Trial of Wikileaker Bradley Manning Begins Monday

[sfc_darrel]

Trial of Wikileaker Bradley Manning Begins Monday


Posted by Mandy Nagy Saturday, June 1, 2013 at 1:07pm
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Private First Class Bradley Manning, the soldier responsible for leaking over 700,000 documents containing classified information to Wikileaks, will finally face military trial this week at Fort Meade, Maryland. Colonel Denise Lind will ultimately decide the soldier’s case.

From Reuters:

Manning, an intelligence analyst, was arrested in May 2010 while serving in Iraq. He was charged with downloading intelligence documents, diplomatic cables and combat videos and forwarding them to WikiLeaks, which began releasing the information that year.

Manning testified in February that he had released the files to spark a domestic debate on the military and on foreign policy in general.

“I take full responsibility for my actions,” he said at the time. “I felt I accomplished something that would allow me to have a clear conscience.”

One of the leaked U.S. military videos showed a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people in Baghdad. They included two Reuters news staff, photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh.

The judge in the case, Colonel Denise Lind, said last month she would close parts of the trial to the public to protect classified material. Rather than face a jury, Manning has chosen to have Lind decide his case.

Manning pleaded guilty in court in February to 10 lesser charges that he was the source of the WikiLeaks release. But prosecutors rejected the pleas and are pursuing the original charges.

Last November, Manning took the stand in a pre-trial hearing to recount what his legal defense had described as “unlawful pretrial punishment,” an attempt that was aimed at convincing the judge to dismiss the charges.

His attorney presented a partial plea offer at that time - not a plea agreement or government deal, rather, an acceptance of responsibility for a subset of charges through a process known as “pleading by exceptions and substitutions.” While the judge accepted the language in it, prosecutors ultimately decided to move forward with the original charges on all 21 counts. The most serious one includes that of “aiding the enemy.”


Manning’s supporters meanwhile have planned a protest this afternoon that will begin outside the main gate of Fort Meade, where the group will gather and then march along US-175 for about a mile to a rally location. They’re touting worldwide protests in dozens of cities this weekend.

You can check out the #FreeBrad hashtag on Twitter to see what they’re all tweeting – many of them, such as CODEPINK, are updating from live on the ground.

Julian Assange is still hanging out at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he’s been planning his Australian Senate bid while avoiding extradition to Sweden on alleged sex crime charges.

http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/06...-monday//#more

[82Rigger]

Good to see that this trial is getting underway.

Guess we'll have to wait and see what happens to the war criminals he exposed.

[reconeil]

Rigger,

Just exactly what: "War criminals" are you referring to?

Neil

[82Rigger]

The ones which the U.S. Government charged Manning with releasing to Wikileaks.

The incidents which the U.S. Government specifically referred to in their charges were:

Haditha (2005)
The July 12, 2007 Baghdad Air Strike
The 2009 Granai Airstrike in Afghanistan

Rigger

[reconeil]

None should consider U.S. Military as: "War criminals" for any miscomunications or mistakenly killing non-combattant civilians and even fellow U.S. Soldiers,...just as some choppers and machinegunners did while flying over top of: "Hamburger Hill" in Vietnam.

Wars (especially with a clandestine enemy) are hell and lethal screw-ups occur.

"Sheit Happens"!

Plus, we must destinguish between Purposeful killing of innocent people (quite commonly practiced by Muslim Terrorists) and Accidental killing of non-combattants, which sadly happens at times during: "The fog of war".

Neil

[82Rigger]

We must also distinguish people who try to hide criminal behavior from the American lawmakers and the American people, and even from those who are assigned to investigate such behavior.


An ACCIDENT occurs when a weapon MALFUNCTIONS.

Whenever a trigger is PULLED or a weapon is ACTIVATED, that is NOT an ACCIDENT.

It is a DELIBERATE ACT.

[reconeil]

Let me try defending The Greatest, Most Concerned about NOT CAUSING Collateral Damage nor Civilian Casualties and Most Honorable Military on Earth (re. The U.S. Military) another way.

Most every time in recent history that U.S. Military have killed: "Friendlies" or innocent civilians, such was either inadvertant, due confused commands or merely accidental.

Sure there were rare occassions when dishonorable murders of defenseless civilians were PURPOSEFULLY COMMITTED by U.S. Servicemen. But such cowardly acts were/are quite rare.

Whereas despicable Muslim Terrorists ALWAYS do such quite typically.
In fairness,...mostly just Infidels.

In fact, Fanatically-Radical Islamic Terrorists Have Always or even Historically TARGETED & KILLED as many defenseless men, women and children (babies also) AS ARE POSSIBLE.

Such War Criminals are actually the ones whom should be broad-brushed as such.
That's exactly what they are. NOT SO for: "America's Finest".

Amazingly such actual: "WAR CRIMES" (what truly are) were and still are perpetrated daily by Muslim Terrorists in: "The Name of Allah". Amazing!!!

Neil

[82Rigger]

I don't recall anyone ever accusing U.S. forces of committing war crimes on a mass scale.

You asked me specifically about info charged to Bradley Manning and I mentioned THREE incidents that occurred over a period of THIRTEEN years.

Not exactly a Nazi or Soviet scale of operations.

Rigger

[reconeil]

I too was alluding to the: "THREE incidents".
Just used Vietnam screw-up as an example.

Regardless, the Marines at Haditha were acquited, and I must believe that both airstrikes killing civilians were accidental.

On that: "Nazi or Soviet scale" of war crimes I would add Chinese, Japanese, Muslims and others.

Neil

[Stick]

Manning deserves the charge of no less than "Treason" in the release of classified military documents and considering the amount of those documents that he published over a popular internet service, one used by a large percentage of World Wide Web users, he deserves maximum sentence for those treasonest acts.
There's a man in Georgia that recieved three e-mails that had links with them and he forwarded on those e-mails to friends BUT those attachments, not opened by the man, were links to files that had children dressed minimally if not kids not dressed at all and checking of the IP address of the forwarding computer confirmed that the links had not been opened on it. The computer was at Fort Steward in Georgia and was a U.S. Army owned computer.
The man was discharged from the Army under less than honorable conditions, tried and found guilty of three counts of "sexual explotation of a minor" and sentenced to eight years for each of those counts not concurrent and not elegible for probation until he has served sixteen years. He will spend the rest of his life on the "Child sex offender" list and unable to live within 1/4 mile of a public school in Georgia or have children in his own home.
Potential future employers will be able to look at his criminal record and therefore not hire the Ex-Con.
He did NOT release one classified document but will pay for life.
Maybe he should have typed "Confidential" on the top and bottom of those attachments, spanked and set free .