The case of Bradley Manning.

[The Man]

Basically, what Greenwald said.

For those who haven’t been following, Manning was a soldier who is said to have videotaped American troops doing things highly illegal under the Geneva and Hague Conventions, such as intentionally killing unarmed civilians and journalists. He is now being charged, while people responsible for much worse atrocities have not been; indeed, in some cases their actions have actually been commended.

This goes, once again, to prove Anachresis’ dictum that laws are like cobwebs, ensnaring the weak but breaking under the exertion of the powerful.

[Crumb]

[California Tanker]

Without rehashing the whole argument of the helicopter incident, there is a simple rule here.

If you have a security clearance, and you knowingly and willingly violate that clearance (let alone repeatedly), then you are going to get charged. End of. The system can't afford to have some pimple-faced private making personal judgement calls on what is or is not best suited to the public domain. If SPC Manning believed that it was worth his career and freedom to get the information out (a conclusion I would not agree with), then so be it. But he went in with eyes open. Much as there is a presumption of lawfulness of any order, there is a presumption of a need for maintaining secrecy for any material. Act contrary to either of those presumptions at your peril.

NTM

[The Man]

Sorry, but as far as I’m concerned that’s complete bullshit. It’s more than readily apparent from the complete lack of punishment over similar cases that nothing would have been done about these crimes if they hadn’t been brought to public attention. The military has far too often just shrugged its soldiers and refuse to prosecute members of the armed forces who have committed atrocities; the links in my original post provide a couple of such examples. If the brass isn’t going to be frakking accountable on its own and prosecute war crimes, then not only should there be nothing preventing its members from disclosing atrocities, but they actually have a civic duty to do so, because every atrocity committed by the United States military that isn’t punished in a very public and visible manner creates more terrorists that hate the country, and also creates a culture in which people have the expectation that if they violate international law, the top brass will cover their asses. That is a much, much bigger security risk to the country than the thought that a couple of people might be radicalised over seeing a video that ends up getting the people responsible for the atrocities contained within life sentences.

That said, I wouldn’t have much of a problem if all they’d done was to discharge the guy from the armed forces over being a security risk. But locking him up for over half of his godsdamn life is beyond obscene when people who have committed much, much worse atrocities have gotten off completely scot-free, or worse yet, commended for doing so.

[Sauron]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

Without rehashing the whole argument of the helicopter incident, there is a simple rule here.

If you have a security clearance, and you knowingly blah blah blah

Your argument would have a lot more credibility if the established cases of
* abuse and neglect of prisoners;
* torture;
* violation of US military and criminal codes;
* infractions of international law;
* etc.

committed by the US military actually had received punishment for these actions. Then you could say "Manning received what he deserved. This is all about following the law. You know - the law? Which applies to everyone, both high and low, and allows our society to function and not fall into chaos?"

Unfortunately, that isn't how things have worked, so you can't really point to the law - or the canned response about a security clearance - and expect people to care.

How many high-ranking military personnel have been convicted for torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib? You and I both know the answer.

How many times have soldiers been caught on tape killing civilians, with the testimony of bystanders and investigators, and yet gotten off?

Bush Administration War Crimes in Iraq - SourceWatch

Crimes of War Project > Iraq Special Edition

http://open.salon.com/blog/ernest_fu...policy_in_iraq

War Crimes Report Shows US Violations of International Law

[California Tanker]

So because some people weren't prosecuted as much as you would like, even fewer of them should be?

All servicemen are entrusted to follow the rules. Soldiers at Abu Ghraib did not. Manning did not. I am not complaining about the prison sentences handed out after Abu Ghraib, I will not complain about a prison sentence handed out to Manning. Junior enlisted soldiers are not part of the classification/declassification process for a reason, they should not be empowered to make such decisions on their own.

NTM

[Sauron]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

So because some people

"Some"?
How about "nearly zero"?

All servicemen are entrusted to follow the rules blah blah blah

Recycling the same canned response will not work here. Address the issue.

[chunksmediocrites]

Originally Posted by The Man

Basically, what Greenwald said.

