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
@Blouise – Do you really think Pavel Durov doesn’t have a BIDET (no need for TP)? 🙂
Things have really changed in Moscow since the old days when there were long lines for EVERYTHING including TP. Now there is many McDonald’s and Baskin Robbins. People go to McDonald’s for the meat! But the black-market (Russian mob) which Putin is not really doing much about, pretty much has changed things there. There are black-market kiosks on almost every street corner. You can buy almost anything within reason.
VK is the biggest Facebook-esq op in Russia. Snowden will probably like it. However, Borscht is an acquired taste. I think he will be spending a lot of time at McDonald’s or BK (Burger King).
The movie WHITE NIGHTS was an American propaganda piece IMO. Remember the Boston Bomber’s parents became US citizens but went BACK to Russia despite Putin wanting to beat the crap out of them for being so close to that Chechen maniac Abdul-Malik (allegedly killed in Grozny)?
I am so shocked that “Putey” (Vladimir Putin – Dubya used to call him that) – or the Gray Cardinal (as he likes to be called) – hasn’t accused Snowden of being a CIA plant yet. It seems his old-KGB “spidey-senses” are telling him Snowden is legit 😉 . Remember that Connecticut kid “Tobin” he kicked out of Russia for being a CIA spy on his cell phone towers? In that case he was right IMO. I guess ol’ GC will have to wait for the other shoe to drop huh? I just hope it’s not like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWt3-kPBQ4A
@Blouise – My GWU comment was not meant to be pejorative. I know it sounded that way. No I’m saying that many GWU students get recruited into the agency. Some professors are agents. An “agent” is NOT an “officer”. An agent is someone who is unofficially or official contracted to be an intelligence asset overseas or domestically. I believe that even the 7th floor likes to pay tuition for some of their employees overt & covert to attend post grad stuff? So GWU is on my good list not bad list like McGill University in Montreal Canada. And there are others like in Southern California…
TonyC – OK let me just put a NEW stake in the ground and we can throw out my old baby with the old bath water. Forget what I said… Now I will say this: Manning is a traitor to USA. He did not reveal anything CRITICAL to opsec. His stuff is apparently opsec-inert. It’s really about BushCo abuses. HOWEVER, just like Anonymously Posted said about about A.I. it’s all a message to future MANNINGS to cease and desist or else… No need to debate this. It is ostensible.
SOTB,
We could consider getting a job at VK in Russia but the food really, really stinks and the toilet tissue is less than sturdy.
“Anything coming from GWU can be assumed to be coming from CIA.” (SOTB)
That would make The National Security Archive based at George Washington University’s Gelman Library a disinformation project? 😉
SOTB: I see you misunderstood my analogies about Manning being the traitor that he is.
I understood perfectly, you are just completely wrong. You do not seem to understand that.
Mespo: On the contrary, I listened to the entire thing, 15 minutes and 44 seconds worth. Apparently YOU didn’t listen to it, or you only heard what you wanted to hear.
If you DID listen to it, tell me precisely what lie he claims is necessary for a politician to tell that is not in the politician’s own best interest or self preservation, and tell me precisely why he must TELL the lie instead of remaining silent or refusing to answer.
I only listened to it once, but I have a good memory and was looking for some truly necessary lie, and did not hear it. So I don’t think you can meet the challenge.
@Blouise – Another thing that’s burning my butt is all this scuttlebutt that Germany is all up in arms that Mr. Obama is listening to their “chatter”. BFD!!! They all knew that when Estonia launched SYKPE and people like the German’s couldn’t break their encryption and that bad-guys were flocking to SKYPE like it was Mecca… Germany was watching when NSA stealthily purchased SKYPE (via their US commercial cover ops) and filled it full of back-doors. That’s why the creator of SKYPE want’s it back as NSA just crippled it. And guess who steps up and purchased SKYPE from NSA (Uh I mean EBAY)? Bill Gates (Mr. CIA). Microsoft has more back-doors than you can shake a stick at.
