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The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Peter Lemkin - 01-12-2012
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, has testified in a courtroom for the first time since he was arrested in May 2010. Speaking Thursday at a pretrial proceeding, Manning revealed the emotional tumult that he experienced while imprisoned in Kuwait after his arrest in 2010, saying, quote, "I remember thinking, 'I'm going to die.' I thought I was going to die in a cage."
As part of his testimony, Manning stepped inside a life-sized chalk outline representing the six-by-eight-foot cell he was later held in at the Quantico base in Virginia, and he recounted how he would tilt his head to see the reflection of a skylight through a tiny space in his cell door.
Manning could face life in prison if convicted of the most serious of 22 counts against him. His trial is expected to begin in February. He has offered to plead guilty to a subset of charges that could potentially carry a maximum prison term of 16 years.
On Thursday, Democracy Now! spoke about Manning's case with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently residing inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he sought refuge nearly six months ago.
JULIAN ASSANGE: What is happening this week is not the trial of Bradley Manning; what is happening this week is the trial of the U.S. military. This is Bradley Manning's abuse case. Bradley Manning was arrested in Baghdad, shipped over and held for two months in extremely adverse conditions in Kuwait, shipped over to Quantico, Virginia, which is near the center of the U.S. intelligence complex, and held there for nine months, longer than any other prisoner in Quantico's modern history. And there, he was subject to conditions that the U.N. special rapporteur, Juan Méndez, special rapporteur for torture, formally found amounted to torture.
There's a question about who authorized that treatment. Why was that treatment placed on him for so long, when so many peopleindependent psychiatrists, military psychiatristscomplained about what was going on in extremely strong terms? His lawyer and support team say that he was being treated in that manner, in part, in order to coerce some kind of statement or false confession from him that would implicate WikiLeaks as an organization and me personally. And so, this is a matter that I ampersonally have been embroiled in, that this young man's treatment, regardless of whether he was our source or not, is directly as a result of an attempt to attack this organization by the United States military, to coerce this young man into providing evidence that could be used to more effectively attack us, and also serve as some kind of terrible disincentive for other potential whistleblowers from stepping forward.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Julian Assange, founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, now under political asylum in Ecuador's London embassy. He was speaking about Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to Assange's website, WikiLeaks. Manning testified Thursday at this pretrial proceeding for the first time since he was arrested more than two years ago.
For more. we're joined by Michael Ratner. He's president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a lawyer for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, and he just got back from attending the pretrial hearing of Bradley Manning yesterday at Fort Meade.
Michael, describe the scene in the courtroom.
MICHAEL RATNER: You know, it was one of the most dramatic courtroom scenes I've ever been in. I mean, for days we've been waiting to see whether Bradley Manning was going to testify, and it's testimony about the conditions he was held in really for almost two years, but certainly the part in Kuwait and Quantico. And we didn't havewe've seen him in the courtroom, but we didn't see him ever take the stand. So we're sitting in this small courtroom. There's all of these guys in these formal-dress blue uniforms. I mean, they look like those Custers or Civil Wars with those little things on their shoulders, epaulets. And then, all of a sudden, we come back from lunch, and David Coombs, Bradley's lawyer, says, "Bradley Manning will come to the stand."
And you could have heardI mean, the room was just mesmerized by what was going to happen next. And he says to Bradley, "I know you may be a little nervous about this. I'll ease you into it." When Bradley opened his mouth, he was not nervous. I mean, he wasthe testimony was incredibly moving, emotional roller coaster for all of us, but particularly, obviously, for Bradley and what he went through. But it was so horrible what happened to him over a two-year period. But he described it in great detail in a way that was articulate, smart, self-aware. I mean, he knew what was going on. He tried to make it so that they wouldn't keep him on the suicide risk, they wouldn't keep him on preventive injury status, where he didn't have clothes and all of that. And he couldn't do it. And he kept trying it, and they kept lying to him. And it was really dramatic.
What came outwhat it began with was really his arrest in late May of 2010. He was almost immediately taken to Kuwait. And that's wherereally where they got him in a way that really, for a period of time, almost destroyed him. They put him into cages that he described as eight-by-eight-by-eight. There were two cages. He said they were like animal cages. They were allthey were in a tent alone, just these two cages, side by side. One of them had whatever possessions he may have had; one of them, he was in, with a little bed for a rack and a toilet, dark, in this cage for almost two months. He was taken out for a short while and then, without explanation, put back in the cage, meals in the cage, etc., all of that.
