Hear Brad Manning

Brad Manning - the poster boy to blame for everything that's gone 'wrong' in America's little effort to recreate Iraq and the rest of the world, is getting his day in court after almost two years in military prisons. And things are taking a decidedly nasty turn for the powers that be, or at least the powers that were. For despite the 'image' of Manning as so far presented - a homosexual, loser, runt with mental issues and a hatred for everything America stands for, he's turning out to be surprisingly lucid, intelligent and more than reasonable.

One wondered when almost immediately he pled 'guilty' to the greater number of charges against him, illegally sharing classified information he was not authorized to divulge. He remains on trial on the charges to which he pled not guilty, ie the charges of treason, and aiding the enemy in time of war.

Along with that guilty plea, Manning has been able to offer the court an account of what he says he did, and why he did it. In that story is the proof of his pudding. And now someone has leaked the audio of his statement to the court. Unless the government can rebut this, or prove otherwise, Brad Manning might go free at last.

The audio record is available here.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/12/bradley-manning-tapes-own-words

What strikes one immediately is Manning's native intelligence and, apparently, his moral fortitude, he just doesn't sound like somebody who thinks, after two years of 'special handling' by the Marines, that he's done something wrong.

First of all, relating to how and why he came to have access to America's most secret information, it seems that his aptitudes and testing on intake to the military were of such a high order that his other obvious 'deficiencies' were  downplayed. He is not constitutionally fitted to America's standard 'vision' of  the 'warrior class'. Basic training - at least the physical part- was a challenging and notably protracted experience. He passed basic in twice the length of time prescribed - ie he should have 'washed out'. For some reason his superiors saw military value in him that allowed them to make a pass of a short, weak, deficient soldier. He pleads guilty to being a somewhat 'weak sister' sort of guy.

Having passed basic he was assigned to military intelligence where he soon learned his 'craft' - gleaning intelligence reports and synopsizing the same for upward transmission, sifting and combining pertinent reports to make note of trends or patterns that could be used for military purposes. He seems to have been good at his job and technically proficient in managing large data systems. His 'problems' started when he insisted on thinking about what he was reading. He claims to have become affected by a "helping" operation was  becoming a self-defeating one. That Iraqis were unappreciative of American sacrifice, but that America's counterinsurgency tactics were geared to do anything but 'win them over'. What he was reading in situation reports was glaringly at odds with the 'official narrative' put out for the information of American forces, and the American people.

He claims that he did what he could to undo what he considered to be incompetent work by military intelligence and was stopped by military bureaucracy and  hierarchy. He claims that personal problems at a time of furlough led to reflection turning into a perceived need to act. He had 'backed-up' his data in a way that would be accessible to him and he had that in his possession, not for nefarious reasons but only to preserve the continuity and integrity of his work. He sought advice from friends and what he thought to be  trustworthy others - including the man who would later turn him in, who was, then, claiming to be an "journalist" and "pastor".

The notion of sharing what he knew with the US media took form in his mind. He approached some media and was rebuffed. No media sources proved to be as interested in what he knew as he hoped they would be.  Eventually, however, he got somebody, who could appreciate its news value, to look at what he had  ... that was the Wikileaks organization. After that the media started to take notice.

Manning was careful to note that the information he transmitted was, according to its official coding, material that was widely-distributable within military and government circles.  He did not transmit any information that was classified or highly restricted.  He explained those 'official' codes to the court.

In short Bradley Manning is proving to be the Daniel Ellsberg of his time, leaking official documents that are at odds with what is being released as truth, or being done in reverse to what is being said. This is, simply, the 'Pentagon Papers' all over again, only this time from the State Department.

St. Julian the Apostate

Julian Assange has certainly made a name for himself. Had he been equally as financially successful, he might have given the 'facebook kid' a run for Time 's 'Man of the Year' contest. But multi-billion dollarhood, especially the kind you 'promise' to give away when you're done with it, I guess,  trumps the altruism of just keeping people in the know.

Assange has been running a website called Wikileaks for almost 10 years now. Over that time it has featured a number of leaked documents and information on a number of topics, mostly inconsequential, and from a wide range of sources, mostly forgettable. Up until fairly recently, even posts that involved the US government - and there have been some notable ones on CIA operations -  didn't break many 'radar horizons', or at least any the general public heard about.