When you delete stuff (you thought you deleted), there is a encrypted and compressed shadow file that stores on your hard drive that can be uploaded and restored. And what about that “chip” that CPU US manufacturers where supposed to incorporate into the CPU? It’s there! And don’t think you can go off-grid with your laptop or tablet. As long as you need an electric company connection your screwed if you think you’re not being spied on. Yes American corporations are in bed with them. They have to or else…
Fortunately, the spying TODAY is being done by the good guys (Mr. Obama et al) and not the bad guys of before (BuschCo). ObamaCo is looking for TRUE enemies-of-the-state. BushCo (just like President Wilson) was looking to nail journalists, and Congressional enemies-of-bush. Yes I know ObamaCO just nailed API but they deserved it for spilling the beans about our assets in Yemen – possibly causing loss of American lives (yes CIA officers are American citizens too).
http://youtu.be/_TJDZax426I
“Amnesty International’s Widney Brown had perhaps the most succinct coda on Manning’s trial and its verdict:
“It’s hard not to draw the conclusion that Manning’s trial was about sending a message: the U.S. government will come after you, no holds barred, if you’re thinking of revealing evidence of its unlawful behavior.””
(Source: http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2013/07/31/op-ed-how-bradley-manning-changed-fate-whistleblowers?page=0,1 )
Anything coming from GWU can be assumed to be coming from CIA.
Anyway… over the last few decades the 7th floor (CIA executive management) and other alphabeters have been doing what doctors do. What’s that? Going to major insurance companies to get massive liability coverage. Like how doctor’s get malpractice insurance? I’m sure Dick Cheney is swimming in Lloyds of London policies awaiting Barry’s next stealthy move like an October Surprise? I’m sure all you Obama-haters will be floored when Barry does this. Maybe in 2016 his swansong year. Leaving the mess for the next guy or gal (maybe President Palin?) 🙁
TonyC. – I see you misunderstood my analogies about Manning being the traitor that he is. Yes his “package” is inert just like Snowden’s. Putin today told Snowden he can stay in Russia if he STOPS unloading his package on USA. Putey even made a very good joking quip too (i.e. “…especially from me” [you had to be there] 🙂 )
When I was referring to SIGSALY (not Enigma as someone had spilled the beans on that one to the NAZIs only they didn’t believe it). NO ONE ever find out about SIGSALY until recently. The NAZIs knew something about it as they were intercepting the “buzzing” noise. But fortunately they misunderstood how it worked.
All I was saying is thank GOD (literally) there was no MANNINGS back then to screw the pooch. We did hang a US soldier back then for treason but I forgot his name. And I forgot what he did. But So I wasn’t saying Manning was a traitor for exposing something critical. He is a traitor for setting up a precedent for other numb-nuts to follow suit. That’s what Mr. OBAMA is trying to prevent!
By burning the hell out of Snowden and Manning OTHERS will look and say: “Ummm maybe I’ll rethink doing that thing just now…” I just wish Jeff Sterling had thought his revelation through. I mean we all knew CIA and Israel was planning something on Tehran. We just didn’t know what and when.
That’s the kinda’ stuff we don’t have a need to know. Yes we do need to know ALL about Cheney’s UNNACO, KBR, and Halliburton deal under the Caspian Sea operation (et al). Yes we need to know what deals Bush had with Saudi Arabia that may have led to the incidents surrounding 9/11. BUT we sure as hell don’t need to know what Mr. Obama is listening to in the NSA data collection.
Since when is the American public privy to IC (intelligence Community) OPSEC (operation security)? SO you think every HUMINT (human intelligence), SIGINT (signals intellince), ELINT (Electronic signals intelligence) ops (operations) need to be fully vetted by YOU? Yes the American people rule their government by VOTES and Congressional oversight.
Don’t you think Congress is watching the alphabet soup very closely? If Mr. Obama was doing anything wrong don’t you think John Boehner and his cronies (i.e. the master-car-thief-in office from California – you know who) would be banging their well groomed nd tanned fists on the table demanding answers of him?
