The Saga of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Wikileaks, to be put
to ballad and film By William Blum - If Manning had committed war
crimes in Iraq instead of exposing them, he would be a free man today.
"Defense lawyers say Manning was clearly a troubled young soldier whom
the Army should never have deployed to Iraq or given access to
classified material while he was stationed there ... They say he was
in emotional turmoil, partly because he was a gay soldier at a time
when homosexuals were barred from serving openly in the U.S. armed
forces." (Associated Press, February 3)
March 06, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --- It's unfortunate and
disturbing that Bradley Manning's attorneys have chosen to
consistently base his legal defense upon the premise that personal
problems and shortcomings are what motivated the young man to turn
over hundreds of thousands of classified government files to
Wikileaks.
They should not be presenting him that way any more than Bradley
should be tried as a criminal or traitor. He should be hailed as a
national hero. Yes, even when the lawyers are talking to the military
mind. May as well try to penetrate that mind and find the freest and
best person living there. Bradley also wears a military uniform.
Here are Manning's own words from an online chat: "If you had free
reign over classified networks ... and you saw incredible things,
awful things ... things that belonged in the public domain, and not on
some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC ... what would you
do? ... God knows what happens now. Hopefully worldwide discussion,
debates, and reforms. ... I want people to see the truth ... because
without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public."
Is the world to believe that these are the words of a disturbed and
irrational person? Do not the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Geneva
Conventions speak of a higher duty than blind loyalty to one's
government, a duty to report the war crimes of that government?
Below is a listing of some of the things revealed in the State
Department cables and Defense Department files and videos. For
exposing such embarrassing and less-than-honorable behavior, Bradley
Manning of the United States Army and Julian Assange of Wikileaks may
spend most of their remaining days in a modern dungeon, much of it
while undergoing that particular form of torture known as "solitary
confinement". Indeed, it has been suggested that the mistreatment of
Manning has been for the purpose of making him testify against and
implicating Assange. Dozens of members of the American media and
public officials have called for Julian Assange's execution or
assassination. Under the new National Defense Authorization Act,
Assange could well be kidnapped or assassinated. What century are we
living in? What world?
It was after seeing American war crimes such as those depicted in the
video "Collateral Murder" and documented in the "Iraq War Logs," made
public by Manning and Wikileaks, that the Iraqis refused to exempt US
forces from prosecution for future crimes. The video depicts an
American helicopter indiscriminately murdering several non-combatants
in addition to two Reuters journalists, and the wounding of two little
children, while the helicopter pilots cheer the attacks in a Baghdad
suburb like it was the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia.
The insistence of the Iraqi government on legal jurisdiction over
American soldiers for violations of Iraqi law — something the United
States rarely, if ever, accepts in any of the many countries where its
military is stationed — forced the Obama administration to pull the
remaining American troops from the country.
If Manning had committed war crimes in Iraq instead of exposing them,
he would be a free man today, as are the many hundreds/thousands of
American soldiers guilty of truly loathsome crimes in cities like
Haditha, Fallujah, and other places whose names will live in infamy in
the land of ancient Mesopotamia. Besides playing a role in writing
finis to the awful Iraq war, the Wikileaks disclosures helped to spark
the Arab Spring, beginning in Tunisia.
When people in Tunisia read or heard of US Embassy cables revealing
the extensive corruption and decadence of the extended ruling family
there — one long and detailed cable being titled: "CORRUPTION IN
TUNISIA: WHAT'S YOURS IS MINE" — how Washington's support of Tunisian
President Ben Ali was not really strong, and that the US would not
support the regime in the event of a popular uprising, they took to
the streets.
Here is a sample of some of the other Wikileaks revelations that make
the people of the world wiser:
In 2009 Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano became the new head of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, which plays the leading role in
the investigation of whether Iran is developing nuclear weapons or is
working only on peaceful civilian nuclear energy projects. A US
embassy cable of October 2009 said Amano "took pains to emphasize his
support for U.S. strategic objectives for the Agency. Amano reminded
the [American] ambassador on several occasions that ... he was solidly
in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level
personnel appointments to the handling of Iran's alleged nuclear
weapons program."
Russia refuted US claims that Iran has missiles that could target
Europe.
The British government's official inquiry into how it got involved in
the Iraq War was deeply compromised by the government's pledge to
protect the Bush administration in the course of the inquiry.
A discussion between Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and American
Gen. David H. Petraeus in which Saleh indicated he would cover up the
US role in missile strikes against al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen.
"We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," Saleh told
Petraeus.
The US embassy in Madrid has had serious points of friction with the
Spanish government and civil society: a) trying to get the criminal
case dropped against three US soldiers accused of killing a Spanish
television cameraman in Baghdad during a 2003 unprovoked US tank
shelling of the hotel where he and other journalists were staying;
b )torture cases brought by a Spanish NGO against six senior Bush
administration officials, including former attorney general Alberto
Gonzales; c) a Spanish government investigation into the torture of
Spanish subjects held at Guantánamo; d) a probe by a Spanish court
into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for American extraordinary
rendition (= torture) flights; e )continual criticism of the Iraq war
by Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero, who eventually withdrew Spanish
troops.
