Bradley Manning Deserves a Medal

This Glenn Greenwald column is worth returning to in light of the Bradley Manning guilty plea. An excerpt:

The sadistic conditions to which he was subjected for 10 months –intense solitary confinement, at one point having his clothing seized and being forced to stand nude for inspection – became an international scandal for a US president who flamboyantly vowed to end detainee abuse. Amnesty International condemned these conditions as “inhumane”; PJ Crowley, a US state department spokesman, was forced to resign after denouncing Manning’s treatment. Such conduct has beenrepeatedly cited by the US as human rights violations when engaged in by other countries.

The UN’s special rapporteur on torture has complained that his investigation is being obstructed by the refusal of Obama officials to permit unmonitored visits with Manning. (Even the Bush administration granted access to the International Red Cross at Guantánamo.) Such treatment is all the more remarkable in light of what Manning actually did, and did not do, if the charges are true. For these leaks have achieved enormous good and little harm.

From the start, US claims about the damage done have been wildly exaggerated, even outright false. After the release of the Afghanistan war logs, officials accused WikiLeaks of having “blood on their hands”,only to admit weeks later that they were unaware of a single case of anyone being harmed. That remains true today.

Even Robert Gates, the Pentagon chief, mocked alarmism over the diplomatic cables leak as “significantly overwrought”, dismissing its impact as “fairly modest”. Manning’s lawyer is seeking internal government documents that, he insists, concluded there was no meaningful harm to US diplomatic relations from the release of any documents. None of the leaked documents were classified at the highest level of secrecy – top secret – but rather bore only low-level classification.

By contrast, the leaks Manning allegedly engineered have generated enormous benefits: precisely the benefits Manning, if the allegations against him are true, sought to achieve. According to chat logspurportedly between Manning and the informant who turned him in, the private decided to leak these documents after he became disillusioned with the Iraq war. He described how reading classified documents made him, for the first time, aware of the breadth of the corruption and violence committed by his country and allies.

He explained that he wanted the world to know what he had learned: “I want people to see the truth … regardless of who they are … because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.” When asked by the informant why he did not sell the documents to a foreign government for profit, Manning replied that he wanted the information to be publicly known in order to trigger “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms”.

There can be no doubt that these vital goals have been achieved. When WikiLeaks was awarded Australia’s most prestigious journalism award last month, the awarding foundation described how these disclosures created “more scoops in a year than most journalists could imagine in a lifetime”.

By exposing some of the worst atrocities committed by US forces in Iraq, the documents prevented the Iraqi government from agreeing to ongoing legal immunity for US forces, and thus helped bring about the end of the war. Even Bill Keller, the former New York Times executive editor and a harsh WikiLeaks critic, credits the release of the cables with shedding light on the corruption of Tunisia’s ruling family and thus helping spark the Arab spring.

In sum, the documentsManning is alleged to have released revealed overwhelming deceit, corruption and illegality by the world’s most powerful political actors. And this is why he has been so harshly treated and punished.

Despite pledging to usher in “the most transparent administration in history”, President Obama has been obsessed with prosecuting whistleblowers; his justice department has prosecuted more of them for “espionage” than all prior administrations combined.

Read the whole thing.

patriot

this is not left vs right, GOP vs Dems or Statism vs liberty.

Love to all, hatred to no one, but why are hostile globalist elite supporting Israel as a Jewish ethnostate with Jewish only immigration, but turning white majority Europe and North America into a multi-ethnic multi-cultural Gulag with dystopian non-White colonization?

Why do gullible Whites kowtow like puppies to hostile Jewish elite, who bleed White soldiers in suicidal wars, subvert our central banks, control our violence/sex saturated mass media, control our treasonous intelligence agencies, impose trillions in debt, plunder our wages?

East Asia is 99% yellow, Africa is 99% Black, West Asia is 99% Brown. But 3rd world colonizers are annihilating Whites, just as Chinese colonizers are annihilating Tibet.

“Native” Americans are not native. They invaded from East Asia. They massacred Solutrean White Europeans, who came first.