“Much ado about NOTHING!”
Greenwald And NYT’s James Risen Completely Deflate Jeffrey Toobin’s Tortured Logic On NSA, Snowden
The Trials of Bradley Manning
His conviction on Espionage Act charges poses grave dangers for American journalism.
Chase Madar
July 31, 2013
http://www.thenation.com/article/175512/trials-bradley-manning#axzz2aj8FHCG8
Excerpt;
Fort Meade is the too-perfect setting for Manning’s court-martial: an Army base, it is also home to the National Security Agency, now famous for its powers of digital intrusion after the spectacular revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA is the largest bureaucracy in the bloated US security complex, a farrago of draconian harshness coupled with casual indiscipline, dodgy legality with solemn appeals to the rule of law, and state-of-the-art IT with chronic power outages and a shambolic incapacity to run a search of its own employees’ e-mails.
Private Manning was an Army intelligence analyst deployed at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Hammer in Iraq when, in 2010, he amassed 90,000 field logs from the Afghan War and 392,000 from Iraq, files on the Guantánamo prisoners and 250,000 State Department diplomatic cables—a huge trove, but still less than 1 percent of what Washington classified in 2010. Manning passed them all to WikiLeaks, which published most of them through well-established newspapers and magazines.
Many of the leaks are not flattering to Washington’s amour-propre. The most famous is the “Collateral Murder” video: the gunsight view from an Apache helicopter opening fire on a couple of armed men and several civilians in Baghdad in July 2007. But the logs from both wars include reports of night raids gone wrong, Afghan outposts laboriously built and then abandoned, civilian casualty estimates whose existence had been officially denied, and documentation of torture by Iraqi authorities under the noses of occupying US soldiers. The diplomatic cables show Washington lobbying to keep the minimum wage down in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere; to impose US-style patent law regimes abroad for the benefit of Big Pharma; and to suppress criminal investigations in Germany into the CIA kidnapping of a terrorist suspect that turned out to be a case of mistaken identity.
One might guess that Manning’s exfiltration of so many documents required amazing feats of subterfuge, but it needed no deception beyond scrawling “Lady Gaga” on a CD-ROM, with the files later sent to a WikiLeaks site from a Barnes & Noble in suburban Maryland while the private was on leave. There was no security to speak of at the SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) at FOB Hammer, where the “infosec” (information security) protocols were casually flouted with the full knowledge of supervisors. This was not an anomaly: 1.4 million Americans have top-secret security clearances—480,000 of them private contractors. Security clearance vetting is cursory, like so much else about the sloshy and erratic US infosec: intact military hard drives can turn up for sale in the bazaars of Kabul, and top-secret documents have been accessed by all sorts of people through the file-sharing technology installed on government laptops by the children and grandchildren of national security officials, as Dana Priest and William Arkin documented in Top Secret America, their book on our ballooning security state.
The Reaction
Manning hoped his leaks would spark ”worldwide discussions, debates and reforms,” as he put it in an instant-message chat with the acquaintance who turned him in to the authorities. From Pakistani reformist politician Imran Khan to former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva to the Council of Europe, politicians from around the world have paid close attention. So have ordinary citizens. The US ambassador to Tunisia’s brutally candid assessment of that country’s corrupt Ben Ali dictatorship added crucial fuel to the uprising that overthrew him in 2011. Scholars, activists and journalists have learned much from the disclosures, using the files in work that is no less important for being incremental, unsexy and usually under the radar.
But inside the Washington Beltway, the reception for Manning’s leaks has been far less welcoming. At its best, he’s been greeted with apathy: Alyssa Rosenberg of the Center for American Progress has dismissed Manning as “not a particularly effective whistleblower.”
