WikiLeaks Attorney on Manning Guilty Verdict: BLOWING WHISTLE on U.S. War Crimes is NOT ESPIONAGE

[Segami]

This is a MUST WATCH interview!!........

U.S. Army whistleblower Bradley Manning was found guilty today of 20 charges in total, including espionage, but he was acquitted of aiding the enemy, the most serious charge. Michael Ratner, an attorney for WikiLeaks, appeared on the Democracy Now! special broadcast to respond to today's verdict.

"For him facing 136 years in jail for telling the American people what our government should have been telling us -- about torture centers in Iraq, 20,000 extra civilians killed in Iraq -- I find outrageous," Ratner says. "He shouldn't be put on trial. He is a whistleblower. The people that should be put on trial are the people who actually did those human rights violations."



Watch the full 90-minute special show at:

http://www.livestream.com/democracynow

[Gregorian]

1. Take the period off the end of the link, and it'll work.

[Segami]

4. Thanks!

[geek tragedy]

5. It's not whistleblowing if you don't read the document before leaking it nt

[rhett o rick]

13. Is that your rationalization for siding with the State? Well you should be ecstatic with the

verdict. Maybe this will be a lesson to those out there that still think they live in a free Democracy. All hail the all powerful State.

[geek tragedy]

15. Huh? Not ecstatic, I though the government was heavy-handed and overcharged him.

I hope he gets off with under 10 years served.

But, no, I don't think it's the case that everyone in the military should be able to leak every single piece of information and data they can vacuum up without reading it and expect to have zero negative consequences.

[pnwmom]

23. +1. n/t

[rhett o rick]

24. I agree he should get a lighter sentence. I also think there should be a way for oversight

of our government.

[geek tragedy]

25. There should, but PFCs aren't the ones

to provide it.

Congress has only recently shown an interest.

[rhett o rick]

26. That brings up another point. How did a Pfc get that kind of access? Why isnt his superior on the

carpet?

[geek tragedy]

27. That's the real scandal. Imagine if Manning

or Snowden were genuinely malevolent or treacherous characters. Makes one wonder what security breaches haven't been publicized because the recipients are terrorist/ criminal orgs or foreign governments.

[rhett o rick]

28. I think that's a great point. nm

[snot]

6. Watching now; great show, as Democracy Now always is.

Manning faces 136 years.

Those whose war crimes he revealed have yet to be investigated.

[railsback]

7. Hmmm… and here I was expecting a WikiLeaks attorney to agree with the verdict

I've been broadsided..

[adirondacker]

8. I just finished watching. Amy did some outstanding interviews. Real Journalist!

[SidDithers]

9. He might have a point, if Manning was a whistleblower...

Manning is a data dumper.

Sid

[cprise]

22. No, the US government is a data dumper

Manning went to the press with the data--which is a tiny speck compared with the info collected daily about US citizens. Even so, Wikileaks put a ton of effort into screening the info and it is the Guardian who is at fault for leaking the rest.

[randome]

10. This is what Wikileaks is all about.

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/04/13/video-colbert-smacks-down-wikileaks-founder-over-collateral-murder-video/

After a sort of jokey opening in which he had his face pixelated and voice altered Colbert got down to business.

“Let’s talk about this footage that has gotten you so much attention recently. This is footage of an Apache helicopter attack in 2007. The army described this as a group that gave resistance at the time, that doesn’t seem to be happening. But there are armed men in the group, they did find a rocket propelled grenade among the group, the Reuters photographers who were regrettably killed, were not identified…You have edited this tape, and you have given it a title called ‘collateral murder.’ That’s not leaking, that’s a pure editorial.”

[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[snot]

12. Colbert is a satirist; and he knew Assange was up to the challenge.

Colbert pretends to be in O'Reilly's camp; he gives Assange the chance to refute the arguments coming out of that camp.

[Hydra]

11. Kicking for later watching

The main point here that the naysayers are avoiding is...Bradley and Edward shouldn't have HAD to do any of this. All of it should have been properly investigated, laid out where we could see it and repudiated.

Instead, thew Obama Admin has firmly put themselves in the same boat as the Bushco traitors and forced various whistleblowers to do whatever was needed to get this out to us.

[RC]

19. +10 Sadly true.

The bad guys are not those that expose the wrongs, but those that DO the wrongs.

[malaise]

14. K & R

for the truth

[LWolf]

16. How many of those charges he was found guilty of

were charges changed by the prosecution at the last minute? Is there any recourse?

[Smarmie Doofus]

17. Did I get this right? Judge Lind was offered a *higher* position by the gov't in the middle....

... of the trial?

[Segami]

18. Yes.

[Smarmie Doofus]

20. What. The. Fuck. Do they really think that no one remembers the Ellsberg trial?

That's what turned a lot of middle of the roaders against Nixon during the run up to impeachment .

Not so much all the other scummy things he did but the fact THAT HE TRIED TO BRIBE A JUDGE.

He tried to bribe a fucking *judge*.

Got any links to this aspect handy ? I never heard about it.

What THE FUCK?

[Segami]

21. "The judge, interestingly enough, has been promised or given"

At 13:25 of the Video


"...The judge, interestingly enough, has been promised or given an appointment to the next highest military court, in the Appeals Court, which I find extraordinary, that in the middle of a trial of the most important whistle blower in the United States history, that the judge who's presiding at it, be given a high position...."

[PowerToThePeople]

30. Schenck said Lind has already been informed that she will take up a new position

“[Judge Col. Denise Lind] Yeah, she’s been given, apparently, from a Washington Post report, an appellate judge job, the higher court, which I found pretty extraordinary. I don’t know whether it’s — I don’t think it’s necessarily illegal, but it does — it’s interesting to me that she’s going upstairs during the very trial that’s going on, and given that promotion. And it reminded me when the Ellsberg judge, the judge in Daniel Ellsberg’s case, the federal judge, during Ellsberg’s trial on espionage was offered to be the head of the FBI, secretly, by the Nixon administration. And, of course, there was a huge stink. I don’t see any stink so far in any of the media about the fact that Denise Lind, the judge, is being offered a higher position.”

http://www.accuracy.org/

Schenck said Lind has already been informed that she will take up a new position, as a judge on the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals, when the Manning trial ends. And she said Lind will not be swayed by the politics of the case.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/more-than-bradley-mannings-fate-lies-with-judge-denise-lind-in-case-about-leaking-info/2013/07/24/fb546d14-f496-11e2-aa2e-4088616498b4_story_1.html

[dtom67]

29. that is ONE thing that no one has talked bout

The fact that a soldier that tortures someone ( or violates anothers' human rights ) is legally responsible for their actions; just ask that 90 + year old nazi that was arrested in budapest a few months ago. Being "under orders" is not a defense against war crimes. Perhaps, if this was talked about more, we would be less prone promote horrific human rights violations as US policy....

Everyone should be free to speak out against acts they view as wrong. Even soldiers.....