Thread: Stop Torturing Bradley Manning!

Stop Torturing Bradley Manning!




It's shocking news: Glen Greenwald reports that U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning is being tortured. Manning is accused of leaking unflattering information about the Afghanistan war to WikiLeaks, but hasn't been convicted of -- or even tried for -- any crime.

He's being held at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, and according to Greenwald:

Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America's Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado: all without so much as having been convicted of anything.

Will you sign on at right to show your support for Manning and his most basic civil rights?

PETITION TO SECRETARY OF THE ARMY, THE HONORABLE JOHN M. MCHUGH:

Torture is absolutely unacceptable, and un-American! Stop violating Private Bradley Manning's basic rights: End the torture and put him on trial or set him free.



http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/Mann ... 0&rd=1&t=2



More on he story at the link below



Glenn Greenwald
Wednesday, Dec 15, 2010 02:15 ET
The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention
By Glenn Greenwald

*

The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention
Reuters/Jonathon Burch/AP/Salon

(updated below)

Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months -- and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait -- under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture. Interviews with several people directly familiar with the conditions of Manning's detention, ultimately including a Quantico brig official (Lt. Brian Villiard) who confirmed much of what they conveyed, establishes that the accused leaker is subjected to detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries.

Since his arrest in May, Manning has been a model detainee, without any episodes of violence or disciplinary problems. He nonetheless was declared from the start to be a "Maximum Custody Detainee," the highest and most repressive level of military detention, which then became the basis for the series of inhumane measures imposed on him.

From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs. Lt. Villiard protested that the conditions are not "like jail movies where someone gets thrown into the hole," but confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, entirely alone in his cell except for the one hour per day he is taken out.

In sum, Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America's Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado: all without so much as having been convicted of anything. And as is true of many prisoners subjected to warped treatment of this sort, the brig's medical personnel now administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation.

Just by itself, the type of prolonged solitary confinement to which Manning has been subjected for many months is widely viewed around the world as highly injurious, inhumane, punitive, and arguably even a form of torture. In his widely praised March, 2009 New Yorker article -- entitled "Is Long-Term Solitary Confinement Torture?" -- the surgeon and journalist Atul Gawande assembled expert opinion and personal anecdotes to demonstrate that, as he put it, "all human beings experience isolation as torture." By itself, prolonged solitary confinement routinely destroys a person’s mind and drives them into insanity. A March, 2010 article in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law explains that "solitary confinement is recognized as difficult to withstand; indeed, psychological stressors such as isolation can be as clinically distressing as physical torture."

For that reason, many Western nations -- and even some non-Western nations notorious for human rights abuses -- refuse to employ prolonged solitary confinement except in the most extreme cases of prisoner violence. "It’s an awful thing, solitary," John McCain wrote of his experience in isolated confinement in Vietnam. “It crushes your spirit." As Gawande documented: "A U.S. military study of almost a hundred and fifty naval aviators returned from imprisonment in Vietnam . . . reported that they found social isolation to be as torturous and agonizing as any physical abuse they suffered." Gawande explained that America’s application of this form of torture to its own citizens is what spawned the torture regime which President Obama vowed to end:

This past year, both the Republican and the Democratic Presidential candidates came out firmly for banning torture and closing the facility in Guantánamo Bay, where hundreds of prisoners have been held in years-long isolation. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain, however, addressed the question of whether prolonged solitary confinement is torture. . . .

This is the dark side of American exceptionalism. . . . Our willingness to discard these standards for American prisoners made it easy to discard the Geneva Conventions prohibiting similar treatment of foreign prisoners of war, to the detriment of America’s moral stature in the world. In much the same way that a previous generation of Americans countenanced legalized segregation, ours has countenanced legalized torture. And there is no clearer manifestation of this than our routine use of solitary confinement . . . .

It's one thing to impose such punitive, barbaric measures on convicts who have proven to be violent when around other prisoners; at the Supermax in Florence, inmates convicted of the most heinous crimes and who pose a threat to prison order and the safety of others are subjected to worse treatment than what Manning experiences. But it's another thing entirely to impose such conditions on individuals, like Manning, who have been convicted of nothing and have never demonstrated an iota of physical threat or disorder.