And thenwait until you hear this. They would wake him at night at 11:00 p.m., 10:00 or 11:00, and his dayor nightwas all night, and he was allowed to go back to sleep at 12:00 or 1:00, noon, the next day. So when we think about what happened to people at Guantánamo or sensory deprivation or what McCoy says in his books on torture, what are they trying to do except destroy this human being?
And he said, "For me, I stopped keeping track. I didn't know whether night was day or day was night. And my world became very, very small. It became these cages. And I'm person," he saidthis was really, I thoughtall of us really were interested in it. He said, "I'm someone who likes current events. I take a broader view of the world." And he gave an example of the oil spill in the Gulf. And he said, you know, "When that ended," and he said, "my world all of a sudden was totally confined to these cages." And that was almost two months in Kuwait, something that none of us really knew about for this period. And he went on to talk about then what happens when he went to Quantico.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: And Michael, you're describing a person who was the exact opposite of some of the portraits of him that have come out from some supposed supporters of his, but also people who have had grudges against him, of being an unstablean emotionally unstable person. The sense that you got of how intelligent and how clear he was about what was happening to him?
MICHAEL RATNER: Even one of the psychiatrists who testified and who was one of the psychiatrists who said this guy should never have been put on prevention of injury or suicide risk when he was at Quanticothat was right after Kuwaitsaid he's highly intelligent. And you could see that. And the image was just at theas you're saying, Juan, was the opposite of what I would have thought going in there, of this sort ofof this person who couldn't make their way in the world, of who just, you know, was unable to really function. This person was articulate, strong, self-aware, as I said, and it wasand very sympathetic. I mean, very sympathetic. And not even a shade that he shaded anything, not anything close to, you know, mendacity, lies, nothing. This was incredible testimony.
AMY GOODMAN: The psychiatrist who treated Bradley Manning while he was in prison at Quantico Marine brig testified on Wednesday that commanders there consistently ignored his medical advice and continued to impose harsh restrictions on Bradley Manning, even though he posed no risk of suicide. Captain William Hoctor said he treated prisoners at Guantánamo but had never encountered military officials so unwilling to heed his medical advice. He testified and said, "I had been a senior medical officer for 24 years at the time, and I had never experienced anything like this. It was clear to me they had made up their mind on a certain cause of action, and my recommendations had no impact," he said. Michael Ratner?
MICHAEL RATNER: No, yesterday when I was in court, they put up anotherthey put another psychiatrist on, the defense did, Ricky Malone, who had been head of likevery substantial psychiatrist, head of Walter Reed at some point, in forensic psychology. And he said essentially the same thing. He said, "I went in there. I treated Bradley Manning. I gave him, you know, a sleep medication when he needed sleep. And I went to the person who ran that brig, and I kept saying he does not have to be on POI," that's short for preventive injury, "he doesn't have to be on suicide risk watch."
AMY GOODMAN: And explain what that means when he's put on those.
MICHAEL RATNER: Right, I'm glad you asked that, because this was so dramatic. They showed a video at some point at the trial of whatof where Bradley Manning was kept. And he's keptthere's no natural light. If he presses his face to the screenit's not really bars, it's like a square screenhe could see the reflection of light on the floor at the end of the hall. Immediately across from his cell is the observation booth that looks right into him, so even if he goes to the bathroom and sits on the toilet, they see everything he does. There's a bright light on himagain, sensory stuff, if you look at that24 hours a day.
They show in the video, when theywhen they actuallysomething happens where they decide they're going to put himhe's always on POI, but they're going to put him back on suicide risk. And they showed the video ofit's videoedof him passing his clothes through the mail, through the little hatch, out of the prison. And then, that
AMY GOODMAN: Like a mail slot.
MICHAEL RATNER: Like a mail slot. And that night, he's standing there stark naked. They only show you the top, but he's standing there stark naked in front of these really beefy, big marines in camouflage. That's the scene you see.
And then there's another video showing, askinghe's trying to ask, "Why am I here? What did I do wrong?" And they're lying to him. One of them saysone of them, who'syou know, who's playing like Mutt and Jeff, he's saying, "Well, you're a greatif I had a hundred, you know, defendants like youor prisoners like you, it would beyou know, I would be great." They're lying to him all the time.
