Bradley Manning Could Face Death Penalty
Posted: March 2, 2011 Filed under: Action Memo, Afghanistan, Foreign Affairs, Iraq, Psychopaths in charge, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, Wikileaks | Tags: aiding the enemy, Barack Obama, Bradley Manning, death penalty, injustice, whistle blowers, Wikileaks 20 Comments
Bradley Manning
Remember when the U.S. was a civilized country? Or am I dreaming? Were we ever a civilized country? Are we really supposed to believe that this guy in the White House is a Democrat? This latest outrage is way beyond the pale, as far as I’m concerned:
Sara Sorcher at The National Journal
The U.S. Army today charged Pfc. Bradley Manning with 22 additional offenses related to the release of classified documents to WikiLeaks, including “aiding the enemy,” traditionally a capital offense. But in a release announcing the new charges, the Army said it would not be recommending the death penalty.
The charges, announced after what the Army said was a seven-month investigation, also included wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet where it could be accessed by “the enemy,” theft of public records, transmitting defense information, and fraud in connection with computers. The new counts included five violations of Army regulations as well, the Army release said. During this time Manning has been held in solitary confinement at the Marine Corps Base brig at Quantico, Va.
They won’t recommend the death penalty? I’m not sure why we should believe anything our government tells us anymore. And just who is this “enemy” that Manning supposedly “aided” by releasing a video of war crimes and supposedly leaking diplomatic cables? That is still a mystery, because the army won’t say.
In its Twitter feed, WikiLeaks said the charge of aiding the enemy was “a vindictive attack on Manning for exercising his right to silence. No evidence of any such thing.” It also said the charge suggested that “WikiLeaks would be defined as ‘the enemy.’ A serious abuse.”
Military officials did not respond to a question on Wednesday about who the “enemy” was. The charge sheet, however, accuses the private of giving intelligence to the enemy “through indirect means,” which could suggest that prosecutors are referring to Afghan and Iraqi insurgents rather than to WikiLeaks.
Does anyone think the Afghan and Iraqi insurgents were surprised to learn that U.S. Soldiers have killed innocent civilians in their countries? I’m not sure what they are supposed to get out of the diplomatic cables. I doubt if any of them would be surprised to learn that the Bush administration lied in order to start a war in Iraq.
The Guardian tries and fails to decipher the “aiding the enemy” charge:
The charge involves “giving intelligence to the enemy”, which is defined as “organised opposing forces in time of war but also other hostile body that our forces may be opposing such as a rebellious mob or a band of renegades”. Such an enemy could be civilian or military in nature.
The charge sheet, like the original set of accusations, contains no mention by name of the enemy to which the US military is referring.
It could be WikiLeaks itself, which the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has accused of launching an “attack on America”. Or it could be a reference to enemy forces in Afghanistan.
A report by NBC News said Pentagon officials emphasised that some WikiLeaks material contained names of informants and others working with US forces whose lives could have been put in danger.
That’s bullsh&t, IMHO. I hope they’re ready to present evidence of harm that actually took place as a result of the release of the diplomatic cables.
At FDL, Jane Hamsher has published a statement from Manning’s friend and supporter David House along with a petition to tell Robert Gates to drop the “aiding the enemy” charges. Here is House’s statement:
Through WikiLeaks we have been given direct evidence that the White House openly lies to congress and the American people in order to achieve political ends. Richard Nixon, in an attempt to stifle government transparency, once called Ellsberg “the most dangerous man in America” and accused him of “providing aid and comfort to the enemy.” Today we see the Obama administration continuing the legacy Nixon started by declaring whistleblowers as enemies of the state. It is a sad and dangerous day for transparency advocates everywhere.
President Obama should be ashamed, but I’m not sure he has the capacity for that–or to feel empathy for this young man who has already spent months in prison under conditions tantamount to torture.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
It appears ‘the enemy’ is us. Who else posed the greatest threat to our gov’t if the information was released?
I think you’re right. We are the ones they want to keep in the dark.
Or is it the lastest tactic to coax a confession — real or not — that’ll put wikileaks out of business? Or a generic scare tactic to warn off other potential leakers?
*****A
Good questions.
Your assessment of Obama is correct BB, he has absolute no empathy…he is a weasel.
