The All Naked Bradley Manning Show

[darrels joy]

The All Naked Bradley Manning Show

posted at 9:14 am on March 6, 2011 by Jazz Shaw
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Another week passes and another bizarre story emerges concerning the case of alleged traitor Pfc Bradley Manning, currently a long term guest of the United States Marines at the Quantico brig. This time it seems that feathers are being ruffled over a report that Manning is being forced to strip naked during sleeping hours and for morning muster.

The Brig has stripped PFC Manning of all of his clothing for the past three nights, and they intend to continue this practice indefinitely. Each night, Brig guards force PFC Manning to relinquish all of his clothing. He then lies in a cold jail cell naked until the following morning, when he is required to endure the humiliation of standing naked at attention for the morning roll call. According to Marine spokesperson, First Lieutenant Brian Villiard, the decision to strip him naked every night is for PFC Manning’s own protection. Villiard stated that it would be “inappropriate” to explain what prompted these actions “because to discuss the details would be a violation of PFC Manning’s privacy.”

This, of course, has the usual suspects up in arms, describing this treatment as everything from brutalization to being on par with Abu Ghraib style torture.

Even my friend Doug Mataconis, an attorney and one of the more sane voices on the web, raised questions about the propriety of this treatment.

If he’s convicted of these charges, he deserves to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. While he’s awaiting trial, though, and even after he’s convicted, he still must be treated humanely and, at present, Manning is receiving worse treatment than a Prisoner Of War would, and the only purpose behind it seems to be to break him psychologically. That’s simply unacceptable.

So what was the mysterious course of events that led to this decision to strip Manning down each night? It’s provided, ironically enough, by one of his biggest cheerleaders at Fire Dog Lake.

In response to PFC Manning’s question, he was told that there was nothing he could do to downgrade his detainee status and that the Brig simply considered him a risk of self-harm. PFC Manning then remarked that the POI restrictions were “absurd” and sarcastically stated that if he wanted to harm himself, he could conceivably do so with the elastic waistband of his underwear or with his flip-flops.

Mystery solved. Jane Hamsher excuses Manning’s “sarcastic” remark as justifiable given his frustration at being kept under special watch to ensure he doesn’t harm himself. (Not a surprise, since she and Glenn Greenwald would probably find a way to laud his actions even if he – or Julian Assange – were found feeding kittens into a wood chipper.) But in the military we had a different way to describe something like that. It’s known as mouthing off or being a smartass. And doing so to your superiors is generally not a wise move under the best of circumstances, say nothing of when you’re in the hoosegow on charges which equate to treason.
But can this treatment really be justified? There are two points to address on this front.

First and most simply put, Manning made the comment about being able to kill himself with his underwear, sarcastic or not. Can you imagine what would be said if the brig commander did nothing and then he actually did turn up dead in his cell by his own waistband? It would be a movable feast for the media and several careers would come to an abrupt end. How does the commander ignore something like that?

The second point is a bit more complicated and far less clear, and one that we’ve touched on here in the past. It boils down to some of the fundamental differences between civilian society and the military community. Just as civilians, used to all their freedoms of free speech, etc. don’t understand the restrictions on military personnel, those familiar with the civilian justice system are frequently shocked by many of the “unofficial” aspects of the Uniform_Code_of_Military_Justice. Lots of things like this go on all the time in the military, or at least they used to back in the day. But normally you don’t have the civilian press watching and reporting on it.

Does that make it right? I leave that to the judgment of the reader.

Also, life in the military in general is just a bit more physical and harsh than in the civilian world. A lot of things happen which would probably shock many of you who have never served. In the Navy, for example, there is an old tradition of an initiation rite of passage the first time a sailor crosses the equator on a war ship. It is the time when you graduate from being a “pollywog” (or just “wog” for short) to being a “shellback.”

Trust me, it’s an ordeal, usually lasting 24 hours or more.

The third time I made the passage, two enlisted men wound up in sick bay with broken arms. Everyone got to experience the joys of crawling through plastic chutes filled with garbage, rotting food and bilge water, all the while being “herded” by shellbacks wielding foot long lengths of fire hose, loving called, “shillelaghs.” (During my own initiation it took more than a week before the bruises finally faded.) And this is all for your friends who have done nothing wrong.