In 2006, a bipartisan National Commission on America's Prisons was created and it called for the elimination of prolonged solitary confinement. Its Report documented that conditions whereby "prisoners end up locked in their cells 23 hours a day, every day. . . is so severe that people end up completely isolated, living in what can only be described as torturous conditions." The Report documented numerous psychiatric studies of individuals held in prolonged isolation which demonstrate "a constellation of symptoms that includes overwhelming anxiety, confusion and hallucination, and sudden violent and self-destructive outbursts." The above-referenced article from the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law states: "Psychological effects can include anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis."

When one exacerbates the harms of prolonged isolation with the other deprivations to which Manning is being subjected, long-term psychiatric and even physical impairment is likely. Gawande documents that "EEG studies going back to the nineteen-sixties have shown diffuse slowing of brain waves in prisoners after a week or more of solitary confinement." Medical tests conducted in 1992 on Yugoslavian prisoners subjected to an average of six months of isolation -- roughly the amount to which Manning has now been subjected -- "revealed brain abnormalities months afterward; the most severe were found in prisoners who had endured either head trauma sufficient to render them unconscious or, yes, solitary confinement. Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury." Gawande's article is filled with horrifying stories of individuals subjected to isolation similar to or even less enduring than Manning's who have succumbed to extreme long-term psychological breakdown.

Manning is barred from communicating with any reporters, even indirectly, so nothing he has said can be quoted here. But David House, a 23-year-old MIT researcher who befriended Manning after his detention (and then had his laptops, camera and cellphone seized by Homeland Security when entering the U.S.) is one of the few people to have visited Manning several times at Quantico. He describes palpable changes in Manning's physical appearance and behavior just over the course of the several months that he's been visiting him. Like most individuals held in severe isolation, Manning sleeps much of the day, is particularly frustrated by the petty, vindictive denial of a pillow or sheets, and suffers from less and less outdoor time as part of his one-hour daily removal from his cage.

This is why the conditions under which Manning is being detained were once recognized in the U.S. -- and are still recognized in many Western nations -- as not only cruel and inhumane, but torture. More than a century ago, U.S. courts understood that solitary confinement was a barbaric punishment that severely harmed the mental and physical health of those subjected to it. The Supreme Court's 1890 decision in In re Medley noted that as a result of solitary confinement as practiced in the early days of the United States, many "prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition . . . and others became violently insane; others still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better . . . [often] did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community." And in its 1940 decision in Chambers v. Florida, the Court characterized prolonged solitary confinement as "torture" and compared it to "[t]he rack, the thumbscrew, [and] the wheel."

The inhumane treatment of Manning may have international implications as well. There are multiple proceedings now pending in the European Union Human Rights Court, brought by "War on Terror" detainees contesting their extradition to the U.S. on the ground that the conditions under which they likely will be held -- particularly prolonged solitary confinement -- violate the European Convention on Human Rights, which (along with the Convention Against Torture) bars EU states from extraditing anyone to any nation where there is a real risk of inhumane and degrading treatment. The European Court of Human Rights has in the past found detention conditions violative of those rights (in Bulgaria) where "the [detainee] spent 23 hours a day alone in his cell; had limited interaction with other prisoners; and was only allowed two visits per month." From the Journal article referenced above:

International treaty bodies and human rights experts, including the Human Rights Committee, the Committee against Torture, and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, have concluded that solitary confinement may amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment. They have specifically criticized supermax confinement in the United States because of the mental suffering it inflicts.

Subjecting a detainee like Manning to this level of prolonged cruel and inhumane detention can thus jeopardize the ability of the U.S. to secure extradition for other prisoners, as these conditions are viewed in much of the civilized world as barbaric. Moreover, because Manning holds dual American and U.K. citizenship (his mother is British), it is possible for British agencies and human rights organizations to assert his consular rights against these oppressive conditions. At least some preliminary efforts are underway in Britain to explore that mechanism as a means of securing more humane treatment for Manning. Whatever else is true, all of this illustrates what a profound departure from international norms is the treatment to which the U.S. Government is subjecting him.

