Keith Olbermann reported last night that Bradley Manning, who is the source for the latest round of Wikileaks has been held in solitary confinement pending his trial. I am among those who say that if there were prosecutable action here it is against Manning rather than Julian Assange, but there’s no excuse for this.
This is the best I can do for a link. Click on “Quantico the new Gitmo” on the scroll of stories.
Please share widely!
http://www.salon.com/news/opin…
That’s more accesible than my link, though Countdown includes the perspective of an FBI whistleblower, too, for another angle.
in this piece here, too.
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p>Manning’s comments–the ones we know about that have been released by Wired–indicate a young man exhibiting all the features of a classic whistleblower:
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p>Manning is in serious trouble, no doubt, and I have no confidence whatsoever that he will receive a fair trial. Indeed, I have no confidence at that Assange will, either, once his indictment is handed down.
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p>You just don’t mess with the Empire. You just don’t.
The military has control over its members much the same as a dictatorship controls its people. Out of the box thinking is frowned upon by all but for the most senior leaders. Certainly a private soldier has no discretion as to what information may be released. If you want to march to the tune of a different drummer, you’d best be prepared to put your life behind you. Don’t expect any melodrama as this White House is as tough on snitches than the last one.
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p>Not that it matters, but I believe Pvt. Manning a patsy. The information released looks as if it is “Sensitive But Unclassified”, not of great threat. Too, what is a private soldier doing with access to piles of supposedly secret data? The two things one must have to access classified information is a clearance and a need to know. I take it for granted that he had clearance, but what “need to know” would a private soldier have to all that data? Anyone watching the store? Or a setup? Pvt Manning played as a rat in a maze?
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p>A perfect mechanism for a government agency to release information under the guise of a security breach? When it comes to intelligence operations, it becomes a through-the-looking-glass world. Nothing can be taken at face value.
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p>As for torture of Pvt. Manning, nothing can or will be done to ease his life. People should remember this before enlisting in the military: anything can be done to you.
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p>“Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news.” –John Le Carre
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My guess is if he’ll ever see a court in his life, it’ll be a long, long time from now.
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p>We’ve learned a lot from what he’s done, though. Let’s hope the media keeps digging in and the sacrifice Manning made isn’t in vein.
Manning’s motives–they’re a reflection of the hacker ethos–but you know he took an oath, and all of the information released wasn’t exactly whistleblower material. Cover up’s by the military are worthy, but communication between diplomats? Not exactly the Pentagon Papers. Where’s the damage? Whistles are blown for violations.
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p>Manning’s civil liberties aside, I’m concerned about what the courts could eventually do to press freedoms. Aside from the scale, the significance,and the digitalization, Manning’s leak and Assange’s receipt of the leak is no different than Mark Felt/Deep Throat talking to Woodward and Bernstein.
if you don’t think the revelations have been eye opening.
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p>or is the potential theft of $9 billion by the Sudanese Prez not “whistleblower material?”
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p>just released today: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…
not necessarily Mark, but people in general poo-poo the important of the content of the cables while simultaneously claiming that their release constitutes a threat to national security. Which is it?
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p>As of now, 1613 cables of 251,287 have been released. We have learned quite a bit about the world in those 1613 cables. Some of these cables go back to 1966. Hmm….should be interesting, enlightening, and instructive. This is all good stuff.
Heard on the news tonight that the Pentagon is denying that Manning is being held in solitary for 23 hours per day.
they may be willing to ‘plea’ (even though no charges have officially been brought AFAIK) if he somehow implicates Assange, telling them Assange was trying to get him to get the information (which would allow a conspiracy charge).
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p>It’s kind of absurd given the fact that the entire point of WikiLeaks is to ensure no one knows who leaked the info when they leak it, including Wikileaks. But, anyway, that’s what the DoJ is floating around.
He’s young and they’ve treated him abysmally, no doubt with the full intention of trying to coerce him into implicating Assange through some sort of plea deal. “Hey, ya wanna spend the rest of your life like this?? If you don’t, tell us how you knew Assange, bla bla bla.” Don’t need to be Einstein to figure that out.
