Chris Hedges: We Are Bradley Manning

[marmar]

from truthdig:


We Are Bradley Manning

Posted on Mar 3, 2013
By Chris Hedges


I was in a military courtroom at Fort Meade in Maryland on Thursday as Pfc. Bradley Manning admitted giving classified government documents to WikiLeaks. The hundreds of thousands of leaked documents exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as government misconduct. A statement that Manning made to the court was a powerful and moving treatise on the importance of placing conscience above personal safety, the necessity of sacrificing careers and liberty for the public good, and the moral imperative of carrying out acts of defiance. Manning will surely pay with many years—perhaps his entire life—in prison. But we too will pay. The war against Bradley Manning is a war against us all.

This trial is not simply the prosecution of a 25-year-old soldier who had the temerity to report to the outside world the indiscriminate slaughter, war crimes, torture and abuse that are carried out by our government and our occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a concerted effort by the security and surveillance state to extinguish what is left of a free press, one that has the constitutional right to expose crimes by those in power. The lonely individuals who take personal risks so that the public can know the truth—the Daniel Ellsbergs, the Ron Ridenhours, the Deep Throats and the Bradley Mannings—are from now on to be charged with “aiding the enemy.” All those within the system who publicly reveal facts that challenge the official narrative will be imprisoned, as was John Kiriakou, the former CIA analyst who for exposing the U.S. government’s use of torture began serving a 30-month prison term the day Manning read his statement. There is a word for states that create these kinds of information vacuums: totalitarian.

The cowardice of The New York Times, El Pais, Der Spiegel and Le Monde, all of which used masses of the material Manning passed on to WikiLeaks and then callously turned their backs on him, is one of journalism’s greatest shames. These publications made little effort to cover Manning’s pretrial hearings, a failure that shows how bankrupt and anemic the commercial press has become. Rescuing what honor of our trade remains has been left to a handful of independent, often marginalized reporters and a small number of other individuals and groups—including Glenn Greenwald, Alexa O’Brien, Nathan Fuller, Kevin Gosztola (who writes for Firedog Lake), the Bradley Manning Support Network, political activist Kevin Zeese and the courtroom sketch artist Clark Stoeckley, along with The Guardian, which also published the WikiLeaks documents. But if our domesticated press institutions believe that by refusing to defend or report on Manning they will escape the wrath of the security and surveillance state, they are stunningly naive. This is a war that is being played for keeps. And the goal of the state is not simply to send Manning away for life. The state is also determined to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and try him in the United States on espionage or conspiracy charges. The state hopes to cement into place systems of information that will do little more than parrot official propaganda. This is why those with the computer skills to expose the power elite’s secrets, such as Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide in January, and Jeremy Hammond, who is facing up to 30 years in prison for allegedly hacking into the corporate security firm Stratfor, have been or are being ruthlessly hunted down and persecuted. It is why Vice President Joe Biden labeled Assange a “high-tech terrorist,” and it is why the Bradley Manning trial is one of the most important in American history.

The government has decided to press ahead with all 22 charges, including aiding the enemy (Article 104), stealing U.S. government property (18 USC 641), espionage (18 USC 793(e)) and computer crimes (18 USC 1030(a)(1))—the last notwithstanding the fact that Manning did not hack into government computers. The state will also prosecute him on charges of violating lawful general regulations (Article 92). The government has refused to settle for Manning’s admission of guilt on nine lesser offenses. Among these lesser offenses are unauthorized possession and willful communication of the video known as “Collateral Murder”; the Iraq War Logs; the Afghan War Diary; two CIA Red Cell Memos, including one entitled “Afghanistan: Sustaining West European Support for the NATO-Led Mission—Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough”; Guantanamo files; documents of a so-called Article 15-6 investigation into the May 2009 Garani massacre in Afghanistan’s Farah province; and a Department of Defense counterintelligence report, “WikiLeaks.org—An Online Reference to Foreign Intelligence Services, Insurgents, or Terrorist Groups?” as well as one violation of a lawful general order by wrongfully storing information. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_are_bradley_manning_20130303/

[Berlum]

1. A must read

A Big Old K and and R.

[SidDithers]

2. No. We're not...

Not even Bradley Manning is the Bradley Manning that Hedges makes him out to be.

Sid

[graham4anything]

3. YUP. WE does NOT include ME. I am not him. Nor would I ever want to be.

and shame on all those that hated the leaker that almost killed Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson
and wanted the leaker jailed then, now looking the other way and sympathizing with this now admitted guilty person. (like an innocent person would plead guilty to even one charge without any conditions put on his pleading guilty.)

[marmar]

4. And a video accompaniment......

[Berlum]

5. "a concerted effort by the...surveillance state to extinguish what is left of a free press"

Hedges nails it. This is where America is getting grabbed and yanked by the short hairs.

[Comrade_McKenzie]

6. Military secrets should never be leaked.

Other nations do not tolerate it.

And neither should we.

Manning is where he belongs for the embarrassment he caused us alone.

[duhneece]

8. I believe that revealing war crimes is an heroic act

When I saw the killing of reporters by US soldiers that Manning revealed, I appreciated him.

[Berlum]

9. Atrocities & outright evil should never been occultly hidden from the American public

If our nation is to act with honor and integrity in the world, the people must know what is being done in their name with their tax dollars.

[raouldukelives]

7. No, we are not all Manning.

The only way Manning had a chance was if the public at large was disgusted by the video. The majority of those that have seen the video hope everyone involved was given a medal.
They know the true villain in all this is the one who doesn't allow the picture to be painted in glorious red, white and blue as it assuredly deserves to be.