1. I like how they attack the strawman with their "aiding the enemy" means "the public is the enemy?!?" claim. They were suspiciously quiet about the news OBL (presumably an enemy) had information leaked by Pfc. Manning.
But I suppose propaganda techniques are only wrong when it's the government or McDonald's, eh?
2. Manning has explicitly been removed from death penalty consideration earlier in the trial process. The prosecutor had to make that declaration already, so it's not something they can back out of. But I guess lies are only wrong when said by the government?
3. I'm not so sure that they would want him to take credit for the tens of thousands of persons killed in the aggregate from Arab Spring uprisings. Even if we consider the formation of democracies a benefit worth the price, that same exact logic would also justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq...
3a. "There is no evidence that anyone died as a result of the leaked information...". Contrast with "The information that Bradley gave to the public has been a catalyst for pro-democracy movements in the Arab world...".
Alright guys, either have the cake, or eat the cake. If he truly catalyzed the Arab Spring then some number of persons died as a result of the leaked information. If no one died because of information he leaked then why try to claim credit for those uprisings?
3:Democracy is self-rule by the people. If it's forced from outside, it's not a Democracy.
Besides, Democracy promotion wasn't even the original rationale for the war. That was "Saddam helped do 9/11". Then it was WMD. Only when those failed was Democracy promotion used as the final fallback rationale.
I'm not saying that Iraq cannot possibly be a legitimate Democracy, but it hasn't yet had the moment of national consensus that that real ones have had at their formation.
mpyne, funny I see you a lot around these kind of topics these days :)
Anyway, you make good points. But regarding the Arab Spring, even if Manning was indeed a catalyst for these movements (which I highly doubt), having an uprising does not always lead to thousands of deaths. As you can see those who were responsible for the deaths in these countries were the government leaders who refused to listen to the crowd and sent the army and tanks instead of promoting dialog. The responsibility for these deaths is very clear and it would have nothing to do with Manning.
And your reference to the "invasion of Iraq" as "formation of democracy" is dubious at best. Installing a puppet Pro-US government is hardly anything democratic, and the elections process in Iraq have been showing many issues (threats on voters, fraud, etc...). Hardly a good example of a "democracy at work".
Think of it though, if I set a bomb somewhere and someone else tells you to walk over near it, that person bears some measure of responsibility as well, because they know the consequences that must result from a bomb detonation. If Manning is to take some of the credit for the Arab Spring then he must also bear some of the responsibility. You don't topple despots without bloodshed, so by all means take credit for your good deeds but don't try to weasel out of the negative effects you should also have known about. Of course, I don't know if Pfc. Manning himself even knows that people are making this claim for him, so I don't ascribe it to him personally.
In fairness to your latter point, we also call the U.S. a democracy despite the threads on voters, fraud, etc. ;)
I don't know when G. W. Bush will, but even his own party relegated him to obscurity in the 2008 election, despite the fact that he was still the President at the time. To this day Iraq is an easy punching bag for politicians on both sides of the aisle.
In fact I read part of the HASC's proposed NDAA for FY-14 and despite being Republican-dominated the bill was full of warnings about applying the lessons learned from Iraq when deciding what to do, or not do, about the ongoing war in Syria.
It sounds to me like the U.S. government in all sectors is well-aware of how stupid that mistake was.
> In fairness to your latter point, we also call the U.S. a democracy despite the threads on voters, fraud, etc. ;)
Democracy is not only about the election process. I was just highlighting the fact that you cannot even START a democracy if you do not have proper elections in the first place. The US may have issues as well but it's an established democracy for a number of other reasons and it would not stop being one unless drastic measures are taken against accepted civil liberties.
You may not be able to read it because it's faded, but I mentioned the reasoning earlier. You do not "inspire" pro-democracy uprisings without knowing full-well that people will die.
"inspiring" and "planning" are two completely different things. You can, quite easily, inspire something without knowing that you will inspire it quid pro quo demonstrandum.
800 people died in Egypt, 300 in Tunisia, 8 in Algeria, 120 in Bahrain
To put this into context, over 2000 people died in Iraq in only the last month. This is years after the war being 'over' and many more years after mission accomplished, and the monthly death total is still greater than the net total of the Arab Spring revolutions
You can't compare Iraq to the Arab spring nations that democratized peacefully. You can't even compre Iraq to the Arab Spring countries that democratized via conflict - 25,000 in Lybia, 90,000 in Syria so far.
Over six hundred thousand people died in Iraq and the war completely destabilized the region. We are only beginning to understand the effects of the Shi'a awakening in the Middle East. Iran was essentially handed an enlarged sphere of influence courtesy of the USA. The rest of the Arab world will achieve a much better end result at a scale that is an order of magnitude lower in deaths.