I’ll leave it for one of the veteran submarine sailors to tell you about the grand old tradition of having your dolphins “tacked on” if they wish to do so in comments.

So I suppose our final question is, does any of this make it acceptable for Manning to be treated in this fashion, either to cover the brig commander’s butt or for the sake of teaching a lesson to somebody mouthing off to their superiors? I really don’t know. Maybe we do need to shine a light on this and review military procedures, both official and “under the covers.” But I do know that life in the military community is a lot different than in the civilian world, and having lived it for a number of years myself, this story honestly didn’t shock me at all.

(The author would like to apologize in advance to friends, family and readers for the title of this column. What can I say? The devil made me do it.)

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives...-manning-show/

[reconeil]

What's-the-big-deal?

Just brig or stockade supply Treasonable Manning with string-tie drawers & patient sock
type slippers as normally given patients in hospitals & wackos in Happy Farms.

Such might even please many impossible to please America Haters and/or Manning Fans?

Though, I personally think such is just too great a waste of U.S. Taxpayer monies.
But, hey. That's just me, Friends.

Neil

[revwardoc]

Civilians should learn to keep out of the way of a military investigation of one of its own, especially that of a traitor. Manning's lucky they don't wash him down with a fire hose before his beddy-by time. What a POS.

[1CAVCCO15MED]

I don't know of a jail in the country that wouldn't take precautions if someone threatened suicide, including taking their clothes if they threatened to use them in the attempt.

[darrels joy]

State Department criticizes Pentagon over Manning detention

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posted at 2:55 pm on March 11, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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Regardless of which position one takes in the ongoing Bradley Manning saga, what the hell is the State Department thinking?

Hillary Clinton‘s spokesman has launched a public attack on the Pentagon for the way it is treating military prisoner Bradley Manning, the US soldier suspected of handing the US embassy cables to WikiLeaks.

PJ Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs at the US state department, has said Manning is being “mistreated” in the military brig at Quantico, Virginia. “What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the department of defence.”

Crowley’s comments are the first sign of a crack within the Obama administration over the handling of the WikiLeaks saga in which hundreds of thousands of confidential documents were handed to the website.

Crowley served 26 years in the Air Force, stationed at home and abroad, but with no apparent particular emphasis in detention or internal security issues. Furthermore, he’s not at the Pentagon now, nor is he at the Department of Justice, the other agency that could exert jurisdiction.

There isn’t anything to suggest that Crowley has any expertise in this area, either in general or specific to Manning’s detention.

In fact, while I was writing this post, Barack Obama told Jake Tapper in the press conference this morning that the circumstances of Manning’s detention relate to his “safety,” and that he has already consulted with the Pentagon on the matter and is apparently satisfied. Crowley has therefore put himself — and the State Department — in the position of criticizing not just the Pentagon but the Commander-in-Chief as well. Is that the role of the State Department, to offer itself as a critic of all other aspects and operations of the executive branch?

The White House needs to hit the “reset button” with its State Department, or more appropriately, the “eject” button with respect to Crowley.

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/03/1...ing-detention/

[sfc_darrel]

Finally, the Left Is Outraged and Ready to Fight… For Bradley Manning

Posted by Jim Hoft on Monday, April 11, 2011, 5:07 AM


Finally, a cause worth fighting for.

The far left is outraged over the “tortuous” treatment of American traitor Bradley Manning because the young criminal is forced to sleep in a smock so he won’t kill himself.

NBC recently made the young Wikileaker Manning out to be a victim who was abused because he was gay… And, of course, the teasing forced him to steal the 250,000+ security documents on and release them on the internet.

…And, that’s why we need DADT repealed.



Code Pink has held several protests in support of the Wikileaker.

Thanks to Bradley Manning, never before has a superpower lost control of such vast amounts of sensitive information.

The Guardian reported:

Obama professor among 250 experts who have signed letter condemning humiliation of alleged WikiLeaks source.

More than 250 of America’s most eminent legal scholars have signed a letter protesting against the treatment in military prison of the alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, contesting that his “degrading and inhumane conditions” are illegal, unconstitutional and could even amount to torture.

