Bradley Manning Pleads Guilty

[Sam.I.Am]

This is verging on total incoherence.

I have no idea what you think it means to accuse me of thinking that illegal combatants are citizens. If it matters, yes, I am pretty sure that an Iraqi citizen who becomes an illegal combatant is still an Iraqi citizen, I just have no idea what you think it means.

If you made a typo for "civilian" then you are just plain wrong. I suspect wishful thinking is in play. You want to have an argument where someone else says "OMG the initial shooting of militia was a war crime!" so you can say "lol no" and win. Sorry. Your wish is not going to come true in this thread.

What we are saying is that the subsequent shooting of people in civilian clothes who were helping the wounded, and who did not have weapons, was a war crime. Not the first shooting, the second. Got it straight now?




You must really have a low opinion of your own ability to read simple text in plain English if you need those organisations to read it for you.

Never mind that there was at least one quote presented earlier in the thread from people with relevant expertise who said that the shooting of civilian Good Samaritans could be a war crime.

If you can read simple text in plain English you could try reading the GCs. Take a look for yourself. Try to find the bit that says it's okay to kill civilian Good Samaritans who are offering assistance to the wounded. Pro tip: The bits that talk about the protections afforded to units marked with a Red Cross or equivalent are different bits.

So you are saying that those organizations, whose stated mission is to be a watchdog on the lookout for war crimes (amongst other things) are incompetent and don't understand the GC's? That you know better than they do? Good to know.

Even you have said that they "Could be" war crimes. There is a difference between "Could be" and "Are". You know what, you're right. They could have been war crimes, however in that particular situation they were not. The incident was scrutinized by several organizations that have never been what I would call of a favorable bent towards the war in Iraq and all of them have decided that given the situation no war crimes were committed. I've told you why, repeatedly, and you keep ignoring the reasons and have justified this by (intentionally?) not understanding when a battlefield stops being a battlefield. This is why I stopped discussing this with you, you have an agenda that you want to push and don't seem to really care about the pesky facts that get in the way of it.

 

[BenBurch]

In the radical antiestablishmentarian frame of mind (both right and left) anything that happens in a war is a "war crime" if it is possible to lie about the circumstances of the event in a way that fools civilians.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

So you are saying that those organizations, whose stated mission is to be a watchdog on the lookout for war crimes (amongst other things) are incompetent and don't understand the GC's? That you know better than they do? Good to know.

Even you have said that they "Could be" war crimes. There is a difference between "Could be" and "Are".

Some extenuating circumstance could pop out of the woodwork, sure. It hasn't yet though and it's been a good long time.

The GCs clearly state it's not okay to blow away civilian Good Samaritans, and the video shows clearly that the civilian Good Samaritans did nothing whatsoever to indicate that they were illegal combatants except to assist wounded people, and that activity is quite expressly protected by the GCs.

When you get to the point when you're ignoring the evidence of your own eyes and the black and white text of the relevant law, and arguing desperately that your lying eyes must be wrong, because you haven't seen some third party do a thing you think it might, your position isn't in a very good state.

Plus, of course, I'm quite okay with the possibility that I've spotted a nuance someone else has missed. That happens when you do your homework sometimes. Maybe it's never happened to you, but it happens to me every now and again.

You know what, you're right. They could have been war crimes, however in that particular situation they were not. The incident was scrutinized by several organizations that have never been what I would call of a favorable bent towards the war in Iraq and all of them have decided that given the situation no war crimes were committed.

That should be really easy for you to establish. Your claim, your burden of proof. Just quote a lawyer from one of those "several organizations that have never been what I would call of a favorable bent towards the war in Iraq" stating that firing on civilians assisting the wounded isn't a war crime under the GCs.

Careful now, though. I'm warning you in advance that if you present an ambiguous quote that could be referring to the initial shooting and not the second shooting of civilian Good Samaritans it's not going to fly around here.

I've told you why, repeatedly, and you keep ignoring the reasons and have justified this by (intentionally?) not understanding when a battlefield stops being a battlefield. This is why I stopped discussing this with you, you have an agenda that you want to push and don't seem to really care about the pesky facts that get in the way of it.

I think you're projecting here.

There is no rule in the GCs that I can see that says there is a magical state of "being a battlefield" and that if a place is "being a battlefield" it's legal to shoot civilian Good Samaritans who are assisting wounded people.

You keep ignoring this and (intentionally?) not understanding it.

Nor is there anything saying that this magical "being a battlefield" state persists after all shooting has stopped and all belligerents on one side are dead or incapacitated, just because some other troops are on their way or someone's hovering a couple of kilometres away in a helicopter.