And what comes out, because as that videoas that clip you read, Amy, of the psychiatrist, is that it never happens, really never happens, that the head of a brig disregards psychiatric information like they were given about Bradley Manning. And here they did. And so, the question you have to ask yourself is, where was that order coming from? We know there was a three-star general involved. How much did it go up to the Pentagon?
AMY GOODMAN: Who was the three-star general?
MICHAEL RATNER: I don't remember his name.
AMY GOODMAN: And this is, of course, all under President Obama.
MICHAEL RATNER: Right. Right, that's correct. I mean, this wasand that cell, when he's in that cellI mean, when we talk about the light on, when he sleeps on that little bunk and hishe's facinghe has to face the light so they can observe him. If he turns over to avoid the light, they come in, and they wake him up. That's night. Daywhat happens during the day? He's in that cell 23-and-a-half hours a day, maybe 20 minutes of what they call sunshine exercise, which is just nothing. And what can he do? Because he's on duty, supposedly, he has to either stand or he can sit on that metal bunk with his feet on the ground and can't lean against anything. That's 10 or 15 hours a day of what you have to call sensory deprivation.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: And Michael, I'd like to ask you aboutgiven that he's been under these conditions now for two-and-a-half years, it's not surprising that he would be attempting to try to negotiate some kind of a plea deal on a reduced sentence. Could you talk about that part, that aspect of what happened with the court?
MICHAEL RATNER: Yeah, yeah. Let me back up on that for one second, because he was in Kuwait 'til end of July 2010. He then was taken to Quantico 'til April or so of 2011. That's the nine months that this hearing is really about and whether the charges should be dismissed because of the serious misconduct and torture and cruel treatment by the government.
So, then he was taken to Leavenworth. And just as an illustration of how he did not have to be treated like he was treated at Quantico, they put on the head of Leavenworth brig by telephone yesterday, and she said, "Well, as soon as he got here, he went right into medium security." And that's the best you can do when you're pretrial. Then, you mix with the population. You getyou get all your hygiene items.
There's a scene in thisin thisand he talkswhere he has to actually beg for a piece of toilet paper. He has to stand in frontat Quantico, stand there with no shirt on, with his boxers, and said, whatever, "Corporal something, this is Corporal Manning, or Private First Class Manning, can I have a piece of toilet paper?" And he has to stand there at attention, while he's begging for a piece of toilet paper.
Your question, Juan, what the lawyer has said, David Coombs, the lawyer for Bradley Manning, has said, they are trying to force Bradley Manning into testifying if he knows anything, which weyou know, probably falsely, because we don't think there's anything therebut against my client, Julian Assange. They are trying to break Bradley Manning.
What's remarkable is that he still has this incredible dignity after going through this. But I think all these prison conditions weresure, they were angry at Bradley Manning, but in the face of that psychiatric statement, that this guy shouldn't be kept on suicide risk or POI, they're still keeping him in inhuman conditions, you can only ask yourselfthey're trying to break him for some reason. The lawyer, David Coombs, has said it's so that he can give evidence against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
AMY GOODMAN: So this pretrial hearing, where does it lead? Therehe is talking about these conditions that many have said amount to torture. What could it lead to?
MICHAEL RATNER: Well, the lawyer, David Coombs, has asked for two things. He said, "I've asked for dismissal of all the charges, because the government essentially has dirty hands." They can't do this to people and still go charge them with crimes. And that has happened rarely, but it has happened, where the government engages in such bad conduct that they're saying, even if it's not about the truth of what happened and the facts, we're going to get rid of the case.
JUAN GONZÃLEZ: And he's also asked for 10 days' credit for every day that he was held in those kind of conditions?
MICHAEL RATNER: Right. So he's held, I think, some 293 days. He would get credit for almostyou know, a number of years off his sentence. In the end, he's asked for 10 for one, understanding that he may not win ultimate dismissal.
But what it also really did is it showed us how this governmentand when Julian Assange said yesterday on your show, Amy, this is really about the U.S. being on trial, that's what this is. This is how the U.S. treatstreats people who, in my view, have taken heroic actions around disclosing secrets of this government.
AMY GOODMAN: And what does this possible plea mean, where he admits that he gave documents to WikiLeaks but will not plead guilty to aiding the enemy?