The more intense response in DC has been to denounce Manning as a traitor with bloodstained hands. The politicians and pundits who supported the Iraq War tend to be especially liberal with that charge. Hillary Clinton, for instance, called Manning’s leaks “an attack on the international community” that “puts people’s lives in danger” and “threatens our national security.” Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered that WikiLeaks “might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family”—after he endorsed President Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan.
Yet in the three years since Manning’s disclosures, there has been no diplomatic Armageddon or military calamity other than the usual rudderless carnage of American foreign policy. There is no evidence that a single US soldier or civilian has been harmed as a result of his leaks (military spokespeople have admitted that no casualties in Afghanistan have been traced to the WikiLeaks revelations).
Manning’s culpability remains less a rational accusation than a casual assumption. He is a convenient scapegoat for a decade of military and humanitarian disaster, and he has been treated accordingly. Upon his arrest in May 2010, he was locked up in punitive isolation for two months in Iraq and Kuwait, then nine more months at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia. Prohibited from lying down during the day or exercising, he was forced to respond every five of his waking minutes to a guard’s question: “Are you OK?” In his final weeks of isolation, Manning was deprived of all clothing beyond a tear-proof smock and forced to stand at attention every night in the nude. This was all for the prisoner’s own good, Obama assured the nation at a press conference. We now know that a Marine Corps psychiatrist repeatedly advised that Manning be taken off “prevention of injury” watch, and even the judge presiding over his court-martial has ruled that his treatment was illegal.
Tony C:
“Ian fails to detail a single lie that is actually necessary, much less a single lie that is actually necessary for a government to tell the people it is supposed to be serving, not subjugating.”
*************
I guess you didn’t listen to it.
mespo: P.S. Ian (in the video) conflates natural lying with necessary lying. Yes, children learn to lie, and lie well. They also learn at an early age to push, hit, bite and throw objects, and in general to attempt to use force to get their way. Does that mean physical assault and property destruction are “necessary” for society to function? No.
Lies are convenient and often work, nothing more. In the placebo effect mentioned, they are sometimes in the best interest of the deceived and do not have to reward the liar.
But they are not necessary, particularly when one is granted power with the proviso (sworn by oath) that the power granted will not be used for their personal gain or against the interests of those granting it.
mespo: That video was a waste of 16 minutes.
Ian fails to detail a single lie that is actually necessary, much less a single lie that is actually necessary for a government to tell the people it is supposed to be serving, not subjugating.
Certainly with consideration of the alternatives: Telling the truth regardless of the consequences, or saying nothing. There may be reasons to keep some things secret, but embarrassment is not one of those reasons, and lying to circumvent or subvert the Constitution is never necessary. Lying for political self-preservation or political advantage is lying for personal gain and is never a necessity in the best interest of the citizens.
In personal communication, a white lie means the lie is not intended to harm another, but to preserve their feelings because the truth sounds mean when that is not the intent. Some other lies are forgivable as well; somebody that lies to conceal information another person has no need or right to know and that might cause the “liar” harm (by gossip, inadvertent revelation, or intentional usage).
But (except for some professionals like lawyers and doctors) we are not servants of other people, even if we work for them that is just a financial arrangement, not an oath of complete loyalty, transparency, and acting in their best interest. Politicians are servants, that is the theory of our government, they are given power with the oath to only use it for the good of citizens.
Unless a governmental lie to its citizens can be shown to be clearly in the citizen’s best interest, it was not only unnecessary but damaging to the citizenry and a violation of their oath of office.
I can think of only one such lie, the “collateral damage” of lying to an enemy and having their citizens hear and believe that lie.
Lying to the citizenry in order to manipulate them directly is not necessary, and a violation of their oath to serve and (therefore) only use their power in the best interest of their constituents.
“Lying to the citizenry in order to manipulate them directly is not necessary, and a violation of their oath to serve and (therefore) only use their power in the best interest of their constituents.”
