Tuesday, July 30, 2013

D-Day for Bradley Manning


 It's D-Day for Pfc. Bradley Manning -- the 25-year-old accused of releasing thousands of secret documents and held in prison since 2010. A judge in Fort Meade, Md., is scheduled to issue her decision this afternoon.

The verdict by judge Col. Denise Lind follows about two months of conflicting testimony and evidence. Manning, a 25-year-old native of Crescent, Okla., has admitted to sending more than 470,000 Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports, 250,000 State Department diplomatic cables and other material, including several battlefield video clips, to WikiLeaks while in Iraq in early 2010. WikiLeaks published most of the material online.

Decision day for Manning.

Decision day for the rest of us.

I do not hold out much hope for the rest of us ... or Manning either.

Just imagine what things would be like if anyone could run around saying the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes.

PS. OK, it's over. He was spared the aiding-the-enemy allegation (which might have been inconvenient for reporters everywhere) but was found guilty of enough counts to put him in jail for over 125 years. The penalty phase of the trial begins Wednesday. Perhaps the judge will then factor in the observations made by "Bill Hubbard" elsewhere:
"Manning has been subject to cruel and inhumane treatment:
- Manning has been held incommunicado for three years.
- He was held in Kuwait for two months in a cage only big enough to hold a large bird.
- Manning spent ten months in solitary confinement in a six-by-eight foot cell and subject to sleep deprivation and forced nudity. He was released from solitary only because of the negative publicity that the government received.
- The trial has being conducted mostly in secret, the military has refused or delayed providing access to court documents, and the defense has been precluded from showing that Manning’s disclosures have not harmed anyone."

1 comment:

  1. BREAKING NEWS ALERT

    Tuesday, July 30, 2013 1:14 PM EDT

    Manning Not Guilty of Aiding the Enemy but Convicted of Multiple Other Counts

    A military judge on Tuesday found Pfc. Bradley Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy, but convicted him of multiple counts of violating the Espionage Act.

    Private Manning had already confessed to being WikiLeaks’ source for the files, which included videos of airstrikes in which civilians were killed, hundreds of thousands of front-line incident reports from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, dossiers on men being held without trial at the Guantánamo Bay prison, and about 250,000 diplomatic cables.
    But while Private Manning has pleaded guilty to a lesser version of the charges he is facing, which could expose him to up to 20 years in prison, the government decided to press forward with a trial on a more serious version of the charges, including “aiding the enemy” and violations of the Espionage Act, which could result in a life sentence.

    READ MORE »
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/us/bradley-manning-verdict.html?emc=edit_na_20130730

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