Besides he’s legally not guilty because he hasn’t found to be such. Even military tribunals have these standards.
while in custody.
But then again, maybe you aren’t affected by the sight of American “heroes” mowing down civilians and Reuters journalists from an Apache helicopter in a Baghdad neighborhood. Here’s your video game war, buddy. How about shooting two innocent children while their father, who stopped while driving the kids to schools, shot dead before their eyes as he stops and tries to help the then-wounded Reuters reporter crawling on the sidewalk? Maybe Manning was offended by the American solder’s comments that you “shouldn’t bring your children to a war”? Maybe Manning was appalled that they blew the rest of what remained of the Reuters reporter to kingdom come?
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p>Are you out of your mind?
He should be tried, hopefully convicted and sent to jail for the rest of his life. And if Wikileaks encouraged him to get and leak documents, then they should be tried also.
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p>If one diplomat thinks Medvedyev is a Putin’s puppet, they should be able to communicate that to their superiors without it being disclosed to the public. Diplomacy must be able to work in secrecy at least for the present. I fail to see how this is whistleblowing. It impairs the State Department of the United States from doing their jobs properly and keeping the country safe. This is treason. Pure and simple.
it’s whistleblowing in the finest form… which is exactly what it is.
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p>The Government is not entitled to commit patently illegal things or lie to the American people about anything and everything.
Absolutely charming. In your world, anything goes, eh? My Lai? Rwanda?
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p>Manning has not committed treason, and the law is clearly on his side. If you “fail to see how this is whistleblowing,” then you don’t understand whistleblowing or the context of Manning’s actions. Good grief. Do some homework.
Obviously, no one condones crimes against humanity, or My Lai. Try to make a reasoned argument rather than resorting to invective.
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p>If Manning was a trying to stop a war or something then he would have leaked documents that were related to that war, like Ellsburg did. Instead he releases documents that show a lower level state department official thinks Medveyev is a puppet. Perhaps you can explain how that is a “crime against humanity” or “patently illegal” as Ryan says.
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p>Private Manning releases huge loads of documents thst are not targeted at any activity in particular. He wasn’t trying to stop anything. He was intending to disrupt the diplomatic efforts of the US government, because he doesn’t like the government. What crimes against humanity has the Obama administration commited? It is the Obama administration’s diplomatic service that has been damaged. Do you really think that Private Manning’s activity has made you and I more safe?
Manning, from what I’ve read saw horrendous acts occurring and wanted to make them be known. Those acts include a dirctive from Clinton for diplomats to spy on other diplomats; a secret war being waged by the us in Yemen; us contractors employing child prostitutes; shell oil infiltrating every level of the Nigerian government and many more offenses.
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p>He may have committed a crime, but he’s a national hero. There’s no way what he did was treason, a violation of some laws, but the intent was clearly whistleblowing.
The fact that these classified documents are not targeted at the crimes that are alleged is the evidence. If he believed an illegal war was being fought in Yemen (where Al Quaeda members currently outnumber those in Afghanistan), then release documents related to that.
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p>Answer this question: How does releasing the Medvedyev document or other embarrassing documents like it, stop allegedly illegal or criminal behavior? The obvious answer is that it doesn’t. Thus the only conclusion is that Private Manning was angry at his government and wanted to damage it by publishing information that would be both embarrassing and helpful to its enemies. I’m not a lawyer, but that sounds to me treasonous behavior.
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p>Perhaps to America’s enemies or to those who are blindly angry at the government, this is heroism.
Here’s three others, one based upon the interview in Wired, the others purely speculation.
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p>By releasing a huge trove of documents, both serious and incidental, the ludicrous nature of the US secrecy policy would be scrutinized and the public would call on Obama to improve upon Clinton’s policy by speeding up FOIA requests, declassifying documents and not classifying other documents to begin with. I truly believe this was Manning’s intent. It was a bit naive given the facts on the ground, but since I agree with him, it’s why I think his actions are just.