Ditto to what Tony said and has been saying throughout this thread. The entire issue of “Top Secret” and “National Security” has been perverted by many Administrations as a means of hiding their dealings and mis-dealings from the people of the United States. I can understand the necessity of keeping secrets in wartime, but we are not in wartime, except in the manufactured sense of unjustified usages of power. The Corporate/Military/Intelligence Complex learned to create phony states of “war” to keep their activities, many of them unconstitutional, secret. Thus “The Cold War”, the “War on Crime”, the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terrorism”. The CIA has been operating as a rogue force ever since Truman reluctantly approved its formation. They have toppled governments, started wars and spied upon allies. They have also operated within the U.S. against their mandate. Today we have a proliferation of Military Intelligence Agencies that also operate without oversight and in the name of our security have perpetrated wrongs against the American people and others.
A large part of their actions have been done under the rubric of “protecting America”, but the upshot of most of their actions have been in protecting the financial interests of the CMIC. Since this is my view of the whole idea of secrecy I see what Manning has done as a great service to us all and in that sense heroic. We have understood since the great Hellenistic minds pondered the nature of life that all “Heroes” are flawed in one way or another.
Whether or not Manning is a hero is not something I need to ponder in deciding that his actions represent a great service to us and the cost to him has been horrific considering how he has been kept as a prisoner.
The answer to 1984 is 1776 Worldwide
ap,
I copied and cross posted the first Lynch post to the “Just Because You’ve Forgotten Doesn’t Mean You’re Forgiven” thread as a relevant example of historical revisionism.
Excellent catch.
“The American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes, and they don’t need to be told elaborate lies,” she said. “I had the good fortune to come home and to tell the truth. Many soldiers, like Pat Tillman, did not have that opportunity.
“The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype,” she said. -Jessica Lynch
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/24/tillman.hearing/
Lynch: Truth ‘not always easy’
Lynch’s testimony began with a recollection of the March 23, 2003, attack and her purported rescue nine days later.
As she and her fellow 11 soldiers drove through Nassiriya, Iraq, they noticed armed men standing in the streets and on rooftops. Three soldiers were quickly killed when a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into their vehicle, Lynch said.
The other eight died in the ensuing fighting or from injuries suffered during the fighting, she said. Lynch later woke up at Saddam Hussein General Hospital.
“When I awoke, I did not know where I was. I could not move. I could not call for help. I could not fight,” she said, explaining she had a six-inch gash in her head and numerous broken bones. “The nurses at the hospital tried to soothe me, and they even tried unsuccessfully at one point to return me to Americans.”
On April 1, U.S. troops came for her.
“A soldier came into the room. He tore the American flag from his uniform, and he handed it to me in my hand and he told me, ‘We’re American soldiers, and we’re here to take you home.’ And I looked at him and I said, ‘Yes, I’m an American soldier, too,’ ” she recalled.
She was distraught to come home and find herself billed as a hero when two of her fellow soldiers had fought bravely until the firefight’s end and another had died after picking up soldiers and removing them from harm’s way.
“The American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes, and they don’t need to be told elaborate lies,” she said. “I had the good fortune to come home and to tell the truth. Many soldiers, like Pat Tillman, did not have that opportunity.
“The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype,” she said.
Lynch became a celebrity after U.S. troops filmed what they said was a daring raid on the hospital. Hospital staffers, however, said there were no Iraqi troops at the hospital when the purported rescue took place.
In the March 23, 2003, attack, Lynch, the Army claimed, was shot and stabbed during a fierce gun battle with Iraqi troops that left 11 of her comrades dead. It was later learned that Lynch never fired a shot during the firefight because her gun was jammed with sand.
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” -Sir Walter Scott
Because this is how we fabricate our history. This is how we spin our patriotism, how we bake our jingoistic cake, the Lynch tale the most apt and definitive myth of the war so far.
