by Wikipedia
Bradley Manning has been Court Martial and sentence to more years that he has accumulated in his life time. I hope we have not heard the last of him. Having his name and the name of Assange and Snowden mix in the same pot of 'leaks’ sometimes we forget that we are talking about two different wars and two different set of reasons given for going into those wars.
The war in Iraq was because Sadam Hussein had chemical weapons and had something to do with 9/11 but more importantly that he had acquired a nuclear capability to wipe out Washington DC like some times it was said by the Bush administration at the time. We were told it was self defense but as we found out all these information fed to us was not true. Then you had the war in Afghanistan with its set of reasons. But most importantly it started as catching Bin Laden believed to be hiding there.Looking back we can see how we lost so many lives and treasure. There was no reason that would not justify such a killing if not anybody else at least our own people.
During that period you had the Vice President of the United States disclosing the identity of a CIA covert agent Ms. Plume and by doing this the field covert spies for the US she had working under her lost their lives. Her career was terminated because her identity now revealed not only put her life and her family’s life in danger but also anybody those close to her.
What happened to Vice President Cheney? Nothing. You have a person doing what his conscience and inexperience told him to do and you had a master at politics giving advice to the President giving a name out of our spy for pure political reasons. Don’t people get killed for that? But again where is the justice here, one is sent to prison for almost life and the other, the political over only gets accolades of how great he was? There is no justice. When we examine the crime in this nation some people seems to be puzzled why so many people in jail in this nation more than in any other nation. Why there are so many horrendous crimes committed by american to americans, people raise their hands in an expression of futility.
All we have to do is look at crime and justice at the highest levels and it will tell you how the kids are doing down below. In a house hold in which the parents are heavy drinkers and smokers and get their money by stealing, does it not make sense that at the very least most of their kids would do the same? If cases like that of Manning and Cheney are aloud to happen and no one in power to make a difference does nothing, then someone somewhere most be asking why do we have a government? A President without power? Going about with the wrong information and making life and death decisions based on lies? Do we need a President? Do we need a congress that does not work and gets tied up in their look out for their own behinds? A Supreme Court that make decisions on political cases bases on politics?
The following is Bradley Manning talking, not much and we have not heard much from him because it would not serve him well to say much.
***(Adam Gonzalez)
This is a transcript of a statement made by Pfc. Bradley Manning as read by David Coombs at a press conference on Wednesday following the announcement of his 35-year prison sentence by a military court:
"The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We've been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we've had to alter our methods of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life.
I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time I realized in our efforts to meet this risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.
In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.
Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown our any logically based intentions [unclear], it is usually an American soldier that is ordered to carry out some ill-conceived mission. Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy--the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, the Japanese-American internment camps--to name a few. I am confident that many of our actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light
As the late Howard Zinn once said, "There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
I understand that my actions violated the law, and I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intention to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others.
If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.”
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