MICHAEL RATNER: Right, I want to explain it as simply as I can.
AMY GOODMAN: And we only have 30 seconds.
MICHAEL RATNER: OK, I'll do it. OK, what it means ishe said, "I'll accept responsibility for mishandling of documents." Potential sentence, the judge said, is 16 years. If the judge accepts the plea, the prosecutor does not have to. Or the prosecutor can accept the plea but can still prove that he aided the enemy and try and get a more severe sentence.
So the question here is going to be, is the prosecutor going to stop at the 16 years maximum sentence, or is the prosecutor going to go on and try and get Bradley Manning life? My opinion, of course, is the prosecutor ought to stop. Bradley Manning, you know, is someone who has disclosed some of the most important secrets of our government having to do with torture and wars and U.S. complicity in human rights violations.
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Peter Lemkin - 04-12-2012
Bradley Manning: A Window Into The American Soul
By Paul Craig Roberts
OpEdNews Op Eds 12/4/2012 at 12:07:35
Liberty consists of government being ruled by law and citizens having control over law. This was the way our founding fathers set up the US Constitution. It is the Constitution that defines the United States. Every member of the government and the armed forces swears allegiance to the Constitution -- not to the government or to the president or to a political party or to an ideology -- to defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic.
Today the emphasis needs to be on the Constitution's domestic enemies in "our own" government. America's foreign enemies are miniscule. But the domestic enemies are legion. America's enemies consist, with whistleblower exceptions, of the entire US government, both executive branch, legislative branch (with possibly a dozen exceptions), and judicial branch (with few exceptions).
The three branches of our government have united to destroy US civil liberties in the name of a hoax, "the war on terror." Even if the US were over-run with terrorists, how could they harm us more than our government has harmed us by destroying the US Constitution?
If you don't believe that the US Constitution has been destroyed by Republicans and Democrats alike, read my book co-authored with Lawrence M. Stratton, The Tyranny Of Good Intentions, and the five articles whose URLs are provided below.
Bradley Manning, a member of the US military, complied with his oath of office, with the US Military Code, with the Nuremberg standards set by the US government, with the strictures expressed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the George W, Bush administration, and with his own conscience. Manning, allegedly (we will never know), released to WikiLeaks the video of the US military murdering two journalists and a dozen innocent people walking down a street.
After the murder of these people by the US military playing video games with live people, a father with two young children stopped his van to help the survivors crawling in the street. The US military, due to either blood-lust, incompetence, or total evil, killed the father and sent high caliber bullets into the bodies of the two small children.
The murderers then blame the father for bringing children into the combat zone created by the incompetence or evil of the US troops, who obviously get their jollies from murdering people. TV cameras are claimed to be weapons and justifications for murdering 15 people.
Subsequently, a few people, whom the video shows to be unarmed, walk into a building.
The US troops claim the unarmed people have weapons and RPGs and send three hellfire missiles into the building. The US troops then report that all the "targets" are dead.
Any real patriotic American who saw this video would be compelled to release it. If Manning released it to Wikeleaks, then Manning is the most morally responsible American alive. What has Manning's moral conscience cost him?
It has cost Manning 900 days held incommunicado illegally by the US government. President John F. Kennedy's presidency lasted 1,000 days. Manning was held and tortured for almost the entire length of Camelot.
And the US government has gotten away with it.
Americans don't care. It is not them. They are too stupid to understand that once law is gone, they can be next.
In their desire to punish Manning, US military and civilian authorities failed to realize that the lesson for soldiers is that crimes against humanity will not be punished, but those who reveal the crimes will be punished.
On November 29, Bradley Manning testified in federal court about his illegal confinement and torture by the US government. Manning's testimony was not covered by the US media. The New York Times, in Chris Floyd's words, "contented itself with a brief bit of wire copy from AP, tucked away on page 3."
In contrast, the British Guardian covered Manning's testimony in detail in two stories 68 paragraphs long. The British people are informed of the US government's crimes against humanity in violation of international law and US law, but not the American people.
A formal United Nations investigation into the illegal, brutal and inhuman treatment of Bradley Manning denounced his treatment as "cruel and inhuman." The US State Department spokesman, Col. P.J. Crowley, resigned after publicly protesting Manning's illegal and inhuman treatment by the US government.
The presstitute media was silent.
