Thank you, Bradley Manning! I am proud to be British because of you.

[idwiyo]

This is a shorter online version of the article I read in Guardian yesterday. If someone has a link to full version, can you post it please?

I wish it was not true. I wish I didn't read it. I can not believe its Bradley Manning who is facing years in prison yet torturers are walking free because president Obama has their backs. I don't understand and I don't ever want to understand how could ANYONE justify what was done by UK and US governments.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/06/pentagon-iraqi-torture-centres-link

Revealed: Pentagon's link to Iraqi torture centres
Exclusive: General David Petraeus and 'dirty wars' veteran behind commando units implicated in detainee abuse

The Guardian/BBC Arabic investigation was sparked by the release of classified US military logs on WikiLeaks that detailed hundreds of incidents where US soldiers came across tortured detainees in a network of detention centres run by the police commandos across Iraq. Private Bradley Manning, 25, is facing a prison sentence of up to 20 years after he pleaded guilty to leaking the documents.

The pattern in Iraq provides an eerie parallel to the well-documented human rights abuses committed by US-advised and funded paramilitary squads in Central America in the 1980s. Steele was head of a US team of special military advisers that trained units of El Salvador's security forces in counterinsurgency. Petraeus visited El Salvador in 1986 while Steele was there and became a major advocate of counterinsurgency methods.

[MotherPetrie]

1. "torturers are walking free because president Obama has their backs"

Just thought that was worth repeating.

[idwiyo]

4. Not just American ones. British are free too.

I know damn well how deeply UK is involved in it.

Every one who knew and kept quiet should be convicted and sent to Iraq for life of heavy labour until they rebuild it by the bare hands.

[JDPriestly]

2. Watch the movie (It's on Netflix)

ccalled "
The Unknown Soldier." It's about the reaction of Germans in Bavaria to an exhibition on the war crimes and cruelty of the ordinary German soldiers during WWII.

I wonder whether Americans would care if they knew that our command in Iraq authorized or approved or permitted this to happen.

[idwiyo]

5. I am sure a lot of people will choose to ignore this article.

it made me so sick I can not sleep. I WISH it did not happen.

I also bet at least one reply justifying Manning to be sent to prison.

[reorg]

7. I suspect the reactions would be very similar

Even though the exhibition was shown more than fifty years after the war crimes occured, its detractors finally managed to close it down.

It had shown that many in the Wehrmacht, from ordinary conscripts up to the highest level, were willing executioners. That it hadn't been just fanatical Nazis who had committed war crimes. While many applauded the exhibition, it was too much for the average conservative German. They still like to pretend/believe that their parents were all basically decent people, had no responsibility whatsoever and were just deceived. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

[Gregorian]

3. Our economy depends upon keeping the military machine alive, at any cost.

Bradley Manning threatens the well being of the military machine, evidently. It's the only reason he is in the brig.

Didn't we learn from the Romans? Might does not make right.

[idwiyo]

6. +1 How dare he to do what Geneva Convention demands

of every person.

[Lordquinton]

8. Our econemy is being destroyed by the military machine

if we took the pentagon's budget in half, we would still be out funding the rest of the world combined in war spending, and we'd have a fully funded budget and dramatically reducing the national debt at a mind boggling rate.