White people should reject suicidal anti-White Jewish ideologies like libertarianism, feminism, liberalism, communism, socialism. Love to all, hatred to no one, but Whites must unite and organize to advance their families, their fertility, their interests. Reading list:
http://toqonline.com/archives/v4n4/TOQv4n4MacDonald.pdf
http://toqonline.com/archives/v11n1/TOQv11n1Lote.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0759672229
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1410792617
http://rosarynovice.stblogs.com/ Augustine

The Department of War is the one running this country… to tyranny! No spineless politician dares to oppose it and its plans of perpetual war and funding.

Keep in mind that this is the Department which sports more admirals than warships, whose navy has a role in Afghanistan, etc. A whole racket to promote officers in useless and unwarranted wars.

Over a decade as an immigrant in this country and there hasn’t been a year in which there wasn’t a war going on. I finally realized that America’s wars are not foreign policy, but a matter of domestic policy, given the number of people who benefit from such an over-bloated military, from the average Joe who enlisted to corporations vying for an easy dole.

Eisenhower was right, too bad he wasn’t heeded and now we live under the Read-White-and-Blue Army, the largest employer in the world.
Anonymous

Imagine a president like, oh let’s say Ron Paul, that could and would pardon Manning…
Anonymous

Deserves a medal? What on earth for?
http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

This is where reading the article comes in handy.
Anonymous

Are you openly advocating criminal activity? What he did can’t be described as civil disobedience, it went far beyond that. And if this is what you’re advocating, it seems rather hypocritical … what have you done other than talk?

Manning is a mentally disturbed kid that released a bunch of documents he hadn’t even looked at for purely selfish reasons. And this is without regard to what he did or didn’t expose. Even if some good came of the revelations, his actions were wrong. While the damage he caused was minimal, perhaps nonexistent, it could have been worse. And his actions certainly didn’t end the war, that is a laugh. The war ended as had already been scheduled. If anything he gave the Iraqis more power for ending things in a way that may not have been ideal. While I disagree with going into Iraq in the first place, I’m still very much on the American side and think we should end it smartly. We did not create any problems in Iraq that didn’t already exist, just stirred them up a bit. Afghanistan still rages on. The material he released was largely irrelevant. Inspire the Arab Spring? Also a laugh. I speak Arabic and have lived the better part of the past decade in various parts of the Middle East, both as a civilian and with the military, and I can tell you, civil unrest has existed there for a LONG time. Manning didn’t inspire anything.

I fail to see how what he did can be condoned.
Anonymous

whistle blowing is wrong? No one should speak out against the government if they see/hear/know something wrong is being done? I suppose you feel the same about those that leaked photos from Abu Ghraib too.
http://rosarynovice.stblogs.com/ Augustine

The justice system still on the books in America doesn’t prosecute for crimes that could have happened, only those that did. Or rather, in this case, also the crime of exposing and indicting the criminal American armed forces. Who’s afraid of the Red Army or of the PLA when we have the Red-White-and-Blue Army? Stalin and Mao would be proud of having it too!
Anonymous

1) What did he blow the lid on, specifically? I know of nothing. 2) We have something called the Whistleblower Protection Act, and what Manning did clearly did not fall under this umbrella. If Manning’s intention was to expose something that was corrupt, he should have taken his specific concern to Congress or some other recognized authority. He should have consulted an attorney and pursued a legal channel. Instead he took a hard drive full of secret documents that he had no direct knowledge of and handed it over to a foreign entity.

I respect that you are trying to be a moral person, I truly do. I appreciate that. But you’re letting your righteousness turn into pride and then self-righteousness. You assume you know things that clearly you don’t know. I have an active security clearance right now. I’ve served in the military. I’ve worked on the private contractor side as well. From my perspective having served, having been to these places myself, and having seen how the government operates, I agree 100% that going to Iraq was a bad decision, but I also think was Manning did was 100% wrong and inappropriate, not only inappropriate but criminal and he should be prosecuted accordingly.

