No good deed goes unpunished, and that is especially true when it comes to whistleblowers who expose the murderous machinations of the US government: SPC Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old intelligence analyst stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer in the vicinity of Baghdad, was arrested two weeks ago for having supposedly sent Wikileaks the “Collateral Damage” video of US troops shooting Iraqi civilians. The video, which showed US pilots murdering unarmed Iraqis, including a journalist, in cold blood and laughing about it, was posted to Wikileaks a month ago, and caused an international sensation. On the home front, it focused attention on the war when the issue had gone quiescent, and forced “progressives” to recall one of the major issues that once fueled their movement during the Bush presidency. Now the feds are having their revenge, and just how this came about is ominously murky. Wired, which says Manning “boasted” about his deeds, reports:
“Manning came to the attention of the FBI and Army investigators after he contacted former hacker Adrian Lamo late last month over instant messenger and e-mail. Lamo had just been the subject of a Wired.com article. Very quickly in his exchange with the ex-hacker, Manning claimed to be the Wikileaks video leaker.
“’If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months, what would you do?’ Manning asked.”
Mr. Lamo is the archetypal
creeper: previously known as the “homeless hacker,” he was sleeping
in bus stations and under bridges, earlier in his career, and logging
on to computers stealing information and wrecking networks. Caught hacking
into Lexis-Nexis, the New York Times,
and other sites, he was “turned,” and made the transition from hacker
to “security expert” and, yes, self-described “journalist.” What he
was, and is, is a professional snitch, working for the feds – I wonder
how he paid off that $60,000 fine they slapped him with? – while all
the time proclaiming his “patriotic” motives in turning in Manning.
According to various puff pieces appearing in Wired and on Cnet,
Lamo “agonized” over the decision, but in the end patriotism won
out:
“I wouldn’t have done
this if lives weren’t in danger. He was in a war zone and basically
trying to vacuum up as much classified information as he could, and
just throwing it up into the air.”
Yes, lives were and are in
danger – the lives of Iraqis, Afghans, and other targets of our
murderous
rulers, whose war crimes are being committed in the dark. Manning’s
“crime” is that he exposed them to the light. Manning also reportedly
is the source of a video showing the massacre of innocent civilians in Garani, Afghanistan, which Wikileaks hinted at having possession
of but has yet to release. Most intriguing, however, is that according
to Lamo, Manning claimed to have leaked 260,000 diplomatic cables to
Wikileaks – in effect, an inside history of recent US shenanigans
around the world. Manning says the cables describe “almost criminal
political back dealings.” The “incredible things, awful things”
he discovered “belonged in the public domain, and not on some server
stored in a dark corner in Washington, D.C.”
The US government involved
in “incredible things, awful things”? I’m shocked – shocked!
This whole story being handed
out by Wired and echoed by Cnet and others – that it was Manning
who contacted Lamo, a stranger, because he was “lonely,” and that
the former confessed to stealing state secrets almost immediately –
stinks to high heaven. Of course, Manning – who was locked up two
weeks ago, although we’re just finding out now – can’t tell his
side of the story, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he never gets to
tell it. The government could easily prosecute him with one of their
military tribunals, or else limit public access to his trial – if
and when they bother to hold one – in the name of “national security.”
After all, we wouldn’t want the American public to learn about the
incredibly awful things their government routinely does on a global
scale, now would we?
So now we just have the snitch
and his enablers to rely on for the “facts,” and they’re spreading
the lie that Manning was indiscriminately “vacuuming up” highly
classified information just for the hell of it, and just because he
could. In reality, however, Manning was horrified by the record of
crimes
that he uncovered, and rightly decided to blow the whistle on the War
Party. For that, the feds will lock him up and throw away the key –
unless my readers decide to act, and rally behind this latest victim of
the Obama administration’s “security” crackdown.
To get a clear picture of what
this entails, contrast the Manning case with another example of the administration’s
attitude toward security “leaks”: the case of the AIPAC duo, Steve
Rosen and Keith Weissman, two top officials of the Israel lobby accused
of stealing classified information and of running a spy ring inside
the Pentagon that funneled our secrets to Israeli embassy officials.
Rosen and Weissman were recorded culling secrets from the Pentagon’s
top Iran specialist, Larry Franklin, as they huddled in Washington’s
dark corners. Bush’s Justice Department prosecuted the case, which
went on for years: one of the first acts of the Eric Holder regime,
however, once Obama was inaugurated, was to drop all the charges –
in spite of voluminous evidence that the accused had indeed stolen
some of our most closely guarded secrets and handed them over to a
foreign
power.
The AIPAC duo’s defenders,
i.e. Israel’s amen corner in the US, made plenty of noise about how
Rosen and Weissman were just doing what “everyone” in Washington
does, “dealing in information,” and that they were no different
than journalists, and ought to be immune from prosecution. They were,
of course, nothing of the sort: journalists don’t collect classified information
for the express purpose of handing it over to foreign governments. This
key point, however, was never made in a court of law – thanks to the Obama administration – and so these two
intrepid “journalists” got off, scot free, and were allowed to
continue their “journalistic” careers. Rosen has now resurrected
himself as an “analyst” for the rabidly pro-Israel Center for Security
Policy, undergoing a seamless transition from spy to blogger. Just as
seamless as Lamo’s transformation from bum-like criminal to
“journalistic”
bum and white-collar snitch.
The operative principle
governing
the administration’s policy on safeguarding our biggest – and darkest
– secrets seems to boil down to this: as long as they’re being stolen
by the Israelis, it’s no big deal, but it’s time to draw the line
as soon as someone wants to let the American people know what’s being
done in their name and with their tax dollars.
Manning must not be allowed
to rot in jail, mugged in the dark by snitches, creeps, and
“journalists”
(or do I repeat myself?). Rather than just closing the garbage pail cover
and turning away from the stench that rose up from those diplomatic
cables, and the videos, he bravely did his patriotic duty, and emptied
the whole steaming mess onto the internet, where it could be examined
in all its disgusting detail. Instead of being prosecuted, he deserves
the Medal of Honor – and the esteem of all true American patriots,
whose loyalty is not to any regime but to the very American idea that
citizens have a right to know what crimes their government is
committing.
Manning must be defended not
only by the peace movement, but by everyone, from progressives to
libertarians,
who believes government must be held accountable. This is the mission
of Wikileaks.com, which we here at Antiwar.com fully support. It is
absolutely appalling that this kind of situation exists in what was
once a free country, and is now rapidly coming to resemble a banana
republic. Hands off Bradley Manning!
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
A note to Wikileaks: isn’t it about time you guys released the Garani video? And how about those 260,000 diplomatic cables? Time’s a wastin’!