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p>As for speculation (which I’d posit, your allegation is as well). 1) It’s logistically easier to send huge amounts of data and potentially not get caught then it is to fish around for deadly serious documents and send just those. 2) By sending a huge amount of info, it’s sure to make a big splash, therefore if he did get caught, there would be more publicity to ensure that his intentions were part of his public perception – namely, If Manning had only sent the worst documents, would we be talking about him and would he still be in solitary confinement. It’s not crazy to think he’d think the answer to the first is no, while the answer the second is yes.
and thus he decided to try to damage it. Here is part of an NBC report: on his motives:
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p>As a gay soldier he was upset about DADT and the military in general. So he decided to get some pay back. This guy is no hero. He’s a criminal facing 52 years behind bars.
when it is presented to you. Manning’s own words, speaking directly to the leak prior to his arrest, indicate his state of mind, yet you deny their worth. The rest is someone else ascribing motives to him he has not articulated. But clearly THAT interpretations suits your sensibilities. You have decided, because you don’t like what he did, that he is not a whistleblower but someone with malicious motivation. Let Manning speak for himself; he’s perfectly capable of doing so. Indeed, he already has and he will. If he changes his story, then so be it and people can reassess their views, but until then, what he actually says counts for something.
If he had stopped at releasing the videos then I would agree with you that he was a whistleblower. But that’s not what he does. He goes on to turn over 260,000 diplomatic cables to Assange.
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p>Now maybe Assange goaded him into doing this, but the fact remains that he did it. He can claim to be a whistleblower all during his trial, but the facts belay that claim. This is no Daniel Ellsburg. This guy was giving aide and comfort to the government’s enemies because he was angry at the military. That is what he told Lama.
would be impossible for any one person to redact. So he gave it an organization that’s demonstrated the ability to responsibly leak information like that before.
Private Manning was incarcerated because he leaked the videos showing US military personnel murdering civilians.
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p>It is your accusation of “treason” that is, at best, “foolish”.
Well, there’s this guy, for instance.
Manning is allegedly the source of the Apache helicopter video.
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p>The helicopter video shows American soldiers mowing down civilians.
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p>This is not really all that much about the cables. They were not top secret, and over 50 percent were not even classified. The video, however, was.
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p>Really, do your homework.
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He did not overtly side with the enemy to levy war against the United States nor otherwise render aide and comfort.
Whether you like it or not we have secrets in our country, on all levels. Our Governor, our President… and I agree with many here that not “all” of that information needs to be secret or maybe even should be secret. But we can’t have some low level military person stealing hundreds of thousands of secret confidential documents and distributing them to foreigners. That’s not his decision. If he felt strongly about the video of the journalist getting killed, then release the video and be done with it, but he went well beyond that.
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p>As I said earlier, what if the information contained specific information which lead to the deaths of Americans? Would that change things or would you all still be rallying around this moron? Luckily, I think Obama agrees more with me than he does with his progressive minions.
But remember if tomorrow Private “X”, for whatever reasons, releases the names of Afghanistan fighters who the Taliban beheads… then supporters of this “process” will have blood on their hands.
I see.
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p>So, having seen the results of our infamous “preemptive invasion” of Iraq, you now advocate preemptive sentencing of Private “X”, based on what he might do?
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p>We learned, after the damage was done, an independent nation destroyed, and the principle obstacle to Iran removed, that none of the claimed hysteria about Iraq was true. No mobile weapons labs, no dastardly biological weapons, no secret nuclear weapons, no yellowcake, nothing. Nada.
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p>You would advocate taking the same hysterical self-serving path against an army private who, three days ago, celebrated his twentieth birthday in solitary confinement. You join a lynch-mob who advocate punishing him for what he might do. There has been no evidence, no trial, no defense. Instead, chest-thumping and pitchfork waving. You seem to have forgotten the lessons we all should have learned about the Pentagon propaganda machine from Jessica Lynch.
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p>You advocate practices of a plain, old-fashioned police state. You, my friend, are talking like a tyrant.
Everything I have “advocated” against Private Benedict Arnold should only happen upon the guilty verdict being read. Prior to that, he is as innocent as Chuck Turner was before he was found guilty. So we are in agreement, to a degree, that nobody should be punished until found guilty. Right now he is being held until the trial can occur.