For those who haven’t been following, Manning was a soldier who is said to have videotaped American troops doing things highly illegal under the Geneva and Hague Conventions, such as intentionally killing unarmed civilians and journalists.

Your statement has some inaccuracies:
1. Manning leaked the video, that he obtained through his work as an intelligence analyst in Iraq. The recording is from one or two Apache helicopter camera(s). He did not shoot the original video.
2. The supposed illegality depends on a lot of factors, which were hashed over a bit here on . For whatever it's worth, the US military cleared the soldiers involved. One of the helicopter crew mistakenly identified the telephoto lens as an RPG launcher being aimed at US forces, and did not show any recognition that the two Reuters employees -walking with other men who were armed with AK-47s and RPGs, within 100 yards of US military personnel engaged in house-clearing operations- were a Reuters driver and a photojournalist. Certainly the firing on the crawling wounded and firing on the van that showed up after to pick up wounded seems closer to an illegal act, but again the military has justifications and their rules of engagement which they used to clear said personnel. If you want to go larger context and talk about the legality of the occupation as the basis, sure. And if you want to question specific actions, you might have a leg on this.

Greenwald among others pointed to what they saw as the larger issue: that what is seen in the video, which was shocking to many, clearly is standard for the occupation of Iraq.

The two Reuters staff members, both of them Iraqis, were killed when troops on an American helicopter shot into the area where the two had just gotten out of their car, said witnesses who spoke to an Agence France-Presse photographer who arrived at the scene shortly after their bodies were taken away.

The Reuters employees were Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, a photographer, and Saeed Chmagh, 40, a driver.

“When we reached the spot where Namir was killed, the people told us that two journalists had been killed in an air attack an hour earlier,” said Ahmad Sahib, the Agence France-Presse photographer, who had been traveling in a car several blocks behind Mr. Noor-Eldeen but was delayed by the chaos in the area. He said he was in touch with Mr. Noor-Eldeen by cellphone until his colleague was killed.

“They had arrived, got out of the car and started taking pictures, and people gathered,” Mr. Sahib said. “It looked like the American helicopters were firing against any gathering in the area, because when I got out of my car and started taking pictures, people gathered and an American helicopter fired a few rounds, but they hit the houses nearby and we ran for cover.”

Attacks like this as the norm under occupation is also what at least one soldier has also affirmed.

90% of what occurs in that video has been commonplace in Iraq for the last 7 years, and the 10% that differs is entirely based on the fact that two of the gentlemen killed were journalists.

Nearly as notable is the US media, in step with the US government, has so sanitized and embedded and disengaged so as to really leave most Americans clueless as to life under occupation or the casual brutality from all sides that it involves. Even now, is it really news in the US that 50 people were killed in Baghdad yesterday? And that this happens with a good deal of regularity across Iraq?

Originally Posted by The Man

He is now being charged, while people responsible for much worse atrocities have not been; indeed, in some cases their actions have actually been commended.

The actions by the Obama administration to vigorously prosecute whistleblowers revealing government waste, fraud, and high crimes is very notable, especially in the larger context of what the Obama administration has refused to prosecute (torture and illegal wiretapping, for example, or ever finding and charging the person who leaked Valerie Plame's identity); the blatant double standard of "we must look forward and can't prosecute these past mistakes" and then reaching into that same time period to prosecute whistleblowers is painful hypocrisy and continues to trash rule of law when it comes to the political elite.

The Manning case is also interesting because the "hacker/journalist" Lamo and the "hacker/journalist" from Wired are extremely dubious, Wired has been cagey about the actual transcripts of the interactions between Bradley Manning and Adrian Lamo (and refuses to release them in full), and part of this appears to be targeting WikiLeaks as a source of embarrassment for the US government.

[California Tanker]

Originally Posted by Sauron

"Some"?
How about "nearly zero"?

Well, seriously. What would you have, say, then-BG Karpinski charged with that would meed the standards required for a conviction, and would result in the prison sentence that you believe deserving? She failed to do her job correctly, she failed to enforce the discipline and standards required to run the prison correctly. That doesn't meet the requirements for a conviction for battery.

Recycling the same canned response will not work here. Address the issue.

OK, let's look at Manning's actions in isolation then.