The list of signatories includes Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor who is considered to be America’s foremost liberal authority on constitutional law. He taught constitutional law to Barack Obama and was a key backer of his 2008 presidential campaign.

Tribe joined the Obama administration last year as a legal adviser in the justice department, a post he held until three months ago.

He told the Guardian he signed the letter because Manning appeared to have been treated in a way that “is not only shameful but unconstitutional” as he awaits court martial in Quantico marine base in Virginia.

The US soldier has been held in the military brig since last July, charged with multiple counts relating to the leaking of thousands of embassy cables and other secret documents to the WikiLeaks website.

Under the terms of his detention, he is kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, checked every five minutes under a so-called “prevention of injury order” and stripped naked at night apart from a smock.

Tribe said the treatment was objectionable “in the way it violates his person and his liberty without due process of law and in the way it administers cruel and unusual punishment of a sort that cannot be constitutionally inflicted even upon someone convicted of terrible offences, not to mention someone merely accused of such offences”.

You’d think… considering the wacky decisions made by this Obama White House that most legal scholars would want to distance themselves from the loons. Not so with Laurence Tribe, the foremost liberal authority on constitutional law in America. Once again, it shows you the caliber of crackpots who are teaching our children at today’s left-wing universities.

http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.co...adley-manning/

[darrels joy]

The Bradley Manning Support Network

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posted at 4:52 pm on May 26, 2011 by Jazz Shaw
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This week, Hot Air was invited to a conference call for the press hosted by the Bradley Manning Support Network, updating us on the latest events in the ongoing saga of the incarcerated subject. The first order of business was to note that the next step in the legal process is an Article 13 pre-trial hearing to be held “in mid-summer.” Additional motions and maneuvering are projected to delay the start of the actual trial until late fall or early winter, most likely in December.

I should be clear that this meeting was not any sort of balanced debate presenting both possible sides of the story. That shouldn’t come as a surprise given the name of the hosting organization. This was a group of devout anti-war activists who label Manning as “hero” on a regular basis and are working to secure his release. But the list of speakers is still noteworthy for this report.

• Daniel Ellsberg, retired defense analyst known for releasing the Pentagon Papers
• Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of Wikileaks
• Jesselyn Raddack, attorney and staff member of the Government Accountability Project
• Ann Wright, Retired Lt. Colonel of the United States Army
• Christina McKenna, activist arrested at Quantico in an action to support Bradley Manning
• Kevin Zeese (moderator), attorney with the Bradley Manning Support Network

To be honest, I didn’t find the majority of the content from the guest speakers particularly notable or surprising. It was mostly a series of testimonials to how “important” the “work” of people like Bradley Manning is, and how such “patriotic” actions should be supported. I will confess, however, that some of the vehemence I heard against Barack Obama was rather shocking, with a definite sense of feeling betrayed on the part of the speakers. I suppose they assumed that the President would abdicate his responsibilities as Commander in Chief and simply intercede on Manning’s behalf.

More startling, though, were a few of the comments directed not at Manning or his specific situation, but at the military in general. The first speaker was Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame. (I got to question Ellsberg individually later, which is covered below.) He started out by saying, “I was the Bradley Manning of my day.” This, of course, rather ignores the fact that he was a civilian employee of the RAND corporation at the time he released that information, having long since completed his term of service in the military.

Jesselyn Raddack chose to focus on Manning’s exposure of what came to be known as the “Collateral Murder Video.” This was rather shocking, as she seemed to pretend that Manning hadn’t allegedly also released tons of unrelated but classified data in a scatter-shot fashion. I lost track of the number of times she used the phrase “war crimes” but she made it clear that she felt the exposure of the video in question justified classifying Manning as a “whistleblower” who is owed immunity, freedom and acclaim.

All of this, of course, ignores the fact that the soldiers in question in the video were investigated, cleared, and the video clearly showed one of the targets holding a rocket launcher.

Christina McKenna was representing 33 people who are going to trial for their protests at Quantico where they were arrested and may be sentenced to large fines or up to a year in jail. Ms. McKenna is clearly so enamored of Manning’s activities that she plans to refuse to pay any fines if convicted, instead choosing to go to jail, “to support Bradley.’