Because Jessica’s story, much like WMDs and Saddam’s nukes and biotoxins and Orange Alerts and our imminently prosperous economy and Jenna Bush’s ostensible prowess with a beer bong, does not rely on truths. We do not rely on first-hand reports. We do not rely on anything so piffling and small and dangerous as honesty. -Mark Morford
Published on Friday, September 5, 2003 by the San Francisco Chronicle
The Big Lie Of Jessica Lynch
A $1 Mil Book Deal, Zero Memory Of Any “Rescue” And The Worst Book You’ll Read This Year
by Mark Morford
Hey, remember that dramatic CNN footage of that big statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled by U.S. forces in that Baghdad square a few months back, during the “war”? Remember how powerfully symbolic it was supposed to be?
Remember, later, seeing the wide-angle shot on the Internet, the one of all the U.S. tanks surrounding the square and the whole bogus setup of how they staged the event, complete with a big crane and some strong cable and strategically positioned “citizens” cheering their “liberation” as the statue fell, as just off camera, a handful of genuine Iraqis loitered nearby, looking confused and bored?
Remember how you felt then? Like this little black worm had bored into your skin and was crawling around in your small intestine and you had the perpetual urge to go off into the corner and eat pie and slam double scotches and scream at the state of BushCo’s nation?
The Jessica Lynch story is just like that, only much, much worse.
These are the things that make you wince and sigh. These are the things that put it all in perspective, make you realize what the Pentagon and the military hawks really value.
These are the things that make you realize, goddammit, here I am working every day and struggling to make ends meet in a BushCo-gutted economy and all I really needed to do all along to make a million bucks is stage some sort of bogus wartime heroics and sell it to a war-numbed American populace for $24.95 in hardback, and, boom, Range Rover City.
Jessica Lynch. You know the one. The sweet, American-pie 19-year-old soldier and kindergarten-teacher wanna-be whose army squad took a wrong turn in Iraq and was, apparently, ambushed.
And some of her comrades were killed and she was taken prisoner, full of stab wounds and bullet holes, and she was whisked off to a ragged Iraqi hospital and held for eight days by vicious Iraqi guards and ostensibly abused, and later supposedly “rescued” in the most daring and macho made-for-TV moment of the war by elite teams of hunky U.S. Army Rangers and U.S. Navy SEALs. Wow.
Except that it never really happened that way. Except that Lynch herself doesn’t remember a single thing and all the nurses and doctors and eyewitnesses on the scene say the Iraqi fedayeen guards had fled the day before the “rescue,” and there was no danger whatsoever, no resistance of any kind, the U.S. forces could just walk right in, and they knew it.
And the hospital doors were wide open, and the nurses and doctors had gone out of their way to provide decent care for our precious Jessica, considering the circumstances, and doctors even tried to return Lynch to U.S. forces themselves.
And despite U.S. claims, Lynch had no knife wounds or bullet holes at all, just a few broken bones, and the dramatic and violent “rescue” was really just inane and silly and entirely faked and yet America bought it, hook, line and Rumsfeld, because it was on TV.
And now, here we are. Jessica and disgraced N.Y. Times reporter Rick “Oh my God do I need a gig” Bragg just inked a $1 million book deal to tell her nonstory, titled “I’m a Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story,” not “Oh My God You Are Such a Sucker for Buying This Book I Mean Wow.”
Because this is how we fabricate our history. This is how we spin our patriotism, how we bake our jingoistic cake, the Lynch tale the most apt and definitive myth of the war so far.
Because Jessica’s story, much like WMDs and Saddam’s nukes and biotoxins and Orange Alerts and our imminently prosperous economy and Jenna Bush’s ostensible prowess with a beer bong, does not rely on truths. We do not rely on first-hand reports. We do not rely on anything so piffling and small and dangerous as honesty.
We rely, simply, on PR. We believe the TV images of the bogus “rescue” at the expense of common sense because we are a nation drunk on the idea that the U.S. can do no wrong and TV would never lie.
And goddammit if Hannity and Rush and O’Reilly say it happened like that, it must be true, and damn you America-hating libs for daring to question the integrity of our armed forces when they are out there right now protecting us from, uh, what was it again? Higher gas prices? Israel’s scorn? Dick Cheney’s pallid sneer? Something like that.