What was it he did? This was no 'Pentagon Papers' event worthy of falling on his sword. There was no earth-shattering revelation, there was no government conspiracy revealed, there was no change in perceptions, governments did not fall, no effect on the national scale... Frankly, the video just wasn't all that important. The Gaza flotilla event had a larger effect on the world, and that involved no illegal release of classified information. He might as well have released a communique between the US and Icelandic governments discussing the menu for a lunch meeting with the Secretary of State for all the effect it had.

And if, as alleged, he also released a quarter-million communiques, he might well have released SecState's dining preferences. That would have been no targetted release of specific dramatic information, that would be just a massive breach of international protocol where countries have a right to expect that what they say in private to each other will not become public information. The actions would discredit the US regardless of if he had sent the helicopter video out or not.

He made a judgement call that something was worthy of breaching security to release in the interests of the greater good. The results of that leak speak for themselves. He was wrong.

NTM

[Sauron]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

Well, seriously. What would you have,

What I would have is you sincerely addressing the question instead of retreating into this bullshit.

The old "just because some people broke the law doesn't mean everyone should get off scot-free" argument falls pretty damn flat in circumstances of highly, highly selective prosecution combined with gross failure to prosecute one's own bedfellows.

OK, let's look at Manning's actions in isolation then.

Better idea: stop dodging my comment and address it directly. Once again:

How many high-ranking military personnel have been convicted for torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib? You and I both know the answer.

How many times have soldiers been caught on tape killing civilians, with the testimony of bystanders and investigators, and yet gotten off?

Why is it that damn near every trial of US service members for rape, excessive force, violating the rules of war, etc. is done by a military tribunal that mysteriously exonerates the overwhelming majority of them?

We know the answer. Just waiting on you to catch up.

[California Tanker]

Originally Posted by Sauron

How many high-ranking military personnel have been convicted for torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib? You and I both know the answer.

How many high-ranking military personnel actually tortured and abused people at Abu Ghraib, or at least ordered such to be carried out? No matter how much you may like for them to be convicted of something, if they haven't done it, or if it cannot be proven they have done it to the definition of the charge, they can't be convicted. Ask New York's DA how easy it is to get mafia leaders behind bars.

Why is it that damn near every trial of US service members for rape, excessive force, violating the rules of war, etc. is done by a military tribunal that mysteriously exonerates the overwhelming majority of them?

Maybe they were not deemed to be guilty under either the laws of war or simple legal rules? Watada is a free man, but not because he was found not to have done what he was brought up on Court-Martial charges for.
Shocking though a lot of incidents may appear to be to Joe Civilian who doesn't even seem to know that the country is effectively at war, the truth remains that wars are very unpleasant things in which unpleasant events happen routinely and within the rules.

NTM

[Adam]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

Shocking though a lot of incidents may appear to be to Joe Civilian who doesn't even seem to know that the country is effectively at war, the truth remains that wars are very unpleasant things in which unpleasant events happen routinely and within the rules.

I wonder if the fact that those rules attempt to preclude Joe Civilian from finding out about those "unpleasant events", via prosecution of those who attempt to inform him, has anything to do with that?

[California Tanker]

Different set of rules concerned.

There have been plenty of alleged violations which have made their way to the public eye without the breaking of classification rules, sometimes without even the need of video footage. Anyone who still believes that everything is all roses and perfume in a war zone is living under a rock. Where the disconnect is is between where people think the lines should be, and where they actually are. This varies from 'When can someone really be shot' through 'can we burn people alive by dropping white posphorous on them?'

NTM

[erimir]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

Different set of rules concerned.

There have been plenty of alleged violations which have made their way to the public eye without the breaking of classification rules, sometimes without even the need of video footage. Anyone who still believes that everything is all roses and perfume in a war zone is living under a rock.

Yes, and the Pentagon tries to keep people living under that rock if they can.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

Where the disconnect is is between where people think the lines should be, and where they actually are.

That seems like a pretty significant disconnect, in an ostensible democracy. One would think that the solution would be more public information, not less, so the public can learn where the lines actually are and see to it that, if necessary, those lines are redrawn where they think they should be.