By the same standard, the Iraq war was a grotesque miscarriage. Since you are an author of impeccable consistency, I suppose we can put you down in that column with respect to Iraq from now on. How reality-based. Impressive.
Being a lawyer, maybe you can help me. Americans can make a “citizen’s arrest”, but if they are wrong they face potential civil actions from the arrestee. But Police Officers can arrest people and if they are wrong, they simple have to let the person go. Right?
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p>Again, you being a lawyer… there must be some theory that in protecting us, government is allowed to take chances that individual citizens cannot, without “risk” of reciprocal actions.
This other shit is BS and, IMO, unconstitutional.
His inhumane treatment is also a way to discourage other potential whistle blowers. This administration has done nothing to protect them and has actually gone backwards with regard to their treatment.
Can soldiers be imprisoned without being court martialed?
Article 10 of the UCMJ:
Otherwise, they could fight for Private Benedict Arnold to be out on bail and given a prize by the Professional Left.
does that change anything in your minds? Should anything be secretive or classified regarding the government? The names/faces of Sky Marshals? Witness protection?
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p>I hope Manning never sees the light of day again since it sets the precedent for future soldiers who fell compelled to defy the law and their sworn duty and release what “they” think is ok to publicize.
…these documents refer to policies that we should know about, like the US backing a secret bombing campaign in Yemen. I don’t believe it includes names of operatives, etc, which if you recall the Valerie Plame episode, many on our side WERE upset that she was outed.
Absolutely nothing to do with Wikileaks?
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p>I love how many people talk about this without mentioning the reason why the guy was outed, according to the journalist who filed the complaint: he was allegedly complicit in an airstrike that killed multiple civilians. It’s almost as if we don’t live in a world where you can kill innocent people without any repercussions.
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p>Compare the American coverage, focused on the poor US spy, to some journalism focused on, you know, the actual victims.
that there’s so much misinformation out there. We all know where that’s coming from.
but I’m prettty confident he didn’t advocate for Scooter Libby or Dick Cheney to “never see the light of day again” for defying the law and so forth. But of course, as Obama said, we need to stop looking backward.
Sufficient unto the day is the sin thereof.
Will that change your mind?
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p>I note that you want to throw Manning in jail forever even though he’s not been found guilty of anything.
Get the military tribunal going and convict him quickly.
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p>For all the people here saying he’s a whistleblower, want to make a bet on whether Obama convicts Manning? (PS I know Obama doesn’t actually convict anyone but his people take their orders/lead from him).
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p>Manning goes away for a long time, take odds on it.
If you read much of what I wrote, you’d know that. I don’t know whether Manning will be convicted (passive voice can be useful at times), but I’m not going to agitate for lifetime imprisonment until he is. I expect he will be put away for a while, because someone has to be punished for this unimportant but high-profile embarrassment, truth/evidence be da—d
How about all the innocents and soldiers who have died as a result of our illegal activities and hypocritical acts? Aren’t you worried about them?
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p>Manning is a whistleblower and will be protected, eventually, by law, once he gets his years day in court.
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p>I took an oath of allegiance, and that oath did not include covering up illegal, immoral, or unethical acts or complying with illegal, immoral, or unethical orders. This former Army chick admires Manning’s courage.
for the Ridenhour Prizes given in recognition of those “who persevere in acts of truth-telling that protect the public interest, promote social justice or illuminate a more just vision of society,” in recognition of Ron Ridenhour, the Vietnam War veteran who exposed the massacre at My Lai.
We’ve become a nation of men, not of laws. I expect Pvt. Manning will get much the same treatment as Aafia Siddiqui; tortured for five years to insanity then tried on absurd charges.
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p>I recently saw an organization listed that call itself the “oath keepers”. The oath you refer to seems to be considered by some powerful people a threat now.
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p>Isn’t this a country where the president can be judge, jury and executioner?
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p>I, too, admire Pvt. Manning’s courage, but expect monuments will be raised to Scooter before him.