You mention Abu Ghraib. This is kind of humorous. You even bringing this up highlights how out of context your perspective is. Abu Ghraib didn’t come to light because someone illegally released secret information. In fact, people within the military reported the crimes through their proper chain of command… they were true Whistleblowers. Long before the media had any knowledge of prisoner abuse the military was already well into an investigation and charges had already been filed. Knowledge of the events came from DOD, who released it to the public. They never tried to conceal anything. In fact I think they released far more information than they needed to.

It’s one thing to keep the public informed, and it’s another to aid the enemy. I know you don’t agree with going to Iraq, and I don’t either, but the fact is we chose to go there. And yes, Congress approved the action. You may not like the format in which they approved the action, but they did in fact approve it. And I believe Mr. Ron Paul even voted to fund it at least one time. Nothing about going to Iraq was unconstitutional. Bush did not act unilaterally. Now regardless of the politics and bad intelligence that got us there, we were there, and after getting there the job of the military is to win and to follow orders. Releasing graphic information about Abu Ghraib, what does this achieve? Why are you so obsessed with making America look evil? From a constitutional perspective there is no right or wrong with regard to war. Regardless of whether you think a war is just, if Congress decides it, in the eyes of America, it is just. The military is not concerned with such questions. It was not Manning’s decision to make whether going to Iraq was right or wrong. Congress made that decision. And the materials he released are all out of context. Ok, so a helicopter squadron appeared to him as blood thirsty. So what. Was he there? No, that cowardly worm has no idea what it’s like to go out there every day and literally not know if you’re coming back or not, to repeatedly take fire, to watch your buddies die. The military is trained to kill, this is what it does. It wins. He passing judgement on things from a very unbalanced perspective. And the materials he released presented a very unbalanced perspective.

It takes an incredible amount of character to volunteer, take an oath, and abide by it in such a hellish environment. But this is the duty of a soldier. Manning failed in that duty in literally every respect. He joined with ulterior motives, lied his way into a position, pissed on every oath he took, and then set about a course of action for which he could not respect the ultimate consequences. It’s a sheer miracle that nothing he released got anybody killed. Easily could have. And if he had gotten a single person killed I’d say he deserves the death penalty. But since there is no evidence that he did get anybody killed, he’ll get a slap on the wrist, but he deserves harsh punishment nonetheless.
Anonymous

It takes an incredible amount of selfishness to say such a thing. Obama could take lessons in arrogance from you.
Anonymous

Lawyers worked so well at stopping Bush from water boarding (a war crime since at least WWII, the US even convicted people from WWII for using it on us). Sometimes you have to public and skip the bought and paid for lawyers, judges, politicians. The US Government serves us, not the other way around. They should have no secrets from us, especially when there’s even a hint of something wrong.
Anonymous

You’re really sounding like a liberal. Not even because of what you’re saying, but because you seem to want to change the subject. What does anything you just said have to do with Manning and the subject of Whistleblowing or appropriate levels of civil disobedience?

Water boarding? I’m not even going to go there, price of tea in china, completely different subject.

The Abu Ghraib incident, again, as previously stated, this is an example of proper whistleblowing through the appropriate channels. Nobody released classified material to a foreign entity to expose abu ghraib. Rather people within the military simply reported it to their chain of command, and the chain of command then reported it to the media (which they didn’t have to). Whether or not those guilty of crimes were dealt with harshly enough is an entirely different subject. And note in the military they use juries too. Their courts aren’t exactly like the civilian world, but on the whole it’s very similar. Lots of criminals get off lightly thanks to a jury of their peers. Welcome to America, should servicemen and women not be afforded the same rights and due process as everybody else?

I’m disgusted by how lightly the terrorist “Maj” Nidal Hassan is being treated. Three years later after murdering 14 men and women, wounding twice as many more. I would have hung his worthless hide from a tree a long time ago. So perhaps the people from Abu Ghraib did get off light, wouldn’t surprise me. But ultimately I was not on there. I haven’t seen the evidence of what they supposedly did, nor the bigger picture of the environment they were in and what was expected of them. I just don’t know. But what I know is that for the sake of this discussion that incident is apples to oranges and irrelevant.

Geneva Convention? Yeah, Geneva Convention doesn’t apply to the Iraq War. That’s kind of a lazy attempt, a quick google search would correct that one.

