After years of abuse in confinement from denying him a charge to denying him counsel, Pfc. Bradley Manning finally had a trial on the most serious charge against him: aiding the enemy. He was convicted on lesser charges. The verdict should again focus attention on the mistreatment of Manning by the Obama Administration for leaking classified reports and diplomatic cables. Many of these documents showed that the U.S. government was lying to the public and to its allies.
Manning previously pleaded guilty to 10 of 22 counts of lesser charges in giving the documents to Wikileaks. He could still face a long sentence and the Obama Administration has clearly worked to make an example of him after he embarrassed the government with both the public and allies.
The documented abuse of Manning by the Obama Administration while in custody will result in a four-month credit toward his sentencing. Yet there has been virtually no demand for the punishment of those responsible for the abuse.
The acquittal is a victory for military justice. There was never any evidence of an intent to aid the enemy and the overcharging of the case was indicative of the excessive response of the Administration — the same pattern shown with Snowden and Assange. Of course, those false or controversial communications in these documents have not been the focus of coverage by the media.
The verdict is also a vindication for the defense in taking a plea on the earlier charges to focus on the most serious charge.
Source: Politico
No, anon. posted, like these lies:
OT:
….justice is bizzarly askew….
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/national/report-armed-george-zimmerman-stopped-texas-cops/nY9KL/
Nick S.: In today’s vernacular, I believe I’m “throwing ‘bows.” 😉
What Ms Fitzgerald wrote about the U.S. command in Vietnam (not to mention Laos and Cambodia) applies equally well to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, or any number of other (mainly Muslim) foreign nations wherein the U.S. command has deprived its own soldiers of their choice as to whether or not to kill civilians, destroy their property, or drive them out of their homes into stateless refugee exile. Yet the individual moral choice always exists and some soldiers refuse to follow unlawful orders to commit crimes just because someone of a higher military rank insists on issuing such unlawful orders. According to trial testimony, Bradley Manning witnessed crimes. He did his duty and reported them to higher ranking authority. That higher-ranking authority (I will never use the word “superior” in relation to anything military) insisted that PFC Manning not only cease reporting such crimes, but actively participate in perpetrating more of them. Bradley Manning exercised his right to do his duty as he saw it and as his oath required. For this, those above him in rank and complicit in the commission of crimes and their cover-up demanded his persecution.
Bradley Manning has nothing for which to apologize, and the U.S. military has once again disgraced itself. An old story, really. It certainly reminds me of the disgraceful episodes of military lawlessness and systemic mendacity that I witnessed in Southeast Asia forty years ago. Not everyone enlists in the military just because it offers them a license to commit crimes. Some do, regrettably, but many also do not. PFC Bradley Manning made his own moral choices. And that insistence of the lowly enlisted man to make his own intelligent and moral choices — that above all else — rankles the authoritarian, subservient military “mind” more than anything else. How dare the lowly enlisted man retain even an ounce of his human integrity in the face of overwhelming official corruption, malfeasance, and mendacity. Can’t have any of that in the lowly PFC. Might bring the entire rotten system crashing down. It might even lead to — horror of horrors! — a little interregnum of Peace.
Good for you, Bradley Manning. You “broke the law” by jaywalking across the street to warn your neighbors that their house had caught fire. Then, after you called police and fire departments for assistance in putting out the fire, they arrested you for jaywalking, disturbing the peace, violation of curfew, “narcissism,” and twenty other “associated” charges requiring years of pretrial punishment and an eventual “trial” that would make Franz Kafka cringe in recognition.
The Founders had it right when they said that a standing Army would eventually destroy the Republic. Looks like it pretty much has already. Not much further to go.
Otteray Scribe:
I appreciate your comment and see your point. I agree, it may have been that Manning took a gamble that he might lose and thus decided to plead “guilty.” It’s a shame that a defendant may have to make this sort of “Sophie’s Choice” decision. And you are right, I am not in the field of law or forensics! I am a health professional, and often encounter patients who are struggling in our justice system, and thus I have a strong interest in such matters. I am glad that people like yourself, who clearly are passionate about law, work in the field. Thank you!!
Pardon Dick Cheney, and Pardon Bradley Manning
By Henry Farrell
7/31/2013
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2013/07/pardon_dick_cheney_and_pardon046125.php
Excerpt:
Since it’s timely, I’m republishing my modest proposal from last year, one half of which is meant in all seriousness:
It’s not at all surprising that most US media have yawned at today’s news that a UN rapporteur has found that the US has treated Bradley Manning in a cruel and inhuman fashion. But it does highlight a rather interesting inequity.