Look, there is no war without spin. There is no war without outright lying to the populace, without trying to coerce a wary nation into supporting our unprovoked savagery by way of Hollywood-style set pieces performed specifically to deflect attention from the brutality and the decapitated children and the still-dying U.S. soldiers and the burning bodies by the side of the road.
This is nothing shocking. This is nothing even remotely unusual or uncommon. The fabric of war consists not of gallant battles fought by hardy soldiers for some noble collective good yay yay go team, but of manufactured tales of valiant brotherhood and purebred heroism designed to make the vile pill slightly less bitter.
War is, of course, vicious and primitive and disgustingly violent and not the slightest bit gallant, and America has rarely been more thuggish in its short history than when we annihilated Afghanistan and Iraq lo these past few years, the world’s greatest bloated superpower hammering down on two nearly defenseless, piss-poor nations in the name of, well, petrochemical rights and strategic political positioning. It’s not a war, it’s a gang beating. Uncle Sam wants you.
And, hence, we need the sugar. We desperately need the sweet, teary-eyed images of flags and salutes and stunning “rescues” to make it all go down smoothly, to suppress the collective recoil, the national gag reflex. After all, who wants to see burning babies and crying mothers and hot screaming death on prime time? Show me Old Glory waving in slo-mo! Ahh, that’s better.
We need, in short, pretty 19-year-old memory-impaired soldier girls being rescued by manly SEALs wearing b!tchin’ night-vision goggles and yelling “Go! Go! Go!” with lots of explosions and helicopters and maybe a cameo by Bruce Willis looking squinty and tough, with the Pentagon cameras rolling and everyone’s adrenaline pumping like at a horse race, except for maybe the baffled Iraqi hospital personnel who were calmly taking care of Ms. Lynch when the U.S. storm troopers swooped in and knocked them down.
Of course, this isn’t about Jessica herself at all. She has served her country bravely and is probably very sweet and at least partially articulate and is just in it for the quick wad of cash, and what the hell she doesn’t remember a damn thing about the rescue anyway, which makes her the perfect one to write a whole book about it, with Bragg along to, ahem, “fill in the blanks.” Ain’t that America.
And we can just imagine how the Pentagon brass doubtlessly winked at Jessie and said hey sweetie, you go girl, take the book deal, and the movie deal, and the commemorative plates by the Franklin Mint, it would be good for the country if you go along with the ruse, there there now, that’s a good little soldier.
Jessica Lynch is but a puppet, a toy, a convenient TV-ready canvass onto which we can project our impotent myths of patriotism and war, spit forth by the BushCo military machine to ease America’s pain, to assuage that increasingly nagging fear that we have committed this horrible thing, this irreversible atrocity.
In short, Jessica’s myth helps numb the idea that we have removed a pip-squeak, nonthreatening tyrant from power and left behind a reeking miasma of violence and bloodshed and thousands of dead citizens, more rabid anti-U.S. sentiment and mistrust and global instability than Saddam (or Osama) could’ve ever dreamed.
And little Ms. Lynch, she is America’s new doll. She is our little G.I. Jessica, all safe and clean in her homecoming fatigues, her imaginary story ready to grace the nightstands of the happily gullible across America.
Because really, why bother with all that icky messy nonfiction, all that violent unsavory fact, when straight fiction is so much more, you know, patriotic?
Michael Murray,
The first section of “Fire in the Lake” is one the best analysis’ of why we didn’t win the war in Viet Nam. Whether Manning is a hero or whatever his motivation was, what he did was heroic. He’ll end up getting sentenced to 120 years minus four months, and his passing will be duly noted about 50 or 60 years from now, either a martyr to the cause or an example to flock.
Any effort to secure a pardon for him would take an unlikely level of coordination and focus among the public, especially if “Dancing With the Stars” features stellar lineups for the next season or two.
The focus must move on to the revelations he provided so that his sacrifice is not wasted.