There is also the fact that the people who die in handovers in Algiers, Tunis or Cairo are giving their lives to a cause they believe in. 90% of the people who died in Iraq didn't get that choice - they were shot at and blown up as they went to the market, dropped their kids of at school and attempted to make a life for themselves.
The Arab spring countries were stuck and they were only getting out of their situation in a tough way. That is why there has been a status quo in the region for so long - the cold war put a lid on it but it was always simmering. If you ask them which prescription they prefer - the American invasion or the America document leak, I know which way 100% of them are going to go.
The treatment of Manning was so poor[1], that Obama's own white house checked with the Pentagon to make sure what they were doing was legal (keeping him in solitary, naked for months). See what Amnesty and others had to say:
I know the reason why they put him through that - it is because Manning was expecting life in prison or to be executed for what he did. He was smiling as he was picked up at his FOB in Iraq, and that must have frustrated the military to know this guy had the balls to stand up to them and not cower when caught.
All of the fear mongering about the damage caused by Mannings leaks (the government knew what would leak before Wikileaks released it since WL had sat on it for a while) turned out to be completely false. The USA is still a superpower, diplomats are still diplomats and it didn't result in a terrorist attack, or worse. The same playbook is being used against Snowden - attack the personal character of the leaker to distract from the information (this has happen with Assange, Manning and now Snowden) and label him a traitor who is aiding the enemy (the charge of aiding the enemy against Manning is completely ludicrous and surreal. UBL also had copies of the NY Times, he also had pornography).
IMO 'aiding the enemy' is one of those bullshit catch-all laws that is widely interpreted just like 'money laundering' and 'tax evasion' - to be used when you want to jail someone but don't have much else. Or even better, an extra few charges and 20 year in sentencing guideline that can be plead down and avoid a trial (since that is what happens in 90% of federal trials - they don't even make the court, the prosecutors stack the charges and overwhelm the defense, having them plead down to what appears as a good deal). 'Aiding the enemy' doesn't actually require any actual evidence of direct aid to the enemy or the enemy receiving a benefit.
[1] I don't know how you don't mention the treatment of Manning. It was a major international news item for months, with most official government press conferences being tied up around questions of his treatment, a lot of international bodies lobbying the US government to do something about it, other foreign leaders speaking up about it, etc.
Wait a minute, it's not like everyone through the war in Iraq was a good thing until Bradley Manning leaked information about it, or that there was a news blackout about how poorly it was going or that the US created a power vacuum that degenerated into a hideous civil war. I'm not willing to address any of the detail in your argument when you start out with such an enormous attempt at misdirection.
Try again by all means, but please don't treat your readers like idiots.
> that same exact logic would also justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq...
and it argued that justifying the Iraq war is on a different scale, not comparable in either death toll or long-term effects to what has taken place thus far in the Arab Spring.
I'm glad you think the war in Iraq was bad, because so do I.
But why would it be OK for someone to have a hand in 116,000+ deaths for democracy but not be OK to have a hand in 600,000+? There's no good answer to this question, which is why I don't see why Manning would want to be known as the instigator of it all.
The rest of your points, even if we simply specify them as true, don't really explain why Manning's own supporters engage in lies and propaganda. So while it's nice to see them again after so long, we pretty much do already know about those claims.
E.g. the maltreatment; the trial judge agrees with you and Amnesty International, so why was that not put on the website? At least that would have been truthful. I would think it would also further the cause of the site in getting the "aiding the enemy" charge dropped, if that's really what they were about.
> I know the reason why they put him through that - it is because Manning was expecting life in prison or to be executed for what he did.
If what you say is true, then the military would also have mistreated Sgt. Bales, but they didn't. Murder is a capital offense too, in the military.
On the other hand, Manning's own lawyer said that Manning "joked" about killing himself, which is typically a fairly solid plan for landing yourself on Prevention of Suicide Watch status in a military prison. Doesn't excuse keeping him in that status after his military psychiatrist deemed him not a suicide risk, which is why the judge reduced his sentence, but nor does it require some massive conspiracy to explain his treatment.
So, if I were a supporter of Manning I wouldn't even worry a bit about the charge of "aiding the enemy", which is almost trivially proven by the prosecution given the way the UCMJ is written. All they really have to prove is that there exists at least one classified document that Manning felt would be posted to the Internet by WikiLeaks, and that there exists at least one enemy of the U.S. with direct or indirect access to WikiLeaks.
Instead his supporters should focus on getting his eventual sentence reduced (though Manning himself is doing far better to help his cause than his supporters are, IMHO).