You keep ignoring this and (intentionally?) not understanding it.

Plus while you have zero quotes from relevant authorities to support your claim that shooting civilian Good Samaritans who are assisting the wounded is not a war crime, whereas we have already quoted a relevant authority to support the claim this is a war crime (barring some extenuating circumstance which nobody knows about).

So what have you got? Nothing, as far as I can see, except a weak argument from incredulity.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

two separate issues

Look, it's extremely simple to understand, and has in fact been born out in previous cases (see the Pentagon Papers); NO ONE IS ATTEMPTING TO CHARGE WIKILEAKS OR ANY NEWS MEDIA ENTITY WITH A VIOLATION OF EITHER ARTICLE 104 OF THE UCMJ OR A VIOLATION OF USC TITLE 18 BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY CANNOT GIVEN THE CURRENT INTERPRETATION OF THE LAWS IN QUESTION. The worst that can happen is that a gag order can be imposed on the news media; that was all that happened during the Pentagon Papers case, and probably the only reason we didn't attempt such with Wikileaks is because they are not a US-based entity.

Sabrina,

Neither I (message 174) nor from what I can gather Professor Benkler ever said otherwise with respect to 104. In fact I would say that if you read Benkler's article, you will see that he is focused on the legal ramifications for the person doing the leak. BTW if you are having trouble with your caps lock key sticking, PM me, and I will offer you a suggestion.

However, you may have conflated two issues because I did also discuss the proposed SHIELD act, which is a different kettle of fish altogether. At Wired Ryan Singel wrote, "The so-called SHIELD Act (Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination) would expand the little used Espionage Act, which dates to World War I.

The bill (H.R. 6506) would likely face a constitutional challenge on First Amendment grounds, and could criminalize news reporting, such as the New York Times report from last year that the CIA regularly pays Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghanistan’s president who is suspected of being deeply involved in corruption and the opium drug trade."

 

[theprestige]

Sabrina,

Neither I (message 174) nor from what I can gather Professor Benkler ever said otherwise with respect to 104. In fact I would say that if you read Benkler's article, you will see that he is focused on the legal ramifications for the person doing the leak.

I've read Benkler's article, and it's quite obvious that he's not really focused on anything. It's a long, rambling, digressive piece, large chunks of which contribute little or nothing to the conclusion at which he arrives.*

Taking the final paragraphs, that conclusion appears to be that prosecuting Manning for leaking classified information will have a chilling effect on potential leakers in the future, and that this in turn will undermine the media's role as government watchdog; apparently leakers, traitors, and spies have now been put on notice that having the New York Times publish their stolen information does not give them a free pass.

One wonders what Benkler thinks is taught in Journalism School. "Make sure to tell your confidential sources that if their material gets published, the government won't prosecute their crimes!"














*Much of the article seems to be preoccupied with rationalizing Manning's supposed impression that Wikileaks was a legitimate media outlet, in order to support the conclusion that prosecuting Manning had serious implications for legitimate media outlets.

 

[WildCat]

*Much of the article seems to be preoccupied with rationalizing Manning's supposed impression that Wikileaks was a legitimate media outlet, in order to support the conclusion that prosecuting Manning had serious implications for legitimate media outlets.

"legitimate media outlet"?

You really want the government to decide which media outlets are "legitimate", and presumably these outlets have more 1st Amendment rights than "illegitimate" media outlets or ordinary people?

 

[theprestige]

"legitimate media outlet"?

You really want the government to decide which media outlets are "legitimate", and presumably these outlets have more 1st Amendment rights than "illegitimate" media outlets or ordinary people?

What? No.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Reuters and Manning

Originally Posted by Manning
I believed that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information ... this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general.

Since in fact these issues are constantly debated in the US, I have adopted the following rule of thumb: Any time someone tries to excuse their bad behavior by saying they wanted to "spark a debate" or some such sophomoric crap, what they really mean is "I'm butthurt that people don't always agree with me, and so I'm throwing a temper tantrum like I'm five years old."

The quote you provided from Manning (top) is not representative of all of his thinking IMO. Here is one excerpt from a longer article: "'Using Google I searched for the event by its date and general location,' Manning said in reading from a 35-page document that took nearly an hour to deliver. 'I found several new accounts involving two Reuters employees who were killed during the aerial weapon team engagement. Another story explained that Reuters had requested a copy of the video under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. Reuters wanted to view the video in order to be able to understand what had happened and to improve their safety practices in combat zones. A spokesperson for Reuters was quoted saying that the video might help avoid the reoccurrence of the tragedy and believed there was compelling need for the immediate release of the video.' [Alexa O’Brien, another journalist who attended Thursday’s proceedings, has provided a full transcript of Manning’s statement: Click here.]"