Here is a new link to NYT:
Pfc. Bradley Manning Faces 22 New WikiLeaks Charges – NYTimes.com
Hey isn’t there some big shindig at the White House, where Obama is giving a party to James Taylor and Merle Streep?
Yup…I thought that was tonight:
Arts Post – President Obama talks about the influence of art and words
Didn’t he just have a motown shindig last week? Isn’t the MENA nation’s contagion keeping him busy at all?
Of course not…he would always rather party than do any kind of real “president” stuff. Hey, remember when he let Bill Clinton give that press conference alone..cause he had to go party? Obama has the other Clinton busy making his Administration’s “statements” on the conflict in the ME. I keep saying that I detested GW…but I think my disgust with Obama has surpassed that.
From the NYT above…life in prison?
What I want to know is who is this enemy? Seems like we embarrassed ourselves and our allies more than that stuff did any thing to an ‘enemy’. Also, they still can’t connect the state department cables to him. Wikileaks said some diplomat walked them out the State Department on a CD.
Would Assange be the enemy? He was given terrorist status from Biden wasn’t he? And now that Assange is being extradited to Sweden…it all seems like it has been timed perfectly.
Speaking of Assange: Assange lodges official extradition appeal
Yes I’ve seen some names in some of the leaked documents I’ve looked at. They should have taken those out before publishing.
Some human rights groups also protested:
source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/10/afghanistan-war-logs-wikileaks-human-rights-groups
I’m betting he lied about the condom too.
The names were to be redacted by the news organizations who published the material. Wikileaks also tried to get the US gov’t to work with them to redact names, and were refused, which is why they went to the news orgs.
We’ll have to wait and see if the government has enough evidence against Manning to put him away for life or kill him. They have already destroyed his mind and body.
I’m not aware that Manning is accused of anything involving a condom. If you’re referring to Assange, this post is not about him. He hasn’t been imprisoned by the U.S. army without charges for months and tortured.
It’s a shame that Manning is locked up while Assange is treated like a god. But it was Assange who leaked the documents TO THE PUBLIC. And it wasn’t even whistle-blowing, just routine documents.
Why Assange approached the Pentagon to help him I don’t understand. They are all part of the executive branch of the government. Why would the Pentagon have a vested interest in making life difficult for the State department, or for the CIA by confirming which individuals have worked with them? Assange must think government agencies have huge numbers of people sitting around with no job duties and nothing better to do than to work for him for free. This guy’s sense of entitlement blows me away.
Assange only agreed to let newspapers handle the vetting in response to pressure from these human rights agencies. They only went public after he blew them off in private.
Here’s an interesting thread from a guy who is a retired foreign news correspondent:
Daniel Ellsberg: “Manning may be single person who did what Nuremberg principle demands: reveal we were handing people over to be tortured”
Tweet by emptywheel
And if the people who handed people over to be tortured are outed, frankly I don’t care.
I note that the above comment ends with “could have been lethal,” not “was lethal.”
I come down on the side of open information, but then of course I’m a liberal, not a neoliberal, conservative, neoconservative or tea partier.
Yamadayev had absolutely nothing to do with torture, if you reread it, you can see he just made an unguarded remark about government expenditures.
Maybe the quotation marks didn’t make it clear enough, but the “it could have been lethal” remark was by the retired journalist, who I don’t think had any information about the informant besides what was in the leaked cable. A quick google shows that Yamadeyev has been assassinated.
Assassination was the big concern of the human rights groups. The Taliban announced they were going through the documents for names, and in the past when they have identified those in contact with the international military they have targeted them and killed them and their families.
” [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703428604575419580947722558.html?mod=WSJEUROPE_hpp_MIDDLESecondNews]
Does anyone care if our State Department is effective? I don’t know, but I hope someone does. Before this was published the US diplomat was extremely well informed and connected. And that’s the problem. All his expertise may now be lost because it will be mighty hard for him to build up trust with these characters again.
I suspect Manning is just a stand-in for Assange, because nobody can get their hands on that one.
I’m sure the Diplomats that are respected are still well respected and that all this did was just show the political hacks and CIA hacks as exactly that … I think a lot of people already had suspicions about most of this anyway.
They praise whistle blowers, but all they really want is to stomp them out-even by means of subliminal references to the death penalty.
Disgusting.