That all changed last summer when Wikilieaks aired some fairly dated imagery of an 'Apache' helicopter strike in Baghdad. This footage answered the questions asked after a journalist working for US media had been killed there three years ago. The media wanted to know what had happened. The military powers were, understandably, obfuscatory. The Wikilieaks release made it clear why. Even in the best light, the incident couldn't be seen as much other than an indiscriminate and deliberate killing of a number of Iraqi citizens under the most 'cocked-up' of circumstances. Even with that 'embarrassment', the 'fog of war' prevailed and the incident passed from view.

The next incident was the release of a number of after-action reports from US military units in Iraq.  Once again the microcosmic view of the war put the lie to any claims of  humanity in action. It was announced that Wikileaks had acquired a substantial database of such information and would be releasing it.

There followed another dose of 'sitreps' from Afghanistan that were no more positive than the previous round from Iraq. Another posting of further Iraqi 'sitreps' led to more embarassing revelations for the US  and the 'forces of democracy' at work. For one thing the unreleased information that as many as 50 000 of Iraqi civilians had been killed, than had been admitted by the military.  By now Assange was well into the public spotlight, as media sources in Britain, the US and Germany had undertaken to organize the flood of information. At this time the US started making noises about the 'dangers' of these leaks and the consequences for those involved.

In fairly short order a US Army soldier, Bradley Manning, was arrested and jailed for his alleged role in the leak. He was 'outed' by a chat line correspondent with whom he is supposed to have confided his misdeeds. No official charges have been laid against Manning, but he remains in solitary confinement in the hands of the US Marine Corps.

It was the further promise of the publication of a mass of diplomatic 'cables' that put Assange well outside the pale of US opinion. Residing temporarily in Sweden,  the expat Australian and now 'world-citizen', was highlighted in a number of media appearances and interviews. He claims his secretiveness is essential to his security. He is reputed to use no communications or devices that could be traced to place him. He lives like a third world dictator-on-the-run,  staying with friends and supporters and moving frequently, as well, apparently, as mooching on a 'royal scale'.

It was the mooching, perhaps, that led him into a new dimension of trouble. For when, we are told, he mooched accomodation with his female 'point person' in  Stockholm, and, later, train fare from another 'fan', the 'giving' progressed to that of a more intimate nature and finished with his being charged with rape, sexual assault and a number of  other 'personal' crimes.

He denies any wrong-doing, of course, but that hasn't stopped an Interpol arrest warrant and his incarceration, pending deportation, in Britain, for 10 days or so. He is currently  under house arrest pending further judicial action.

That there will be judicial action of some kind seems apparent, for he is 'bete noir' in a number of countries. He has been decried a 'traitor' in Australia, America and Great Britain. Calls for his execution/assassination have been mede by some people in high places. The Vice President of the United States wants him declared a 'terrorist'. That latter, no doubt, so the 'special' judicial processes, used to 'combat terror', might be used to 'shut him up'. The US would dearly love to have him a guest in Guantanamo. Although it's every bit as likely that any court in the US would convict him of, virtually, anything.

So Wikileaks are being blamed for a plethora of 'problems'. But in actuality the 'problems' exist independent of Wikileaks,  it's just that now they're 'out in the open'.  For if US diplomatic and other staff have negative considerations of foreign leaders they are willing to report to head office, those considerations remain founded in some substance, or not. If there is a 'problem' reported by Americans, placed to report them, Wikileaks only demonstrates what sort of things are reported. The 'problem' still exists, or existed.  Wikileaks didn't make these reports up. Publishing them could, would, or should have happened eventually. That somebody 'looks' bad, now, is no more caused by a leak, than it was when they were 'in action'  If they 'look' bad it's because they were bad, the same would be true with 'good' as a descriptor. That there are more bad stories than good ones may be a fact of life, but none of the good ones are being released, either. One would think that, if they existed, they would be, if only to counterract Wikileaks.


The latest American effort is to charge Assange with collusion or conspiracy to 'help' Brad Manning 'steal' those secret e-documents. Maybe that's why he hasn't been charged with any wrong-doing, yet. Assange's willingness to publish being seen as the greater 'crime' than appropriating the information in the first place. Brad Manning would have to 'testify' that Assange held his hand while he downloaded those files. If it meant a fixed sentence in a civilian jail as opposed to indeterminate solitary confinement in a Navy brig, I would. But even all this 'counter-conspiracy' smacks of more of the same 'badness' that's embarassing America now. It's just more fodder for Wikileaks.

Perhaps the most telling thing is that these threats to Assange are arising as Wikileaks prepares a tranche of banking memoranda. Who knows if the 'great banking collapse' of double ought nine actually transpired as it was reported, or if that, too, was another example of the screenwriters' art.

He's no angel, but the world needs more Assanges. He comes off  a lot more honest than the 'good guys'.