath of the disastrous Iraq War.  Making the situation even worse, guess who holds much of the debt incurred to finance the Bush/Cheney fool's errand?  China, of course.  That's right, American taxpayers have been doubly screwed.  The GOP mantra to average Americans ought to be bend over and hold your ankles.  Here are highlights from the Times story:

BAGHDAD — Since the American-led invasion of 2003, Iraq has become one of the world’s top oil producers, and China is now its biggest customer. 

China already buys nearly half the oil that Iraq produces, nearly 1.5 million barrels a day, and is angling for an even bigger share, bidding for a stake now owned by Exxon Mobil in one of Iraq’s largest oil fields. 

“The Chinese are the biggest beneficiary of this post-Saddam oil boom in Iraq,” said Denise Natali, a Middle East expert at the National Defense University in Washington. “They need energy, and they want to get into the market.” 

Before the invasion, Iraq’s oil industry was sputtering, largely walled off from world markets by international sanctions against the government of Saddam Hussein, so his overthrow always carried the promise of renewed access to the country’s immense reserves. Chinese state-owned companies seized the opportunity, pouring more than $2 billion a year and hundreds of workers into Iraq, and just as important, showing a willingness to play by the new Iraqi government’s rules and to accept lower profits to win contracts. 

“We lost out,” said Michael Makovsky, a former Defense Department official in the Bush administration who worked on Iraq oil policy. “The Chinese had nothing to do with the war, but from an economic standpoint they are benefiting from it, and our Fifth Fleet and air forces are helping to assure their supply.” 

In the desert near the Iranian border, China recently built its own airport to ferry workers to Iraq’s southern oil fields, and there are plans to begin direct flights from Beijing and Shanghai to Baghdad soon. In fancy hotels in the port city of Basra, Chinese executives impress their hosts not just by speaking Arabic, but Iraqi-accented Arabic. 

For China, Iraq is one of several countries it increasingly relies on to keep its growing economy running. China recently became the world’s biggest oil importer, and with its consumption growing, it is investing heavily in oil and gas fields around the world — $12 billion worth in 2011, according to the United States Energy Department. Over 50 percent of its oil imports come from the Middle East, even as imports from Iran have been reduced in recent years. “It’s pretty simple,” said Kevin Jianjun Tu, an expert on Chinese energy policies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “China needs more energy and needs to diversify its sources.” 

Bradley Manning expose American war crimes and atrocities.  Meanwhile, Bush and Cheney authorized war crimes, violations of the Geneva Conventions - actions that led to Japanese and Nazi officials to suffer long prison terms or even execution - and they have suffered no consequences whatsoever.  Now we learn that their idiot war aided China, not America.  In short, the wrong individual is being prosecuted.  Bush and Cheney need to be prosecuted.

George W. Bush Cancels Europe Trip Over Fear of Legal Action over Torture

Until George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their minions who authorized torture and other violations of the Geneva Conventions, in my view, America has little moral standing to criticize foreign powers that utilize similar practices.  And sadly, there is no movement in this country to punishes those who committed war crimes.  Thankfully, in other countries such reticence to call out Bush and Cheney et. al.  In fact the cretinous Bush has cancelled a planned trip to Europe over fears that he might be subjected to legal action should he venture out of the USA.  Personally, I applaud those who would bring Bush to justice.  The total number of lives ruined because of this man will perhaps never be known, but just in American lives wasted we know that the number far exceeds 4,000.  Democracy Now looks at the Chimperator's cancelled trip.  Here are highlights:

Former president George W. Bush was scheduled to be heading to Switzerland this weekend for his first trip to Europe since leaving office. He was set to speak on Saturday at a dinner in Geneva in honor of United Israel Appeal. But Bush canceled the trip after human rights attorneys threatened to take legal action against him for sanctioning the use of torture. 

One of the key pieces of evidence against the former president has been his own words. In an interview last November with NBC’s Matt Lauer, Bush openly admitted authorizing the use of torture 

MATT LAUER: Why is waterboarding legal, in your opinion?

GEORGE W. BUSH: Because the lawyers said it was legal, said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act. I’m not a lawyer. And — but you got to trust the judgment of people around you. And I do.

MATT LAUER: You say it’s legal, and the lawyers told me.

GEORGE W. BUSH: Yeah.

MATT LAUER: Critics say that you got the Justice Department to give you the legal guidance and the legal memos that you wanted.