But why would it be OK for someone to have a hand in 116,000+ deaths for democracy but not be OK to have a hand in 600,000+? There's no good answer to this question, which is why I don't see why Manning would want to be known as the instigator of it all.
"have a hand" is a little too ambiguous don't you think? There is a significant moral difference between "providing information" (what Manning did), and "invading a sovereign state using fairly indiscriminate bombing after a propaganda campaign about WMDs" (what the coalition forces did)
you vote for whoever gives you more advantages. not the more just or whatever fairy tale... if it weren't for other people also wanting often advantages on opposite areas, the only limit would be your morals.
So, for me, a nobody middle class, 100k deaths for democracy/political freedom/etc is much better than 600k deaths for the interests of an elite i'm not part. Your example does not stand a millisecond of analysis. The answer is clear as the day.
even if the numbers were inverses, it's still the political, democratic, sound choice on the 1st, that gives me advantages.
I'm not sure that even the neocons could tell you the actual reason they went to war. Only the WMD thing even made a bit of sense (in the aftermath of 9/11). But even most of the normal tinfoil theories (e.g. blood for oil) wouldn't have made practical sense. Puzzles me to this day.
Saudi Arabia (like Kuwait) doesn't have much of a military, but it is absolutely crucial to the world energy market. The US will apparently spare no expense to protect it.
Saudi Arabia has one of the largest and well supported Air Forces in the middle east, other than Israeli AF. The RSAF has 250+ fighter/attack aircraft in service. F-15s and Tornado's mainly. Also another 120 F-5E/F fighter "trainers" available.
That's fine. It would still have been quite vulnerable to a ~1990 Iraq. Even a ~2000 era Iraq wouldn't need to conquer the country, but merely strike critical oil infrastructure. They were thought to have chemical weapons, etc.
If you don't believe the US cares much about such things, I recommend the book (unfortunately titled) "Blood and Oil" by M. Klare.
> that same exact logic would also justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq...
Tony Blair dragged the Brits to war by lying in parliament when he said there was evidence Saddam's military had a WMD capability that could reach London and could be ready to go within 45 minutes.
Colin Powell stood up in the UN a rattled of another bunch of lies with assertions of mobile Iraqi biological-warfare labs and a "sinister nexus" between Iraq and al-Qaeda terrorists.
The war was started on lie after lie and the administration is still lying about it today.
"There is no evidence that anyone died as a result of the leaked information...". Contrast with "The information that Bradley gave to the public has been a catalyst for pro-democracy movements in the Arab world..."
IMO, it's normal to read "There is no evidence that anyone died as a result of the leaked information..." as "There is no evidence that [US soldiers, intelligence assets, allies] died as a result of the leaked information"
Evidence shows intelligence assets and allies were in fact killed due to the leaked information. Some key items were redacted, but the names of many Afghans were left in plain text ... and they met terrible fates as a result.
About 3... so you're saying that foreign aggression based on lies is morally equivalent to a local revolution as long as both ostensibly have some similarities in their end goals?
You if you can claim with a straight face that you'd trade 40,000 lives and a despot for a democracy, then what would your reasoning be to quibble about whether the results were achieved by local revolution or foreign aggression?
Do you think every Libyan who died was either for the regime or for the revolution? Many just wanted to live their lives and neither side spoke for them.
What does a "local revolution" even mean in a place like Iraq with sectarian tension all across the country? Most of the Iraqis who died were killed by other Iraqis, not by the U.S. So even if a local revolution had started the conflict in Iraq, do you think that local revolution would have been able to speak for every group with an interest in the stakes?
I don't know, what about the American Revolution? Was it morally wrong as well?
You certainly have a point wrt to how many people's interest is represented in the Arab Spring. It looked like the Egyptian revolution was mostly due to urban population, for instance. But, well, you can't expect everybody to agree with a revolution, you will always find plenty of people who want to keep the old regime because it is (or they think it is) more closely aligned with their interests, and other people who won't take sides. That's still "local revolutions". That's not a conflict originally triggered by the mistakes of a third party, in order to further its own selfish interests.
> If no one died because of information he leaked then why try to claim credit for those uprisings?
Apples and oranges. The Government claimed that the leaked cables were putting informants at the risk of dying. No informant has died because of the leaks. So yes, "there is no evidence that anyone died as a result of the leaked information".
imho, great video, but please change the initial video screenshot.
The pre-play screenshot seems a bit angry, and Im note sure how it ties in? In contrast, the content of the video I think was on-target, and thought provoking.
A shot of manning being 'escorted' to trial, or just his face would be more suitable I think.
or you could lead with the text slide "Is truth the Enemy? ..".. which is impactful.