* * * * *

The plight of Manning has largely been overshadowed by the intense media fixation on WikiLeaks, so it's worth underscoring what it is that he's accused of doing and what he said in his own reputed words about these acts. If one believes the authenticity of the highly edited chat logs of Manning's online conversations with Adrian Lamo that have been released by Wired (that magazine inexcusably continues to conceal large portions of those logs), Manning clearly believed that he was a whistle-blower acting with the noblest of motives, and probably was exactly that. If, for instance, he really is the leaker of the Apache helicopter attack video -- a video which sparked very rare and much-needed realization about the visceral truth of what American wars actually entail -- as well as the war and diplomatic cables revealing substantial government deceit, brutality, illegality and corruption, then he's quite similar to Daniel Ellsberg. Indeed, Ellsberg himself said the very same thing about Manning in June on Democracy Now in explaining why he considers the Army Private to be a "hero":

The fact is that what Lamo reports Manning is saying has a very familiar and persuasive ring to me. He reports Manning as having said that what he had read and what he was passing on were horrible -- evidence of horrible machinations by the US backdoor dealings throughout the Middle East and, in many cases, as he put it, almost crimes. And let me guess that -- he’s not a lawyer, but I'll guess that what looked to him like crimes are crimes, that he was putting out. We know that he put out, or at least it's very plausible that he put out, the videos that he claimed to Lamo. And that's enough to go on to get them interested in pursuing both him and the other.

And so, what it comes down, to me, is -- and I say throwing caution to the winds here -- is that what I've heard so far of Assange and Manning -- and I haven't met either of them -- is that they are two new heroes of mine.

To see why that's so, just recall some of what Manning purportedly said about why he chose to leak, at least as reflected in the edited chat logs published by Wired:

Lamo: what's your endgame plan, then?. . .

Manning: well, it was forwarded to [WikiLeaks] - and god knows what happens now - hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms - if not, than [sic] we're doomed - as a species - i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens - the reaction to the video gave me immense hope; CNN's iReport was overwhelmed; Twitter exploded - people who saw, knew there was something wrong . . . Washington Post sat on the video… David Finkel acquired a copy while embedded out here. . . . - i want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.

if i knew then, what i knew now - kind of thing, or maybe im just young, naive, and stupid . . . im hoping for the former - it cant be the latter - because if it is… were ****ing screwed (as a society) - and i dont want to believe that we’re screwed.

Manning described the incident which first made him seriously question the U.S. Government: when he was instructed to work on the case of Iraqi "insurgents" who had been detained for distributing so-called "insurgent" literature which, when Manning had it translated, turned out to be nothing more than "a scholarly critique against PM Maliki":

i had an interpreter read it for me… and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled "Where did the money go?" and following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet… i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on… he didn’t want to hear any of it… he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees…

i had always questioned the things worked, and investigated to find the truth… but that was a point where i was a *part* of something… i was actively involved in something that i was completely against…

And Manning explained why he never considered the thought of selling this classified information to a foreign nation for substantial profit or even just secretly transmitting it to foreign powers, as he easily could have done:

Manning: i mean what if i were someone more malicious- i could've sold to russia or china, and made bank?

Lamo: why didn’t you?

Manning: because it's public data

Lamo: i mean, the cables

Manning: it belongs in the public domain -information should be free - it belongs in the public domain - because another state would just take advantage of the information… try and get some edge - if its out in the open… it should be a public good.

That's a whistleblower in the purest and most noble form: discovering government secrets of criminal and corrupt acts and then publicizing them to the world not for profit, not to give other nations an edge, but to trigger "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms." Given how much Manning has been demonized -- at the same time that he's been rendered silent by the ban on his communication with any media -- it's worthwhile to keep all of that in mind.

But ultimately, what one thinks of Manning's alleged acts is irrelevant to the issue here. The U.S. ought at least to abide by minimal standards of humane treatment in how it detains him. That's true for every prisoner, at all times. But departures from such standards are particularly egregious where, as here, the detainee has merely been accused, but never convicted, of wrongdoing. These inhumane conditions make a mockery of Barack Obama's repeated pledge to end detainee abuse and torture, as prolonged isolation -- exacerbated by these other deprivations -- is at least as damaging, as violative of international legal standards, and almost as reviled around the world, as the waterboard, hypothermia and other Bush-era tactics that caused so much controversy.

