February 10, 2011
Tomgram: Chase Madar, The Trials of Bradley Manning, A Defense
The Obama administration came into office proclaiming
"sunshine" policies.
When some of the U.S. government's dirty laundry was laid out in the
bright light of day by WikiLeaks, however, its officials responded in a
knee-jerk punitive manner in the case of Bradley Manning, now in
extreme isolation in a Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia. The urge of the Obama administration and the U.S. military to
break his will, to
crush him, is unsettling, to say the least. Whatever happens to Julian Assange or WikiLeaks, Washington is clearly
intent on destroying this young Army private and then putting him away until hell freezes over.
It should not be this way.
Today, thanks to lawyer and essayist Chase Madar, TomDispatch is making a
long-planned gesture towards Manning, whose acts, aimed at revealing
the worst this country had to offer in recent years, will someday make
him a genuine American hero -- but that’s undoubtedly little consolation
to him now. When it comes to America’s recent wars, its torture
regimes,
black sites, and
extraordinary renditions, as well as the
death and destruction
visited on distant lands, blood
is on many official American hands, but not on Manning’s. Those officials should be held accountable, not him.
With that in mind, TomDispatch offers its version of the defense of
Bradley Manning. (To catch Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast video
interview in which Chase Madar explores Manning’s case and his defense,
click
here, or download it to your iPod
here.) Tom
Why Bradley Manning Is a Patriot, Not a Criminal
An Opening Statement for the Defense of Private Manning
By
Chase Madar
Bradley Manning, a 23-year-old from Crescent, Oklahoma, enlisted in
the U.S. military in 2007 to give something back to his country and, he
hoped, the world.
For the past seven months, Army Private First Class Manning has been
held in solitary confinement in the Marine Corps brig in Quantico,
Virginia.
Twenty-five thousand other Americans are also in prolonged solitary confinement, but the conditions of Manning’s pre-trial detention have been
sufficiently brutal for the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on Torture to
announce an investigation.
Pfc. Manning is alleged to have obtained documents, both classified
and unclassified, from the Department of Defense and the State
Department via the Internet and provided them to WikiLeaks. (That
“alleged” is important because the federal informant who fingered
Manning, Adrian Lamo, is a
felon convincted of computer-hacking crimes. He was also
involuntarily committed
to a psychiatric institution in the month before he levelled his
accusation. All of this makes him a less than reliable witness.) At
any rate, the records allegedly downloaded by Manning revealed clear
instances of war crimes committed by U.S. troops in
Iraq and
Afghanistan, widespread torture
committed
by the Iraqi authorities with the full knowledge of the U.S. military,
previously unknown estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians
killed at U.S. military checkpoints, and the massive Iraqi
civilian death toll caused by the American invasion.
For bringing to light this critical but long-suppressed information,
Pfc. Manning has been treated not as a whistleblower, but as a criminal
and a spy. He is
charged
with violating not only Army regulations but also the Espionage Act of
1917, making him the fifth American to be charged under the act for
leaking classified documents to the media. A court-martial will likely
be convened in the spring or summer.
Politicians have
called for Manning’s head, sometimes
literally.
And yet a strong legal defense for Pfc. Manning is not difficult to
envision. Despite many remaining questions of fact, a legal defense can
already be sketched out. What follows is an “opening statement” for
the defense. It does not attempt to argue individual points of law in
any exhaustive way. Rather, like any opening statement, it is an
overview of the vital legal (and political) issues at stake, intended
for an audience of ordinary citizens, not Judge Advocate General
lawyers.
After all, it is the court of public opinion that ultimately decides
what a government can and cannot get away with, legally or otherwise.
Opening Statement for the Defense of Bradley Manning, Soldier and Patriot
U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning has done his duty. He
has witnessed serious violations of the American military’s Uniform Code
of Military Justice, violations of the rules in
U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10,
and violations of international law. He has brought these wrongdoings
to light out of a profound sense of duty to his country, as a citizen
and a soldier, and his patriotism has cost him dearly.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
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