Constitutional attorney Glenn Greenwald concludes that "the US establishment journalists have enabled the government every step of the way." The presstitutes hold "themselves out as adversarial watchdogs, but nothing provokes their animosity more than someone who effectively challenges government actions."
Greenwald praises Bradley Manning who "has bestowed the world with multiple vital benefits. But as his court martial finally reaches its conclusion, one likely to result in the imposition of a long prison term, it appears his greatest gift is this window into America's political soul."
The window into America's political soul reveals total evil. The US government constitutes Satan's Chosen People. Nothing else can be said for those who rule and oppress us.
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Keith Millea - 04-12-2012
Quote:The US troops claim the unarmed people have weapons and RPGs and send three hellfire missiles into the building. The US troops then report that all the "targets" are dead.
I'm sorry but I have to keep countering this claim.That video clearly shows that there was at least one rifle and one RPG in that group of people.I do not consider these deaths to be murder, but instead,the deadly circumstances and results of "WAR ITSELF".
That innocent people died in this video is a regular consequence of any WAR.Sadly,that's the nature of the beast.
That those fly-boys got their jollys off on killing those people was a disgrace to the Army,if not also,their very own soul.
FWIW
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Peter Lemkin - 04-12-2012
Keith Millea Wrote:Quote:The US troops claim the unarmed people have weapons and RPGs and send three hellfire missiles into the building. The US troops then report that all the "targets" are dead.
I'm sorry but I have to keep countering this claim.That video clearly shows that there was at least one rifle and one RPG in that group of people.I do not consider these deaths to be murder, but instead,the deadly circumstances and results of "WAR ITSELF".
That innocent people died in this video is a regular consequence of any WAR.Sadly,that's the nature of the beast.
That those fly-boys got their jollys off on killing those people was a disgrace to the Army,if not also,their very own soul.
FWIW
I saw a show in which they interviewed someone who was on the ground there and witnessed the whole thing from the ground. He said it was right next to a Mosque and the Mosque had armed guards, who he felt was the men with the weapons [supposed].. were allowed to have, and known to have, armed guards at the/that Mosques there and then.
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Keith Millea - 04-12-2012
Quote:I saw a show in which they interviewed someone who was on the ground there and witnessed the whole thing from the ground. He said it was right next to a Mosque and the Mosque had armed guards, who he felt was the men with the weapons [supposed].. were allowed to have, and known to have, armed guards at the/that Mosques there and then.Again,these are the kind of things that unfortunetly happen as a consequence of WAR ITSELF.
There were US troops with Bradley fighting vehicles heading towards this group of people.There was an RPG launcher sighted.They could make no other decision about what to do.They had to take out the RPG.
Yeah,I know it sucks......
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Adele Edisen - 10-01-2013
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33573.htm
Military Judge Recognizes What Many Progressives Denied: Bradley Manning Was Mistreated
The ruling is but the latest repudiation of claims from Obama supporters that Manning was treated fairly and justly
By Glenn Greenwald
"With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are." - Barack Obama, White House Press Conference, March 10, 2011.
January 09, 2013 "The Guardian' -- Few if any articles that I've written produced as much backlash as my 15 December 2010 column reporting on the oppressive and inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention, the first time that story was reported. The anger at my article primarily came not from right-wing venues but from the hardest-core Obama supporters, who (as they always do since 20 January 2009) reflexively defended the US government. Led by former Obama campaign press aide and now MSNBC contributor (the ultimate redundancy) Joy Reid, these particularly fanatical Democratic partisans literally adopted the anti-Manning rhetoric from the further right-wing precincts and repudiated the liberal tradition of defending whistleblowers and opposing oppressive detention conditions - all in order to insist that Manning was being treated exactly how he should be (this warped reaction was far from unanimous, as many progressives protested Manning's treatment).
Since then, an internal investigation by the Marine Corps - which operates the brig in which he was held - found that Manning's jailers violated their own policies in imposing oppressive conditions. The Obama administration's own State Department spokesman, PJ Crowley, denounced the detention conditions as "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid" and was then fired as a result. Amnesty International called for protests over Manning's treatment. The UN's highest torture official formally concluded after an investigation that the US government was guilty "of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment towards Bradley Manning" and "that the US military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment in keeping Manning locked up alone for 23 hours a day over an 11-month period in conditions that he also found might have constituted torture" - exactly what I reported at the end of 2010.
