The Bradley Manning Case and Our Decade of Denial

[marmar]

Seamus McKiernan
Associate Blog Editor, The Huffington Post

The Bradley Manning Case and Our Decade of Denial


For nearly three years, Bradley Manning, the 24-year-old army private accused of leaking classified documents, has been denied the right to speak in public. He got his chance this week in a Fort Meade, Md. courtroom, but the long denial reminded me of a short story called "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas," by Ursula K. Le Guin. It's a fictional tale about villagers who enjoy total happiness and bliss as long as they keep quiet about a boy who's locked up in a dark, underground cellar. The denial that haunts the pages of "Omelas" is also at the center of the government's case against Bradley Manning.

Manning has been in the dark for more than 900 days -- with most of that time spent in solitary confinement. It is the longest pre-trial detention of a U.S. military soldier since the Vietnam War. The extreme conditions of Manning's detention have been widely reported. A Navy psychiatrist who treated Manning testified that his medical recommendations were consistently ignored by commanders. A UN investigation last spring described Manning's conditions as "cruel" and "inhuman."

Like any allegory, the "Omelas"-Manning comparison isn't perfect. Unlike the boy in the story, Bradley Manning may not be innocent. But if there's a strong case against Manning, what accounts for the delay in due process and the extreme conditions of his detention? If the Obama administration believes in protecting whistleblowers, as it codified in new whistleblower-protection legislation that Obama signed this week, why is Bradley Manning's case being treated so differently?

The answer lies in the perceived power of denial. Instead of confronting revelations in the leaked material -- which includes thousands of intelligence documents and diplomatic cables -- the government has chosen to focus its efforts on punishing the suspected leaker. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seamus-mckiernan/bradley-manning-trial_b_2225114.html

[RomneyLies]

1. Manning spending the rest of his life in prison is too good for him n/t

[Earth_First]

4. wow.

unreal.

[RomneyLies]

5. The only thing that is unreal is idiots idolizing this traitor. n/t

[marmar]

9. We know. We know. You're either with us, or you're against us, right?

[RomneyLies]

10. You either think or flow with the sheep

I got your number.

[marmar]

11. ROFL...Umm, okay.

nt

[RomneyLies]

12. Glad you agree wiht me now. n/t

[white_wolf]

15. That's ironic coming from the person spouting military propaganda about oaths and orders.

[Luminous Animal]

19. Baaaaaa

[nadinbrzezinski]

33. Of course

because we know he put whole legions at risk...oh wait, not even the prosecution is saying that.

By the way, I know you got me on ignore but this has to be said...he s being prosecuted out of high embarrassment of what it revealed, including war crimes.

But hey, in your eyes Daniel Ellsberg should have been shot as well, and Mai Lai never happended either.

[Lordquinton]

37. One question

Has Bradley Manning been convicted of anything?

[randome]

2. A leaker is not a whistle blower.

Handing hundreds of thousands of classified documents over to a foreign national -without review- is not the same at all.

[white_wolf]

8. Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, disagrees with you.

I'll take his opinion over yours.

[randome]

13. Understandable. I disagree with him.

Ellsberg was an investigative reporter who ferreted out facts. Manning gave hundreds of thousands of documents to a foreign national. I see a clear difference.

[Luminous Animal]

20. Ellsberg was a reporter? Um. No. I suggest you do some research.

[randome]

23. Yes, I had it wrong. He was a military analyst.

Still, he gathered the facts and compiled the Pentagon Papers. That's not at all on the same level of what Manning did.

[Luminous Animal]

28. And yet Ellsberg does not make that distinction and considers Manning a hero.

Ellsberg did a remarkable brave act that (and I remember) resulted in gross character assassination and many calls by pundits and citizens like you for his prosecution (and even the death penalty) under the Espionage Act. Nixon tried and failed, thank fucking hank.

I was proud, as a youth, to have stood with Ellsberg. I was proud to stand with Howard Zinn & Noam Chomsky in rejecting Nixon's vision of an authoritarian state and allowing, not only the freedom to reveal what our government does in our name, but the right for any journalistic organization to publish that information.

I am not narrow minded enough to think that Manning needs to be a mirror of Ellsberg. I am as broadminded as Ellsberg to recognize that Manning did a remarkable brave thing and that he deserves support from, not only from American heroes like Ellsberg, from little ol' people like me.

[jerseyjack]

31. Yes, Ellsberg worked for the Daily Planet.

[JDPriestly]

35. Ellsberg was a government employee who had access

to secret intelligence documents. He surreptitiously copied the documents and arranged for their publication. Ellsberg had a high security clearance and was trusted with national security secrets.

[white_wolf]

3. Speaking of denial. See the two posters above me.

They would rather hide behind oaths and orders than confront the truth that the U.S. has committed horrible crimes.

[randome]

6. I KNOW the U.S. has committed horrible crimes.

My statement above still stands.

[tama]

14. How does it stand?

As you are giving more legitimacy to the horribly criminal entity than to an exposer of those crimes (jailed and tortured by the criminal entity).

