The Common Ills: Political Prisoner Bradley Manning

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Political Prisoner Bradley Manning

Abby Martin: I spend a lot of time alerting viewers about issues that politicians often overlook or simply ignore. However, former Congressman Ron Paul stands as an exception. See, he just made a public statement about the awful detention of Army Private Bradley Manning. The former presidential candidate told US News [and World Reports] that it's Manning who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, not President Obama. He said, "While President Obama was starting and expanding unconstitutional wars overseas, Bradley Manning, whose actions have cause exactly zero deaths, was shining a light on the truth behind these wars. It's clear which individual has done more to promote peace." [Applauding] Well done. Frankly, I couldn't agree more. Many people have wondered why Obama got nominated for a Peace Prize on practically the first day of his presidency? Meanwhile, the story of Bradley Manning who has spent over a thousand days behind bars is practically non-existent in the corporate media. And I should also note that Manning has effectively been nominated for the Peace Prize three times now. It's refreshing to see that at least one politician is willing to speak out about Manning's story but as for the rest of them? Well, let's keep Breaking The Set.

That's Abby Martin speaking on her Breaking The Set show for Russia Today yesterday. We're talking about Bradley Manning this entry but I don't watch Breaking The Set. A friend called this morning to tell me Conner Habib was on it. Conner's an adult entertainer, columnist and porn star. I'm throwing his visit on the show out there because the most popular piece we did at Third last year after TV pieces was "Columbia Journalism Ridiculous" -- according to Jim, I don't follow stats -- and I'm sure a good portion of the popularity had to do with the photo in there that Conor took of himself. If you enjoyed his photo and would like to see more of Mr. Gorgeous (Conner is incredibly photogenic and, as Ty has pointed out, he's also a very sweet guy) or you're interested in a serious discussion about sexuality and the issues, you can stream Abby Martin's interview with him (go to this page). At the top of the show is where Abby makes the Bradley remarks above (which I saw while streaming earlier).

In terms of Bradley, while many outlets ignore him -- including NPR, PRI's The World has covered him repeatedly -- this month alone the coverage has included this by Arun Rath and this by Chris Woolf. (And at the end of the entry, I'll tell you an NPR story that few know of right now.) And Rath spoke with Brooke Gladstone for WYNC's On The Media last month.

Monday at Ideas about the environment . . ., Robert Kyriakides offered a reminder:

Just so we do not forget, Bradley Manning’s case has still not been resolved. Mr Manning released, it is claimed, many sensitive and secret documents which showed the USA in a bad light; it is claimed that in doing so he aided and abetted the enemy of the USA. He has been in prison for nearly three years, although fortunately his period of solitary confinement “only” lasted the first nine months of his incarceration.

And Kyriakides is correct that Bradley could be forgotten. There hasn't been nearly enough attention to or focus on him. That's Bradley, pictured below.

MANNING, BRADLEY PFC HEAD AND SHOULDERS 4-26-2012

Monday April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks released US military video of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were killed in the assault including two Reuters journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. Monday June 7, 2010, the US military announced that they had arrested Bradley Manning and he stood accused of being the leaker of the video. Leila Fadel (Washington Post) reported in August 2010 that Manning had been charged -- "two charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The first encompasses four counts of violating Army regulations by transferring classified information to his personal computer between November and May and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system. The second comprises eight counts of violating federal laws governing the handling of classified information." In March, 2011, David S. Cloud (Los Angeles Times) reported that the military has added 22 additional counts to the charges including one that could be seen as "aiding the enemy" which could result in the death penalty if convicted. The Article 32 hearing took place in December. At the start of this year, there was an Article 32 hearing and, February 3rd, it was announced that the government would be moving forward with a court-martial. Bradley has yet to enter a plea. The court-martial was supposed to begin before the November 2012 election but it was postponed until after the election so that Barack wouldn't have to run on a record of his actual actions. Independent.ie adds, "A court martial is set to be held in June at Ford Meade in Maryland, with supporters treating him as a hero, but opponents describing him as a traitor." February 28th, Bradley admitted he leaked to WikiLeaks. And why.