[California Tanker]

One would think that the solution would be more public information, not less, so the public can learn where the lines actually are and see to it that, if necessary, those lines are redrawn where they think they should be.

It's not as if the information isn't publicly available, just often people couldn't be arsed to go look it up. Even supposedly reputable sources screw it up. Take the White Phosphorous thing.

CNN:

Under an international protocol ratified by Israel in 1995, the use of such incendiary weapons is allowed when "not specifically designed to cause burn injury to persons." <snip> For example, it is illegal under the protocol to use white phosphorus against any personnel, civilian or military

Only problem is it isn't illegal to burn enemy military personnel to crisps, and the protocol makes no such prohibition.

But as soon as any reference is made to using WP as a weapon, there is suddenly screaming about war crimes without bothering to look at context. It's nasty, unpleasant, but legal. That is purely due to a lack of knowledge on something which is publicly available.

NTM

[Adam]

Well, two things:

1) Sorry if I jumped into the middle of a discussion without making my intent clear. I was referring specifically to those cases where, if the public were better informed as to what goes in in areas where our armed forces are deployed, their opinions about the appropriateness and conduct of those deployments might well be different, and the military takes pains to conceal those facts from them. The OP is a prime example. The use of white phosphorous really isn't, and I apologize if the way I jumped in implied that I thought it was.

2) That is a good point, though. If the public were better informed about the legality of incinerating enemy military personnel, it might well become illegal. I concede that it is not the military's job to make sure the public is informed.

[beyelzu]

Originally Posted by Adamus Prime

Well, two things:

1) Sorry if I jumped into the middle of a discussion without making my intent clear. I was referring specifically to those cases where, if the public were better informed as to what goes in in areas where our armed forces are deployed, their opinions about the appropriateness and conduct of those deployments might well be different, and the military takes pains to conceal those facts from them. The OP is a prime example. The use of white phosphorous really isn't, and I apologize if the way I jumped in implied that I thought it was.

2) That is a good point, though. If the public were better informed about the legality of incinerating enemy military personnel, it might well become illegal. I concede that it is not the military's job to make sure the public is informed.

Maybe not but considering how much they spend on pr they have no problem trying to keep the public misinformed.


That being said, I don't think it is a low ranking soldier's place to make such a decision, and he had to know what he was doing could get him in trouble.

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

It's not as if the information isn't publicly available, just often people couldn't be arsed to go look it up. Even supposedly reputable sources screw it up. Take the White Phosphorous thing.

CNN:

Only problem is it isn't illegal to burn enemy military personnel to crisps, and the protocol makes no such prohibition.

But as soon as any reference is made to using WP as a weapon, there is suddenly screaming about war crimes without bothering to look at context. It's nasty, unpleasant, but legal. That is purely due to a lack of knowledge on something which is publicly available.

NTM

Yes, I think most of the screaming is about using it in places where civilians are harmed.
And what do we see in the protocol: " It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons.

3. It is further prohibited to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by means of incendiary weapons other than air-delivered incendiary weapons, except when such military objective is clearly separated from the concentration of civilians and all feasible precautions are taken with a view to limiting the incendiary effects to the military objective and to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects."

Which rules out pretty much every inch of the Gaza Strip for instance.

[California Tanker]

But not Falujah or Afghanistan.

Part of the problem with WP is it's a dual-use munition. It can be used as an obscurant, or it can be used as an incendiary. Neither use is prima facie illegal in the populated areas of Gaza Strip, a point which even the Goldstone Report acknowledges. But at least Goldstone made an effort to determine the back-story behind the use of the munitions (Albeit a thwarted one since the Israelis failed to co-operate). When the first pictures of WP bursting over Gaza were made public, people didn't bother trying to see if there were any nuances before proclaiming them as evidence of war crimes.

I was referring specifically to those cases where, if the public were better informed as to what goes in in areas where our armed forces are deployed, their opinions about the appropriateness and conduct of those deployments might well be different, and the military takes pains to conceal those facts from them.