On the one side of the balance sheet, we have Richard B. Cheney. This gentleman, now in private life, is a self-admitted and unrepentant perpetrator of war crimes – specifically, of ordering the torture of Al Qaeda detainees. Along with other senior members of the Bush regime, he is also guilty of the outsourcing of even viler forms of torture through the extraordinary rendition of individuals to regimes notorious for torturing prisoners (including the dispatch of Maher Arar, who was entirely innocent, to the torturers of Syria). The Obama administration has shown no enthusiasm whatsoever for prosecuting Cheney, or other Bush senior officials, for their crimes. While Obama has effectively admitted that they were torturers, he has indicated, both through public statements and continued inaction, that he would prefer to let bygones be bygones.
On the other, we have Bradley Manning. He appears to be a confused individual – but his initial motivation for leaking information, if the transcripts are correct, were perfectly clear. He was appalled at what he saw as major abuses of authority by the US, including incidents that he witnessed directly in Iraq. There is no evidence that his leaking of information has caused anything worse than embarrassment for the US. Yet he is being pursued by the Obama administration with the vengefulness of Greek Furies. While Manning was being kept in solitary confinement, and treated in an inhuman fashion, Richard Cheney was enjoying the manifold pleasures of a well-compensated private life, being subjected to no more than the occasional impertinent question on a Sunday talk show, and the inconveniences of being unable to travel to jurisdictions where he might be arrested.
It would appear then that the administration is rather more prepared to let bygones be bygones in some cases than in others. High officials, who ordered that torture be carried out and dragged the US into international disrepute, are given an ex post carte blanche for their crimes, while a low-ranking soldier who is at most guilty of leaking minor secrets at the lowest levels of classification, is treated inhumanely and likely, should he be convicted, to face life imprisonment.
Juliet throwing fastballs high and tight. I like it!!
Bob,
What do you mean when you say that Manning was a “gossip?” Can you clarify that comment?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/01/bradley-manning-wikileaks-statement-full-text
http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/wikileaks/bradley_manning/pfc_bradley_e_manning_providence_hearing_statement.html#update
subvert
Bob, Esq.,
Yep and agree with the term gossip whereas Snowden revealed actions meant to subverted the constitution.
That being said, I take strong issue with the manner in which Manning was held remembering that back in January a military judge deemed Manning’s pretrial detention treatment “excessive”.
“Michael: And thanks for the Wiki reference. You really impressed me with your vast knowledge of Googling sh*t up.” — Juliet Lester Neary
No thanks required. You impress easily. Just ask any spokesperson for the U.S. government.
I also served nearly six years of penurious indentured servitude in Uncle Sam’s Canoe Club, a.k.a., the United States Navy, ultimately rising to the rank of E-5 at time of honorable discharge in February of 1972. I know U.S. Navy rankings without having to look them up, but I did want to double check my understanding of equivalent Army rankings, so I did a few seconds worth of research to make sure I had my facts straight. You might try it sometime.
I also followed some of the so-called “trial” proceedings wherein witnesses who had served with Bradley Manning testified to his knowledge and competence. He obviously knew more about the “security” system of the U.S. military than any “management” or “supervisory” cipher nominally above him in rank and responsible for him in the — apparently non-existent — “chain of command.” Some chain. Starts and ends at E-3.
Do you really want to get into a pissing contest with me about matters concerning the U.S. military? Frankly, I don’t think you’ve got the hose for it, if you catch my drift.
Michael: You should put your unremarkable hose away. An E-5 is an E-5 is an E-5, regardless of branch. A fact anyone who has been in the military would not need to Google. Unremarkable, limp, and minuscule.
http://youtu.be/MyKIb3f1qk8
For the record, while Manning certainly wasn’t “aiding the enemy” etc., he wasn’t truly a whistle blower.
Manning was more of a gossip than anything else. Unlike Snowden, Manning did not blow the whistle on a government design to violate the U.S. Constitution. Snowden’s actions can easily be seen as him keeping his oath of loyalty to the document; whereas Manning simply abused his position and released classified documents.
Bob: Exactly.
“The judge, interestingly enough, has been promised or given an appointment to the next highest military court, the appeals court, which I find extraordinary, that in the middle of a trial of the most important whistleblower in United States history, that the judge who’s presiding at it be given a higher position.” -Michael Ratner, Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)
Bradley Manning Awaits Verdict After Trial Ends with Prosecution “Smears” & Harsh Gov’t Secrecy
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/29/bradley_manning_awaits_verdict_after_trial
AMY GOODMAN: And, Alexa, the ability to get information out—I mean, what you started doing in this trial, for people to understand how closely held the information was, that you were the one providing the public with transcripts at the beginning. Explain why the court wasn’t doing this.