[randome]

18. A leaker is not a whistle blower.

The video of a helicopter shooting people in Iraq has more than one interpretation. If you think those specific individuals are guilty of war crimes, then someone needs to make the case. Manning made NO case. He simply gave that video and hundreds of thousands of unreviewed documents to a foreign national.

Even if everyone was to agree that the helicopter shooting constituted a war crime, it has absolutely no impact on Bush and the gaggle of buffoons who led us to invade a country that did us no wrong.

[Luminous Animal]

21. Oooh foreign national. Ooh, scary. Actually he turned over the info to a global free press.

[Bonobo]

22. I understand what you are trying to say. May I ask a couple of questions?

1. Manning does not have any "standing" for making a "case" as you put it. He was in a privileged position to be able to access information not available to most people and so he released it. How is that NOT blowing a whistle? Simply because he did not, himself, pour through it all?

2. You seem to feel that if Manning had gone through all the documents and picked and chosen what "case" he wanted to present, then THAT would make the difference between him being a "leaker" and being a "whistleblower". Can you understand why that difference toes not mean much to the rest of us? Maybe as a military man, you are focusing on some concept of secrets that need to be kept and so you tend to condemn him for revealing them while the rest of us are focusing on the crimes that are being kept secret so we tend to focus on them and laud him for revealing them. Make sense?

3. Do you not see why it is important to protect people who reveal hidden crimes being perpetrated by the govt.?

4. Do you agree that soldiers should NOT follow orders that they know to be immoral?

[randome]

25. Sure.

1. There are very specific yet wide-ranging avenues to avail oneself of Whistle Blower protection. You don't give information to a foreign national like Assange.

2. By dumping those hundreds of thousands of documents to Assange, he could easily have put soldiers' lives at risk. As far as I know, that didn't happen but we may never know if that's the case or not. And it's a piss-poor risk to take if the objective is to reveal war crimes. Why risk the lives of soldiers who had nothing to do with the alleged war crime?

3. OF COURSE it's important to protect whistle blowers. That's why we have such things as whistle blower protection acts, an enhancement of which Obama signed recently.

4. Yes, I definitely agree that soldiers should not follow orders that are immoral. So far as I know, Manning was not ordered to do anything immoral.

[randome]

26. Manning was, and likely is, emotionally disurbed.

He suffers from gender identity disorder. He assaulted a superior officer and he was found huddled in a fetal position on the floor after having carved the words 'I want' into a chair with a knife.

That state of mind is definitely NOT the right state of mind to be making decisions about dumping classified information.

His superiors are also culpable in this as they put him in a position where this could occur when they should have known better.

I think he needs to be sentenced but shown some leniency.

[Bonobo]

27. Thank you for your answers. nt

[JDPriestly]

36. "He suffers from gender identity disorder."

Do you mean he "suffers" from being gay?

What in the world are you talking about?

[randome]

40. He suffers from being confused as to gender.

http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/12/21/9590399-manning-defenses-focus-on-gender-identity-disorder-alarms-some?lite

[tama]

29. You are referring

to arbitrary legal definitions of a state that you admit is horribly criminal and using those arbitrary definitions to justify the horrible treatment of a fellow human being who has spoken truth to power about the crimes. In other words you are replacing your conscience and compassion with loyalty to criminal entity. How does that make you different from mafia loyalist?

[PDJane]

7. In a civilized country, Manning's pre-trial treatment

would have him released.

[white_wolf]

16. You know I thought we had this little thing called the 8th amendment...

but I guess that was thrown out along with the 1st, 4th, and 5th.

[Solly Mack]

17. k/r

[Egnever]

24. Mess with the bull you get the horns

I have a hard time having any sympathy for this guy.

[railsback]

30. Manning is NO whistleblower

I wish people would stop tying this punk to people who put their lives on the line, knowing full well that what they're doing is the right thing to do. As the Manning correspondences show, this was just a sad little kid seeking attention.

[Canuckistanian]

32. This piece reminds me of a question I asked early on

Why the delay in bringing the trial and the Manning's defence?

I know that Manning's counsel has put forth many motions before the trial, but Jesus, these should have been dealt with long ago.

If the charges are SO egregious and SO cut and dried, why the delay?

What it tells me is that the administration is not so interested in the "whistleblower" aspect so much as the desire to illegally PUNISH Manning.

Let the man speak. And if he has something damaging to say, then so be it. We all know he's losing his freedom whatever happens here.

[NashvilleLefty]

34. This is NOT a "Black and White" issue.

or even 50 Shades of Grey.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

38. Manning and Assange removed the "I knew nothing" defense of those who protect murderers.

Of course, those that believe that the people in a democracy should not know what their government does are frightened and are trying (vainly) to silence those who would expose the corruption of the DOD, "intelligence community", the bankers and the politicians.

[snot]

39. On the issues of the crimes leaked, Manning's leaking, and Assange's publishing of those crimes,

. . . and on the issues of the U.S.'s subsequent persecution of the leaker and publisher of its crimes,
I stand with Manning and Assange.