Yes and no. The current rules of engagement, for example, are classified, and with good reason. The opposition knows we have them, and tries to use them to prevent us killing them. As much as possible, the military will want to keep the knowledge of just where that line on when we can shoot people starts to get fuzzy a secret. But this also means that the exact rules must also be secret from the American population. Although ROEs are a political concern and are generally placed for political/strategic reasons, nothing to do with the laws of war, making public political discourse out of them can be counter-productive. As for why the gunship video was classified to begin with, it wasn't an issue of anyone making an active decision to hide it, it's just default that everything which happens in a war zone is classified. If I emailed my buddy across the base if he wanted to meet up for lunch, automatically it's classified. Trying to evaluate every individual document and recording is just not feasible.

NTM

[chunksmediocrites]

It certainly is easier to make everything our military does in a war-zone automatically classified. In fact the number of general government documents that are classified rose precipitously after 9/11:
NPR Sept 2005:

a recent report by his information oversight office found a steady increase in the number of classified documents.

Mr. LEONARD: For the year 2004, what our report highlighted was that there were in excess of 15 1/2 million classification decisions, where someone in the government created an information product and decided that it was appropriate to affix classification markings to it.

NORTHAM: That's about double the number of documents that were classified in 2001, the year of the 9/11 attacks. Roger Cressey, a former White House counterterrorism official during the Clinton and this administration, says he's not surprised that much more information is being classified.

Mr. ROGER CRESSEY (Former Counterterrorism Official): When a nation is at war and an administration adopts a wartime footing, then there is a natural inclination to further classify things. Anything that could be associated with deployment of troops overseas, with steps at home related to identifying potential terrorism activity, you want to keep that classified.

NORTHAM: But it's not cheap to keep information from view. The price tag for classifying documents in 2004 alone was $7.2 billion. Scott Armstrong, the executive director of Information Trust, which tracks government secrecy, says there's no question the administration needs to keep some things secret. But Armstrong says the huge leap in the number of top-secret documents shows the administration is overclassifying information.

Mr. SCOTT ARMSTRONG (Director, Information Trust): The way the systems work is more energy goes into protecting it from other officials, from people that have control of taxpayer dollars or people that are politically interested than actually goes into it from protecting it from our enemies.

This became even more bizarre with the US government in some cases classifying documents retroactively.
And then came Obama, willing to go farther than the Bush administration on secrecy:
ABC News May 2009:

Last Friday, President Obama met with White House counsel Greg Craig and other members of the White House counsel team in the Oval Office and told them that he had second thoughts about the decision to hand over photographs of detainee abuse to the ACLU.

They discussed possible counterarguments that they believed the Bush legal team hadn't tried -- namely, the argument that releasing the photographs constitute a national security risk.

A White House official said that the president "believes that the national security implications of such a release have not been fully presented to the court."

Ironically, in the same year Obama would sign an executive order to create greater transparency.

I don't think the government is prosecuting Bradley Manning because vital national security secrets have allegedly been revealed; diplomatic documents and Apache helicopter video footage from 2007 don't carry threats to national security today any more than the second group of Abu Ghraib photos, unless the argument is that any information embarrassing to the government can be defined as a threat to national security. Which, under blanket secrecy attempts by the Obama DoJ- to avoid explicitly revealing in court the torture done by the US government or their contractors to (often innocent) terrorist suspects- is exactly how the vastly broad national security umbrella is now being applied.

I have no problem with applying rule of law; but if that was the intent then Obama reaching back into the same period of (politically inconvenient) torture and wiretapping- which he will not prosecute- to single out a whistleblower violating classified document rules- puts the lie to any realistic application of rule of law in the least.

I think the government is prosecuting these cases to send a message to any potential whistleblowers about the costs of revealing things that embarrass the government or contradict official propaganda.

Greenwald covers much of this and in detail here.

[chunksmediocrites]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

As for why the gunship video was classified to begin with, it wasn't an issue of anyone making an active decision to hide it, it's just default that everything which happens in a war zone is classified.

Maybe they weren't trying to hide it. Maybe a film used in an investigation into the deaths of two Reuters employees that could be detrimental to US military PR just got lost.

