As court martial approaches, support for Bradley Manning grows

In 2010, 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning was charged with leaking classified information to Wikileaks, which was widely seen as a catalyst for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010.

Asia Times reported that the documents revealed “US war crimes, including the video of US soldiers in a helicopter gunship enjoying themselves murdering civilians walking along the street as if the soldiers were playing a video game.”

“According to the US Military Code, US soldiers are required to make war crimes known. However, the law on the books provided no protection to Bradley Manning,”  wrote Paul Craig Roberts.

Last week, Bradley Manning’s defense faced off with military prosecutors in Ft. Meade, Maryland to argue that all charges be dismissed because of “unlawful pretrial punishment.” This hearing was second in importance only to the court martial.

Manning testified about his treatment at a military prison in Quantico, Virginia. He can only see natural light as a reflected gleam from a window down the hall when he holds his head to the door of his cell and looks through the crack. His 6ft by 8ft  cell contains a toilet that is in full vision of the guards. When he needs toilet paper, he told the court, he has to stand to attention and shout: "Lance Corporal Detainee Manning requests toilet paper!" Held in solitary confinement and prohibited from exercising, Manning testified that he is “authorized to have 20 minutes sunshine, in chains, every 24 hours.” Expert witnesses stated that these harsh restrictions are worse than Guantanamo Bay or even death row.

Military judge Colonel Denise Lind announced that Manning's court martial, which had been set to begin in February, would now be delayed until March 16 at the earliest, due to the debate over his unlawful confinement.

Under the most severe of the 22 counts he faces – "aiding the enemy" – Manning could be detained in military custody for the rest of his life. In a proposed plea bargain, Manning would admit to leaking a battlefield video file, classified memos, Iraq war logs, Afghanistan war logs and other classified materials. He would also plead guilty to wrongfully storing classified information, in hopes of a lighter sentence.

Meanwhile, peace activists around the world are pushing for dismissal of all charges. Protests at Fort Meade, recruiting centers, and US embassies demanded fair treatment for Bradley, considered by many to be the most important whistleblower of our time.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel published a letter of support in The Nation on December 3, 2012, which stated:

“We Nobel Peace Prize laureates condemn the persecution Bradley Manning has suffered, including imprisonment in conditions declared “cruel, inhuman and degrading” by the United Nations, and call upon Americans to stand up in support of this whistleblower who defended their democratic rights...

If Bradley Manning released the documents, as the prosecution contends, we should express to him our gratitude for his efforts toward accountability in government, informed democracy and peace.”
Ray McGovern, a high-ranking retired C.I.A. analyst, called Manning “our friend” and “a hero.”

Bradley Manning Support Network is asking all people to submit photos of themselves holding a sign that reads “I am Bradley Manning,” to show the world that people from all walks of life believe the public deserves to know the truth. Their website, iam.bradleymanning.org states:

“Whistle-blowers play an important role in a democracy, and by revealing evidence of unpunished war crimes, as well as secret corporate influence on U.S. foreign policy, Bradley Manning acted in the interest of American citizens.”

Commentator Glenn Greenwald wrote, “Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America’s Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado: all without so much as having been convicted of anything.” 

David House, a 23-year-old MIT researcher who befriended Manning after his detention (and then had his laptops, camera and cellphone seized by Homeland Security) is one of the few people to have visited Manning several times at Quantico. He describes worrying changes in Manning’s physical appearance and behavior just over the course of a few months.

President Obama's state department spokesman, retired air force colonel PJ Crowley, resigned after publicly condemning Manning's treatment.

According to chat logs released by Wired Magazine, Manning clearly believed that he was a whistle-blower acting with the noblest of motives.

Manning told hacker Adrian Lamo that the leaks were intended to create “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”

Manning described to Lamo the incident which first made him seriously question the US government. He was instructed to work on the case of Iraqi “insurgents” who had been detained for distributing so-called “insurgent” literature which, when Manning had it translated, turned out to be nothing more than “a scholarly critique against PM Maliki.”

“I had an interpreter read it for me… and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled “Where did the money go?” and following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet… i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on… he didn’t want to hear any of it… he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees… i had always questioned the things worked, and investigated to find the truth… but that was a point where i was a *part* of something… i was actively involved in something that i was completely against…” wrote Manning.

Lamo reported Manning to US authorities.

“The government's radical theory is that, although Manning had no intent to do so, the leaked information could have helped al-Qaida, a theory that essentially equates any disclosure of classified information – by any whistleblower, or a newspaper – with treason,” writes Greenwald.

79-year-old former military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who is often praised for his 1971 leak of the Pentagon's secret history of the Vietnam War, said that Wikileaks' disclosure of government secrets on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and thousands of diplomatic cables was “exactly the right thing” to do. Ellsberg once faced criminal charges over his leak, but they were thrown out by a judge.