I can not believe the amount of civilian casualties [the tapes] revealed, or the callousness and deceit of the US military and government officials from around the world.

The final speaker was Assange, but to be honest, he wandered around from one incomprehensible charge to the next in a fashion that made him rather difficult to follow. Should you wish to hear the entire call for yourself, however, you can find a downloadable audio file of it here and decide for yourself.

After we were finished, I found myself taking exception with some of the opinions expressed by Ellsberg and arranged to submit a few questions to him. Rather than leave us open to charges of selective editing, I’ll give you the opportunity to review them precisely as submitted and answered.

1. Just to ensure I have the timeline correct, could you confirm (or correct, if inaccurate) that at the time of the release of documents leading to the Pentagon Papers, you were fully released from the military and were a civilian employee of either the RAND Corporation or of the State Dept.? (Unsure of the timing.)

2. How would you characterize the difference in responsibilities and options between civilian and military personnel in matters of security and containment of materials deemed classified?

3. Do you feel that individual soldiers should be the final arbiters as to which orders they should or should not obey?

4. Starting from the entirely plausible assumption that we have a problem with overclassification of documents, both in the military and the civilian government, do you find it acceptable that a Private First Class be the person to make the final determination when materials have been overclassified, or could the matter be more effectively addressed from the top down?

Ellsberg’s answers did not in my opinion, cover all of the questions asked, but I’ll try to dig out the portions which seem to apply and then include the entire response in the interest of full transparency. We start off with the easy one, that being the first question of his status re: military service and the dates involved.

Dear Jazz: The first is easily answered: I was fully released from the Marines (active duty) in February 1957 (reserves in 1961). I was a civilian employee of RAND 1958-64 and 1967-70 (and a consultant for the DOD much of that time). DOD, 1964-65, State 1965-67. In 1971 I was a researcher at the Center for International Studies, MIT. So I wasn’t subject to military regulations in releasing the Pentagon Papers. Xeroxing (even a classified document) is not a crime for a civilian (though the Justice Department experimented in my case for the first time in calling it one, under the Espionage Act). But putting a Lady Gaga CD into an official network (quite apart from downloading data onto it) IS a crime under the UCMJ, to which Manning is subject. (your question 2)…

The next part seems to be an answer to the question of whether or not soldiers are obligated to follow orders.

Of course, there is a public presumption that privates, or enlisted men in general, should follow all orders and regulations unquestioningly, like robots, and should be “deciding” almost nothing for themselves, least of all the legality or appropriateness of higher orders. But that’s not what I was taught as a private (OCC in the Marines) or as a second lieutenant or what I taught others as a rifle company commander or battalion training officer, in connection with the laws of war or the Nuremberg obligations. Who else BUT the ultimate executant of possibly lethal (or illegal) orders is to be “the final arbiter” of whether it is his or her duty to obey or to disobey (and expose or resist)? It is not only NOT the duty of such a person–whether a private or a general–to obey an illegal order (for practical purposes, this has to be interpreted as a “blatantly illegal” order–a relatively rare event–in view of the “benefit of the doubt” that all military subordinates are supposed to and do give to directives from superiors), it is their duty to DISOBEY it, expose it and resist it. That is the essence of the Nuremberg principles, as embodied in laws of war and military regulations.

This is fairly shocking, speaking as a veteran myself. The idea that each and every order is subject to examination by the solider is anathema to the entire core of a functional military. Yes, there are extreme examples, such as the Nuremberg cases, but trying to draw some sort of parity between that hellish example and a private with a blank Lady Gaga CD dumping tons of classified dispatches is beyond a stretch. I think perhaps Mr. Ellsberg is a few too many years removed from his service with the Marines.

This final portion covers – I believe – the question of whether or not an army private is the best person to determine when documents have been incorrectly classified.

In Iraq, specialist Manning (whose Iraq war logs–if he was the source–revealed 15,000 deaths of civilians beyond those tallied by the Iraq Body Count. Not all “deliberately,” of course, but many reflecting illegal Rules of Engagement such as those that permitted or directed the killing of the unarmed men in civilian clothes–including two Reuters journalists–and the occupants of a van attempting to succour them (including two children), revealed by the Apache helicopter video.

