The Chris Moeller Archives

Supporting the troop

American hero Bradley Manning turns 24 today. The Army intelligence officer spent his birthday in court accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified "secret" documents to WikiLeaks. In a truly democratic country, the men and women on trial would be the perpetrators of the military, diplomatic, and war crimes that Manning has exposed-- his fellow soldiers opening fire on unarmed men from the cockpit of an Apache helicopter in Iraq, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton instructing U.S. diplomats to act as covert spies at the United Nations, President Obama for his secret and unauthorized bombings of Yemen and its civilians-- but ours is not a truly democratic nation under the Bush/Obama oligarchy. Manning faces lifetime imprisonment under the Espionage Act (really?), and could still face the death penalty, for blowing the whistle on, and embarrassing, our government of profound corruption when he should instead be given the Medal of Freedom and made a key witness for the Justice Department in the prosecution of these other cases.

The goal is to break the courageous Manning so that he will implicate WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, very real threats technologically and morally to America's ability to continue committing crimes with impunity across the globe. To break Manning, he was isolated in military prison for 10 months, kept from all human contact (including his attorneys) except for his guards, had his clothes seized for a time, was made to sleep naked on a mattress with no sheets or blankets, and awakened every 15 minutes after being deemed a "suicide threat."

U.S. officials are well aware of the severity of their actions against Manning and their own willful violation of international law. Amnesty International and the United Nations have both condemned the U.S. for human rights violations in their treatment of Manning, and the U.N.'s special rapporteur for torture has not been allowed to meet unmonitored with Manning.

In Australia, this extraordinary exposure of secret information in the WikiLeaks case-- which has since helped to bring about the Arab Spring and "end" the Iraq war-- earned native son Julian Assange the most prestigious journalistic honor that country offers. Our native son, the actual source of the information, gets tortured Abu Ghraib-style. Dozens of Americans protested outside the courthouse today in Fort Meade, Maryland, and dozens more did so in London outside of the United States embassy, but where is the American journalistic establishment in their public protests supporting Manning? They moved quickly to publish the leaked information-- a veritable "lifetime of scoops". (The biggest reveals were published in the New York Times even before they were published on WikiLeaks' website.) Now, where are they in defending the government transparency they claim to care about?

This story is about you. The ongoing torture and the destroying of an extraordinarily brave and principled human being named Bradley Manning is about you. Your government is showing you how they will treat people who blow the whistle on any one of their crimes. The message is Keep Your Mouth Shut. In his three years in office, our president has now prosecuted more government whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all of his predecessors combined. Virtually the entire world outside of our borders sees what's happening, even if many Americans still refuse to. There has been more revealed in the Manning affair than just what could be read on the hundreds of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic cables. It also has exposed our president, Barack Obama, a man who vowed to operate "the most transparent administration in history," to be the actual "traitor" to America's ideals of justice and humanity, as well as to be one of the great merchants of evil the world over.

posted by CM @ 11:53 AM