Joe Coscarelli writes on the Tuesday acquittal of Bradley Manning on a charge of "aiding the enemy" and his
conviction on 19 counts of espionage:
Three years after he was first charged with leaking classified government material, following eight weeks of testimony and three days of deliberation, a military judge found Bradley Manning not guilty today of "aiding the enemy," a capital offense, but guilty of nineteen lesser counts for violating the Espionage Act. Despite the surprising outcome—even his most ardent supporters were pessimistic—Manning could still face more than 100 years in prison during a sentencing phase that will include more witnesses for both sides and could take weeks. Manning's fate was decided by Col. Denise Lind in a court martial after he waived his right to a jury trial.
The 25-year-old soldier and WikiLeaks associate had previously agreed to plead guilty to 10 of the 22 charges, which carry up to twenty years in prison, but the government pushed forward with the "aiding the enemy" case anyway, arguing that some of the 700,000 documents he leaked were obtained by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. (A full breakdown of the charges is here.) According to the prosecution, "He was not a whistleblower; he was a traitor."
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In an earlier version of the Washington Post
story about the case, this paragraph, now heavily edited, appeared:
The government relied on a case from the Civil War to bring the charge: In that trial, a Union Army private, Henry Vanderwater, was found guilty of aiding the enemy when he leaked a Union roster to an Alexandria newspaper. Vanderwater received a sentence of three months hard labor and was dishonorably discharged. |
In a
post-conviction comment,
CitizenOfEarth gave us a different bill of particulars:
Leaked Documents Summary:
1. There is an official policy to ignore torture in Iraq.
2. There is an official tally of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.
3. Guantanamo prison has held mostly innocent people and low-level operatives.
4. The State Department authorized the theft of the UN Secretary General’s DNA.
5. The U.S. Government withheld information about the indiscriminate killing of Reuters journalists and innocent Iraqi civilians.
6. The State Department backed corporate opposition to a Haitian minimum wage law.
7. The U.S. Government had long been faking its public support for Tunisian President Ben Ali.
8. U.S. officials were told to cover up evidence of child abuse by contractors in Afghanistan.
9. The Japanese and U.S. Governments had been warned about the seismic threat at Fukushima.
10. The Obama Administration allowed Yemen’s President to cover up a secret U.S. drone bombing campaign.
11. Known Egyptian torturers received training from the FBI in Quantico, Virginia.
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There's
another list here.
Bradley Manning, 25, could obviously spend the rest of his life in prison if the sentencing is hard-nosed.
Meanwhile, still free to roam the streets, take their book tours and collect their 5- and 6-digit speaking fees, is the cabal of scorpions that rationalized torture which they claimed was not torture, secretly rendered people off the streets of U.S. allies and secretly transported them to secret prisons in nations ruled by dictatorial regimes, fabricated evidence to take us into Iraq, where thousands of Americans and tens if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died in the conflict, conjured up a hell-hole at Guantánamo Bay, a place the attorneys created to be jurisdictionless—not quite the U.S., not quite Cuba—and thus free from both American and international law.
No slam time for them. Not even an appearance before a truth and reconciliation commission. Not one minute of public penance or penitence.
Bradley Manning versus Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice and George Bush. A true tale of American justice.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Building a better people trap...:
Like it or not, America post World War II was redesigned as a country for cars first, people second. We can all hope that will change and push for legislation that favors more variable use communities, better public transport, and urban renewal, but for many years to come there's going to be a need to shuffle people down the highway on a regular basis in areas where mass transportation is inadequate.
So we better look at ways to do it more efficiently -- ways that do as much as possible to prevent repeats of the big disaster we're all still dealing with... the war in Iraq. Oh, and also that godawful mess from BP.
This week there was some news on a couple of fronts when it comes to replacing our current generation of automobiles with something that slurps up less petroleum.
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Tweet of the Day:
Federal Pipeline Safety Agency Fails to Inspect 80% of Pipelines
http://t.co/... @PEERorg @OccupyWallSt @earthjustice @NRDC #ecowatch
— @EcoWatch
On today's
Kagro in the Morning show, a
Greg Dworkin "death and dying" themed round-up! From Scott Simon's running Twitter commentary from his mother's hospital bedside, to the Inca "Ice Maiden" mummy. JPMorgan Chase fills the energy market fraud gap left behind by Enron. Richmond, CA prepares to deploy a new weapon in the foreclosure crisis, this time on behalf of actual people. Wrapping up: Sharia crayons! NC's governor clueless on voter suppression, and Judd Gregg blames majority rule for Senate gridlock. Finally, in a surprise appearance,
Armando drops by to tease an upcoming interview for next week.
High Impact Posts. Top Comments.