[governance] The Judicial Lynching of Bradley Manning (- or the death of Nuremburg principles...)
Riaz K Tayob
riaz.tayob at gmail.com
Thu Jun 13 18:03:28 EDT 2013
[this is how the USG treats war crimes whistleblowers... kept naked to
prevent his Swartzing... perhaps make lesson that everyone else will
remember... ]
Chris Hedges' Columns <http://www.truthdig.com/report/category/hedges/>
The Judicial Lynching of Bradley Manning
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Posted on Jun 9, 2013
AP/Patrick Semansky
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is escorted out of a courthouse at Fort Meade,
Md., on Wednesday after the third day of his court-martial.
By Chris Hedges <http://www.truthdig.com/chris_hedges/>
FORT MEADE, Md.---The military trial of Bradley Manning
<http://www.bradleymanning.org/> is a judicial lynching. The government
has effectively muzzled the defense team. The Army private first class
is not permitted to argue that he had a moral and legal obligation under
international law to make public the war crimes he uncovered. The
documents that detail the crimes, torture and killing Manning revealed,
because they are classified, have been barred from discussion in court,
effectively removing the fundamental issue of war crimes from the trial.
Manning is forbidden by the court to challenge the government's
unverified assertion that he harmed national security. Lead defense
attorney David E. Coombs
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Edward_Coombs> said during pretrial
proceedings that the judge's refusal to permit information on the lack
of actual damage from the leaks would "eliminate a viable defense, and
cut defense off at the knees." And this is what has happened
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/676419-20120719-ae-221-ruling-government-motion-to.html>.
Manning is also barred from presenting to the court his motives for
giving the website
<http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/the_death_of_truth_20130505/>
WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables, war
logs from Afghanistan and Iraq, and videos. The issues of his motives
and potentially harming national security can be raised only at the time
of sentencing, but by then it will be too late.
The draconian trial restrictions, familiar to many Muslim Americans
tried in the so-called war on terror, presage a future of show trials
and blind obedience. Our email and phone records
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/us/nsa-verizon-calls.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0>,
it is now confirmed, are swept up and stored in perpetuity on government
computers. Those who attempt to disclose government crimes can be easily
traced and prosecuted under the Espionage Act
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/business/media/white-house-uses-espionage-act-to-pursue-leak-cases-media-equation.html>.
Whistle-blowers have no privacy and no legal protection. This is why
Edward Snowden---a former CIA technical assistant who worked for a
defense contractor with ties to the National Security Agency and who
leaked to Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian the information about the
National Security Council's top-secret program to collect Americans'
cellphone metadata, e-mail and other personal data---has fled the United
States. The First Amendment is dead. There is no legal mechanism left to
challenge the crimes of the power elite. We are bound and shackled. And
those individuals who dare to resist face the prospect, if they remain
in the country, of joining Manning in prison, perhaps the last refuge
for the honest and the brave.
Read Chris Hedges' Dig about Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and Bradley
Manning here
<http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/the_death_of_truth_20130505/>.
Coombs opened the trial last week by pleading with the judge, Army Col.
Denise Lind <http://www.law.gwu.edu/Faculty/profile.aspx?id=20526>, for
leniency based on Manning's youth and sincerity. Coombs is permitted by
Lind to present only circumstantial evidence concerning Manning's
motives or state of mind. He can argue, for example, that Manning did
not know al-Qaida might see the information he leaked. Coombs is also
permitted to argue, as he did last week, that Manning was selective in
his leak, intending no harm to national interests. But these are minor
concessions by the court to the defense. Manning's most impassioned
pleas for freedom of information, especially regarding email exchanges
with the confidential government informant Adrian Lamo
<http://www.thenation.com/blog/174650/bradley-mannings-informant-adrian-lamo>,
as well as his right under international law to defy military orders in
exposing war crimes, are barred as evidence.
Manning is unable to appeal to the Nuremberg principles, a set of
guidelines created by the International Law Commission of the United
Nations after World War II to determine what constitutes a war crime.
The principles make political leaders, commanders and combatants
responsible for war crimes, even if domestic or internal laws allow such
actions. The Nuremberg principles are designed to protect those, like
Manning, who expose these crimes. Orders do not, under the Nuremberg
principles, offer an excuse for committing war crimes. And the Nuremberg
laws would clearly condemn the pilots in the "Collateral Murder" video
<http://www.collateralmurder.com/> and their commanders and exonerate
Manning. But this is an argument we will not be allowed to hear in the
Manning trial.
Manning has admitted to 10 lesser offenses surrounding his leaking of
classified and unclassified military and State Department files,
documents and videos, including the "Collateral Murder" video, which
shows a U.S. Apache attack helicopter in 2007 killing 12 civilians,
including two Reuters journalists, and wounding two children on an Iraqi
street. His current plea exposes him to penalties that could see him
locked away for two decades. But for the government that is not enough.
Military prosecutors are pursuing all 22 charges against him. These
charges include aiding the enemy, wanton publication, espionage,
stealing U.S. government property, exceeding authorized access and
failures to obey lawful general orders---charges that can bring with
them 149 years plus life.