State Department officials at the United Nations, as well as US
diplomats in various embassies, were assigned to gather as much of the
following information as possible about UN officials, including
Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, permanent security council
representatives, senior UN staff, and foreign diplomats: e-mail and
website addresses, internet user names and passwords, personal
encryption keys, credit card numbers, frequent flyer account numbers,
work schedules, and biometric data. US diplomats at the embassy in
Asunción, Paraguay were asked to obtain dates, times and telephone
numbers of calls received and placed by foreign diplomats from China,
Iran and the Latin American leftist states of Cuba, Venezuela and
Bolivia. US diplomats in Romania, Hungary and Slovenia were instructed
to provide biometric information on "current and emerging leaders and
advisers" as well as information about "corruption" and information
about leaders' health and "vulnerability". The UN directive also
specifically asked for "biometric information on ranking North Korean
diplomats". A similar cable to embassies in the Great Lakes region of
Africa said biometric data included DNA, as well as iris scans and
fingerprints.
A special "Iran observer" in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku reported
on a dispute that played out during a meeting of Iran's Supreme
National Security Council. An enraged Revolutionary Guard Chief of
Staff, Mohammed Ali Jafari, allegedly got into a heated argument with
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and slapped him in the face
because the generally conservative president had, surprisingly,
advocated freedom of the press.
The State Department, virtually alone in the Western Hemisphere, did
not unequivocally condemn a June 28, 2009 military coup in Honduras,
even though an embassy cable declared: "there is no doubt that the
military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in
what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the
Executive Branch". US support of the coup government has been
unwavering ever since.
The leadership of the Swedish Social Democratic Party — neutral,
pacifist, and liberal Sweden, so the long-standing myth goes — visited
the US embassy in Stockholm and asked for advice on how best to sell
the war in Afghanistan to a skeptical Swedish public, asking if the US
could arrange for a member of the Afghan government to come visit
Sweden and talk up NATO's humanitarian efforts on behalf of Afghan
children, and so forth. [For some years now Sweden has been, in all
but name, a member of NATO and the persecutor of Julian Assange, the
latter to please a certain Western power.]
The US pushed to influence Swedish wiretapping laws so communication
passing through the Scandinavian country could be intercepted. The
American interest was clear: Eighty per cent of all the internet
traffic from Russia travels through Sweden.
President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy told US embassy
officials in Brussels in January 2010 that no one in Europe believed
in Afghanistan anymore. He said Europe was going along in deference to
the United States and that there must be results in 2010, or
"Afghanistan is over for Europe."
Iraqi officials saw Saudi Arabia, not Iran, as the biggest threat to
the integrity and cohesion of their fledgling democratic state. The
Iraqi leaders were keen to assure their American patrons that they
could easily "manage" the Iranians, who wanted stability; but that the
Saudis wanted a "weak and fractured" Iraq, and were even "fomenting
terrorism that would destabilize the government". The Saudi King,
moreover, wanted a US military strike on Iran.
Saudi Arabia in 2007 threatened to pull out of a Texas oil refinery
investment unless the US government intervened to stop Saudi Aramco
from being sued in US courts for alleged oil price fixing. The deputy
Saudi oil minister said that he wanted the US to grant Saudi Arabia
sovereign immunity from lawsuits
Saudi donors were the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like
Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out
the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, hired
investigators to unearth evidence of corruption against the Nigerian
attorney general in order to persuade him to drop legal action over a
controversial 1996 drug trial involving children with meningitis.
Oil giant Shell claimed to have "inserted staff" and fully infiltrated
Nigeria's government.
The Obama administration renewed military ties with Indonesia in spite
of serious concerns expressed by American diplomats about the
Indonesian military's activities in the province of West Papua,
expressing fears that the Indonesian government's neglect, rampant
corruption and human rights abuses were stoking unrest in the region.
US officials collaborated with Lebanon's defense minister to spy on,
and allow Israel to potentially attack, Hezbollah in the weeks that
preceded a violent May 2008 military confrontation in Beirut.
Gabon president Omar Bongo allegedly pocketed millions in embezzled
funds from central African states, channeling some of it to French
political parties in support of Nicolas Sarkozy.
Cables from the US embassy in Caracas in 2006 asked the US Secretary
of State to warn President Hugo Chávez against a Venezuelan military
intervention to defend the Cuban revolution in the eventuality of an
American invasion after Castro's death.
The United States was concerned that the leftist Latin American
television network, Telesur, headquartered in Venezuela, would
collaborate with al Jazeera of Qatar, whose coverage of the Iraq War
had gotten under the skin of the Bush administration.