And now, on Tuesday, the military judge presiding over Manning's court-martial found, as the Guardian's Ed Pilkington reports, "that he was subjected to excessively harsh treatment in military detention" and is thus entitled to a reduction of his sentence if he is found guilty. Pilkington notes:
"[The military judge's] ruling was made under Article 13 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that protects prisoners awaiting trial from punishment on grounds that they are innocent until proven guilty. The recognition that some degree of pre-trial punishment did occur during the nine months that the soldier was held in Quantico marks a legal victory for the defence in that it supports Manning's long-held complaint that he was singled out by the US government for excessively harsh treatment."
This is far from a real victory for Manning. He was seeking dismissal of all charges, or a far greater sentencing reduction, based on claims of unlawful detention. And the judge, while accepting some, rejected many of his claims of abuse on the grounds that there was no intent to punish him before trial. But that's hardly surprising: this is, after all, a military judge presiding over a case where an Army Private is accused of "aiding and abetting al-Qaida." The entire proceeding is stacked against Manning: a military judge presiding over a military tribunal in this case is about the least objective and trustworthy arbiter on these questions.
That's why this ruling is so significant: even the military judge recognized that, in multiple ways, the treatment of Manning was unfair, excessive and illegal. Politico's Josh Gerstein explains:
"The decision is a significant victory for Manning's defense and a vindication for human-rights groups that complained 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.'"
Amazingly, Obama's defense of Manning's treatment - repudiated even by this military judge - came less than a week after the New York Times first reported that brig officials had begun stripping Manning of all his clothing and forcing him to remain naked.
The willingness of some of Obama's most devoted followers to justify all this and lash out at critics surprised even me, and underscored just how blindly supportive they are no matter how extreme and odious the behavior. As Charles Davis detailed in an excellent analysis at Salon last April, these Obama-defending progressives - in order to attack Manning and defend his detention conditions - copied almost verbatim the playbook used by Nixon officials to malign Daniel Ellsberg and anyone else who exposed wrongdoing on the part of the US government. Just as Bush followers did for years with the controversy over torture, these Democratic partisans alternated manically between denying that these oppressive conditions existed, justifying their use, and mocking concerns over them.
John Cole, one of President Obama's most steadfast supporters (and a former Army soldier), repeatedly condemned the abusive treatment of Manning, and in doing so, continually provoked the scorn of his Obama-supporting readers. Yesterday, after reading news of the military judge's decision, Cole sarcastically wrote:
"I don't understand how this is possible. What kind of commie liberal is this judge? Is she from Code Pink? For months, when I said he was being abused, all the keyboard commandos assured me that military protocol was being followed and that if they didn't abuse him like this and keep him naked and without his glasses, if he killed himself firebaggers like me would blame Obama.
"Many of you internet tough guys continued with this line of invective even when the DOD Inspector General said he was being treated not in accordance with rules. . . .
"Anyone with half a f****** brain could tell he was being treated differently than any other person in custody at Quantico, and the reason for it was he had embarrassed the Brass and the National Security State.
"For alleged liberals, there's not a dimes worth of difference between many of you and [Bush torture advocate] Marc Thiessen."
Watching self-proclaimed progressives attack and malign a courageous whistleblower, while defending the US military's patently abusive detention practices and steadfastly defending the government's extreme secrecy powers, is one of the most potent symbols of the Obama presidency.
An equally potent symbol is that at the very same time that Bradley Manning is prosecuted and threatened with life in prison for exposing serious war crimes, a government official who supported if not participated in those war crimes is being promoted to CIA director. This takes place in the same week when, as FAIR put it on Monday, "the only person to do time for the CIA's torture policies [John Kiriakou] appears to be a guy who spoke publicly about them, not any of the people who did the actual torturing.
As usual, those who commit serious crimes in government are not punished but rather rewarded. Only those who expose those crimes are punished. That's the story of Bradley Manning, and what makes it all the more remarkable and telling are the hordes of Democrats who have spent several years justifying and cheering for this.
Adele
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Peter Lemkin - 05-02-2013
celandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir announced Friday she plans to visit Bradley Manning, the jailed U.S. Army Private currently on trial for his alleged role in the Wikileaks scandal.