ALEXA O’BRIEN: The court—this is a military court-martial. And Judge Colonel Denise Lind believed—it was her contention—and Mr. Ratner and CCR, you know, filed suit in respect to this—she felt that there was no legal—First Amendment legal precedent for public access to the court documents. So what she would do is read these really long, mile-a-minute recitations of the motions into the court record and then deprive us of a media operations center, so that we had to actually scribble these things down in our notebooks.
And we’re not talking about just merely the trial of Bradley Manning, as important as it is. We’re talking about setting legal precedent for the future of national security reporting and also whistleblowers—and also, really, even beyond that, just simply people using the Internet, communicating in legally protected speech, First Amendment rights, because the government is asserting in this case that, essentially, the enemy uses the Internet, and so if you publish intelligence or you aid the enemy with whatever is classified as intelligence, which in this case only has to be true and useful to the enemy—that’s the definition; it doesn’t have anything to do with classified information—that you could be brought up on the charge of aiding the enemy. So, it’s very important that we—we should have had access to these public records. And I think it tells you—it leans more towards a long record of Colonel Denise Lind being deferential to the government, the prosecution, and doing whatever she can to help them manage this trial and the public perception about it.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Ratner, actually, Denise Lind, the judge, is going to move out of her position after this, isn’t she?
MICHAEL RATNER: Yeah, she’s been given, apparently, from a Washington Post report, a appellate judge job, the higher court, which I found pretty extraordinary. I don’t know whether it’s—I don’t think it’s necessarily illegal, but it does—it’s interesting to me that she’s going upstairs during the very trial that’s going on, and given that promotion. And it reminded me when the Ellsberg judge, the judge in Daniel Ellsberg’s case, the federal judge, during Ellsberg’s trial on espionage was offered to be the head of the FBI, secretly, by the Nixon administration. And, of course, there was a huge stink. I don’t see any stink so far in any of the media about the fact that Denise Lind, the judge, is being offered to a higher position. And then, think about the higher position. She’s sitting up there on the court when the Bradley Manning conviction is going to be, assuming there’s—well, there’s a conviction because he’s already pleaded to 10 counts—is going to be reviewed. She won’t sit on it, but her fellow judges are going to be sitting there, and are they going to want to reverse one of their fellow judges? So, it—basically, it stinks, Amy.
=======
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/31/facing_rest_of_life_behind_bars
AMY GOODMAN: We want to play a clip of a response to the Manning verdict from Michael Ratner, one of the attorneys for Julian Assange who also spent a good deal of time at the trial. We were doing a live broadcast yesterday as the verdict came down, and he described how the military judge, Colonel Denise Lind, in the Manning case may now—has now just gotten promoted.
MICHAEL RATNER: The judge, interestingly enough, has been promised or given an appointment to the next highest military court, the appeals court, which I find extraordinary, that in the middle of a trial of the most important whistleblower in United States history, that the judge who’s presiding at it be given a higher position. And, of course, this has—it brings us right back to Daniel Ellsberg. During Daniel Ellsberg’s trial for espionage, which eventually just collapsed under all the government chicanery, hypocrisy, etc., the trial judge in that case was actually offered to be the head of the FBI. Haldeman, from Nixon’s office, went out and sat on a park bench with him, overlooking the Pacific, and said, while the trial is going on, “Hey, Judge, how would you like to be head of the FBI?” I mean, you talk about influencing a judge by the executive. You’re seeing it both in the Ellsberg case, and now you see the other crucial, major whistleblower, the same thing happening, the judge being offered a higher position. I find it pretty remarkable that they would mess around and make it look like that judge may not have a complete fairness.
**Juliet Lester Neary 1, July 31, 2013 at 5:41 pm
Michael: A year barely gets one through basic and AIT. You have no idea what you’re talking about, so kindly STFU with your insults. I was a sergeant/E-5, holding an E-7 position in a base S-2. I worked directly for the base commander. I know what I’m talking about. You don’t. Bugger off.
**
Well he’ll,
Now we all know you’re supposed to be smart enough to have figured out 911 was an Inside Job, & those reporters murdered in the video Manning released worked for Reuters.