FWIW I do believe Bradley Manning deserves moral and legal support. But this video is both propagandistic and vague. Like, except for 3 or 4 Hollywood celebrities, who are these people? And are they doing more than making a video?
These people clearly missed the point of Manning's leaks.
Its like how Christians worship Jesus instead of God. The point of the leaks was to shed light on the atrocities committed by the government not so that Manning is glorified into some sort of saint. I mean, I'm all for doing that- but wtf is the point when the same atrocities will happen again on some other day. You can argue that so that future leakers will get protection- well let me remind you there won't be any future leakers present anyway. The government will certainly start to smarten up about who they choose that pulls the trigger.
Ah ok. That's very misleading. This is a pretty open call for nominations from the public. The actual people selected from that group that Laureates vote on is kept secret.
The site features another falsehood: "There is no evidence that anyone died as a result of the leaked information"
Not true. The cables contained the actual names of Afghans who helped us fight the Taliban. Once their names were exposed, unredacted, via the Wikileaks calbes, "punishment" and death -- courtesy of the ascendant Taliban leaders -- came quickly.
"Yet the dead are the lucky ones. The more unfortunate may wind up in a torture chamber similar to one found by Coldstream Guards. It features such amenities as chains to hang prisoners from walls. Not that the inmates would want to walk on the floor: that features broken glass. And there is limb amputation, kneecapping with an electric drill, eye gouging, bone-breaking or ritual rape to smash the will. Where the offender is not himself available punishment will be visited on his relatives."
No, the antics of Manning and Assange were not without bad consequences.
This is a troll. I like to look at contrarian evidence, so I read the article. It contains zero evidence and is just a creepy piece of fantasy writing.
Perhaps evidence does exist, but odds are we'd have heard about it by now, given how hard it's been sought (presumably by people who don't lack for media access).
"Perhaps evidence does exist, but odds are we'd have heard about it by now"
But that depends on how you -- and others -- filter your news sources. Many on one side of the political spectrum have no clue how far the IRS over-reached when investigating political enemies ... and they won't know, because they trust their sources of news and unfortunately don't look for contrarian viewpoints like you do.
(btw: I'm not blaming you of the above; you've proven you seek diverse sources of information)
"WikiLeaks published a lengthy statement on its website Thursday morning, accusing the Guardian of "negligently [disclosing] top secret WikiLeaks’ decryption passwords to hundreds of thousands of unredacted unpublished US diplomatic cables." According to WikiLeaks, the disclosure of the password began months ago when Rusbridger's brother-in-law David Leigh, also the Guardian's investigations editor, learned the password and subsequently published the passwords in his book about WikiLeaks."
Strawman argument. By the same argument "Manning would not hav had anything to release if the DOD had implemented compartimentalization of access to state documents." (which most modern armies were already doing before, and which the DOD now has)
Understandable, but the parent is trying to shift the blame of anyone dying to The Guardian and I would argue that blame lies on Manning by releasing hundreds of thousands of documents wholesale vs. a whistleblower like Ellsberg in where he only published data directly related to a specific crime.
Not untrue, but analogous to saying someone wouldn't have died from a gunshot if the ammunition hadn't been sold. It misses the bit where someone pulled the trigger.
> "Yet the dead are the lucky ones. The more unfortunate may wind up in a torture chamber similar to one found by Coldstream Guards. It features such amenities as chains to hang prisoners from walls. Not that the inmates would want to walk on the floor: that features broken glass. And there is limb amputation, kneecapping with an electric drill, eye gouging, bone-breaking or ritual rape to smash the will. Where the offender is not himself available punishment will be visited on his relatives."
I hope this is not an attempt as moral outrage. When you and your allies rely on torture (not to mention the good old "chai boys" tradition of the Afghan police...), you lose the moral high ground.
But I suppose propaganda techniques are only wrong when it's the government or McDonald's, eh?
2. Manning has explicitly been removed from death penalty consideration earlier in the trial process. The prosecutor had to make that declaration already, so it's not something they can back out of. But I guess lies are only wrong when said by the government?
3. I'm not so sure that they would want him to take credit for the tens of thousands of persons killed in the aggregate from Arab Spring uprisings. Even if we consider the formation of democracies a benefit worth the price, that same exact logic would also justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq...
3a. "There is no evidence that anyone died as a result of the leaked information...". Contrast with "The information that Bradley gave to the public has been a catalyst for pro-democracy movements in the Arab world...".
Alright guys, either have the cake, or eat the cake. If he truly catalyzed the Arab Spring then some number of persons died as a result of the leaked information. If no one died because of information he leaked then why try to claim credit for those uprisings?