But military law experts told The Huffington Post that the odds are low that his charges will simply be dismissed.

Iraq’s Radiation: Not Going Away

By Karin Friedemann, The Muslim Observer

A depleted Uranium shell

According to Al Jazeera, the Pentagon used more than 300 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq in 1991. In 2003, the US military used more than 1,000 tons. In 2010, depleted uranium contamination was reported to be the highest on record, yet by 2012 continuing documentation has still not resulted in any action by the US or any other responsible party towards environmental clean-up.

An April 13, 2012 article by Karlos Zurutuza published by Global Research quotes hospital spokesman Nadim al-Hadidi saying:

“At Fallujah hospital they cannot offer any statistics on children born with birth defects – there are just too many. Parents don’t want to talk. Families bury their newborn babies after they die without telling anyone. It’s all too shameful for them.”

Relief organizations such as LIFE for Relief and Development escorted several US Congressmen on a tour of Iraqi hospitals in 2002, which often had no electricity nor sterile equipment, where women too weak from hunger to give birth had to receive C-sections by candlelight without anesthetic on beds without sheets. The horror show often reached its climax when the baby was born looking grotesque. When the sympathetic Congresspeople spoke up, the US government arrested relief workers and peace activists from several organizations for the crime of breaking US sanctions.

Back then, there was already documentation of Iraqi babies being born with bizarre deformations such as hands growing out of shoulders without arms, which were also found to occur in the offspring of US veterans who had served in Iraq. None of this came as a surprise to the US Army.

In a report published in 1990, before Operation Desert Storm, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) reported that:

“Short-term effects of high doses can result in death, while long-term effects of low doses have been implicated in cancer,” and

“Aerosol DU exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant with potential radiological and toxicological effects.”

None of this is new information, but a recent photo circulated on Facebook shows infant deformations in Iraq that are so horrific that I was asked to stop “traumatizing” my friends after I posted the photo.

Many babies born dead in Iraq today do not even resemble a human being. My Facebook friend told me she doesn’t want to see it and doesn’t want to think about it ever again. This was the first time she had ever heard of this problem.

My outrage, if fully expressed, would be a howling scream filling every corner of the earth. How dare anyone do this to women? Or refuse to care? How come, after over 20 years, no one is working to fix this problem? I have lost so many friends over the years, trying to educate them, and yet our popular culture continues to condemn Nazi Germans as the worst people who ever lived, because they went about their normal lives, oblivious to the atrocities of their government. The Nazis are accused of having performed scientific experiments on humans. Yet when I spoke up in college German history class, saying, “You ask, ‘How could they?’ How could you?” I just received a roomful of blank stares.

After WWII, the victorious party (America) took responsibility for rebuilding the defeated party (Germany). This was considered vital for preserving the world economy. Projected temperature for Wednesday in Baghdad is 103 degrees. Before we discuss universal health care for Americans, we need to discuss the clean-up of Iraq.

The radioactivity situation in Iraq is much worse than in Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Each atomic bomb created a huge blast that killed over 100,000 people within eight weeks, one third of them dying within one day. Infants conceived within that eight week period were found with birth defects but no genetic damage was discovered after the blasts.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Physical, Medical and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombings, an exhaustive Japanese study, published in English in 1981 claims that most of the radioactive debris was carried off in the mushroom cloud and not embedded in the earth. By contrast, the relatively low-level radiation caused by the use of depleted uranium artillery and tanks has become part of the air, rain and dust, sickening the Iraqi people without killing them immediately. Because the victims die one at a time, there are no headline news stories. Yet even in the early 1990’s there were reports of farmers’ fields strewn with bullets where nothing would grow, and children dying after playing with bullet casings. Relief organizations’ concerns were casually dismissed by Hillary Clinton at a meeting during her husband’s presidency. Like Madeleine Albright, she felt that the deaths of Iraqi children were “worth it.”

The way the US treats Iraqi people is worse than they treated the Black slaves, who at least were considered useful. The US has intentionally destroyed the future of more than one country. This is why getting our government to make the reparations necessary for a true peace will be difficult. The good news is that we now have Facebook, Twitter, and alternative news websites to bring the horrible news to people’s bedrooms and living rooms. In the 1990’s, political activists had to rely on subscription-only email lists and photocopied flyers. We now have the technology to go beyond preaching to the choir.

Many of us are exhausted from the relentlessness of international news reports of evil in the world. After subjecting ourselves to twenty or more years of sleepless nights, some of us are ready to say, “I tried,” and hand the heavy responsibility of knowledge to the next generation. Yet, our children cannot save the world without our guidance.

The problem of radioactive contamination is not going to go away by itself. Those who are interested in scientific experiments should embrace the very real challenge of cleaning up Iraq’s depleted uranium. It’s something no human generation has ever had to do before, and will require some very smart thinking individuals to come up with a plan.