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17 Jan 2012
Manning One Step Closer To Court Martial
It looks almost certain that a military trial will decide whether Bradley Manning spends his life in prison. He's been in custody without trial since July 2010. Here's the latest on his situation
Last week all charges against Bradley Manning were preliminarily referred to court martial. Manning, the 24-year-old army private, will face 22 charges of leaking documents and videos to Wikileaks. A final decision on the court martial is likely to be made this week, although there is a possibility that the decision will be passed further up the chain of command.
Manning was arrested Kuwait in July 2010 and has been in custody without trial since then.
The investigating officer who recommended the court martial, Lt Colonel Paul Almanza, is an employee of the Justice Department which is also aggressively pursuing action against Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Manning’s lawyer and supporters argued that this entailed a conflict of interest. The Bradley Manning Support Network notes that, "he [Almanza] was also criticised for allowing all of the military’s witnesses and evidence to be presented, while prohibiting all but two of the defense’s witnesses from testifying, as well as evidence that could exonerate the accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower."
Manning’s lawyer David E. Coombs reports that he has issued two separate deposition requests to allow the testimony of several witnesses for the defence. The call for witnesses in Manning’s Article 32 hearing was effectively refused. Coombs writes, "In the government’s response, it opposed the presence of all defense requested witness (with the exception of ten witnesses who were also on the government’s witness list)."
If a full military trial gets the go ahead, it will take place in the next three to five months. Manning will remain in custody in the interim. The stakes are high for Manning. The Army’s news release puts it bluntly: "If convicted of all charges, Manning would face a maximum punishment of reduction to the lowest enlisted pay grade, E-1; total forfeiture of all pay and allowances; confinement for life; and a dishonorable discharge."
Manning has already endured what many commentators regard as unlawful punishment. He has been held in conditions that are essentially punitive without facing trial. This open letter written by Manning in March 2011 provides details of his situation in Quantico Brig, where he was held until April 2011. US legal scholars Bruce Ackerman and Yochai Benkler and a cohort of their colleagues last year rebuked Barack Obama for his suggestion that the conditions under which Manning was held were acceptable. They wrote, "He is currently detained under degrading and inhumane conditions that are illegal and immoral."
Manning was moved from Quantico Brig in Virginia to another facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas last year. This prolonged incarceration without trial has attracted much criticism. As Ackerman and Benkler write, "If Manning is guilty of a crime, let him be tried, convicted, and punished according to law. But his treatment must be consistent with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. There is no excuse for his degrading and inhumane pretrial punishment."
The Manning case has been highly divisive. Tiffany Madison of the Washington Times summarises the positions taken for and against Bradley Manning in the US military and policy establishment in this piece. In spite of the polar positions taken on Manning’s situation, she argues the case provides an opportunity for a more productive public dialogue:
"Instead of allowing politics and ideology to divide us, the American people should use this opportunity not to characterise PFC Bradley Manning as either an idealistic whistleblower or narcissistic turncoat, but to evaluate our relationship with our own government. Rarely do we have such an opportunity, where the classified information is already public record, for an honest, open dialogue regarding the national-security state. And whether it is still operated by the citizen, for the citizen, both civilian and military."
Chase Madar of Mother Jones is one of Manning’s supporters. He argues that the private deserves a presidential medal, not a prison cell. Madar puts Manning in a tradition of American whistleblowers that includes one of the Marine’s most outspoken defenders, Daniel Ellsberg. "At immense personal cost, Bradley Manning has upheld a great American tradition of transparency in statecraft and for that he should be an American hero, not an American felon."
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Posted Thursday, 19 January 12 at 7:40AM
Of course he has beenin custody without trial since then. he is essentially on remand for the most serious offences including treason and espionage what do you lot expect that he would get out on some peppercorn bail?
http://iainhall.wordpress.com/
Posted Thursday, 19 January 12 at 12:04PM
Manning, together with Assange, did the whole world a favor. They exposed some the dark underbelly of the U.S..
Manning should be made a national hero and, if he lived in a real democracy, he would be.
But the U.S. is not a democracy, not anymore!
P.S. Have you heard about ‘full global spectrum dominance’? It’s the U.S.’s plan to control the whole world.
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 12:08PM
I think that it would be a good idea if Obama was in there on trial for murder, multiples, using unmanned drones, on people without any trial or access to appeal.
In truth, I doubt that America has ever been a democracy. You have only to look at their electoral system to see that it is totally biased towards the Big End of town, and as corrupt as any in the whole miserable world. The people and corporations with the most money. Also, no one can be elected to the USA Congress, or to the Presidency, without the full backing of the Israeli/Jewish Zionist lobbies. So, in effect, a small gathering of Fundamentalist Jews in a small Palestinian country they are occupying, have total control of the foreign policies of the USA.
At the moment, they are forcing the Yanks into WW3 against Iran, on totally false premises/propaganda. No one in the USA, in an election year, can do anything against this pressure. Just look at Obama. All speech, no guts. Look at Santorum, promises to go in with guns blazing into Iran as soon as elected Pres. Nutters, the whole lot of them.
I hope everybody is stocking up on fuel. So far as I can see the Zionist Israelis and Yanks have tough-talked themselves into a corner. The only way they can move is to make war against Iran. Well, war may be a wrong word, it will be another Blitzkrieg, massive first strike against everything and probably Nuclear. If the Iranians are allowed to strike back, a whole lot of Yank soldiers are going to die in the Middle East. Can’t have that, can we, Baraçk Obama!
Exterminate, Exterminate, Exterminate.
Bloody Hell!!!
In the meantime, all oil supplies STOP! Dazza.
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 1:18PM
People who try to deceive and manipulate others deserve our contempt.
People who try to expose deception and manipulation deserve support.
When governments try to deceive and manipulate their constituents,
they are being abusive rather than representative.
Help stop government lies by supporting whistleblowers.
If Brad Manning is the whistleblower here (?),
then I thank Mr Manning for his worthy work.
This man is not getting a fair or timely trial.
US Justice is failing here.
David Grayling- The US Empire passed the Decline tipping point in the Empire Graveyard of Afghanistan about 2005. China has long been a sleeping Empire (mercantile economics, annexing Tibet).
Their internal authoritarianism will either evolve to something bearable, or explode as backlash and Empire fragmentation.
Empires- Hoo! Haa! What arrre they goood for? Absolutely nothin’!
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 1:19PM
Dazza
After reading your post (skimming actually as I didn’t want to waste too much time on it) where you threw around allegatons of nutterdom in every direction, I wondered if you were familar with that old expression about kettles and pots and blackness.
Posted Friday, 20 January 12 at 2:24PM
olivier - yes I tend to feel the same way - how can democracy actually operate if its citizens are not informed, having a variety of facts and thus make wise decisions on what they want their governments to do? Isn’t oppression the word used when one group denies another group the ability to participate in collective decision making? Does a government have the right to withhold information from its public? It is a concern when these people have nuclear weapons and unmanned drones with the consequential power and opportunity to kill masses of people - who also did not participate in the decisions that took or maimed their or their families’ lives…
But our governments in Oz are doing the same thing - just look at the latest BS with the pokies reforms - what is obviously the best thing to do is to rein in the possibility of problem gambling wasting so much of their income and preventing the gamat of social issues interconnected with gambling/poker machines - what we get…well, that’ll be some more political acrobatics that don’t actually address the issue at hand.
Posted Sunday, 22 January 12 at 4:46PM
If Manning has managed to resist the torture techniques of sense deprivation, isolation and intimidation, instigated to provide evidence to convict Assange for this long, he is a brave soul indeed.