I agree with you about letting the world take care of itself. Agree with you 100%. I’d bring ‘em all home, I’d shut down 80% of the bases. I’d cut the military budget by a cool 30% across the board to start out with. I’d change a lot of stuff…. but again, what does that have to do with Manning’s crime?

Here is the bottom line. Manning did not expose even one single criminal act. Not one. I challenge you to name a single one, a single person he exposed for criminal behavior. Only one single investigation and trial has resulted from Manning’s behavior, and that is his own trial for treason.
Anonymous

If you don’t see any crimes committed in the video where the 2 Reuters guys were killed, then you’ve got issues. The killers go free while the whistleblower goes to prison. And with that I’m done with you. Keep defending the murdering thugs that run this country using the military to enforce their ways if you want. I don’t support murders.
Michael Mills

I think he’d settle for not going to jail for having a conscience.
Anonymous

What crimes? They were under orders. They had specific orders and specific rules of engagement. Did they break their rules of engagement? Nope. If they hadn’t fired on those people would they have been violating their orders? Yep. The video also doesn’t show the context of everything that was happening around them, it doesn’t show the hours leading to this incident, it doesn’t show the hoards of people just like this one that had been killing people the days weeks and months before. It doesn’t show the rules on the street and the orders that have been given to the general population with regards to having firearms and mobilizing on the street. You are seeing things out of context.

You are having a purely emotional response because you don’t like the way they were talking. In an environment like that this is how soldiers talk. The work they do is difficult, and they don’t sit down and cry every time they shoot somebody. In order to mentally do their jobs they have to see the people they are shooting as the enemy. And you don’t hold a committee to assess a situation before deciding to pull a trigger. Things happen fast, decisions have to be made fast. Not making fast decisions results in good people getting killed. It results in bad guys getting away. I guarantee you those pilots have saved a lot of lives, a lot of American lives, and a lot of Iraqi lives too.

Are mistakes made? Sure of course. The military isn’t perfect. They don’t always assess a situation properly, they make a judgement call based on all their previous experiences. If a situation seems to match countless similar situations they’ve already encountered, it’s reasonable to assume more of the same. They have to make a choice. And they do their best. Do doctors always save lives? Nope, doctors kill people, doctors kill a lot of people. They aren’t perfect. But I’m still darn glad they are around, and I thank them for having the courage to keep working despite the guilt I know they feel over mistakes they’ve made in the past.

You sir are two things. You are self-righteous, judging things you clearly know nothing about, and you’re also a coward. If you truly had the courage of your supposed convictions, if you truly believe this Manning character is a hero then you should be out committing crimes yourself to subvert the state. But you don’t do that because you’re a coward, you’re all talk. Instead of actually doing something you just like to sit at home and talk trash on the internet.
Jimi

War Dept, HHS, DHS, Agriculture Dept, Energy Dept, Education Dept, Federal Reserve, you name it, are all ruining this country.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1054783285 Marvin Keene

Sorry, I don’t agree with you on this one. Many years ago, I worked in military intelligence and worked with people who did a job like Manning. One is required to sign oaths whereby you swear to not reveal the classified information that you come into contact with. This ban extends even after your service is complete. If I recall correctly, the term is 75 years. Manning is not a hero. He is an oath-breaker and a betrayer of trust. He is unworthy of your support, Dr. Woods.
Jeremiah

I never cease to be amazed at those who make a fetish of every “oath” taken in the service of a criminal enterprise that is itself run by serious and habitual oath-breakers. Those many low-level classified document leaked by Manning should never have been classified in the first place, but should have been available for the inspection of the citizens whose money is purloined to pay for the many activities described therein. But of course the state fears having its mendacity, incompetence and criminality exposed to those who must pay the bills and bear the consequences—hence its obsession (and the obsession of all tyrannous states) with secrecy. Manning’s duty to his fellow citizens, to his own conscience, and to the constitutional republic that he thought he had enlisted to defend trumped any oath that would have had him assist his employers in deceiving the American people.
Sabrina Liukin

“We did not create any problems in Iraq that didn’t already exist, just stirred them up a bit.” WOW!! We did much more than stir the pot; we dropped a sugar cube in a cup of superheated distilled water. I don’t exactly disagree with the rest of what you said, but don’t downplay our role in turning Iraq into a bloodbath.
Anonymous

The point I was making here is that the vast majority of casualties are from sectarian violence. Vast vast majority. Blaming this violence on the US, regardless of how one feels about the decision to go to Iraq to begin with, is just dishonest.