(And what was the rank of the officials who decided to deny Reuters’ FOIA requests to release that video? They too were “final arbiters” of what the public should be allowed to know or see about the conduct of this war. Manning proved a better one, if he were the source to Wikileaks. None of which is to say that his judgment, or Julian Assange’s, is beyond investigation or criticism or is always going to be right. But which has a better track record so far, in deciding what has been “overclassified” ?

The PROBLEM comes from “top down” and will not be remedied at that level; the people on top know very well what they don’t want the public to know, what will embarrass them or make them subject (in principle, not really in practice) to prosecution. If the people at lower levels don’t exercise any independent judgment, then internal crimes, deceptions, recklessness, waste and corruption will never be known by outsiders, let alone held accountable and changed. In the military, especially, superiors are responsible both for the training, discipline, and supervision of subordinates–in short, for their crimes or major errors (see General Yamashita, in the Tokyo trials), but in many cases they are are directly responsible for directing the culpable behavior.

I don’t even know what to say to that type of “reasoning.” I leave it to the reader to judge. That’s all for this report, but following, as promised, is the full text of Ellsberg’s long and somewhat meandering response to me, lest we be accused of “taking him out of context.”

Dear Jazz: The first is easily answered: I was fully released from the Marines (active duty) in February 1957 (reserves in 1961). I was a civilian employee of RAND 1958-64 and 1967-70 (and a consultant for the DOD much of that time). DOD, 1964-65, State 1965-67. In 1971 I was a researcher at the Center for International Studies, MIT. So I wasn’t subject to military regulations in releasing the Pentagon Papers. Xeroxing (even a classified document) is not a crime for a civilian (though the Justice Department experimented in my case for the first time in calling it one, under the Espionage Act). But putting a Lady Gaga CD into an official network (quite apart from downloading data onto it) IS a crime under the UCMJ, to which Manning is subject. (your question 2)

In the government my rank, by the way, was GS-18 or FSR-1, the civilian equivalent of major general. I only wish that someone with the values of private Manning had had the kind of access that I did, rather than being limited to Secret cables, especially before we were fully committed in Iraq or to escalating in Afghanistan. But those values–which urge one to obey THE LAW rather than one’s order or regulations,at whatever cost to oneself, when masses of lives are at stake–are regrettably rare in all ranks.

The others call deserve longer answers than I can manage at this particular moment; we could discuss later if you wanted, but I understand you want some comment today.

Of course, there is a public presumption that privates, or enlisted men in general, should follow all orders and regulations unquestioningly, like robots, and should be “deciding” almost nothing for themselves, least of all the legality or appropriateness of higher orders. But that’s not what I was taught as a private (OCC in the Marines) or as a second lieutenant or what I taught others as a rifle company commander or battalion training officer, in connection with the laws of war or the Nuremberg obligations. Who else BUT the ultimate executant of possibly lethal (or illegal) orders is to be “the final arbiter” of whether it is his or her duty to obey or to disobey (and expose or resist)? It is not only NOT the duty of such a person–whether a private or a general–to obey an illegal order (for practical purposes, this has to be interpreted as a “blatantly illegal” order–a relatively rare event–in view of the “benefit of the doubt” that all military subordinates are supposed to and do give to directives from superiors), it is their duty to DISOBEY it, expose it and resist it. That is the essence of the Nuremberg principles, as embodied in laws of war and military regulations.

That is not to say that this obligation is very often observed.

On the contrary, it is generally (but not quite universally) violated, because the personal risks of disobeying any order greatly outweigh the personal risks of obeying it. So even officers, let alone enlisted men, rarely do fail to obey and to maintain the secrecy of even blatantly illegal orders, which do occur: e.g., orders to kill people under custody, or clearly unthreatening and unarmed people including old women and infants; or (throughout the Iraq war-logs revealed by Wikileaks) to hand over prisoners to be tortured by our Iraqi allies, and to fail to investigate any such suspicions, reports or events.