 

[WildCat]

What? No.

So what's the relevance of considering wikileaks a "legitimate media outlet"? It's completely irrelevant.

A pet peeve of mine is people who think "freedom of the press" applies only to professional journalists or other news media, rather than to anyone and everyone. Professional journalists, I'm sorry to say, are some of the worst offenders at spreading such nonsense.

I apologize for getting the wrong impression about your views. But my leg starts twitching whenever I hear the phrase "legitimate news media".

 

[BenBurch]

Yep, I agree, WildCat.

 

[smartcooky]

A lot of people don't agree that exposing government cover-ups is the act of a traitor. Some people believe it can be the act of a patriot. The difference is when the cover ups are directed toward keeping things secret from the US public rather than from the enemy.

Just as one man's terrorist can be another man's freedom fighter, so one man's traitor can be another man's patriot.

Paul Revere was considered a patriot by Americans. but a traitor by the British.

General Robert E. Lee was considered a patriot by the Confederacy, and traitor by the Union.

And Maj-Gen Benedict Arnold, well, what would you classify him as?

I've read somewhere that Ron Paul considers Manning to be a patriot.


EDIT: For the removal of doubt... I don't

 

[ZouPrime]

So what's the relevance of considering wikileaks a "legitimate media outlet"? It's completely irrelevant.

A pet peeve of mine is people who think "freedom of the press" applies only to professional journalists or other news media, rather than to anyone and everyone. Professional journalists, I'm sorry to say, are some of the worst offenders at spreading such nonsense.

I apologize for getting the wrong impression about your views. But my leg starts twitching whenever I hear the phrase "legitimate news media".

I think theprestige point is that it's irrelevant if Wikileaks is a legitimate media outlet or not. It doesn't change anything to what Manning did.

 

[theprestige]

I think theprestige point is that it's irrelevant if Wikileaks is a legitimate media outlet or not. It doesn't change anything to what Manning did.

What's more, I actually don't make a distinction between "legitimate" and "not legitimate" media outlets. On that point, I agree entirely with WildCat's sentiment: in terms of human rights, there's no such thing as media outlets, just citizens exercising free speech.

To me, Manning's leak would have been just as acceptable--or unacceptable, as the case may be--whether he'd leaked it to the New York Times, the Rivendell Rider, the guy next to him at the bar, or passerby on a busy streetcorner.

So Benkler's lengthy digression into explaining why Manning would have thought Wikileaks was a "legitimate media outlet" (LMO) was entirely irrelevant to me. It was also boring, and specious. It signaled to me that Benkler is a no-talent assclown who seriously believes that there is such a thing as LMOs, and that they have--or should have--special legal powers and immunities.

 

[theprestige]

Just as one man's terrorist can be another man's freedom fighter, so one man's traitor can be another man's patriot.

Paul Revere was considered a patriot by Americans. but a traitor by the British.

General Robert E. Lee was considered a patriot by the Confederacy, and traitor by the Union.

And Maj-Gen Benedict Arnold, well, what would you classify him as?

I've read somewhere that Ron Paul considers Manning to be a patriot.


EDIT: For the removal of doubt... I don't

My feeling is, if someone is going to set themselves above my law, and above my democracy and my government, without my advice or consent, I expect them to have an extremely good reason for doing so. It is a supreme arrogance for an Army private to decide to set aside my entire government and all my checks and balances, and declare unilaterally that they alone should have the authority to make decisions on my behalf. If they are going to be that arrogant, I expect them to justify their arrogance in the most compelling possible terms.

Manning has not done so. Not to me, anyway. So I don't consider him a patriot at all. Just a jackass who betrayed my trust and set himself outside my law and my government. I'd exile him, except that isn't a thing we do anymore, apparently. If a good case could be made that his actions caused deaths, I'd execute him. As it is, I'm content to see him rot in prison as the forsworn traitor he is.

 

[Mark6]

I like how you conflated coverups with secrets.

Classified information is classified information regardless of its content. It was well above Mannings paygrade to decide what is or is not classified or what should or should not be released or disclosed to the public.

Out of curiosity, who does decide whether given piece of classified information should not be classified any more? I've read that there are documents dating to WWII which are still classified -- is there a legitimate reason for it? I find much easier to believe that they are still classified simply because nobody in position to declassify them ever got around to do so. (Not like they have infinite amount of time.)

