Bradley Manning Revealed Crimes Far Worse Than Those He Supposedly Committed

I have not yet seen the outcome of Bradley Manning's sentencing, but I continue to be sickened by the persecution of Manning by the U. S. Military and the Obama administration while those who authorized and/or committed war crimes - yes, I am talking about George Bush, Dick Cheney and a number of others  - continue to go unpunished.  Apparently, Barack Obama and the U.S. military have forgotten the standard that was applied at Nuremberg to those who committed similar crimes.  I personally do not want to hear any more blather about American exceptionalism as long as war criminals go unpunished while whistle blowers are persecuted.  A piece in Huffington Post expands on this topic.  Here are highlights:

In the media world, even national security hawks like The Daily Beast's Eli Lake concede that Manning's leaks had "a lot of public benefit." But very few have argued Manning should go free.

Did Manning break the law? According to the letter, yes he did. But since when did we presume to hold people in government accountable to the law?.

The Bush administration lied to the American people in order to justify the war crime of attacking Saddam Hussein's Iraq. That crime qualified, in the words of the Nuremberg Tribunal, as "the supreme international crime differing only from other crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Trillions of dollars and the death and suffering of millions of people were the consequences of that crime.

The Bush gang also secretly ordered warrantless surveillance of Americans' domestic communications without involving the courts, a blatant violation of both constitutional and statutory law. And don't forget the setting up of a worldwide torture regime that directly violated longstanding international law as well as domestic law, specifically a Convention against torture, passed by Congress and signed by Ronald Reagan, which specifies that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever... may be invoked as a justification of torture."

Yet, nobody but the most marginal voices in our politics ever dared to suggest the Bush administration should be prosecuted according to the letter of the law.

In the U.S., there are crimes the government approves of and those it doesn't. Contrast Bradley Manning's punishment, for example, with that of the commander in charge of the torture at Abu Ghraib. Manning was subjected to abusive detention and faces more than a hundred years in prison. Col. Thomas M. Pappas, who oversaw the brutal torment of hundreds of detainees got an $8,000 fine.

Bradley Manning's leaks revealed crimes far worse than the ones he has supposedly committed. The Collateral Murder video shows the sickening slaughter of a group of people in Iraq, including journalists and rescuers.

One State Department cable revealed to the world for the first time that U.S. special operations forces raided a house in Iraq in 2006 and summarily executed one man, four women, two children, and three infants -- all shot in the head. Although Phillip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, brought the incident to the attention of then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration failed to respond.

Manning's leaks also revealed the fact that the Obama administration colluded with the Yemeni dictatorship of Ali Abdullah Saleh to execute a secret war without the consent of Congress and systematically lie about it. Yet Manning, who blew the whistle on this criminality, is the only one facing legal prosecution..

History, at least, will look very kindly on the actions of Bradley Manning and harshly on the crimes of the overlords he challenged. The real task is for Americans to get to the point where the country -- and its government -- is ruled by law, and not by men.

 Americans wonder how the horrors of Nazi Germany came to be.  If Americans do not demand that the rue f law prevail, America is well on its way towards a totalitarian government that punishes anyone who exposes its lies and worse yet, its crimes.

Read More

The Ugly Truth About American War Crimes

As noted before, one of my biggest disappointments with Barack Obama is that he has refused to open the lid on American war crimes and torture that were official policy under Bush/Cheney.  The provisions of the Geneva Conventions were knowingly and deliberately ignored and violated and in the process America lost all moral standing to ever criticize other nations for human rights abuses.  Worse yet, war criminals such as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have been allowed to go free of any consequences.  Andrew Sullivan sums the situation up this way:

The country still won’t come to terms with the fact that the US perpetrated a global campaign of war crimes, torture, dehumanization and cruelty for seven years, and its impact is still being felt. It is felt not simply among all those dictators – from the master-torturer, the King of Jordan, to the Chinese and Russians, beaming broadly, knowing that the US has now no moral legs to stand on, especially since Obama’s decision to ignore binding Geneva Convention laws that require prosecution of the guilty.

But there is a human toll as well: not just among those still living with PTSD from the brutal torture sessions, but from the perpetrators as well. Many did so with qualms, under orders; others, given the signal from the commander-in-chief that torture was now an American value, took to it with relish and occasionally desperation. One reluctant participant soldier, just killed himself – yet another one – because he couldn’t live with what he had actually been ordered by his president to do.

Sullivan is referring to the suicide of  Daniel Somers who was a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  In his suicide note, Somers gives an indication that things that were done are far worse than most Americans realize.  Somers and others like him simply found it impossible to go on living knowing what they had done under orders.  Here are portions of Somers' suicide note via Gawker:

On June 10, 2013, Daniel wrote the following letter to his family before taking his life. Daniel was 30 years old. His wife and family have given permission to publish it. 
 

I am sorry that it has come to this.

The fact is, for as long as I can remember my motivation for getting up every day has been so that you would not have to bury me. As things have continued to get worse, it has become clear that this alone is not a sufficient reason to carry on. The fact is, I am not getting better, I am not going to get better, and I will most certainly deteriorate further as time goes on. From a logical standpoint, it is better to simply end things quickly and let any repercussions from that play out in the short term than to drag things out into the long term.

You must not blame yourself. The simple truth is this: During my first deployment, I was made to participate in things, the enormity of which is hard to describe. War crimes, crimes against humanity. Though I did not participate willingly, and made what I thought was my best effort to stop these events, there are some things that a person simply can not come back from. I take some pride in that, actually, as to move on in life after being part of such a thing would be the mark of a sociopath in my mind. These things go far beyond what most are even aware of.

To force me to do these things and then participate in the ensuing coverup is more than any government has the right to demand. .  .  .  .  And for what? Bush’s religious lunacy? Cheney’s ever growing fortune and that of his corporate friends? Is this what we destroy lives for

The fact is that any kind of ordinary life is an insult to those who died at my hand. How can I possibly go around like everyone else while the widows and orphans I created continue to struggle?

 Bush and Cheney in their megalomania and religious insanity simply did not care what was done to others.  The same holds for many in the "Christian" Right who view non-Christians as not even human.  And, apparently, Obama is little better.  How else to explain his refusal to see that war criminals be brought to justice.  Americans need to know the horrors done in their name.  By doing nothing, we all end up with blood on our hands.  I find myself less than proud to be an America as any decent moral person should be.

Read More