What all of this achieves is clear. Having it known that the U.S. could and would disappear people at will to "black sites," assassinate them with unseen drones, imprison them for years without a shred of due process even while knowing they were innocent, torture them mercilessly, and in general acts as a lawless and rogue imperial power created a climate of severe intimidation and fear. Who would want to challenge the U.S. Government in any way -- even in legitimate ways -- knowing that it could and would engage in such lawless, violent conduct without any restraints or repercussions?

That is plainly what is going on here. Anyone remotely affiliated with WikiLeaks, including American citizens (and plenty of other government critics), has their property seized and communications stored at the border without so much as a warrant. Julian Assange -- despite never having been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime -- has now spent more than a week in solitary confinement with severe restrictions under what his lawyer calls "Dickensian conditions." But Bradley Manning has suffered much worse, and not for a week, but for seven months, with no end in sight. If you became aware of secret information revealing serious wrongdoing, deceit and/or criminality on the part of the U.S. Government, would you -- knowing that you could and likely would be imprisoned under these kinds of repressive, torturous conditions for months on end without so much as a trial: just locked away by yourself 23 hours a day without recourse -- be willing to expose it? That's the climate of fear and intimidation which these inhumane detention conditions are intended to create.

* * * * *

Those wishing to contribute to Bradley Manning's defense fund can do so here. All of those means are reputable, but everyone should carefully read the various options presented in order to decide which one seems best.



UPDATE: I was contacted by Lt. Villiard, who claims there is one factual inaccuracy in what I wrote: specifically, he claims that Manning is not restricted from accessing news or current events during the prescribed time he is permitted to watch television. That is squarely inconsistent with reports from those with first-hand knowledge of Manning's detention, but it's a fairly minor dispute in the scheme of things.

* More: Glenn Greenwald



http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn ... index.html



Kathyet

Absolutely despicable.

Petition signed!

This guy is a traitor - waterboard him - send him to Egypt to be interrogated and then execute him.

These petitions are brought to you by the same people who support the DREAM act - why are you letting yourself be taken in by them

Originally Posted by judyweller

This guy is a traitor - waterboard him - send him to Egypt to be interrogated and then execute him.

These petitions are brought to you by the same people who support the DREAM act - why are you letting yourself be taken in by them

Maybe because news is news and since the media doesn't get it out well we don't need to know anything is that it, and someone that turns the tables on the corruptible leaders is a traitor..hmmmm interesting analogy........To bad you feel wiki leaks and this soldier are traitors for getting certain information out...But which is worse...Knowing or not knowing what is going on? Depends on how you look at it I guess. I feel there is way too much corruption and hidden agendas going on in our Country and elsewhere and if the truth got out maybe it would stop some of it. But that is my opinion of course!!!!!!


Kathyet

The US Army's Treatment Of Alleged WikiLeaker Bradley Manning Is A Disgrace
Henry Blodget | Dec. 15, 2010, 11:43 AM | 3,922 | comment 94



Salute Flag

According to Glenn Greenwald at Salon, the US Army has kept alleged WikiLeaker Bradley Manning in solitary confinement at Quantico for the past 7 months and refused to allow him basic necessities like exercise, a pillow, and sheets.

If this is true, it's a disgrace. It's also conduct unbecoming of the US military.

Now, before you go howling that whatever treatment Manning is getting is actually way too good for him because he's a traitor who should just be taken out and shot, let me be clear:

It may well be that Manning should be taken out and shot.

He just shouldn't be subjected to these petty and demeaning punishments in the meantime.

What can the Army possibly be hoping to accomplish by depriving Manning of exercise, sheets, and a pillow? Does it want him to see who's boss? Does it want to teach him a lesson about allegedly leaking secrets to WikiLeaks? Does it want to show him how tough it is and what it thinks of alleged traitors?

If the Army's goal is any of these things, all it is doing is embarrassing itself and every other American.

Bradley Manning

Image: AP
As was demonstrated in spades at Abu Ghraib, how we treat our prisoners matters. It matters to other soldiers. It matters to the country. It matters to humanity. And subjecting prisoners to petty tortures and humiliations just lowers us to the level that we're fighting to try to rise above.