GEORGE W. BUSH: Well —

MATT LAUER: If it’s legal, President Bush, then if an American is taken into custody in a foreign country, not necessarily a uniformed American —

GEORGE W. BUSH: Look, I’m not going to debate the issue, Matt. I really —

MATT LAUER: I’m just asking. Would it be OK for a foreign country to waterboard an American citizen?

[O]n Monday, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights issued a 42-page document they call a preliminary indictment against Bush. Human rights lawyers say Bush could now face a lawsuit wherever he travels outside the United States.

We’re joined by Bill Quigley, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Were you disappointed by the cancellation of Bush’s trip?

BILL QUIGLEY: Well, yes and no. I mean, we really hoped that we could persuade Swiss prosecutors to actually charge him with criminal acts and to issue an arrest warrant. At the same time, everybody knew all along that one of the ways that people who are facing criminal charges in a certain jurisdiction, one of the ways they react is by not going to that place. And so, it was disappointing that we’re not able to actually prosecute him, but I think it has shown worldwide, really, that even though he was the president of the United States, if you engage in torture, which is universally felt to be illegal and unjust and immoral, that there are consequences for that.

So, we filed, along with 60 human rights organizations from around the world, this complaint and backed it up with 2,500 pages of documentation that shows his participation in torture, not to mention his own admission of it in his own book about that. And so, I think it is a big step forward in terms of human rights accountability for torture.

NBC News has coverage on the documentation of torture under Bush/Cheney here.  One of the reasons, in my view, why Bradley Manning is being so aggressively prosecuted is because some of the materials he is alleged to have released confirmed the use of torture and extraordinary efforts to cover it up.  Bush and Cheney rather than Manning is the one who should be prosecuted.

The Horrors in Iraq Worse Than Hiroshima?

The American public continues to avoid facing the horrors done in their name in Iraq.  Horrors that involve not only the hundreds of Iraqis who needlessly lost their lives.  These horrors extend to babies being born horribly deformed thanks to the U. S. military's use of depleted uranium in weaponry.  The image above is horrifying.  So is what America did having fallen for the jingoistic slogans of war mongers and the lies of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.  The horrors also extend to our military veterans some of whom will never recover physically and/or mentally.  Democracy Now looks at the continued horrors in Iraq where the deformities and inflated cancer rates are said to exceed those seen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in the aftermath of the nuclear bombings. Sadly, many on the far right, especially the Christofascists, will not be moved to care.  After all, these victims aren't Christian and aren't white and, therefore in their sick minds are not even human.  Bradley Manning is facing criminal charges for trying to expose American atrocities and war crimes, yet those who caused this nightmare go un-prosecuted and unpunished.  Here is an excerpt from Democracy Now:

Dr. Samira Alani actually visited with doctors in Japan, comparing statistics, and found that the amount of congenital malformations in Fallujah is 14 times greater than the same rate measured in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in the aftermath of the nuclear bombings. These types of birth defects, she said—there are types of congenital malformations that she said they don’t even have medical terms for, that some of the things they’re seeing, they’ve never seen before. They’re not in any of the books or any of the scientific literature that they have access to. She said it’s common now in Fallujah for newborns to come out with massive multiple systemic defects, immune problems, massive central nervous system problems, massive heart problems, skeletal disorders, baby’s being born with two heads, babies being born with half of their internal organs outside of their bodies, cyclops babies literally with one eye—really, really, really horrific nightmarish types of birth defects. And it is ongoing.

Meanwhile, we see the far right in particular blathering on and on about American exceptionalism.  America is exceptional alright, but in a horrible way.  And the damaged lives extend as noted to many of our troops - those lucky enough to have not lost their lives for nothing.     But one example is Iraq War veteran Tomas Young who has written a letter to Bush and Cheney.  Here are highlights from Democracy Now:

Iraq War veteran Tomas Young was left paralyzed in a 2004 attack in Iraq. Released from medical care three months later, Young returned home to become an active member in Iraq Veterans Against the War. He recently announced that he will stop his medicine and nourishment, which comes in the form of liquid through a feeding tube — a decision which will hasten his death. Joining us from his home in Kansas City, Young reads from his letter, "A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran." Young says to Bush and Cheney:

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney

From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.
 
Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

—Tomas Young

The fact that Bush and Cheney - an senior military officers who engaged in torture, violations of the Geneva Conventions and outright war crimes remain unpunished speaks volumes about America and sadly the American people.  None of it is good.  Americans may want to close their eyes to the crimes done in their names, but the rest of the world is watching.  The far right worries about America's standing in the world and would say that Obama has lessened it when, in fact, it is they and their policies that have done America grievous harm.  Bush and Cheney need to be prosecuted, tried, and likely executed - at least if America applied the standards it used on Germans and Japanese officials after World War II.  Right now, I am not proud to be an American.

Bradley Manning Makes His Statement on Why He Exposed War Crimes

As the title of this post indicates, I believe some of the information released by Bradley Manning exposed war crimes committed by American military personnel. And it is because of some of the horrific American wrongdoing exposed in my opinion that the military has been so Hell bent to persecute Manning.  Watch the video above from the Press Freedom Foundation which has some on Manning's statement superimposed underneath and I would argue any moral, decent person would have felt the need to expose these murders and hopefully prevent further atrocities.  A full audio of Manning's over 1 hour statement is here.  Here is a portion of the statement made by the Press Freedom Foundation:

The information provided by Manning has uncovered stories of wrongdoing by the United States, as well as by leaders and politicians around the world. The cables were reportedly one of the catalysts that led to the Arab Spring and sped up the end of the Iraq War. To this day, more than two years after their release, the information provided by Manning is used every day by journalists and historians in major publications are the world to enlighten and inform the public, both in the United States and around the world. In a time when the extent and reach of U.S. government secrecy is unprecedented, and there are credible reports that the government has abused its secrecy and classification systems to cover up numerous illegal and unconstitutional activities, Manning’s actions should be seen as an overdue sliver of sunlight into an overly secret system rather than as a basis for a prosecution seeking decades of imprisonment.

By releasing this audio recording, we wish to make sure that the voice of this generation's most prolific whistleblower can be heard—literally—by the world.

Regardless of whether one believes that Manning’s acts were right or wrong or a mix of both, he has taken responsibility for them by pleading guilty to ten charges, for which he faces up to twenty years in prison. The government however, is continuing to pursue all of the charges against him, including charges under the Espionage Act and "aiding the enemy" —which could have huge consequences for press freedom and the First Amendment. The ACLU has expressed concern that this "aiding the enemy" charge could criminalize speech for all sorts of active military members, noting that "In its zeal to throw the book at Manning, the government has so overreached that its ‘success’ would turn thousands of loyal soldiers into criminals."

And Harvard Law professor Yochai Benkler has argued that this prosecution could decimate national security journalism by outlawing whole categories of journalist-source relationships in the future: "[T]he prosecutors seem bent on using this case to push a novel and aggressive interpretation of the law that would arm the government with a much bigger stick to prosecute vaguely-defined national security leaks, a big stick that could threaten not just members of the military, but civilians too."

 Here is a portion of Manning's statement in connection with the video clip above (I find the mindset exhibited by the weapons team deeply disturbing): 

"At first I did not consider the video very special, as I have viewed countless other war porn type videos depicting combat. However, the recording of audio comments by the aerial weapons team crew and the second engagement in the video of an unarmed bongo truck troubled me ...

It was clear to me that the event happened because the aerial weapons team mistakenly identified Reuters employees as a potential threat and that the people in the bongo truck were merely attempting to assist the wounded. The people in the van were not a threat but merely "good samaritans." The most alarming aspect of the video to me, however, was the seemly delightful bloodlust they appeared to have."

Is Manning a criminal and traitor or is  he a patriot who wanted to prevent heinous crimes.  Readers will have to decide for themselves.   For my part, those prosecuting Manning do not seem to care about morality and decency whatsoever otherwise they would be prosecuting the members of the weapons team.
 

Bradley Manning: Traitor or Hero?

As the prosecution of Bradley Manning continues to unfold for his alleged crime of aiding the enemy, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other high ranking officials of the Bush/Cheney regime should be on trial for war crimes.  Among the things that the documents traced to Manning indicate that torture and repeated violations of the Geneva Conventions occurred - i.e., the same things that led to imprisonment and execution for some of the leaders of the Nazi and Japanese governments after World War II.  And as Andrew Sullivan notes the credit for the exposure of these crimes is because of Manning.  Indeed, Andrew notes:

How did we find all this out? Bradley Manning’s leaks. Sometimes a whistleblower is not only a traitor. He can also be a patriot, uncovering war crimes. 