The latter order, very frequent in those logs, was blatantly illegal in view of our international obligations to investigate (and to resist) any plausible instances of torture. Then-corporal Manning’s attempt to report and change this behavior–”I was actively participating in things I was totally against”–was met by the illegal order to refrain from investigating further and to continue the illegal round-up and turnover for torture: in short, blatant cover-up, which was itself illegal.

Manning, at the very bottom of the chain of command, was the only one to OBEY the law on this count (by exposing the practice and the orders not to investigate, and by revealing the Apache helicopter assault: if he was indeed the source).

Both his choices and those of the myriad colleagues who continued to participate and to keep their silence reflected low-level choices: his, both right AND legal, the others’, neither.

OF COURSE, the privates and sergeants who were ordered by Lt. Calley and Capt. Medina to kill all women and infants (there were virtually no men present, except old men) in My Lai hamlet should have refused to obey, should have protected (with their lives, if necessary) the victims from deliberate slaughter (as did Warrant Officer Hugh Thomson), should have attempted to bring Lt. Calley under immediate arrest if he persisted in his blatantly illegal commands (a bizarre thought?

Nothing less could actually have stopped the ongoing slaughter). One sergeant (aside from Thomson), Bernhardt, did refuse to obey and refrained from shooting, hanging his M16 muzzle downwards on his shoulder; and later, he was one who exposed the crimes to Ron Ridenhour. His colleagues who carried out the order, were being “final arbiters” of the appropriateness of the policy just as much as he was. They were very wrong, he was right. (But their behavior was, unfortunately, to be expected as virtually universal, given the “operational norms” of the military as distinct from the formal regulations since Nuremberg).

It isn’t simply a matter of “obeying one’s conscience”; unfortunately, our socially-constructed consciences all too often have become voices of conformity, demanding that we “carry out our duty” (orders) as defined by authority: even when these orders arguably, or even blatantly, defy the law.

(See the Milgram experiments). Most of those soldiers (see counterparts in the “kill team” in Afghanistan, or at Haditha) would actually feel guilty, or at least uneasy, if they DISOBEYED those orders. Bernhardt alone at My Lai took the actual laws forbidding deliberate killing of noncombatants seriously.

In Iraq, specialist Manning (whose Iraq war logs–if he was the source–revealed 15,000 deaths of civilians beyond those tallied by the Iraq Body Count. Not all “deliberately,” of course, but many reflecting illegal Rules of Engagement such as those that permitted or directed the killing of the unarmed men in civilian clothes–including two Reuters journalists–and the occupants of a van attempting to succour them (including two children), revealed by the Apache helicopter video.

(And what was the rank of the officials who decided to deny Reuters’ FOIA requests to release that video? They too were “final arbiters” of what the public should be allowed to know or see about the conduct of this war. Manning proved a better one, if he were the source to Wikileaks. None of which is to say that his judgment, or Julian Assange’s, is beyond investigation or criticism or is always going to be right. But which has a better track record so far, in deciding what has been “overclassified” ?

The PROBLEM comes from “top down” and will not be remedied at that level; the people on top know very well what they don’t want the public to know, what will embarrass them or make them subject (in principle, not really in practice) to prosecution. If the people at lower levels don’t exercise any independent judgment, then internal crimes, deceptions, recklessness, waste and corruption will never be known by outsiders, let alone held accountable and changed. In the military, especially, superiors are responsible both for the training, discipline, and supervision of subordinates–in short, for their crimes or major errors (see General Yamashita, in the Tokyo trials), but in many cases they are are directly responsible for directing the culpable behavior.

It is not the superiors who are going to be willing to uncover and reveal these shortcomings to outside authorities; it’s people down the ladder, who feel themselves less responsible for the faulty behavior, who will blow the whistle, if anyone.

There is simply no alternative to relying on their sense of obligation (despite their lowly status, and despite the personal risks that are always involved in embarrassing a superior) for the information that is vital to democratic governance.

No matter how much action is taken to reduce “overclassification” (and Obama, aside from rhetoric, has moved in the opposite direction), there will always be an urgent need for whistleblowers. And I wish that it was more often people near the top of the ladder, with the most access and the broadest view of consequences and policies, who chose to obey their oaths to defend the Constitution, but that isn’t the way it happens.