But, yes, the idea that the government can’t take you prisoner just because seems to have died in 9/11 for most Republicans and many, many Democrats (including the president).
So… (example which will be portrayed as a strawman by “yous guys”)… a guy works for a pharmaceutical company and has access to “confidential (you guys call secret) information. He steals data about the company which reveals the following…
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p>- They are working on a new herpes drug, Sinistra, which is very unsafe (causes people to lean to the left) but they are not telling the FDA. (joke warning… get it, Sinistra, latin for left… or some also say “evil”)
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p>- The company executives salaries and compensation.
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p>- The medical records of everyone on the company (35,000 employees) including the diseases, conditions, medications and psychiatric records of employees.
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p>- The salary, credit card, 401K, mailing address and SSN of every employee.
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p>- All of the confidential drug compounds (the chemistry) company “X” is working on (worth billions).
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p>- All the employee emails showing both company confidential information AND personal information (like the CEO’s executive assistant is giving oral sex to the new copier repair guy).
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p>- All sorts of other shit.
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p>This disgruntled worker gives the data to someone else who publishes every single bit of it on-line. The company has a bird and has the worker arrested. He claims he is a whistleblower (due to the information regarding the unsafe “left leaning” drug currently ready for final approval from the FDA).
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p>What say you?
If it ever matches up with the actual information released by Wikileaks and several other media organizations, I’ll consider it.
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p>Until those organizations publish an inventory of Area 51, the radio frequencies used by the armed forces, our launch codes, and the security codenames of civilian and military principles, your example is irrelevant and smacks of hysteria searching for justification.
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p>Just because something embarrassing happened to the American government doesn’t mean we need to find someone to put in jail for a long time.
Pvt. Manning might be a whistleblower in the traditional sense but he is not protected by the same laws that protect civilians. That’s just the way it is and the price you pay for being in the military.
But I do oppose this idea that these leaks represent a serious breach of American security. My gentle correspondent greatly exaggerated the impact of these messages in his analogy.
The other stuff is personal information, which I don’t think was part of this.
Private Manning steals 241,000 highly confidential US Government documents and gives them to the world to view and when I and others (Obama) talk about charging him with a crime, his defenders (you guys) bring up the video of the Journalists being killed. What about the other 240,999 documents?
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p>What if some of those documents had confidential information analogous to the ones I mentioned in my hypo? Maybe I would agree with you about the video but he went well beyond the video.
…stay away from hypotheticals and judge the facts of the case currently before us, though since this is the government we’re talking about there may be somethings that should be transparent in this context that wouldn’t need to be in the private sector context.
by a judge and a jury. Then we can talk about the facts and the actual verdict which we all will support since our laws will be followed. Right? So if he is found guilty, then teachers and Manning supporters will have to proclaim to everyone (students) that Manning was guilty of breaking these “X” laws and was properly found guilty and deserved the punishment handed out to him… right? And if he is found innocent, then I and others will have to admit he is innocent and was found innocent by the courts. I’m good with this arrangement.
…since one of us may think the case was wrongly decided. All I said was stick to the case at hand rather than create hypotheticals.
I like opining about things like this but I was running into the “you’re wrong because I disagree with you and you are irrelevant” remarks. I was hearing the “please stick to the facts…” when hardly anyone knows the “facts” just stories and subjective opinions. So all I was saying is we wait for the trial and then we would have the facts (who did what when), the law (can a soldier working on classified data invoke a “whistleblower” defense and apply it to ALL the data he stole) and the verdict (does a judge/jury find this soldier guilty of a crime).
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p>Rather than getting into the he said/she said argument thing, I was suggesting we wait for reality.
I suggest you reread your own comment that begin this exchange. What you characterize as “you’re wrong because I disagree with you and you are irrelevant” I, instead, see as you projecting a truckload of your own speculation, biases, and hysteria onto a situation that screams of a confused young man attempting to handle (perhaps inappropriately and perhaps even criminally) his knowledge of war-crimes, murder, and lies on the part of the government he signed up to serve.