Reuters was the news outfit that released the info to BBC/CNN, others?, that that “they?” were going to “Blow Up’ the al-CIAda building 7 NYC.
Remember that tape, the BBC report filming with building 7 in the background saying #7 had already came down & then the building is shown being blown in the video seconds later. Further the cop caught on tape telling people to get back, they’re going to blow up the building before hand?
(The Enron records were said to be in that building & massive records of Wallst Bond frauds, obstruction of Justice anyone)
There’s much more, but the point is we’d never went to war for those “Oil/Nat Gas & pipeline route maps if not for Bush/Cheney’s 911, & thus no Bradley Manning.
Pity we couldn’t follow the official 911 Commission Report lead & have a Real Investigation into 911.
And what Tony C. said.
Mespo said, “Some lies are necessary as every adult knows.”
Like these lies?
http://youtu.be/Og_m48LWkR8
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/24/tillman.hearing/
“Brother calls tale ‘calculated lies’
As the tide was turning in the U.S. battle against Afghan insurgents — and as media outlets prepared to release reports on detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq — the military saw Pat Tillman’s death as an “opportunity,” Kevin Tillman told the panel.
Even after it became clear the report was bogus, the military clung to the “utter fiction” that Pat Tillman was killed by a member of his platoon who was following the rules of engagement, the brother said.
“Revealing that Pat’s death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster during a month already swollen with disasters,” Kevin Tillman said. “The facts needed to be suppressed. An alternative narrative had to be constructed, crucial evidence destroyed.”
Tillman bristled at the military claim that the initial report was merely misleading.
Clearly resentful, he told the panel that writing a field report stating that his brother had been “transferred to an intensive care unit for continued CPR after most of his head had been taken off by multiple 5.56 rounds is not misleading.”
“These are deliberate and calculated lies,” he said.
Pat Tillman, who became a national hero after he gave up a lucrative contract with the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals to join the Army’s elite Rangers force, was awarded the Silver Star, the military’s third-highest combat decoration, after the Army said he was killed leading a counterattack.
O’Neal testified that his superiors had him write a statement about the incident for Tillman’s Silver Star commendation. He said the final version contained false statements about enemy fire that had been inserted by someone else.
Thomas F. Gimble, the Defense Department’s acting inspector general, said that investigators could not determine who altered O’Neal’s statement and that no attempt was made to examine the document’s electronic history.
The Army later acknowledged not only that Tillman was killed by his fellow soldiers, but that officers in Tillman’s chain of command knew the counterattack story was bogus.
Still, Senior Chief Petty Officer Stephen White told the official heroism-under-fire story at a May 3, 2004, memorial service for Tillman.
“It’s a horrible thing that happened with Pat,” White, a Navy SEAL who was Tillman’s friend, told the committee. “I’m the guy that told America how he died, basically, at that memorial. It was incorrect. That does not sit well with me.”
Though the military blamed the erroneous report on an inadequate initial investigation, Mary Tillman told ESPN Radio last month that everyone involved in the shooting knew immediately that her son had been shot three times in the head by a member of his platoon.
“The Tillman family was kept in the dark for more than a month,” Waxman said. “Evidence was destroyed. Witness statements were doctored. The Tillman family wants to know how all of this could’ve happened.” “
The government of the United States had such a compelling case against PFC Bradley Manning that it took them three years to arrange for even a kangaroo-court farce of a “military” trial. Even the so-called military “judge” had to acknowledge the three years of pretrial punishment, generously allowing Bradley Manning four months off whatever number of decades he will spend in prison for not breaking down and “confessing” to “conspiring” with Wikileaks and Julian Assange — the entire purpose of the years of pretrial punishment. Years of abusing an Army PFC just to try and fabricate some phony “association” with an independent Australian journalist who had every right in the world to publish whatever in the hell he wanted.
But then, secret trials based on secret testimony by secret witnesses giving secret evidence do engender great confidence in the justice of their outcomes. This explains the strong preference for secret trials on the part of our Constitution’s founding authors. They just couldn’t say enough in praise of them.
mespo727272 1, July 31, 2013 at 3:50 pm
Dredd:
Whether you care to admit it or not many wars decide things.
=================================
Oh I readily admit it.
But the way you present it is that making a decision to go to war to decide something is axiomatically … what … magic?
What could go wrong?
Any decision is the right one?
I am the decider in chief?
A hundred aberrations “decide things”, but not well:
(Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala). To the extent that cultures can build truth for their people, can rebuild the underworld of the amygdala, they should do so.
Sheroes would.