So how should Manning be treated?

If the answer to the following three questions is "yes," he should, in fact, be shot.

1) Did Manning actually leak the information to WikiLeaks? Has this been proven beyond a reasonable doubt? If so, fine. If not, when will it be proven? And why is Manning being treated this way in the meantime? Aren't Americans presumed innocent until proven guilty?

2) Does leaking this information to WikiLeaks qualify as "treason"? Some would argue that leaking information about our conduct in the Iraq war was actually a patriotic act, not a crime against the country. I won't pick a side on that one here. In any event, if this leak has been proven to qualify as "treason" under the legal definition of the word, fine.

3) Is treason always punishable by death? Are there lesser forms of treason that result in jail time or public service, or are traitors always shot? If they're always shot, fine.

In other words, if Manning "did it," if his crime was treason, and if treason is always punished with death, then the Army should man up and just take Manning out and shoot him.

What it shouldn't do is subject him (or anyone) to wimpy, petty punishments that are beneath our military and country.

See Also: Is WikiLeaker Bradley Manning Being Tortured?
Tags: Wikileaks, Bradley Manning | Get Alerts for these topics »


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-a ... z18IkUkmSx


Kathyet

Originally Posted by judyweller

This guy is a traitor - waterboard him - send him to Egypt to be interrogated and then execute him.

And why is he a traitor, exactly?

Is it simply because he enabled the publication of (thus far negligible and propaganda-laced) information that the federal government supposedly wanted kept secret?

Newsflash: Governments usually keep secrets to protect themselves, not to protect the People.

These petitions are brought to you by the same people who support the DREAM act - why are you letting yourself be taken in by them

And the same people who oppose the DREAM act tend to be the same people who erroneously think gold actually works as a national currency or that land owners shouldn't have to pay a cent of taxes to own something they did not produce.

You don't hear me complaining about such things do you?

Originally Posted by ReddHeretic

Originally Posted by judyweller

This guy is a traitor - waterboard him - send him to Egypt to be interrogated and then execute him.

And why is he a traitor, exactly?

Is it simply because he enabled the publication of (thus far negligible and propaganda-laced) information that the federal government supposedly wanted kept secret?

He is a traitor for betraying government secrets to the enemy. Julian Assange is an enemy of the US - make no mistake. He belongs in Maximum Security prison for life. It is important that the government put and end to him and his leaks - put him on trial for espionage. He supports Al Quaeda and all the enemies of the US. He is a menace to the world.

We need the stuxnet worm to take care of wikileaks. We need to ensure that everyone who participates in Operation Payback is tracked down and jailed. What they are doing is wrong. I applaud every business that severs connnection with this anarchist.

He is an anarchist - look the word up. There is no room for anarchist in this world - they are out to destroy the world and turn it over to the Third World. Don't get suckered into the "cry for Bradley Manning" Crowd -- he brought it on himself. He got himself in trouble now let him pay the price.

Campaign against WikiLeaks Is Lawless

by Gene Healy

Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of The Cult of the Presidency.

Added to cato.org on December 14, 2010

This article appeared in The DC Examiner on December 14, 2010.

What's surprising about Washington's ongoing anti-WikiLeaks conniption isn't what the purloined cables disclose about American foreign policy. Even Defense Secretary Robert Gates admits that, despite a few "awkward" exposures, the consequences for U.S. national security will be "fairly modest."

No, what's really telling is how Washington's political class has reacted to WikiLeaks. As they see it, anyone who threatens to undermine government secrecy is morally equivalent to Osama bin Laden.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., says that if existing laws can't stop WikiLeaks, "we need to change the law," dammit, because the organization's founder, international man of mystery Julian Assange, is a "high-tech terrorist."

Terrorism ain't what it used to be. Apparently, today you can qualify just for embarrassing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Terrorism ain't what it used to be. Apparently, today you can qualify just for embarrassing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

True, some secrecy is necessary, in business, war and diplomacy. And Congress and the Obama administration should take a close look at the vulnerabilities Assange has exposed. Why did an Army private have access to such a broad range of diplomatic cables, anyway?