END TRANSCRIPT

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/05/2...pport-network/

[darrels joy]

Obama's Bradley Manning Gaffe

Posted by Eben Harrell Wednesday, May 25, 2011 at 2:05 pm

12 Comments • Related Topics: National Security

Bradley Manning


It was a throwaway line at the end of a fundraiser. But it's fitting that in the Wikileaks era, President Obama was being video recorded when he told a questioner in San Francisco last month that U.S. army private Bradley Manning, who is charged with leaking classified documents to Wikileaks, "broke the law."

Now attorneys supporting Manning, 23, have seized on that comment to argue that Obama has prejudiced Manning's court-martial and that charges against Pfc. Bradley should be thrown out.

"President Obama is the Commander-in-chief," Kevin Zeese, an attorney with the Bradley Manning Support Network told a teleconference for reporters held today to mark the one-year anniversary of Manning's arrest and imprisonment. "The only way the military can claim there is no undue influence in this case would be a charade--[it would be] officers claiming they are not[listening to] their Commander-in-chief. The military courts have held over and over that if undue influence can be proven the case should be dropped."

Zeese added that he performed a google search with "Obama, Manning and guilty" and found 1.5 million hits on April 24, the day after Obama's remarks hit the internet, suggesting that Obama's comments went viral and were thus unavoidable.

Obama's gaffe came during an answer to a question about Manning's imprisonment. "I can't conduct diplomacy on an open source," Obama told an unidentified questioner. "That's not how … the world works. If I was to release stuff, information that I'm not authorized to release, I'm breaking the law … We're a nation of laws. We don't individually make our own decisions about how the laws operate … He broke the law."

This isn't the first time an off-the-cuff comment about Manning from the administration has caused an uproar. In March, US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley told a seminar at MIT that the treatment of Manning in military detention "counterproductive and stupid"—until his transfer last month to Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, Manning had been held in near-solitary confinement at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va, where he was forced to sleep nude. Crowley eventually resigned from his position, although he has since said he stands by his comments.

The fallout to Obama's remarks have been international. Ann Clywd, a British Member of Parliament and the chairwoman of a parliamentary group on human rights, told British media that Obama may have prejudiced Manning's trial. She told the Guardian that Obama's remarks "were an amazing thing for the president of the United States to comment on when the man hasn't stood trial yet". Manning is charged with various crimes related to his alleged leaking of video and war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan and diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies. He faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.

Manning is expected to face prosecution in the fall. Investigators have also been keen to learn what contact Manning had with Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Assange denies knowing Bradley's identity until after his arrest. But over at the New Yorker, Raffi Khatchadourian posts some strong circumstantial evidence that this might not be the case.

In May of last year, my piece about WikiLeaks was making its way through the last stages of production at The New Yorker. It was being edited and fact-checked; final touches were being added. I did not interview Manning for the article; nonetheless, while we were working on the piece, he wrote [to a contact] on May 25th and said, “new yorker is running 10k word article on wl.org on 30 may, btw.” This turned out to be a dead-on prediction. But how could he have known specifics about our piece before we had published it? The answer is pretty clear: someone involved in WikiLeaks, or an intermediary, told him.

Obama administration officials will be scrutinizing the relationship between Assange and Manning as they consider charging the Australian-born Wikileaks boss under the Espionage Act. Already, there are reports of sitting grand jury convened in Virginia to weigh Assange's prosecution.

With characteristic swagger, however, Assange claimed on Wednesday that his organization will gain whether he faces prosecution or not. He told reporters on the Manning conference call that charging himself or Manning under the Espionage Act will "criminalize investigative journalism."

"From Wikileaks' perspective, either outcome works," he added. "Either the mainstream press in the U.S. collapses as an effective investigative organ, and all sources are then forced to only deal with Wikileaks, or the administration finds that it has to conform to the U.S. first amendment and thus the U.S. becomes a free society that upholds Wikileaks' values."

Let's hope Obama's mic is off when he hears that comment.



Read more: http://battleland.blogs.time.com/201...#ixzz1NWJNtRHN