Bradley Manning: In attempting to conduct counter-terrorism or CT and counter-insurgency COIN operations we became obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists and not being suspicious of and avoiding cooperation with our Host Nation partners, and ignoring the second and third order effects of accomplishing short-term goals and missions. I believe that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information contained within the CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A tables this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as [missed word] as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.
I also believed the detailed analysis of the data over a long period of time by different sectors of society might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to even to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the effected environment everyday.

At the end of the month (April 30th), there will be an event about the importance of whistle blowing to a society at St. Joseph's College (starting at 6:30 pm) with Sarah Leonard (Dissent and New Inquiry) and Chase Madar (author of The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story Behind the WikiLeaks Whistleblower). For Chase Madar's book, click here and link goes to Barnes and Noble. Not Amazon? Amazon shows the book as "out of print" -- even as a download. (On the St. Joseph's College event, we'll note it in the snapshot. A friend asked me to note it and I said sure but there's nothing at St. Joseph's College about it. So I called him back and he said the event is on and scheduled and he'd e-mail me something later today. We'll include that info in the snapshot.)

Whether you can attend that event -- it's free and open to the public -- or not, you can discuss Bradley in your own circles. Yes, all this time later, we still have to be the media. No, we don't get paid for it. But it's our world and either we do our part and lift our share or we sit back and watch as the infotainment absorbs every minute of discussion.

Last week, Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights) was on the Real News Network with Paul Jay and he was discussing Bradley during part of the appearance.