You know that disturbing video of U.S. helicopters shooting civilians and journalists in Iraq leaked by Wikileaks? Turns out the Pentagon couldn't have released it even if they wanted to. They have no idea where their copy is.

According to an AP report:

And on Tuesday, when questions were raised about why the Pentagon didn't release the video itself at the time it issued its official report, "officials said they were still looking for it and weren't entirely sure where it was."

I guess I would be less skeptical if government agencies hadn't been known to "lose" damning evidence regularly, or if the concern about the leaking of classified information wasn't accompanied by the parties involved all shrugging and supposedly having no idea where that classified information might be stored or who might have it.

[The Man]

Originally Posted by Adamus Prime

2) That is a good point, though. If the public were better informed about the legality of incinerating enemy military personnel, it might well become illegal. I concede that it is not the military's job to make sure the public is informed.

It might not be, but it certainly shouldn't be their job to punish people who are only trying to make the public better informed either. At least not if they're not going to punish people who commit much worse atrocities than... making the public aware of the existence of atrocities.

Originally Posted by California Tanker

How many high-ranking military personnel actually tortured and abused people at Abu Ghraib, or at least ordered such to be carried out?

We don't really know, because the military keeps such information unavailable to the public. I wonder why that might be.

[wildernesse]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

As for why the gunship video was classified to begin with, it wasn't an issue of anyone making an active decision to hide it, it's just default that everything which happens in a war zone is classified. If I emailed my buddy across the base if he wanted to meet up for lunch, automatically it's classified. Trying to evaluate every individual document and recording is just not feasible.

NTM

If everything that US troops do in a war zone is classified, then why can I see so much of Iraq and Afghanistan via my facebook profile?

[California Tanker]

I don't think the government is prosecuting Bradley Manning because vital national security secrets have allegedly been revealed;

I fully agree. But then, it's again not for Joe User to make the decision on what is vital and what is not. It may not even be obvious to the person making the leak what is the important classified bit: He may be focusing on the events happening on the ground, whilst the computer symbology could be revealing information about a brand new system that the helicopter is equipped with. Not being an aircrewman he probably wouldn't even know that what was being displayed was new or secret. It need not be an equipment based issue either, there could be references made to certain tactics or procedures which the Army doesn't want to let the enemy know about, but which our leaker may not recognise for what they are.

diplomatic documents and Apache helicopter video footage from 2007 don't carry threats to national security today any more than the second group of Abu Ghraib photos, unless the argument is that any information embarrassing to the government can be defined as a threat to national security.

Well, that's another argument. The second group of photos would have presumably revealed no further information about the prison (Hey, who didn't know that there was abuse at Abu Ghraib?) whilst affecting the US's position abroad.

I have no problem with applying rule of law; but if that was the intent then Obama reaching back into the same period of (politically inconvenient) torture and wiretapping- which he will not prosecute- to single out a whistleblower violating classified document rules- puts the lie to any realistic application of rule of law in the least.

I would presume that in reality the greater the positive effect of the leak, the less chance of a prosecution happening. For starters, the leak should show evidence of illegal activity. I believe that's a pre-requisite for protection under the civilian whistleblower laws as well. Much like a soldier who refuses to obey an order, you break the 'presumption of lawfulness' at your peril. It doesn't matter if you believe that you're right, that the order you've been given is unlawful, or that the activity you've leaked about is illegal. If it turns out not to be so, you're going to pay for it. The 'You leaked classified information so you should be prosecuted' position should not be a 'zero tolerance' position. But the standard for immunity should be very high. Most of those leaks, which as Mr Greenwald points out, haven't been particularly important, would not meet that standard. I think he's looking at the wrong standard. It should not be 'What harm has come from the leak?' it should be 'What good has come of it?'

If everything that US troops do in a war zone is classified, then why can I see so much of Iraq and Afghanistan via my facebook profile?

They probably aren't using documents or pictures generated on SIPR, which is the Secure network over there. My work computer and 'phone were SIPR. Everything written or spoken over it was automatically classified. My computer in my hut was on a commercial internet line, so stuff from my personal camera put onto facebook would not be classified. But still circumspection is required, for example you'll get into trouble if you release photos of battle damage.

NTM