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phantom power

(25,966 posts)
Mon Jun 17, 2013, 05:28 PM Jun 2013

As Bradley Manning Trial Begins, Press Predictably Misses the Point

This whole thing, this trial, it all comes down to one simple equation. If you can be punished for making public a crime, then the government doing the punishing is itself criminal.

Manning, by whatever means, stumbled into a massive archive of evidence of state-sponsored murder and torture, and for whatever reason, he released it. The debate we should be having is over whether as a people we approve of the acts he uncovered that were being done in our names.

Slate was one of the few outlets to approach the Manning trial in a way that made sense. Their story took the opportunity of the court-martial to remind all of us of the list of horrors Manning discovered, including (just to name a very few):

During the Iraq War, U.S. authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape, and murder by Iraqi police and soldiers, according to thousands of field reports…

There were 109,032 "violent deaths" recorded in Iraq between 2004 and 2009, including 66,081 civilians. Leaked records from the Afghan War separately revealed coalition troops' alleged role in killing at least 195 civilians in unreported incidents, one reportedly involving U.S. service members machine-gunning a bus, wounding or killing 15 passengers…

In Baghdad in 2007, a U.S. Army helicopter gunned down a group of civilians, including two Reuters news staff…

This last incident was the notorious video in which our helicopter pilots lit up a group of civilians, among other things wounding two children in a van, to which the pilots blithely commented, "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle."


Except that there had been no battle, none of the people on the street were armed, it was an attack from space for all these people knew – and oh, by the way, we were in their country, thanks to a war that history has revealed to have been a grotesque policy error.

It's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle. It's lines like this, truly horrific stuff that's evidence of a kind of sociopathic breakdown of our society, that this trial should be about. Not Manning's personal life.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/as-bradley-manning-trial-begins-press-predictably-misses-the-point-20130605
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As Bradley Manning Trial Begins, Press Predictably Misses the Point (Original Post) phantom power Jun 2013 OP
ok, don't Niceguy1 Jun 2013 #1
Predictably and Deliberately Catherina Jun 2013 #2

Niceguy1

(2,467 posts)
1. ok, don't
Mon Jun 17, 2013, 06:19 PM
Jun 2013

Punish him for any alleged crimes that he revealed..but donl unish him for the documents that were crime free.


Good deal

Catherina

(35,568 posts)
2. Predictably and Deliberately
Mon Jun 17, 2013, 06:35 PM
Jun 2013

Thank you so much for not forgetting Bradley Manning.

There is going to have to be a way to liberate our political prisoners whose ranks Manning is going to join and put the real traitors, the real war criminals behind bars.

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