The Vatican told the United States it wanted to undermine the
influence of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez in Latin America because
of concerns about the deterioration of Catholic power there. It feared
that Chávez was seriously damaging relations between the Catholic
church and the state by identifying the church hierarchy in Venezuela
as part of the privileged class.
The Holy See welcomed President Obama's new outreach to Cuba and hoped
for further steps soon, perhaps to include prison visits for the wives
of the Cuban Five. Better US-Cuba ties would deprive Hugo Chávez of
one of his favorite screeds and could help restrain him in the
region.
The wonderful world of diplomats: In 2010, UK Prime Minister Gordon
Brown raised with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the question of
visas for two wives of members of the "Cuban Five". "Brown requested
that the wives (who have previously been refused visas to visit the
U.S.) be granted visas so that they could visit their husbands in
prison. ... Our subsequent queries to Number 10 indicate that Brown
made this request as a result of a commitment that he had made to UK
trade unionists, who form part of the Labour Party's core
constituency. Now that the request has been made, Brown does not
intend to pursue this matter further. There is no USG action
required."
UK Officials concealed from Parliament how the US was allowed to bring
cluster bombs onto British soil in defiance of a treaty banning the
housing of such weapons.
A cable was sent by an official at the US Interests Section in Havana
in July 2006, during the runup to the Non-Aligned Movement conference.
He noted that he was actively looking for "human interest stories and
other news that shatters the myth of Cuban medical prowess".
[Presumably to be used to weaken support for Cuba amongst the member
nations at the conference.]
Most of the men sent to Guantánamo prison were innocent people or low-
level operatives; many of the innocent individuals were sold to the US
for bounty.
DynCorp, a powerful American defense contracting firm that claims
almost $2 billion per year in revenue from US tax dollars, threw a
"boy-play" party for Afghan police recruits. (Yes, it's what you
think.)
Even though the Bush and Obama Administrations repeatedly maintained
publicly that there was no official count of civilian casualties, the
Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs showed that this claim was untrue.
Known Egyptian torturers received training at the FBI Academy in
Quantico, Virginia.
The United States put great pressure on the Haitian government to not
go ahead with various projects, with no regard for the welfare of the
Haitian people. A 2005 cable stressed continued US insistence that all
efforts must be made to keep former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
whom the United States had overthrown the previous year, from
returning to Haiti or influencing the political process. In 2006,
Washington's target was President René Préval for his agreeing to a
deal with Venezuela to join Caracas's Caribbean oil alliance,
PetroCaribe, under which Haiti would buy oil from Venezuela, paying
only 60 percent up front with the remainder payable over twenty-five
years at 1 percent interest. And in 2009, the State Department backed
American corporate opposition to an increase in the minimum wage for
Haitian workers, the poorest paid in the Western Hemisphere.
The United States used threats, spying, and more to try to get its way
at the crucial 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen.
Mahmoud Abbas, president of The Palestinian National Authority, and
head of the Fatah movement, turned to Israel for help in attacking
Hamas in Gaza in 2007.
The British government trained a Bangladeshi paramilitary force
condemned by human rights organisations as a "government death squad".
A US military order directed American forces not to investigate cases
of torture of detainees by Iraqis.
The US was involved in the Australian government's 2006 campaign to
oust Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare.
A 2009 US cable said that police brutality in Egypt against common
criminals was routine and pervasive, the police using force to extract
confessions from criminals on a daily basis.
US diplomats pressured the German government to stifle the prosecution
of CIA operatives who abducted and tortured Khalid El-Masri, a German
citizen. [El-Masri was kidnaped by the CIA while on vacation in
Macedonia on December 31, 2003. He was flown to a torture center in
Afghanistan, where he was beaten, starved, and sodomized. The US
government released him on a hilltop in Albania five months later
without money or the means to go home.]
2005 cable re "widespread severe torture" by India, the widely-
renowned "world's largest democracy": The International Committee of
the Red Cross reported: "The continued ill-treatment of detainees,
despite longstanding ICRC-GOI [Government of India] dialogue, have led
the ICRC to conclude that New Delhi condones torture." Washington was
briefed on this matter by the ICRC years ago. What did the United
States, one of the world's leading practitioners and teachers of
torture in the past century, do about it? American leaders, including
the present ones, continued to speak warmly of "the world's largest
democracy"; as if torture and one of the worst rates of poverty and
child malnutrition in the world do not contradict the very idea of
democracy.
The United States overturned a ban on training the Indonesian Kopassus
army special forces — despite the Kopassus's long history of arbitrary
detention, torture and murder — after the Indonesian President
threatened to derail President Obama's trip to the country in November
2010.
Since at least 2006 the United States has been funding political
opposition groups in Syria, including a satellite TV channel that
beams anti-government programming into the country.
William Blum is the author of:
• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
• Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
• West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
• Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at
www.killinghope.org
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30726.htm