December 25, 2010

• Bradley Manning

  I hate myself for not knowing that name until a few minutes ago.  I hate myself for hatin’ on HIM, even though I had never learned his name.

  Many of us have known about him, whether we knew his name or not.  He is the guy — the soldier, the son-of-a-bitch soldier who secretly found a way to get gobs of very sensitive classified information into the hands of WikiLeaks, compromising our security interests to an unbelievably high degree.

  I still don’t know if I’m on Manning’s side or not, but I think I am.

  Listen, when you enlist in a military unit, you have duties to fulfill and you have to follow orders.  I know that.  And information is classified for a reason, and I know that, too, and you can’t just leak stuff, no matter how right you may be.

  But.

  Did we not learn anything from the Nuremberg trials?

  When you serve under scum who command you to be inhumanly brutal to innocent non-combatants, and any nitwit with a tenth of a brain can SEE the wrongness in your orders, the Nuremberg rulings told us that you do NOT have to follow orders.  Or, if you do, there are severe consequences.

  Now we still don’t know just how unGeneva-like were those orders in Iraq, but I think we do know that PFC Manning disagreed with his superiors.

  One of the reasons a soldier has to follow orders is that, in theory at least, his commanding officers know what they’re doing, and that they’re decent human beings.  It’s not up to a soldier to think, or have a conscience, or do anything but follow orders.

  But what IS the truth here?  We know this much:

  Manning has been charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) with violations of UCMJ Articles 92 and 134 for the “transferring classified data onto his personal computer and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system,” and “communicating, transmitting and delivering national defense information to an unauthorized source”.

  Here is what “really happened” according to Johann Hari, columnist for the London Independent, in an article published in the Huffington Post two days ago:

  “Manning signed up when he was just 18 believing him would be protecting and defending his country and the cause of freedom. He soon found himself sent to Iraq, where he was ordered to round up and hand over Iraqi civilians to America’s new Iraqi allies, who he could see were then torturing them with electrical drills and other implements. The only ‘crime’ committed by many of these people was to write ‘scholarly critiques’ of the occupation or the new people in charge. He knew torture was a crime under US, Iraqi and international law, so he went to his military supervisor and explained what was going on. He was told to shut up and get back to herding up Iraqis,” Hari wrote.

  Manning has been in solitary confinement at Quantico since May 2010, where he awaits court-martial.  Here are two paragraphs from Wikipedia:

  “Manning has selected former military attorney David Coombs to lead his defense team.  Manning has been held at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, in solitary confinement since sometime in May 2010.  For approximately 23 out of 24 hours every day, he is alone in his cell.  It has been reported by friends and supporters that he is not permitted to exercise and that his mental and physical health are deteriorating and that the suicide watch on him has been lifted.

  “Former United Nations Special Rapporteur Manfred Nowak is looking into allegations from Manning supporters that Manning is being mistreated in military custody.”

  I don’t know if Manning is being mistreated or not, but it appears so.  Assuming the facts are roughly as presented here, the lesson is that he should have followed the chain of command after being told to “shut up” by his CO.

  Still, I’d like to know the whole truth.

   

   

  • 3:19 am
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