Jónsdottir became a central figure in the Wikileaks case after admitting in the spring of 2009 to helping the group get hold of a secret video of American soldiers shooting at civilians in Baghdad from a helicopter. The U.S. Department of Justice named her in its probe against Wikileaks, and has been able to legally force social networking website Twitter to hand over personal information from her account as a result of the investigation.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has said he first spoke to Jónsdottir in late 2009, according to Iceland Review. The parliamentarian admitted she got him into the U.S. embassy in Reykjavik in December 2009 as a "prank."
Pfc. Bradley Manning
Jónsdottir has refused to leave Iceland out of fears she will be arrested by U.S. authorities, despite a 2011 letter released by the U.S. Justice Department stating she is welcome to America and is not part of any criminal investigation.
"The best legal assistance available in North America" has been helping her fight the case, Jósdottir said in a press statement. She plans to meet with them when she visits pfc. Manning in April.
Jónsdottir told RÚV on Friday that the FBI had hacked into her personal computer between May and October of 2011, accessing personal files, e-mails and other information.
Last week, it was revealed that Icelandic Home Secretary Ögmundur Jónasson kicked out a group of FBI agents who came to Iceland to investigate the Wikileaks operation back in 2011.
Jónsdottir has been a parliamentarian since 2009, when she and three others were elected to office representing the grassroots Citizens' Movement. The other party members were film director Þráinn Bertelsson, economist Þór Saari, and editor Margrét Tryggvadóttir. Differences arose and Bertelsson left the party in 14 August 2009, and the remaining three members regrouped as The Movement.
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Adele Edisen - 25-02-2013
Bradley Manning: 1,000 Days in Detention and Secrecy Still Reigns
By Ed Pilkington
Such is the Alice-in-Wonderland world of the Bradley Manning trial. Why does it
matter?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34071.htm [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001r_mp0ddKse_G1Xmpgw003-9P23AnCvMVZiUNDkylfekbuCpqo1652cjuGTF6XL0DsfckmbRX84GQHez2lNy8MATWykWSSSsRzTrApTgbnZFbbP3IJ2ROtr7dcUV9PBJKg6sQKiqyUwO2ADOohGMEhd5c5youQjeJ]
Bradley Manning: 1,000 Days in Detention and Secrecy Still Reigns
The WikiLeaks suspect's prosecution has been conducted with a complete absence of transparency with worrying implications
By Ed Pilkington
February 24, 2013 "Information Clearing House" - (The Guardian) - On Saturday Bradley Manning will mark his 1,000th day imprisoned without trial. In the course of those thousand days, from the moment he was formally put into pre-trial confinement on 19 May 2010 on suspicion of being the source of the WikiLeaks disclosures, Manning has been on a long and eventful journey.
It has taken him from the desert of Iraq, where he was arrested at a military operating base outside Baghdad, to a prison tent in Kuwait. From there he endured his infamous harsh treatment at Quantico Marine base in Virginia, and for the last 14 months he has attended a series of pre-trial hearings at Fort Meade in Maryland, the latest of which begins next week.
For the small band of reporters who have tracked the prosecution of Private First Class Manning, the journey has also been long and eventful. Not in any way comparable, of course; none of us have been ordered to strip naked or put in shackles, and we have all been free to go home at night without the prospect of a life sentence hanging over us.
But it's been an education, nonetheless. Though we are a mixed bag a fusion of traditional outlets such as the Washington Post and Associated Press and new-look bloggers such as Firedoglake and the Bradley Manning support network we have been thrown together by our common mission to report on the most high-profile prosecution of an alleged leaker in several decades.
There's something else that binds us disparate though our reporting styles and personal politics might be and that's the daily struggle to do our jobs properly, confronted as we are by the systemic furtiveness of the US government. It's an irony that appears to be lost on many of the military lawyers who fill the courtroom at Fort Meade. A trial that has at its core the age-old confrontation between a government's desire for confidentiality and the public's need to know, is itself being conducted amid stringent restrictions on information.
None of the transcripts of the court martial procedure have been released to us. No government motions to the court have been published. David Coombs, Manning's lead lawyer, has had to plead to be allowed to post his defence motions, and when he has been granted permission he has often been forced to redact the documents to an almost comical degree.