The second point I was making is the US is concerned with US interests, and that’s how it should be. Now I agree that going to Iraq was stupid. Bad intelligence. Bad understanding of the Middle East and Islamic world. We exacerbated the very problems we sought to address.

But again, the US is concerned with US interests. We are not perfect. Mistakes are made. Even if the war was the “right” decision, individuals in the military are going to make mistakes, they won’t always kill the right people. You think we didn’t kill any innocent people in WW2? Pick what to you was a just war, and guaranteed, the good guys in that war killed innocent people. It happens. This is war. It’s not pretty.

Do we get rid of the police because sometimes they make mistakes? Do we get rid of the courts because sometimes an innocent man goes to jail? Do we call them murders and baby killers? I mean come on. This is simply the nature of a human world. We do the best we can.

Going to Iraq may have been a bad move, but guess what, too late, we went. After we pulled out of Vietnam millions, MILLIONS, of Vietnamese who had been loyal to the US were genocided. I agree wholeheartedly that going into Vietnam was very misguided. However, leaving the way we did was immoral in my opinion. We made commitments that we broke, and people, a lot of people, died as a result. We didn’t simply cut and run from Iraq for this very reason. Basically everybody acknowledges that going was dumb, trying to impose democracy was dumb, but it’s too late, we’re there and gotta deal with it. We have to leave as gracefully as we can, not to save face, but for the sake of being responsible.

Now I may not agree with the course our politicians choose. If it were up to me for example I’d pull out of Afghanistan right now today. I see no argument to stay even another day, and I say that as someone who was in Afghanistan just two months ago. Been there, done it.

But even though I disagree with some of the decisions being made, I’m not going to go to the opposite extreme and start calling people murders and clapping for criminal scum like Manning. Manning had pure malice in his heart.

Politically I very much am more in line with the Libertarians or the liberty movement, whatever one wants to call it. I’m to the point I don’t want to vote GOP ever again. And I really respect Dr. Woods and his historical perspective and Constitutional scholarship. By a significant margin I like Ron Paul above nearly all the other GOP politicians.

That said though, I’m really disgusted with probably a majority of the people within the liberty movement. And especially disheartened when I such men like Dr. Woods openly advocate criminal behavior and cheer guys like Manning. Forces me to take another look at who I’m associating myself with.
http://rosarynovice.stblogs.com/ Augustine

Hmmm…

Total number of employees of the HHS, 67000; of the DHS, 240000; of the USDA, 106000; of the DoE, 115000; of the USDE, 5000.

Now, compare these meager numbers with the number of employees of the DoD, 3.2 million! Which department calls the shots, the lilliputian ones or the largest employer in the world? Which one is the most ruinous? The same one which should be decimated first.
Mike

O”I fail to see how what he did can be condoned.”

I see your eyes are shut tight. Next….
Mike

Tried a mirror lately?
Mike

Jeremiah, some warmongers will never figure it out. The religion of nationalism runs too strongly in their blood.
Anonymous

If you’re going to troll at least try to make it interesting, I hate boring posts.
Sabrina Liukin

“Blaming this violence on the US, regardless of how one feels about the decision to go to Iraq to begin with, is just dishonest.”

I don’t see how you can honestly believe the words you say. Either you’re moral compass needs calibrating, or you simply don’t know the history of the war and the events leading up to the war. The invasion of Iraq, dismantling of the Iraqi army and the installation of a puppet government created the conditions for the ensuing bloodbath. You’re on the wrong side of history dear friend.

You brought up WW2 and said that the good buys killed innocent people in that war. True. But WW2 and Iraq are completely different situations. We were the aggressors, bad guys that invaded Iraq, and as a result, many innocent people died. Your comparison does not stand.

“Do we get rid of the police because sometimes they make mistakes? Do we get rid of the courts because sometimes an innocent man goes to jail? Do we call them murders and baby killers?”

When police make mistakes or kick your door down and shoot your family without provocation, we hold the individuals involved accountable, not the institution. We do not get rid of all police throughout the entire country, just like we do not dismantle the army when our political leaders run off to war illegally. Come on man, use a little common sense when making an argument.

You’re fixated on this idea of encouraging people to break the law. So let me explain things to you so hopefully you will realize that your absolute adherence to the “law” a little out there. First, not all laws are moral. You seem to have a hard time with this. Rosa Parks broke the Jim Crow laws of segregation and went to jail for it. I guess if you were there, you’d tell her to get to the back of the bus, you would never encourage her to sit where she pleases. Or perhaps someone in your family has a heart attack or stroke (god forbid)… well I would encourage you to exceed the speed limit to get your loved one to the hospital in time. You of course would be breaking the law, so perhaps, you shouldn’t be associating with anyone who would speed to get the hospital. You’re gonna have to reevaluate many of your friendships because I think many of your friends would encourage you to break a few traffic laws in order to get to the hospital in time.
Anonymous

Sir, have you ever been to Iraq? Have you been to the Mid East at all, anywhere, even Dubai as a tourist? I’ve lived most of the past decade in the Middle East, in some of the most dangerous places, both as a civilian and with the military. I went to college there. I speak Arabic. I don’t mean to brag, but my point is to say that you’re speaking rather ignorantly about things which I have first-hand knowledge of.

I’ve said repeatedly on this thread that the decision to go to Iraq was extremely misguided for a lot of reasons. Very bad decision. However, if a leader or leaders (in this case our intelligence community, POTUS, and almost every member of Congress) make a mistake, that doesn’t make people serving in our military murders. And it certainly doesn’t justify CRIMINAL behavior by guys like Manning.

Again, I challenge you, please name ONE criminal act Manning exposed? What did Manning expose that justifies his act of hatred and his irresponsible behavior that likely could have gotten our people killed?

Iraq is a violent place with violent people. While going there was a bad move, we are not responsible for sectarian violence. We are not making sunnis and shias kill each other. We are not making Al Qaeda operate. You act like Saddam Hussein was a nice guy and we murdered a great man who was holding this great country together and then we murdered a whole bunch of perfectly peaceful people.

Saddam was a bad guy and there was ample justification to get rid of him either way. Ill timed. Poorly planned. Poorly executed. Destabilizing the country in the way we did, very bad decision… but again, none of these things are “murder.”

Your example about the police is stupid. Did the military decide to go to Iraq for themselves against the will of Congress and POTUS? Because that’s the example you’re giving. The military was sent and ordered to do a job. Don’t like the job? Ok, talk to Congress about it.

If SWAT is sent into a live hostage situation and ordered to go in, would you throw them into prison if they accidentally shot one of the hostages? And in the course of the raid several members of the SWAT team were killed too. Would you call them murders and put them in jail? No, of course not.

Why do you assume I have a hard time with the concept of civil disobedience? Why is everything so extreme with people like you? If you knew me you’d know that I am practically the very opposite of what you describe. Manning is not a Rosa Parks and this is the bottom line. You know what, if he had released documents revealing that the administration had intentionally lied about the WMD intelligence, I’d agree with you. That would be something worth whistleblowing. Manning didn’t do that. You guys act like that’s what he did, and he didn’t. Manning literally didn’t expose anything. Not one thing. And the larger point is he didn’t even know what he was revealing. Hundreds of thousands of documents. He hadn’t read all of them. He read but a handful. His actions could have easily gotten people killed.
Sabrina Liukin

You’re not as good at twisting the facts as you think you are. You make lots of assumptions about other people and that doesn’t help your argument very much. Also, I suggest you work on your comprehension skills b/c you completely misread and misinterpret everything I said. Good day sir. I don’t have time to continue explaining things to someone who is so obtuse.
Anonymous

What facts did I twist? What did I misread?