I for one view Manning as a patriot.  And the fact that the military and the Obama administration are so hot to crucify Manning shows that Manning's real offense was to document just how morally bankrupt the Bush/Cheney regime really was.  If Obama had any guts, he'd open the door for criminal prosecutions of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others who committed nothing short of war crimes.  Naturally, much of the investigative work on these crimes is being done by the foreign media.  Here's more from Andrew's post:

The Guardian, in a 15-month investigation, has unearthed the fact that Donald Rumsfeld brought veterans from the dirty wars in Latin America, Colonel James Steele and Colonel James H Coffman, to empower sectarian warfare against the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. He set up detention centers for Sunni insurgents that were run by Iraqis but monitored and checked on by two men, one of whom reported to Rumsfeld, the other to Petraeus. So we have the first solid evidence that Petraeus, the golden mediocrity of Washington, was also an abetter of the worst forms of torture imaginable:

“Every single detention centre would have its own interrogation committee,” claimed [Iraqi General Muntadher] al-Samari, who worked with Petraeus’ and Rumsfeld’s designated men on the ground] … “Each one was made up of an intelligence officer and eight interrogators. This committee will use all means of torture to make the detainee confess like using electricity or hanging him upside down, pulling out their nails, and beating them on sensitive parts.” There is no evidence that Steele or Coffman tortured prisoners themselves, only that they were sometimes present in the detention centres where torture took place, and were involved in the processing of thousands of detainees.

But reporters witnessed horrifying war crimes in US-occupied Iraq, under the authority of those reporting directly to Rumsfeld and Petraeus:

Samari claimed that torture was routine in the commando-controlled detention centres. “I remember a 14-year-old who was tied to one of the library’s columns. And he was tied up, with his legs above his head. Tied up. His whole body was blue because of the impact of the cables with which he had been beaten.”

Gilles Peress, a photographer, came across Steele when he was on assignment for the New York Times, visiting one of the commando centres in the same library, in Samarra. “We were in a room in the library interviewing Steele and I’m looking around I see blood everywhere.”

The reporter Peter Maass was also there, working on the story with Peress. “And while this interview was going on with a Saudi jihadi with Jim Steele also in the room, there were these terrible screams, somebody shouting ‘Allah, Allah, Allah!’. But it wasn’t kind of religious ecstasy or something like that, these were screams of pain and terror.”

And we wonder why America's image has fallen abroad.   I would argue that those who authorized these crimes deserve to be on trial far more than Bradley Manning.  Oh yes, the Republicans would scream and shriek.  But as the evidence was rolled out, I suspect that the American public would be repulsed by what the GOP rubber stamped during the Bush/Cheney years.  It's truly ugly, but Americans need to know what was done allegedly in their name.

The Government's Tortured Case Against Bradley Manning

It is always a bad sign for one's case when it is necessary to rely on cases from more than one hundred fifty years ago as declarative binding precedent.  Yet that is exactly what the prosecutors in the case against gay army service member Bradley Manning are resorting to.  I have long believed that the government's real vendetta against Manning is fueled by the fact that he allegedly exposed atrocities if not out right war crimes that the military leadership wanted to remain secret and unknown.  Much more concern has been shown by the military brass - and sadly the Obama administration as well - over the fact that the murder of unarmed civilians and reporters was made public rather than has ever been shown over prosecuting those who committed the atrocities/war crimes purportedly exposed by Manning and Wilileaks.  A piece in The New Yorker looks at this questionable prosecution.  Here are highlights:

But as a linchpin in Manning’s prosecution—he is accused of giving classified cables and other materials to WikiLeaks—it is a troubling theme. According to the AP, prosecutors singled out an 1863 case in which a soldier named Henry Vanderwater was convicted of giving a command roster to a Virginia newspaper, which printed the information. “Publishing information in a newspaper [can] indirectly convey information to the enemy,” a prosecutor quoted by Politico argued. Can anyone aid the enemy by giving information to a reporter? Are reporters aiding the enemy if they publish it—and who, by the way, is “the enemy”?

There are other charges against Manning—twenty-two in all—and he has indicated that he would be willing to plead guilty to seven of them. (His trial, which was supposed to start in March, has now been delayed until June.) But aiding the enemy is a charge of a different degree than simply exposing classified information. It involves intent and carries heavier penalties. It is also the sort of charge that, in wartime, or anytime, almost invites overreach. Would it aid the enemy, for example, to expose war crimes committed by American forces or lies told by the American government? In that case, who is aiding the enemy—the whistle-blower or the perpetrators themselves?