 

[Sam.I.Am]

Out of curiosity, who does decide whether given piece of classified information should not be classified any more? I've read that there are documents dating to WWII which are still classified -- is there a legitimate reason for it? I find much easier to believe that they are still classified simply because nobody in position to declassify them ever got around to do so. (Not like they have infinite amount of time.)

Most classified material has a shelf life where upon that "Expiration date" it is either automatically downgraded or is subject to review (usually) by a board of people who are knowledgeable on the matter(s) at hand.

Sometimes the subject matter may never be declassified simply because it may reveal something tangentially related that is still ongoing. For example, lets say that a certain type of torpedo tube is no longer in service anywhere. The technical manual for that tube is still classified because in it the maximum operating depth of the tube (and the boat that it is attached to) is mentioned in that manual. Meanwhile the actual operating depth of that class of boat is still classified because it can give a hint what current boats may be capable of. Thus that technical manual will never be declassified even though the equipment is well outdated.

Another example is ships movements. The date and destination is usually classified until it returns at which point there is no reason for it to remain classified. However there are cases where the movement details may remain classified forever. For example if a submarine is going off to do surveillance then it may not be wise to say where or when that surveillance was done not only because it can reveal what they possibly discovered but also because they might want to go back at a later date so they don't want to make it easy for the people being observed to know where to look. This has the effect of forcing the people being observed to spread themselves out thinner and longer than they may be able to effectively do.

Even things that may seem unrelated can be stitched together to give an overall picture of what a ships intentions are. I've mentioned this here before but I'll repeat it here. The ships "Grocery bill" is classified because how much food you have on board is directly related to how long you plan on being gone. How long you will be gone can be used to infer where you may be going. If you're planning on doing something that you want to keep secret then you would want to know who might be out there and when (and for how long). Having knowledge of the one limiting factor of those who you want to avoid could be invaluable. Hence the grocery bill (food is really the most limiting factor in todays submarines that can make their own unlimited power, water and air) is a good hint at what to possibly expect.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Democracy Now covered the case in depth today:

Bradley Manning Speaks: In Leaked Court Recording, Army Whistleblower Tells His Story for First Time

Daniel Ellsberg: In Hearing Bradley Manning Act Out of Conscience, Secret Tape Refutes Media Slander

AMY GOODMAN: Bradley Manning also discovered video of another deadly U.S. air strike on civilians, this time in Afghanistan. Around 100 Afghan civilians were reportedly killed in May 2009 when U.S. warplanes bombed the village of Garani. WikiLeaks apparently has the video but still hasn’t released it. Manning said the Garani bombing was even more disturbing than that July 12, 2007, incident in Iraq that killed 12, including the two Reuters employees. Manning began by recounting that the air strike occurred in the Garani village in the Farah province of northwestern Afghanistan.

BRADLEY MANNING: The air strike occurred in the Garani village in the Farah province, northwestern Afghanistan. It received worldwide press and got worldwide press coverage during the time, as it was reported that up to 100 to 150 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, were accidentally killed during the air strike.

After going through the report and the [inaudible] annexes, I began to review the incident as being similar to the 12 July, 2007, aerial weapons team engagements in Iraq. However, this event was noticeably different in that it involved a significantly higher number of individuals, larger aircraft and much heavier munitions. Also, the conclusions of the report are even more disturbing than those of the 12 July, 2007, incident.

When a soldier sees the people being lied to are the American citizens themselves, you hope the soldier asks, is it right?

 

[theprestige]

When a soldier sees the people being lied to are the American citizens themselves, you hope the soldier asks, is it right?

Given that several soldiers were aware of the "lie", what makes Manning's judgement privileged?

Was Manning's decision to overstep his authority and betray my trust commensurate with the information he revealed?

Has Manning ever stated a willingness to accept the legitimate consequences for the real crimes he committed, because those consequences were worth revealing the information he revealed?

 

[PhantomWolf]

When a soldier sees the people being lied to are the American citizens themselves, you hope the soldier asks, is it right?

I don't hope that. I would hope that they would ask themselves "Is what I am being ordered to do illegal?", but it's not up to them to decide if something is right or wrong based on their own determiniation of what is moral. If a soldier believes that the citizens of their country are being lied too and wants to reveal the truth, fine, but they need to also understand that in doing so they are libable for the consequenses of doing so.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch wrote in their World Report for 2011: "In October Wikileaks released thousands of documents, mostly authored by low-ranking US officers in the field between 2004 and 2009, revealing many previously unreported instances in which US soldiers killed civilians, and the torture of detainees by their Iraqi captors."