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p>Even before then, you wrote:
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p>That is hardly a suggestion that we “wait for reality”.
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p>Sorry, John, but it looks to me like you went way way out on a dangerous limb, got called for it, and are now trying to scramble back.
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p>I’m glad that at least even you now seem to agree that we should wait for the facts before pronouncing a verdict — that is, if Private Manning can survive until then at the hands of a military that still tortures and abuses its “detainees”.
you know about WikiLeaks procedures in processing documents. Why don’t you go over to their website–really, the NSA won’t care–and take a look at what they’ve actually published and how documents work their way through the pipeline. Your comment above is a waste of our time and is entirely noncontributory.
That pretty much sums up JohnD’s participation here most of the time:)
a bunch of otherwise reasonable people continue to feed his ego by taking his bait.
We don’t agree Christopher, but I would never say your opinions are not contributory, just because I disagree with you. Don’t get sucked in (to the dark side) by the more zealous stubborn or narrow minded views here. Be your own person. That’s debate.
You must be a joy in the classroom (God help our kids), so “open minded”. Since my ideas/thoughts don’t align with yours, you decide to go wacky and start with personal attacks and proclaim with authority… “Your comment above is a waste of our time and is entirely noncontributory.” Then by all means stop wasting your time and go encourage more people to commit treason.
We don’t agree on almost anything. But I still want to hear your opinion. so please continue writing it here.
I have no professional obligation or moral imperative to treat you like a 15-year-old adolescent in a classroom. If I had a dollar for every time someone on this forum tried to diss me by claiming I’m probably shitty in the classroom, I’d be rich.
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p>Students disagree with me all the time–and that’s great! We have lively and informative discussions. Here’s the kicker, though: they are required to have facts to back up their opinions. We actually do teach kids how to argue. We do teach them they need facts if they want their opinions taken seriously, even though we are a nation increasingly predisposed to value truthiness over reasoned argument. The half-assed thinking and comments on this forum regarding the WikiLeaks & Julian Assange stuff is a perfect example of this. The discussion generates plenty of emotion, but people are woefully bereft of facts and are unwilling to go do any research on their own.
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p>You’re gonna love this: next year we’re offering an elective based on Michael Sandel’s course at Harvard. We’re calling it “Moral Reasoning: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” You’ll love this even more: I’m teaching it. Smile, John. Happy Holidays.
I love it when people assume their opinion is “right” and everyone else is wrong. They also say that their information is “fact driven” while other’s is half-assed thinking. You said…
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p>This sounds exactly like I would imagine a teacher would present a story to students. You would call it fact based. Your disdain is seething through your words about “American heroes”.
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p>I wasn’t inferring you were a shitty teacher, just that your bias would cause you to slant every story in line with your ideology (which I’m sure you would deny). Any “conservative” student would not stand a chance. Next you’ll be telling me that teachers are no more liberal than the average person on the street.
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p>Speaking of “facts”, what rights do soldiers surrender when they work on “classified data”?
What do you do for a living (aside from your tax-dodging book resale scheme)? Willing to put up as lightiris does?
Again you speak from hysterical fear of what some disgruntled employee might release, as opposed to what Private Manning actually did leak.
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p>In view of your panic over all the things you fear from your hypothetical disgruntled employee, it is no wonder that you so aggressively move to reverse the First Amendment:
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p>It’s doubly ironic that your first terrifying bullet (“The company executives salaries and compensation”) is a disclosure that is already required by law for any pharma with 35,000 employees.
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p>Never mind that those employee emails already belong to the company by well-established law and precedent — there is ZERO expectation of privacy from any employer-operated email system. Those 35,000 employees (including the CEO’s executive assistant) are already far more at risk from their own company executives than from any far-fetched scenarios like you offer. Those executives already have an essentially unfettered ability to use those emails for any purpose they like. I suspect that your executive assistant has far more to fear from his own CEO’s desire for comparable sexual favors than from any such disclosure.
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p>I get that you live in a terrifying universe. I, on the other hand, find the prosecution of privates who reveal the reality
US military personnel murdering civilians far more threatening than any of your imagined paranoia.