"He knew that the video depicted a 2007 attack," Coombs said of the
"Collateral Murder" recording. "He knew that it [the attack] resulted in
the death of two journalists. And because it resulted in the death of
two journalists it had received worldwide attention. He knew that the
organization Reuters had requested a copy of the video in FOIA [Freedom
of Information Act] because it was their two journalists that were
killed, and they wanted to have that copy in order to find out what had
happened and to ensure that it didn't happen again. He knew that the
United States had responded to that FOIA request almost two years later
indicating what they could find and, notably, not the video.
"He knew that David Finkel, an author, had written a book called 'The
Good Soldiers,' and when he read through David Finkel's account and he
talked about this incident that's depicted in the video, he saw that
David Finkel's account and the actual video were verbatim, that David
Finkel was quoting the Apache air crew. And so at that point he knew
that David Finkel had a copy of the video. And when he decided to
release this information, he believed that this information showed how
[little] we valued human life in Iraq. He was troubled by that. And he
believed that if the American public saw it, they too would be troubled
and maybe things would change."
"He was 22 years old," Coombs said last Monday as he stood near the
bench, speaking softly to the judge at the close of his opening
statement. "He was young. He was a little naive in believing that the
information that he selected could actually make a difference. But he
was good-intentioned in that he was selecting information that he hoped
would make a difference."
"He wasn't selecting information because it was wanted by WikiLeaks,"
Coombs concluded. "He wasn't selecting information because of some 2009
most wanted list. He was selecting information because he believed that
this information needed to be public. At the time that he released the
information he was concentrating on what the American public would think
about that information, not whether or not the enemy would get access to
it, and he had absolutely no actual knowledge of whether the enemy would
gain access to it. Young, naive, but good-intentioned."
The moral order is inverted. The criminal class is in power. We are the
prey. Manning, in a just society, would be a prosecution witness against
war criminals. Those who committed these crimes should be facing prison.
But we do not live in a just society.
The Afghans, the Iraqis, the Yemenis, the Pakistanis and the Somalis
know what American military forces do. They do not need to read
WikiLeaks. They have seen the bodies, including the bodies of their
children, left behind by drone strikes and other attacks from the air.
They have buried the corpses of those gunned down by coalition forces.
With fury, they hear our government tell lies, accounts that are
discredited by the reality they endure. Our wanton violence and
hypocrisy make us hated and despised, fueling the rage of jihadists and
amassing legions of new enemies against the United States. Manning, by
providing a window into the truth, opened up the possibility of
redemption. He offered hope for a new relationship with the Muslim
world, one based on compassion and honesty, on the rule of law, rather
than the cold brutality of industrial warfare. But by refusing to heed
the truth that Manning laid before us, by ignoring the crimes committed
daily in our name, we not only continue to swell the ranks of our
enemies but put the lives of our citizens in greater and greater danger.
Manning did not endanger us. He sought to thwart the peril that is daily
exacerbated by our political and military elite.
*Advertisement*
Manning showed us through the documents he released that Iraqis have
endured hundreds of rapes and murders, along with systematic torture by
the military and police of the puppet government we installed. He let us
know that none of these atrocities were investigated. He provided the
data that showed us that between 2004 and 2009 there were at least
109,032 "violent deaths" in Iraq, including those of 66,081 civilians,
and that coalition troops were responsible for at least 195 civilian
deaths in unreported events. He allowed us to see in the video
"Collateral Murder" the helicopter attack on unarmed civilians in
Baghdad. It was because of Manning that we could listen to the callous
banter between pilots as the Americans nonchalantly fired on civilian
rescuers. Manning let us see a U.S. Army tank crush one of the wounded
lying on the street after the helicopter attack. The actions of the U.S.
military in this one video alone, as law professor Marjorie Cohn
<http://www.tjsl.edu/directory/marjorie-cohn> has pointed out, violate
Article 85 of the First Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, which
prohibits the targeting of civilians, Common Article 3 of the Geneva
Conventions, which requires that wounded be treated, and Article 17 of
the First Protocol, which permits civilians to rescue and care for
wounded without being harmed. We know of this war crime and many others
because of Manning. And the decision to punish the soldier who reported
these war crimes rather than the soldiers responsible for these crimes
mocks our pretense of being a nation ruled by law.
"I believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see
this, it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in
general as it applied to Iraq and Afghanistan," Manning said Feb. 28
when he pleaded guilty to the lesser charges. He said he hoped the
release of the information to WikiLeaks "might cause society to
reconsider the need to engage in counterterrorism while ignoring the
situation of the people we engaged with every day."
But it has not. Our mechanical drones still circle the skies delivering
death. Our attack jets still blast civilians. Our soldiers and Marines
still pump bullets into mud-walled villages. Our artillery and missiles
still raze homes. Our torturers still torture. Our politicians and
generals still lie. And the man who tried to stop it all is still in prison.
/Read Chris Hedges' Dig about Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and Bradley
Manning here
<http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/the_death_of_truth_20130505/>./
/Trial transcripts used for this report came from the nonprofit Freedom
of the Press Foundation <https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/>, which,
because the government refused to make transcripts publicly available,
is raising money to have its own stenographer at the trial. Transcripts
from the pretrial hearing came from journalist Alexa O'Brien./
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