Anyone who values the First Amendment ought to oppose the campaign to "get" Assange by any means necessary. In a free society, you can't just "change the law" to persecute someone you don't like, and you can't abuse your position to silence speech you oppose.

Last week in the Wall Street Journal, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., demanded that Assange be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act. After all, she wrote, the First Amendment isn't "a license to jeopardize national security," any more than it's a license to "yell 'Fire!' in a crowded theater." A poor choice of metaphor: It comes from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' 1919 opinion in Schenck v. United States, when the Supreme Court allowed the Wilson administration to imprison a man for the crime of publicly arguing that the draft was unconstitutional.

We've since done a much better job protecting the First Amendment. In 1971's New York Times v. United States, the Supreme Court rebuffed the Nixon administration's attempt to stop the paper from publishing classified documents showing that the government had lied America into the Vietnam War.

WikiLeaks stands in the same position as the "gray lady" in New York Times v. United States, and since that case, the Congressional Research Service reports, no "publisher of information obtained through unauthorized disclosure by a government employee has been prosecuted for publishing it." "First Amendment implications" would likely "make such a prosecution difficult."

Even so, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., has suggested that U.S. newspapers could still be punished for publishing WikiLeaks' leaks. Unsatisfied with mere threats, Lieberman has also gone outside the law, throwing his weight around to get Amazon.com to boot the site off its servers.

Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of The Cult of the Presidency.
More by Gene Healy

As new-media analyst Clay Shirky puts it, Myanmar and Russia "can now rightly say to us, 'You went after WikiLeaks' domain name, their hosting provider, and even denied your citizens the ability to register protest through donations,' all without the slightest legal authority. 'If that's the way governments get to behave, we can live with that.' "

The Obama Justice Department is exploring charges to bring against Assange, and, according to press reports, the administration is talking to Britain and Sweden about extradition.

They should think hard about whether that's the outcome they want. People tend to romanticize outlaws, and in this case, he's likely to beat the rap.

Assange may be an unsavory character using dubious methods. But this wouldn't be the first time a creep got to vindicate a vital constitutional principle.


http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12633


Kathyet

Is Barack Obama In Bed – so to speak – With Julian Assange?
28Share 0diggsdigg
ASSANGE HAS RELEASED U.S. CLASSIFIED AND UNCLASSIFIED INFORMATION, BUT WHAT IS HIS SOURCE?

by Joan Swirsky, ©2010

Julian Assange is editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, a website organized to expose secret governmental activities worldwide

(Dec. 15, 2010) — The fanatical hard Left – those communists, socialists, and radicals currently in power – view anything that is bad for our country – massive Intelligence leaks, disastrous oil spills, escalating unemployment, chaos on our borders, military setbacks, et al – as a thundering success. To them, anything that undermines the United States brings them closer to their Grand Plan of toppling Big Bad America and transforming it into the kind of totalitarian Banana Republic they never tire of glamorizing.

That’s why it is clear to me that the potential damage from the Australian-born Julian Assange’s release of 250,000 classified State Department and Pentagon cables on November 28 – and an equal number last July – is part not only of this Australian’s wish to harm our country but also the American Left’s premeditated and malevolent plan to destroy America. And let us not forget that Assange’s assault began in April 2010 with nearly 80,000 documents “dumpedâ€

I just found this from Lew Rockwell...

American Soldiers Should Be First in Line To Defend Bradley Manning

by Andrew Mason and Mark R. Crovelli




One of the most curious facets of the ongoing Wikileaks saga is the conspicuous silence of the American military about the Bradley Manning case. The military’s silence is absolutely deafening, for example, on the pages of Stars and Stripes, where only two articles in the turbulent month of December have even deigned to mention Mr. Manning. One would expect that, in a case involving the largest leak of classified documents in the history of the world, the armed forces would be staking out a concrete position on this case for the entire world, and especially the armed forces, to see. After all, it was one of the armed forces’ own who allegedly released the documents to Wikileaks, and other active-duty servicemen with access to classified documents may be considering doing the very same thing as Manning.

This silence emanating from the armed forces regarding Manning raises a fascinating and important question: What position should the armed forces take with regard to the Manning case? We all know what stance the Pentagon is likely to take, given that many of the embarrassing documents actually refer to people in the Pentagon, but the question that truly needs to be answered concerns the position the armed forces should take – especially the position that average soldiers should take on Bradley Manning.