In addition to the political and legal issues, the hearings have dealt with what is both a moral and a math problem. The judge, Colonel Denise Lind, agreed that the conditions of Manning’s detention had, at times, become illegal—“excessive in relation to legitimate government interests” —but not illegal enough to have any charge against him dismissed . Instead, as Charlie Savage reports, she did some calculations: whatever sentence Manning might get would be reduced by seven days for times he shouldn’t have been on suicide watch; ten for days when his exercise was restricted; twenty for days when he had his clothes taken away; and seventy-five days for a stretch when, despite the advice of psychiatrists, he was put on restrictive “prevention of injury” status. That is a hundred and twelve days in all—or about the same as the three-month sentence that Henry Vanderwater got, back in 1863, along with a dishonorable discharge.

Every day that the Obama administration fails to intervene and put an end to this travesty of a trial, the less I think of Obama himself.  Manning, if he released the information, exposed horrors that should have been quickly investigated and those who committed these atrocities should have been vigorously prosecuted and punished.  Instead it has been the individual who exposed the war crimes who has been aggressively prosecuted.  Something is very, very rotten in this whole saga.

Bradley Manning Awarded Sentencing Credit

It has been a while since this blog has addressed the issue of Bradley Manning's military trial for purportedly releasing to Wilileaks among other things information on war crimes committed by American service members in Afghanistan.  Disturbingly, the U. S. Military and the Obama White House have been far more concerned about the materials leaked by Manning that confirmed U.S. military misdeeds - which seem to have had questionable, if any, real negative impacts on the military and the State Department - than the horrors of atrocities committed by U. S. Service members.  Manning, who is gay and who some have speculated was motivated in part by the thankfully now dead DADT policy, has been submitted to inhumane treatment while incarcerated prior to his trial.  Now, the judge in Manning's case has awarded Manning a credit for the horrific treatment he had to endure.  Here are highlights from an article in Politico:

The military illegally punished alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning by keeping him in stricter conditions than were necessary during much of the nearly nine months he spent in a Marine Corps brig, a military judge ruled Tuesday.

Army Col. Denise Lind granted the Army private nearly four months credit off any sentence he may receive for allegedly sending hundreds of thousands of military reports and diplomatic cables to the pro-transparency organization.

The decision is a significant victory for Manning’s defense and a vindication for human rights groups that complained that the intelligence analyst was being treated unfairly. The ruling also runs counter to President Barack Obama’s statement at a March 2011 news conference that Manning’s treatment at the brig was “appropriate.”

Lind calculated most of the credit based on three periods when Manning was held on “suicide risk” or “prevention of injury” watch after psychiatrists opined that such treatment was not necessary. The judge ruled that it was “excessive” to keep him on that status, which required frequent checks by guards, limits to his clothing, and sometimes led to him sleeping wearing nothing but an anti-suicide blanket.

“At some point, continuing POI [prevention of injury watch] of the recommendations over mental health professionals becomes excessive, absent a change in circumstances,” Lind said in her lengthy ruling which she read from the bench Tuesday afternoon. She called her decision to award one 20-day credit “a very close call.”

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits pre-trial punishment. In addition, a provision of military law bars use of confinement conditions ” more rigorous than the circumstances required to insure [a defendant’s] presence” at trial.

If convicted on the most serious charge he faces, aiding the enemy, Manning faces a potential sentence of up to life in prison. Other charges, such as violating the Espionage Act and theft of government property, could put Manning in jail for dozens of years.

[T]he Defense Department has refused to release written copies of the judge’s rulings, legal filings or transcripts of the court martial proceedings and Lind has said she does not have the authority to do so. Reading the decision aloud was the only way for the judge to effectively get her full rationale into the public domain.

The military’s highest appeals court is considering a legal challenge to the secrecy surrounding the court records. Such records are routinely available to the public in state and federal civilian courts.

Perhaps my views are tainted by my coming of age during the Vietnam era when the U.S. military fed the public and Congress a constant stream of lies that cost thousands of young Americans their lives - for nothing as it turned out - but I remain convinced that Bradley Manning's only real crime - if it is one - is to have shown the horrors being done in the name of America and the American public.  Neither the U.S. Military or the White House look kindly on having the truth exposed that shows that America is engaged in unconscionable and illegal conduct.