The most egregious example of this over the past 1,000 days was the moment in January when the military judge, Colonel Denise Lind, issued her ruling in an Article 13 motion brought by Manning's defence. This was the complaint that the soldier, while at Quantico, had been subjected to a form of pre-trial punishment that is banned under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
It was an important moment in the narrative arc that is the Bradley Manning trial. Technically, Lind had the power to dismiss all charges against the soldier; she could have, though none of us expected that she would, let him walk out of that court and into freedom. (In the end she knocked 112 days off any eventual sentence).
The accusations contained in the Article 13 also went to the heart of the defence case that Manning has singled out for unfair and at times brutal treatment. During the testimony, Manning himself gave evidence, standing inside a 6ft by 8ft (180cm by 240cm) box that had been drawn on the floor of the courtroom to replicate the dimensions of his cell. He recalled such humiliating details as the routine he was required to follow when he needed toilet paper. Standing to attention at the front bars of his cell, he was ordered to shout out to the guards who kept him under 24-hour observation: "Lance Corporal Detainee Manning requests toilet paper!"
So my fellow reporters and I awaited with intense interest Lind's judgment, though also with some trepidation. We'd sat through the spectacle of Lind reading out to the court her rulings, and it wasn't a pleasant experience. The judge has a way of reading out her decisions at such a clip that it is almost impossible to take them down even with shorthand or touch typing.
In the event, Lind spent an hour and a half without pause reading out a judgment that must have stretched to 50 pages, at a rate that rendered accurate reporting of it diabolically difficult. No copy of the ruling has then or now been made available to the public, presumably on grounds of national security, even though every word of the document had been read out to the very public that was now being withheld its publication.
Such is the Alice-in-Wonderland world of the Bradley Manning trial. Why does it matter? It matters to Bradley Manning. The soldier is facing charges that carry the stiffest punishment available to the state short of killing him. (They could technically do that to him too, but the prosecution has made clear it will not seek the death penalty). If found guilty of the most serious charge "aiding the enemy" he could be confined to military custody for the rest of his life with no chance of parole, a prospect that makes the past 1,000 days look like a Tea Party.
The least Manning deserves is stringent fairness in his prosecution, and stringent fairness cannot exist in the absence of openness and transparency. As a British appeal court judge wrote in a recent case brought by the Guardian to protest against excessive courtroom secrecy: "In a democracy, where power depends on the consent of the governed, the answer must lie in the transparency of the legal process. Open justice lets in the light and allows the public to scrutinise the workings of the law, for better or for worse."
There's a much bigger reason why the cloak-and-dagger approach of the US government to this trial should be taken seriously. America doesn't seem to have woken up to this yet, but the prosecution of Bradley Manning poses the greatest threat to freedom of speech and the press in this country in at least a generation.
The "aiding the enemy" count essentially accuses Manning of handing information to Osama bin Laden as a necessary consequence of the act of leaking state secrets that would end up on the internet. When one of the prosecution lawyers was asked whether the government would still have gone after Manning had he leaked to the New York Times instead of WikiLeaks, she unhesitatingly replied: "Yes".
If that's not a threat to the first amendment, then what is? This prosecution, as it is currently conceived, could have a chilling effect on public accountability that goes far beyond the relatively rarefied world of WikiLeaks.
That's something worth contemplating as Bradley Manning enters his second 1,000 days sitting in a cell. Looked at this way, we're sitting in the cell with him.
Copyright The Guardian
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information ClearingHouse endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
Silenced (Scenes from a new documentary film about whistleblowers - available on original URL page - AE)
Adele
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Peter Lemkin - 25-02-2013
Most Americans just don't want to see how far toward tyranny and a police state America has come [already over the 'line', IMO] - Obama being President, notwithstanding. He has continued, and in some areas exceeded, Bush's excesses and drive toward an End Of America. Manning is a good 'canary in the coal mine' with which to watch this - but they are everywhere, if one will only look. We've had our Reichstag moment [911], having been softened up by the long list of assassinations and covert ops, propaganda before....what comes next, unless the People together say 'NO MORE", will be very ugly indeed. Cry my beloved County....for she is headed in all the wrong directions...fast. They want to make whistleblowing on crime and unconstitutionality punishable by death or life in prison under harsh treatment. Those who do the crimes for the Banksters and National Security State get rewarded. Very sad and very sick. Very apt on what is [not] going on is Hedges' book 'Death of the Liberal Class'.
The persecution and prosecution of Bradley Manning - Magda Hassan - 25-02-2013
I guess the right to a quick and speedy trial doesn't apply to the military? Like many things.