The answer, it turns out, cannot be discovered by facilely pointing out that it is illegal under military law for soldiers to release classified information to the public. This is true, because the document classification system has been manipulated by political and military elites in a way that is extremely prejudicial to average soldiers. Ironically, this fact has itself been revealed by the Wikileaks releases, because it is clear that political and military elites are over-classifying documents in order to protect their own asses. They have been classifying documents "secret" even when they involve nothing more than gossip about foreign diplomats and royalty, for example. Peruse the Wikileaks files for two minutes and you will get a good sense of just how absurd the document classification system in the United States has become.

Insofar as the document classification system in the U.S. has been absurdly extended and abused, this has created a serious moral problem for conscientious soldiers in the armed forces. For, by over-classifying documents, political and military elites are able to hamstring their subordinates and make the exposure of what they are doing virtually impossible, unless it is leaked. Any unsavory, illegal, untruthful or even just plain embarrassing information can be hidden from public view simply by stamping the offensive document "secret." It is also a way for political and military elites to avoid prosecution for crimes in the United States by claiming that their defense involves "sensitive" or "secret" documents that cannot be revealed in open court. This strategy is so common in our corrupted day and age that it even has a name: "greymail."

In essence, then, the document classification system in the United States has warped into an instrument of intimidation against average, conscientious soldiers who might be appalled by their superiors’ words or deeds. Superior officers and civilian bureaucrats can preempt dissent by simply stamping incriminating documents "secret," and use that tiny word as a threat against conscientious soldiers that they had better keep their mouths shut – or else. This threat is all the more unconscionable while two wars are going on that are killing average American soldiers, not political and military elites, in droves. When lies are used to get American soldiers killed, and soldiers are intimidated to preempt the exposure of those lies, you have a recipe for tragedy on a massive scale.

It is important to bear in mind, moreover, that we are not talking about documents upon which the safety of the United States rests. No high-ranking officers would be stupid or reckless enough to share such sensitive documents with low-level officers and enlistees. If they were that mind bogglingly idiotic, then the entire Pentagon and officer corps ought to be forced to resign for incompetence immediately. In addition, the fact that people in Washington routinely leak documents to the press that are far more sensitive to national security than those Manning released, like the National Intelligence Estimate, testifies to the existence of a revolting double standard being applied to political and military elites as compared to the standard being applied to average soldiers like Mr. Manning.

Bearing these observations in mind, it ought to be obvious that average soldiers should celebrate Bradley Manning as a hero who stood up to this unconscionable intimidation from above. He didn’t just reveal to the world that the upper echelons of the political and military establishment are engaged in outright crimes and deception; he revealed and took a stand against conscientious soldiers being silenced by asinine document over-classification. He is, in other words, a defender of the honor and integrity of the average soldier and the Army’s own core values, which stands in stark contrast to the depravity of the political and military elites that we meet in the Wikileaks documents, and who are now trampling on the constitution even in their detention of Mr. Manning.

Thus, average soldiers ought to be the first in line to defend Bradley Manning. They ought to insist that he only be punished if it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the documents he released were indeed of vital importance to the security of the United States. If this cannot be proven, then Mr. Manning ought to be immediately and unconditionally released. (Proving this in Mr. Manning’s case will be extremely difficult, however, given that Defense Secretary Gates has already asserted that the documents have harmed no one, and the fact that the Pentagon didn’t even think it necessary to redact names from the documents). The assumption going forward, now that we know for a fact that documents are being over-classified in abundance by political and military elites, is that any released document is not vital to national security until conclusively proven otherwise. If average soldiers were to operate under this assumption, moreover, political and military elites would be forced to take the time to actually hide any truly sensitive documents from the view of hundreds of thousands of people, as they should have been doing from day one.

It was long overdue for someone to stand up against the practice of over-classifying documents in order to intimidate average soldiers. Bradley Manning has courageously done so, and all members of the armed forces should rejoice for it.

December 22, 2010

Andrew Mason is a former corporal in the U.S.M.C. Mark R. Crovelli [send him mail] writes from Denver, Colorado.

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

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