So here we are this week, April 5, the third anniversary of the “Collateral Murder” video.
Now, how that came about is important and what it says is important. It came about because a young private first class, Bradley Manning, serving in Iraq as an intelligence analyst hears talk about this video. He goes and looks at the video, and he sees this incredible–what he calls incredible blood lust by American soldiers killing civilians. And there’s some argument or discussion about it within his unit. And he sees that Reuters, who had two journalists killed, murdered in that video, has asked for a copy of the video, and the military has gotten back to Reuters and said, well, we can’t find it, etc. Yet this video is just floating around through this intelligent analyst unit in Iraq. So after viewing the video, Bradley Manning decides to upload it to WikiLeaks.
Like the King speech, it’s one that every single one of your viewers ought to look at, because it’s absolutely devastating. The story is there’s a open square in Baghdad, nothing much going on. You can see from the video it’s very clearly shot from the helicopter, people walking around, doing their business, no military by any appearance, just a calm scene. These two American helicopters, what Manning calls aerial gunships, with 30 millimeter cannons come across the scene, and they see these people walking around.
And two of the people walking around are Reuters journalists. Obviously, they don’t know that, but they think that they might be carrying guns or explosive devices. One, if you look at the video closely, clearly he has a camera around his shoulder. The other journalist, I don’t think he had anything particularly, maybe another camera or something.
And they ask for–and there are some other people around. And they ask for permission to engage. They get permission to engage. And then you see a video in which people are just slaughtered. It’s really–the best expression that I know is shooting ducks in a barrel. They’re sitting up there with clear vision, and they’re just firing these 30 millimeter cannons, devastating the whole place. When you see the picture afterwards, there’s this pool of blood that’s got to be 50 feet across and 20 feet wide.
And one thing we should mention is the two people killed. One is named Saeed Chmagh. He’s 40 years old. He had four children. One of the best journalists in Iraq. And there’s a picture that you see on the one that WikiLeaks prepared of this video of his son screaming, holding his father’s picture. The other journalist is a photographer, Namir Eldeen. Namir is a 22-year-old man, a war photographer, also slaughtered, slaughtered in this.
As I said, WikiLeaks obtained the video from Bradley Manning.
As I said, like shooting ducks in a barrel. And they keep shooting.
And after they kill at least eight of them, according to their own admission, from this helicopter, the language is what got Bradley Manning to say, I’m giving this video to WikiLeaks, because of what he said was blood lust. And here’s what he heard. The soldiers say, or the people, the shooters say, ha-ha, I hit him,–
U.S. SOLDIER: Oh, yeah. Look at that. Right through the windshield.
RATNER: –or, look at these dead bastards,–
U.S. SOLDIER: Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards.
RATNER: –or good shooting. And they see a guy crawling, and they know they can’t just kill a guy crawling, so they just say, please, pick up a weapon so we can kill you, pick up a weapon.
Then, after they kill these eight, a van comes along, a big van, like a moving van, and they admit in the helicopter that’s watching them that they’ve gone to pick up the bodies. They say that to each other in these helicopters. And despite that, despite that, they ask permission to engage and shoot the van. And what happens? Can I shoot? Can I shoot, they keep saying. Let me shoot. Let us shoot.
U.S. SOLDIER: –to engage.
U.S. SOLDIER: [incompr.] pick up the wounded. Yeah, we’re trying to get permission to engage.
U.S. SOLDIER: Come on, let us shoot.
RATNER: And finally they get the order, engage. And they engage, and they fire at the van.
They then say–they look at the van afterwards. It stopped moving, obviously. They say, look at that, right through the windshield. And then, after they do that, the van is out there, all the dead people, the blood. And then they send one of the U.S. tanks or some kind of a U.S. vehicle there. And it’s so strewn with bodies that the vehicle can’t get through, so it drives over a body. And then the soldiers or the helicopter guys say, ha, look it, it drove over a body, and they all start to laugh.
That’s the video that people ought to see that Bradley Manning uploaded to WikiLeaks on this, the third anniversary of really the first major piece of what he would call the Bradley Manning set of documents that were released.
What Manning said in his guilty plea, quote: the most alarming aspect of the video to me, however, was the seemingly delightful blood lust they appeared to have. And then he goes on. The dehumanized individuals were engaging. They seem not to value human life, by referring to them as, quote, “dead bastards” and congratulating each other.
So, in addition to the Reuters journalists killed, another eight are killed, and then the father of two children in the van is killed. He was going to pick up the bodies to help rescue people. The two children are wounded. They’re taken to a hospital. They aren’t taken to an American hospital where they might have received better care; they’re taken to an Iraqi hospital. They survive.
I talk about this really because here you have on one hand an amazing antiwar speech and an antiwar [incompr.] not just about a particular war, with Martin Luther King, but all wars.

Okay NPR story. Which will piss some friends off but we'll throw in anything this entry that might get Bradley some attention.

Why is NPR taking off Talk of the Nation? Because of PRI's The World. Talk hasn't been replaced with PRI's The World. But other NPR shows -- such as Fresh Air -- are starting to lose out. And NPR is freaking out because they get their money from stations who air the shows they produce. That's always been part of the NPR and PRI rivalry.

NPR believes that the switch indicates people are tired of talk. What the switch most likely indicates is people are tired of Terry Gross. In some of the markets that's the show's been dropped, it's still on. But it's only on once a day. If there's anything scarier and sadder than Terry Gross once a day, it's Terry twice. Some markets have to fill airtime and were airing the show twice. Some of the 'dropping' is just that they're now only airing it once.

Along with the fact that people are tired of Terry Gross, there's also the fact that The World sounds different. It's not chatter. It's not cute factoids about the stray dog that Steve or Renee or Robert chuckles over bumper music about. It's not silly patter between the hosts. More and more, NPR's magazine shows are sounding like Good Morning America. That's not what they're supposed to sound like. Simply by staying professional on air, The World has succeeded in making listeners feel they're getting more news from it than they do from All Things Considered or Morning Edition. If they want to stop losing out to PRI, NPR needs to get their hosts to conduct themselves more professionally on air.

The following community sites -- plus PRI, Susan's On the Edge, The Diane Rehm Show, IVAW, Pacifica Evening News and Jody Watley -- updated last night and this morning: