# Brad/Chelsea Manning:  Charged w/AFG file leak, Cdn angles, disposition (merged)



## jollyjacktar

Shared with the usual caveats.  

British fury as Wikileaks publishes the 90,000 top secret files that expose the horrific civilian cost of Afghan war By Katherine Faulkner

White House slams leak as 'irresponsible' 16 children killed in error by British troops  Special forces 'black' unit hunts down Taliban leaders  French troops shot at a bus full of school children Polish troops killed wedding party in mortar attack Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles  

A massive file of secret military documents revealing chilling details of the Afghanistan war and civilian deaths have been leaked to a whistle-blowing website.   In one of the biggest leaks in military history, 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence about the conflict were passed to Wikileaks.  And in a disclosure which has enraged the White House, the website has published the documents and handed the files over in full to three national newspapers in three different countries.
  
The secret documents suggest that coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in incidents that have never been reported.
They include claims that 16 children were among the civilians shot or bombed in error by British troops.  They also reveal  how a secret 'black' unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for 'kill or capture' without trial.   And how the U.S. covered up evidence the Taliban had acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.   Other disclosures include how the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets.  And how the Taliban has escalated its roadside bombing campaign which has claimed 2,000 lives to date.

SO WHO LEAKED THE DOCUMENTS?
U.S. government agencies have been bracing for the release of thousands more classified documents since the leak of a classified helicopter cockpit video of a 2007 firefight in Baghdad.   That leak was blamed on a U.S. Army intelligence analyst working in Iraq.
Spc Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was arrested in Iraq and charged earlier this month with multiple counts of mishandling and leaking classified data, after a former hacker turned him in.  Manning had bragged to the hacker, Adrian Lamo, that he had downloaded 260,000 classified or sensitive U.S. State Department cables and transmitted them by computer to Wikileaks.org.
Mr Lamo turned Manning in to U.S. authorities, saying he could not live with the thought that those released documents might get someone killed.

The Pentagon's criminal investigations department continues to try to trace the leaks but Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has flatly refused to meet with U.S. intelligence agencies to help them find the culprit.  And he has also refused to discuss how he obtained the Afghanistan files published today.   But suspicions are already centring again on Sgt Manning.  Speaking to The Daily Beast, Mr Lamo said he believed Sgt Manning was behind today's leak also - but added that he could not have been working alone.

The documents detail coalition troops shooting unarmed drivers and civilian motorcyclists because they are terrified that they could be Taliban suicide bombers.   In one incident never before reported, French troops shot at a bus full of children because it had come too close to a military convoy.  Eight children were wounded in the attack, which took place in the village of Tangi Kalay, near Kabul, in 2008.  Other reports record how a U.S. patrol machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers. 
And they show how Polish troops mortared a village in 2007, killing a wedding party including a pregnant woman, in what was apparently a revenge attack.

The White House has condemned the leak and claimed that the publication of details from the secret documents could put lives at risk.  'We strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information, which puts the lives of the U.S. and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security,' a U.S. Government spokesman told the Guardian newspaper, which published the files.
'Wikileaks made no effort to contact the U.S. government about these documents, which may contain information that endanger the lives of Americans, our partners, and local populations who cooperate with us.'.....

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1297644/Wikileaks-publishes-90-000-documents-Afghan-war.html#ixzz0umcLz9cB


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## MPIKE

Just waking up to this news.  ??? pretty alarming news.. No surprise the wikileaks site is down due to high traffic..

EDIT to add:  there is a video http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10758578 from the Guardian newspaper Nick Davies explaining their process of vetting material and only dealing with restricted level material.  All I can say is how incredibly ignorant and this act is nothing short of malicious!  It shall be interesting to see what security offences investigations spin out from this.. 
op:


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## tomahawk6

The soldier that leaked this material is under arrest in theater. SPC Manning leaked Dept of State cables and the video of a gunship killing insurgents in Iraq. The video had been edited by WikiLeaks to make it look like the aircrew had killed civilians. He had too much unsupervised time on his hands in Afghanistan.


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## 40below

Here's the best guide to the Wiki doc dump I've seen so far:

_By and large, like most of the stunts pulled by Assange, this one's long on light and short on heat, nothing we didn't already know if you were paying attention to our wars._

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/07/wikileaks-afghan-documents-and-me-source


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## MPIKE

40below said:
			
		

> Here's the best guide to the Wiki doc dump I've seen so far:
> 
> _By and large, like most of the stunts pulled by Assange, this one's long on light and short on heat, nothing we didn't already know if you were paying attention to our wars._
> 
> http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/07/wikileaks-afghan-documents-and-me-source



That is a good article and pretty much sums up the issue.. thanks.


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## The Bread Guy

40below said:
			
		

> Here's the best guide to the Wiki doc dump I've seen so far:
> 
> _By and large, like most of the stunts pulled by Assange, this one's long on light and short on heat, nothing we didn't already know if you were paying attention to our wars._
> 
> http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/07/wikileaks-afghan-documents-and-me-source



Good one - in a similar vein:
http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2010/07/scoop.html


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## RHC_2_MP

An unnamed source has leaked over 90000 military documents to US, British and German newspapers and sent them to a web site dedicated to leaked documents.  


ATO allies fear fallout of leaked Afghan war docs

CTV.ca News Staff 
  
Updated: Mon. Jul. 26 2010 11:59 AM ET
Several European NATO members have expressed concern that the fallout from a massive online leak of confidential U.S. documents on the Afghan war could extend well beyond the Internet -- and could even affect the war itself.
The U.S. records cover six years of the war in Afghanistan, including previously unknown accounts of civilian deaths and targeted attacks on Taliban members.
"A lot of it is mundane, but a lot of it is also very serious, on-the-ground, battlefield reports about the situation in the war, and right now it doesn't seem like it is matching the narrative that is coming out of the Pentagon," freelance journalist Tom Popyk told CTV's Canada AM during an interview in Toronto on Monday morning.
Some reports, for example, reveal that the Taliban "apparently have surface-to-air missiles, which contradicts everything we've heard from the Pentagon about the kind of weaponry that's being seen in the field," said Popyk, who has reported in Afghanistan in the past.
So far, NATO has declined comment on the release of the U.S. documents. But representatives from NATO member countries say they hope the leaks do not pose problems for the current war effort.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle warned that "backlashes" could result from the 91,000 U.S. military documents posted online by the WikiLeaks organization on Sunday.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that with recent progress being made in Afghanistan, he hoped "any such leaks will not poison that atmosphere."
"We are working hard with our allies on improving security on the ground and increasing ... the capacity of the Afghan government, so we are not going to spend our time looking at leaks," Hague said Monday before attending a European Union meeting.
Another EU official told The Associated Press that the organization "wants to stay as far from this as possible."
In Washington, White House national security adviser Gen. Jim Jones said the leaks "put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk." The Associated Press has reported that the Obama administration is unsure who leaked the documents to WikiLeaks.
In Kabul, the Afghan government said it was "shocked" by the release of the documents, while arguing that much of the information was not new.
Canadian references
In Ottawa, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon told reporters that the Canadian government is concerned that "operational leaks could endanger the lives of our men and women in Afghanistan."
When questioned about a leaked report that suggested a Canadian was among the casualties in a helicopter that was brought down by a heat-seeking missile, Cannon said that any incidents involving Canadian military members are handled by "the investigative arm of the Canadian Forces."
Another leaked report indicated that the U.S. wanted Canada to put pressure on Saudi Arabia and South Africa, two countries where the Americans believed Taliban fundraising was taking place.
The leaked documents were posted to the web on Sunday, though they had been given to The New York Times, London's Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel in advance of their online publication.
Most of the documents are considered "raw intelligence" reports collected by junior officers that are then passed on to analysts for further review.
Some of the more sensational revelations stemmed from reports that Pakistan's intelligence service was working with the Afghan insurgency, according to the Times report.
On Monday, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency said the accusations that it had close links to the Taliban were false.
And on Sunday, Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., said the documents posted by WikiLeaks "do not reflect the current on-ground realities."
Haqqani also said Pakistan is jointly working with the U.S. and Afghanistan, "to defeat al Qaeda and its Taliban allies militarily and politically."
In London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told reporters that the leaked documents show evidence of war crimes, though "it is up to a court to decide really if something in the end is a crime. That said … there does appear to be evidence of war crimes in this material."
Assange said WikiLeaks has access to another 15,000 Afghan files, though they are currently being vetted by the organization.
With files from The Associated Press and The Canadian Press

This is bad and might get a lot worse...and if they find the source of the leak, getting charged with treason is probably the least of his worries!


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## 40below

RHC_2_MP said:
			
		

> and if they find the source of the leak, getting charged with treason is probably the least of his worries!



They've already found the source of the leak. Step on up SPC Bradley Manning.


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## dapaterson

Some of these do highlight the unfortuante affinity to stamp anything and everything with a "SECRET" label.  Many, perhaps, should have been labeled "EMBARASSING" instead - such as the orphanage without orphans.

Stricter control over information classification and designation makes it easier to control information and makes security precautions easier to enforce; when everything is secret, little gets treated seriously.


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## observor 69

Having read what the media is telling us about this load of released info I haven't read anything that changes my overall opinion on how things are going in Afghanistan.
Also the situation on the ground has changed, American troop levels and commitment, to the extent that most of the info is historical.


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## Retired AF Guy

Read some of the reports and the few I've read are pretty insignificant; reports on enemy/friendly action for example. However, there are some that are interesting.  Here is one  report that mentions various suicide attacks that resulted in not only a large number of civilian casualties, but also an attack against three Canadian Coyotes that result in one vehicle overturning (due to loss of visibility) and three slightly injured soldiers. An extract:



> Witness statements from the patrol described a dark blue 4 x 4 SUV vehicle similar to a Suzuki Sidekick (comparatively identified) exploding after being passed by a Canadian patrol mounted in Coyote armored vehicles (C/S 62).  The patrol consisted of three Coyote vehicles with the SUV detonating between the first and second Coyote vehicles.  It is established that the first Coyote (C/S 62F) in Order of March (OOM) was the target and received light damage (punctured tire).  The second Coyote (C/S 62D) in OOM traveled through the blast for a further 60 m before leaving the road at a culvert/ditch and rolling completely on to the turret (MK).  No obvious blast damage was apparent on the vehicle and it was verified that the driver lost visibility of the road due to the smoke, dust and debris from the detonation. The third Coyote (C/S 62C) in OOM received no damage.  CF received three WIA (minor injuries).


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## Cpl4Life

40below said:
			
		

> They've already found the source of the leak. Step on up SPC Bradley Manning.



This is alleged I'm assuming.


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## 40below

Probably deserves its own thread, but mods, feel free to merge. Hadn't seen this one brought out yet.

_OTTAWA - The mother of a Canadian soldier killed by insurgents in Afghanistan says a leaked document suggesting that her son was in fact killed in a friendly-fire incident is wrong.

The report, one of thousands of U.S. secret documents posted on the WikiLeaks whistle-blower website, suggests four Canadian soldiers, reported killed in fighting in Panjwaii district on Sept. 3, 2006, were in fact killed by a NATO bomb.

Sgt. Shane Stachnik, Warrant Officer Frank Robert Mellish, Pte. William Cushley and Warrant Officer Richard Francis Nolan, were killed during the opening phase of the Canadian-led battle Operation Medusa.

Stachnik's mother, Avril, said in an interview from her home in Waskatenau, Alta., that she is absolutely positive that her son was killed in action, by the Taliban.

"The vehicle that he was in was hit by an RPG — that's a rocket-propelled grenade — and some of the shrapnel from it hit the turret and some of the shrapnel from the turret hit him in the neck. He bled to death."

She said that's what the Department of Defence told her, and that's what she believes.
_

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/afghanmission/article/840583--dnd-families-of-dead-soldiers-say-leaked-friendly-fire-report-is-wrong


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## George Wallace

40below said:
			
		

> Probably deserves its own thread, but mods, feel free to merge. Hadn't seen this one brought out yet.
> 
> _OTTAWA - The mother of a Canadian soldier killed by insurgents in Afghanistan says a leaked document suggesting that her son was in fact killed in a friendly-fire incident is wrong.
> 
> The report, one of thousands of U.S. secret documents posted on the WikiLeaks whistle-blower website, suggests four Canadian soldiers, reported killed in fighting in Panjwaii district on Sept. 3, 2006, were in fact killed by a NATO bomb.
> 
> Sgt. Shane Stachnik, Warrant Officer Frank Robert Mellish, Pte. William Cushley and Warrant Officer Richard Francis Nolan, were killed during the opening phase of the Canadian-led battle Operation Medusa.
> 
> Stachnik's mother, Avril, said in an interview from her home in Waskatenau, Alta., that she is absolutely positive that her son was killed in action, by the Taliban.
> 
> "The vehicle that he was in was hit by an RPG — that's a rocket-propelled grenade — and some of the shrapnel from it hit the turret and some of the shrapnel from the turret hit him in the neck. He bled to death."
> 
> She said that's what the Department of Defence told her, and that's what she believes.
> _
> 
> http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/afghanmission/article/840583--dnd-families-of-dead-soldiers-say-leaked-friendly-fire-report-is-wrong




That would have to be some bomb, so TOP SECRET that knowledge of it now should throw the fear of God into any enemy.  A bomb like this, that could explode four times, in four different locations, at four different times, to kill four men would be right out of a Science Fiction movie.


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## 40below

Fantastic analysis, George, your usual standard. The thread is richer for your contribution.

_"Frank was standing on one side of Sergeant Major Barnes and Will Cushley was standing behind him, behind what -- I don't know what the military calls it but -- what we'd call a front-end motor, and the Taliban insurgent or whatever you want to call them popped up out of a building and fired a 50-cal rifle at it and the schrapnel killed both Frank and Will Cushley._

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/Canadian+deaths+have+been+friendly+fire+WikiLeaks+file/3325426/story.html#ixzz0usrP7XlD

If you are unfamiliar with how 'bombs' work, PM me, I'll try to explain.


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## Jammer

Bollocks!!!! I watched it all happen in front of me!


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## George Wallace

40below

Obviously you missed the point of my post.  It was ref your post that these mem were killed by "one NATO bomb" in a Blue on Blue engagement.  But if you want to PM me with how a bomb works, feel free.   :


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## HItorMiss

I don't even know where to begin....

There are many many members of Charles Company who were there who are contacting media reps as we speak and trying to go through official channels to sort this out, I am one of them. 



			
				40below said:
			
		

> Fantastic analysis, George, your usual standard. The thread is richer for your contribution.
> _"Frank was standing on one side of Sergeant Major Barnes and Will Cushley was standing behind him, behind what -- I don't know what the military calls it but -- what we'd call a front-end motor, and the *Taliban insurgent or whatever you want to call them popped up out of a building and fired a 50-cal rifle at it* and the schrapnel killed both Frank and Will Cushley._



Next I will address this, It was in fact a Spig 9 82MM Anti Tank gun.... I know this because a .50 cal rifle does not have the effect that the weapon that hit the Zedlemyer did, which was to penetrate the Zed and blow a section of guys and wounded men being cared for at a CCP all over the places while killing two and seriously wounding others. I know I am one of the guys that almost died at the Zed. I make it a mission of mine to ensure that story is told properly Frank and Will deserve it.


Now Shane died pretty much as his mother says I was the person who treated him and the wounded members of his vehicle, His wounds were substantial and there was nothing anyone could have done. Rick took and RPG blast to his torso again nothing anyone could have done. The JDAM did nothing it never exploded it was a dud. All it did was cause my OC to have to redeploy his troops away from the bomb and make a new plan on the fly that is all.

Any reporters who read this wish to contact me please do so I will gladly set any and all records straight about the events that unfolded that day!


Further to what GW said all these events happened hundreds of meters from eachother only 2 of them were in close proximaty and that was Frank and Will at the CCP.


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## 40below

George Wallace said:
			
		

> 40below
> 
> Obviously you missed the point of my post.  It was ref your post that these mem were killed by "one NATO bomb" in a Blue on Blue engagement.  But if you want to PM me with how a bomb works, feel free.   :



I posted a link to the article, George, I make no claims for its accuracy. You jumped in with a sneering remark claiming these men were killed in four different locations at four different times by some miracle bomb (that also wounded four other pers and a terp.) The facts show they were together and it happened in the same incident.


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## Oldgateboatdriver

This is the perfect demonstration of the danger of reaching conclusions on the basis of a single document (or 90,000 of them - which for the duration of the AFGH mission is still an insignificant subset of the paper generated.) without making a full and complete inquiry into the facts.

The operation was carried out on the ground by Canadian forces, not American, and the air support was from NATO, thus likely US. That a US recorder away from the scene of action may have concluded from near simultaneous reports of the successful bombing run and Canadian casualties that it was a Blue on Blue is not in and itself a significant discrepancy in the "fog of war". 

However I have no reason whatever to doubt that DND took proper reports on the events from all those involved , reached the proper conclusions, and advised the families accordingly. So rest in peace Sgt Stachnick, WO Mellish, Pte Cushley and WO Nolan, as the heroes you truly are.


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## George Wallace

Thanks Bulletmagnet.

I know you have told the story here before, and I will try to link it.

40below

You are just being an ass.  Thanks for coming out.


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## HItorMiss

40Below

No they were not together.... Rick was in the seat of a Gwagon, Shane was in the the sentry hatch of his LAV both were not close to eachother but the they were killed almost at the same time at the initiation of the ambush.... Frank and Will were at the CCP Will was there when I asked his section to 2IC to use his section to provide security, Frank was there asking if I was going to get Ricks body from the back of a damaged LAV.

Feel free to specualte all you want but I have the facts and so does GW he has had extensive conversations with me about this and of course there are several articles about the incidents that day the best one being from Legion Magazine where the repoter took months to interview all persons involved with the battle that day.


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## HavokFour

> *Military rejects WikiLeaks friendly fire report*​
> The Canadian military is rejecting a report released by WikiLeaks that suggests four Canadian soldiers who died in September 2006 in Afghanistan were killed by friendly fire from U.S. forces.
> 
> The military maintains the four soldiers died in combat with the Taliban.
> 
> "The loss of four Canadian soldiers on September 3rd, 2006, was the result of insurgent activity in the Panjwaii district of Afghanistan," the defence minister's spokesman Jay Paxton said in an email Monday evening.
> 
> "The only friendly fire incident from the time period in question occurred on September 4th, 2006, when Private Mark Anthony Graham was killed in the same district."



Read more...

BulletMagnet, I suggest you get in contact with the CBC *ASAP* and give them what you know.


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## HItorMiss

Havok

This is already in the works many members of Charles that are in Canada are already trying to get in touch with the media, Many of us though are still serving and thus must go thru offical channels and get permission to speak on something like this.


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## George Wallace

Here are links to the original releases here on army.ca, as told by people who were there.  

WO Richard Nolan RCR, WO Frank Mellish RCR, Sgt Shane Stachnik 2 CER, Pte Jonathan Cushley RCR- 03 Sep 06 

Battle of Panjwai , Legion Article


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## The Bread Guy

Attached is a copy of the initial report on Wikileaks mentioned in media accounts.

Thanks bulletmagnet et. al. for sharing the reality - looking forward to seeing more of this side of the story as follow-up coverage.  It can be painful reliving such events, so an extra helping of thanks for going over it one more time for this.


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## tomahawk6

The problem is WikiLeaks has already doctored the attack video and who is to say they havent doctored these files to support their agenda. Most of these files are similar to police files or raw intel which could be considered to be unsubstantiated. The ISI is widely considered to be behind the taliban but there isnt a smoking gun at least to my knowledge.


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## The Bread Guy

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> .... Most of these files are similar to police files or raw intel which could be considered to be unsubstantiated ....


I'm happy to hear from others who may have some direct knowledge they can share, but from what I read of those who should know, these individual reports are also the "first draft" of the events they describe.  We all know how different the first version of a story can be compared to the version we see after cooler heads have prevailed and sorted out all the information.


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## Hawk

I just went to the cbc site to see what their loyal followers have to say. They seem to think, at least a lot of them, that the leaked documents have to be gospel. I wish - oh never mind - I'll keep my opinions of cbc followers, including, I'm embarrassed to say, members of my own family. to myself. I don't know why I ever go to their site. It just makes me mad. I'd suggest you ones who were there would go in and tell them, but they wouldn't believe you, anyway.

Hawk


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## George Wallace

Hawk

That is about it.  Many on those sites making comments are paranoid conspiracy nuts.  They wouldn’t believe the truth if it hit them in the face.

As for Wikileaks, the owner is a 5th Columnist in my eyes, leaking sensitive documents in time of war in a one-side exposé.  Are there any Taliban documents to give a truly balanced perspective?  Not anywhere to be seen.  We all know what kind of atrocities they have carried out in recent history.  What we are seeing is the MSM playing into the enemy’s hands, undermining all that we have achieved.  As we have several people on this site who where actually there, we know that at least some of these leaked documents are false.


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## Newt

Hawk said:
			
		

> I just went to the cbc site to see what their loyal followers have to say. They seem to think, at least a lot of them, that the leaked documents have to be gospel. I wish - oh never mind - I'll keep my opinions of cbc followers, including, I'm embarrassed to say, members of my own family. to myself. I don't know why I ever go to their site. It just makes me mad. I'd suggest you ones who were there would go in and tell them, but they wouldn't believe you, anyway.
> 
> Hawk



Nothing raises my blood pressure more than reading the comments on CBC articles. 

In the civilian world I work in records and information management, and this wikileaks business is a perfect example of people making decisions based on the content of a document without fully examining the context of the document. I work hard educating my staff to avoid such pitfalls, and it frustrates me to see other people fall into it.


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## Wookilar

George, I'm not sure I would call this report false....wrong yes, but not "false" in a dishonest way (how it is being perceived by the tinfoil hat brigade is much different). Now, I'm no Int god, but the report in question seems to be making a giant leap in assuming the GBU was the cause of death.  
Seems like lazy intelligence gathering to me.

Wouldn't the coronor's report have more weight for cause of death than an Int Sum written by someone that wasn't even there? 

Wook


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## The Bread Guy

Wookilar said:
			
		

> George, I'm not sure I would call this report false....wrong yes, but not "false" in a dishonest way (how it is being perceived by the tinfoil hat brigade is much different). Now, I'm no Int god, but *the report in question seems to be making a giant leap in assuming the GBU was the cause of death* ....


Exactly - correlation =/= causality:


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## George Wallace

Wookilar

In a way you are right.  It in all likelihood is a report with third or fourth hand information, done up in a very hasty and brief fashion.  Something to the extent accounting for the facts that a NATO aircraft dropped a bomb (no mention that it was a dud) and that four Canadians were killed and several wounded.  In a sense those facts are correct, but in reality their breviety give a completely false picture of what happened.


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## The Bread Guy

George Wallace said:
			
		

> In a sense those facts are correct, but in reality their breviety give a completely false picture of what happened.


Not to mention someone classifying the document as a "friendly fire/blue-blue" report.


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## Old Sweat

In my opinion the news story is based on a reading of the entry by someone who is not familiar with sitrepspeak. I have had considerable experience, albeit quite a long time ago, working in a formation headquarters in Germany as a watchkeeper on the brigade command net and an outstation on the division command net.

What we have is an entry that has combined and condensed quite a bit of information into a short synopsis. It is normal to end such entries with a report on casualties, without implying that they are the result of any one incident. (I have read literally hundreds of war diary entries, sitreps etc from both World Wars and the Boer War, and they all more or less follow the same format.)


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## George Wallace

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> Not to mention someone classifying the document as a "friendly fire/blue-blue" report.



That is the real kicker, and an assumption that someone made without 'all' the facts, no doubt due to the brevity of the report they were looking at.


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## medicineman

The way the document is written could make someone infer, especially if they had an agenda, that the casualties were the result of the bomb.   We kow, not just from first hand accounts, but in general that contact reps read like this - Troops taking lots of fire from area X, Air support called in, building with bad guys partially demolished, net result of contact was X number CDN KIA and WIA.  I don't see anything that reads "Bomb dropped on building, oops, blowed up good guys".  Like I mentioned in the other thread about this and was hinted to earlier here, this does have a bit of a ring of info/disinfo ops...a hell of a way for the bad guys or their puppet masters to breed insecurity on the home front.  If you can't kill them on the battlefield, kill their public will to go on from the other end.  And if it wasn't from the bad guys, well either way, it's a big coup for them anyway.

MM


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## Kat Stevens

40below said:
			
		

> Fantastic analysis, George, your usual standard. The thread is richer for your contribution.
> 
> _"Frank was standing on one side of Sergeant Major Barnes and Will Cushley was standing behind him, behind what -- I don't know what the military calls it but -- what we'd call a front-end motor, and the Taliban insurgent or whatever you want to call them popped up out of a building and fired a 50-cal rifle at it and the schrapnel killed both Frank and Will Cushley._
> 
> Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/Canadian+deaths+have+been+friendly+fire+WikiLeaks+file/3325426/story.html#ixzz0usrP7XlD
> 
> If you are unfamiliar with how 'bombs' work, PM me, I'll try to explain.



Could you CC me that info?  I've never seen an explosion, have no knowledge of explosives or volatile substances, and could really benefit from your clearly superior knowledge in that regard.


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## Wookilar

You have to wonder what got inside the head of the young SPC that is suspected of being the source. Some interesting comments over on The Beast about whether he had help or not.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-25/wikileaks-afghan-files-did-accused-leaker-bradley-manning-act-alone/
(not that the beast is the epitome of journalistic integrity or anything, but certainly no worse than the CBC  ;D)

Wook


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## ModlrMike

George Wallace said:
			
		

> That is the real kicker, and an assumption that someone made without 'all' the facts, no doubt due to the brevity of the report they were looking at.



Exactly, George.

I've looked at several reports of activity I am personally familiar with, and they're almost all just as succinct. They're equally ambiguous if you don't have special knowledge of the event. Many of the reports are "first comment" and these are the ones the media seem to be focusing on, not the more detailed and complete reports.


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## George Wallace

I wonder how long Julian Assange is going to be allowed to remain a free man?  What he has gone and done now, is cross a very fine line.  I am sure his Wikileaks will soon be closed down, and his finding himself jailed.


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## Wookilar

I do not see that happening. Different organizations have tried since he started up. The screaming of "censorship" would go arounf the planet pretty quick.

Besides, there will always be some ass-clown with an ISP that will host another ass-clown.

Wook


----------



## George Wallace

I'm thinking "the National Security Act" or whatever the US and UK have to protect State Secrets.  He has crossed the line in releasing secret documents that can "embarrass" or "do harm" to the governments of the US and UK.  These maters are not usually taken lightly.  I don’t think they would go so far as to try him for treason, but they may try to charge him with something close to it.


----------



## The Bread Guy

George Wallace said:
			
		

> I'm thinking "the National Security Act" or whatever the US and UK have to protect State Secrets.  He has crossed the line in releasing secret documents that can "embarrass" or "do harm" to the governments of the US and UK.  These maters are not usually taken lightly.  I don’t think they would go so far as to try him for treason, but they may try to charge him with something close to it.


Legal-beagle question:  if the servers where the info is contained aren't in the US or UK, can this fly?  

Then again, maybe he can visit the areas where anyone who's listed on these reports talking to ISAF has been killed to share his philosophy  >


----------



## Redeye

I have hard time believing that, actually.  I doubt he'll wind up in any sort of detention.  As for the site, it'll likely not go anywhere, either.  And even if it did, it has mirrors everywhere, and any of the info put out on it has been copied and stored all over the place - if it disappeared, a replacement would likely appear very quickly.



			
				George Wallace said:
			
		

> I wonder how long Julian Assange is going to be allowed to remain a free man?  What he has gone and done now, is cross a very fine line.  I am sure his Wikileaks will soon be closed down, and his finding himself jailed.


----------



## George Wallace

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> Legal-beagle question:  if the servers where the info is contained aren't in the US or UK, can this fly?



He did make a public appearance to announce these 'facts':


> WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange speaks during a press conference in London, 26 Jul 2010. Assange said he believes there is evidence of war crimes in the thousands of pages of leaked U.S. military documents.



LINK


> WikiLeaks is a website that posts formerly secret documents online in what its members say is the pursuit of transparency and accountability.  Its release of more than 75,000 U.S. Army and Marine Corps documents chronicling six years of events in Afghanistan has angered officials in Washington, Britain and Pakistan
> 
> The WikiLeaks website says the organization began as a dialogue between activists who wanted to alleviate suffering.  It says the organization champions "principled leaking."
> 
> Since 2007 WikiLeaks has posted thousands of documents on the internet.  Founder Julian Assange sees himself as an information activist whose main goal is to get information into the public domain.  He says he has a small, overworked staff, about 800 part time workers and thousands of supporters.
> 
> "I suppose our greatest fear is we will be too successful too fast, and we will not be able to do justice to the material we are getting in fast enough," said Assange.  "That is our greatest problem at the moment."
> 
> WikiLeaks is non-profit and Assange says during the past few months there has been tremendous financial support.
> 
> "We have raised a million dollars from the general public.  As a result we are enabled to have a sort of fierce independence that larger organizations find more difficult.  That said, of course, we are also immediately accountable to the public because that is where our money comes from, directly from the public, not from advertisers or foundations," said Assange.
> 
> Simon Schneider, who runs a competition to find new internet technology to improve global security, says WikiLeaks main strength is protecting its sources.
> 
> "The fact that it is so controversial and the fact that so many people talk about it tells me that WikiLeaks touches on a very, very important point," said Schneider.  "And I think that this discussion between what should be private and what should be public touches a lot of peoples nerves, and I think it is important that we talk about it."
> 
> But former intelligence analyst Bob Ayers is not convinced WikiLeaks is a force for good.
> 
> "The fact that we have a bunch of liberal amateurs trying to do intelligence assessments of material does not give me a strong feeling of confidence," said Ayers.
> 
> Ayers cites WikiLeaks most recent revelations, the release of more than 75,000 U.S. military documents relating to Afghanistan.
> 
> "The information that was released is not a threat to the United States per se," said Ayers.  "It has the potential to be a threat to combatants that are fighting in the area, it has the potential to destabilize the trilateral relationships between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the U.S.  And it has the potential to place the intelligence community at some level of risk if their sources are being compromised publicly."
> 
> WikiLeaks founder Assange says his organization has a harm-minimization process to identify, redact or withhold anything that might hurt a source or anyone involved in the documents.  Assange says for that reason, they did not release more than 15,000 Afghanistan-related documents, and he says because what they did make public was seven months old, he believed it contained no information that could harm NATO troops.
> 
> Ayers disagrees.  "The fact it is seven months old is immaterial.  It is irrelevant.  They are not going to change their patrolling patterns in seven months, they are still going to patrol the same way.  So now what you have done is you have informed the enemy of information that can assist them in planning how to attack NATO forces in Afghanistan when they are on patrol," said Ayers.
> 
> Ayers believes the American government will have to do something about WikiLeaks.  Under U.S. law it is illegal to disclose classified information.
> 
> "There is a real dilemma here as to how to deal with a site like WikiLeaks," said Ayers.  "Are they acting in the public good?  Are they acting sensationally? Are they endangering the public good?  Are they endangering lives by their actions?  And those are things that I think we will still see addressed and sorted out over the next six months or so."
> 
> To thwart censorship, WikiLeaks released the leaked documents in three jurisdictions, the United States, Germany and Great Britain.


========================================================================

Who is really providing the "financial support"?


----------



## The Bread Guy

This, via Canadian Press, from former CDS Rick Hillier:


> .... Hillier says there were more than 1,000 Canadian soldiers involved in Operation Medusa, and hundreds of witnesses who saw precisely what happened, and the American account is simply incorrect.
> 
> He says it's a cardinal rule among soldiers in the field to take every piece of information with a grain of salt, because it's only in the fullness of time that the true picture emerges.
> 
> A source in Washington says the report could be confusing their deaths with a genuine friendly-fire death the following day: Pte. Mark Graham died when Canadian troops in the area were strafed by NATO planes.
> 
> "Somebody wrote a document, obviously, and was wrong in what they wrote," said Hillier, who was conducting interviews Tuesday for The Motorcycle Ride for Dad, a cross-Canada effort to raise money for prostate cancer awareness.
> 
> "We always tried to take with a grain of salt everything we heard, because nothing was ever as good or as bad as you would first hear. We never trusted those first reports, and don't trust them now."
> 
> "We had hundreds of witnesses to all the events that occurred over the days and several weeks there, and sadly, we know from those hundreds of folks who were involved directly, that the lives of those four soldiers were lost because of enemy action, not because of friendly fire."
> 
> Hillier said the documents, which were posted Sunday on the fledgling whistle-blower site Wikileaks, pose a serious problem because they're already forcing the families of Canadian soldiers killed in battle to relive the tragedy ....


----------



## Brutus

There's quite a bunfight going on on cbc.ca under the article 'Military Rejects Wiki leaks' and to a lesser extent, 'Hillier Slams Wiki report'.

I am curious, and I know everyone likes their PerSec, but is anyone on this forum also one of the sane fellows saying their was no cover-up?


----------



## Nostix

I'm no doctor, but I'm fairly certain if I read much more of CBC in the next few days I'm going to burst a blood vessel and stroke out.


----------



## OldSolduer

Brutus said:
			
		

> There's quite a bunfight going on on cbc.ca under the article 'Military Rejects Wiki leaks' and to a lesser extent, 'Hillier Slams Wiki report'.
> 
> I am curious, and I know everyone likes their PerSec, but is anyone on this forum also one of the sane fellows saying their was no cover-up?



I haven't seen the CBC site, but as the dad of a fallen, and a member, the CF was upfront with us all the way. 

As for the "soldier" who leaked these documents, I can only hope he is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, along with the people who run that organization that publicized the documents.

These people are nothing more than fifth columnists who seek to make money off the misfortune of others. I can only imagine how those parents feel right now.

 :rage:


----------



## Arctic Acorn

The hardest thing to try and convince civilians that just because its on paper this stuff isn't gospel...its what some overworked staff guy transcribed listening to a radio, who may not necessairly be a native english speaker (welcome to NATO).

Ask any civvy to listen to a hockey game on the radio and write down everything that they hear. How accurate is that going to be? Now imagine that the announcer is the team captain, trying to play the game, coordinate his players, and describe what they're seeing/doing. 

Oh, yeah...they're also being shot at...in complex terrain...spread out over a wide area...sometimes with other teams in the field, who are trying to do the same bloody thing. 

Confusing? Damn right. Its takes a hell of a lot of effort to sift through the raw reports, and try to piece the facts together. This is as a staff weenie. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to be be the guy who was actually there, and seeing reports coming out that describe the worst day of your life to that point that don't get the facts right.


----------



## Nauticus

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> I haven't seen the CBC site, but as the dad of a fallen, and a member, the CF was upfront with us all the way.
> 
> As for the "soldier" who leaked these documents, I can only hope he is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, along with the people who run that organization that publicized the documents.
> 
> These people are nothing more than fifth columnists who seek to make money off the misfortune of others. I can only imagine how those parents feel right now.
> 
> :rage:


I appreciate the sacrifice your son (or daugher) and your family made, and there is no such thing as giving more to our country.

With that said, and I don't mean to be disrespectful, but the documents leaked were not written by those who posted it. Yes, much of it is classified, and that is illegal, and will be taken care of as required, 

With that said, now that they ARE leaked, who should be at fault for what is written, in this specific case? The person who leaked it? Or the person or organization to wrote it?


----------



## OldSolduer

Nauticus:

Thank you for your kind words.

The "soldier" who leaked it has to be prosecuted. He was entrusted with it and he chose to give it to Wikileaks. He violated a trust.

Second, as far as I'm concerned Wikileaks should prosecuted, knowingly publishing classified material.


----------



## Nauticus

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> Nauticus:
> 
> Thank you for your kind words.
> 
> The "soldier" who leaked it has to be prosecuted. He was entrusted with it and he chose to give it to Wikileaks. He violated a trust.
> 
> Second, as far as I'm concerned Wikileaks should prosecuted, knowingly publishing classified material.


And I agree on both points.

On that, though, I am wondering why the report that suggests our soldiers were the result of friendly fire is obviously wrong. There could be a look into the accuracy of some of these reports.


----------



## ArmyRick

This is one ugly mess.  suggest to people (40 below?) not speculate or make comments unless they know for sure or were there to witness it.


----------



## Michael OLeary

Nauticus said:
			
		

> With that said, now that they ARE leaked, who should be at fault for what is written, in this specific case? The person who leaked it? Or the person or organization to wrote it?





			
				Nauticus said:
			
		

> On that, though, I am wondering why the report that suggests our soldiers were the result of friendly fire is obviously wrong. There could be a look into the accuracy of some of these reports.



It's a question of context for each and every document.

The document suggesting it was friendly fire could have been written from a very specific viewpoint with information available to the writer at that time.  If it was subsequently proven wrong, it is still part of the evolving collection of documents on the incident which leads to the official report that gets issued after all the facts are considered.  Just because an earlier report turns out to be wrong doesn't mean you root out every copy and delete it, it's still part of the process, and how it happened to be created is also worth sturdy to minimize confusion in early reporting of future incidents.

With the dumping of thousands of documents that were never meant to be public, for many reasons including that some may have been from early stages of analysis and investigation and did turn out have wrong conclusions, leading to the uninformed accepting of isolated reports as fact simply because they exist (including dis-proven reports now seen outside of the context of their full evolution), it is the unplanned release of a document that was superseded that is the greater wrong.


----------



## Nauticus

Michael O'Leary said:
			
		

> It's a question of context for each and every document.
> 
> The document suggesting it was friendly fire could have been written from a very specific viewpoint with information available to the writer at that time.  If it was subsequently proven wrong, it is still part of the evolving collection of documents on the incident which leads to the official report that gets issued after all the facts are considered.  Just because an earlier report turns out to be wrong doesn't mean you root out every copy and delete it, it's still part of the process, and how it happened to be created is also worth sturdy to minimize confusion in early reporting of future incidents.
> 
> With the dumping of thousands of documents that were never meant to be public, for many reasons including that some may have been from early stages of analysis and investigation and did turn out have wrong conclusions, leading to the uninformed accepting of isolated reports as fact simply because they exist (including dis-proven reports now seen outside of the context of their full evolution), it is the unplanned release of a document that was superseded that is the greater wrong.



That's fair.

Obviously I'm referring to this specific document, since this thread is about this one document and not the entire leak (there's another thread for that), but yes. Your explanation is fair.

I just hope there's some criminal action taken as a result of all these getting leaked. Treason wouldn't be a bad charge, especially since this isn't the first time the accused has done it, but I doubt such a charge will be laid. I'd love to be proven wrong


----------



## ArmyRick

On a different note but same topic, I read the comments made by people on CBC.ca. Man is there ever alot of conspiracy theorist. Even when people who were there made comments, they were being ignored or discredited.

My beleif is this, there are lots of people with "agendas of their own" that are exploiting this unfortunate incident to spread their own message. that is absolutely unacceptable in my view. 

Lets not forget that it was four brothers that have fallen, and many were there when it happened. 

No conspiracy, no cover up. There never was.


----------



## Retired AF Guy

George Wallace said:
			
		

> I wonder how long Julian Assange is going to be allowed to remain a free man?  What he has gone and done now, is cross a very fine line.  I am sure his Wikileaks will soon be closed down, and his finding himself jailed.



My understanding is that his server is located in Sweden which has very strong laws that protect whistleblowers from revealing their sources. Plus, the fact that the reports were published in three different newspapers, in three different countries, and nothing has been done to shutdown the three sites would suggest that nothing is going to happen. However, if I was Mr. Assange, I would be very careful when making any travel plans in the future.


----------



## Edward Campbell

ArmyRick said:
			
		

> On a different note but same topic, I read the comments made by people on CBC.ca. Man is there ever alot of conspiracy theorist. Even when people who were there made comments, they were being ignored or discredited.
> 
> My beleif is this, there are lots of people with "agendas of their own" that are exploiting this unfortunate incident to spread their own message. that is absolutely unacceptable in my view.
> 
> Lets not forget that it was four brothers that have fallen, and many were there when it happened.
> 
> No conspiracy, no cover up. There never was.




So many people have a real *need* to find some way to validate their ingrained anti-American and, consequentially, anti-war (any war in which the US is involved?) feelings. This erroneous report provides them with a 'hook' upon which they can hang those feelings.

Despite all the red T-shirts and bumper stickers, the "support" for the troops is very, very shallow - wide, perhaps, but not deep. Our four friends, comrades-in-arms, members of our regimental families, etc are lost and forgotten n the firestorm of righteous indignation that has been ignited by an act of journalistic vandalism. The same applies to the nearly 150 others - they have become _inconvenient truths_ in an ideological debate.


----------



## paffomaybe

Perhaps the source of the story mixed up Tarnak Farms with the 2006 incident?  Wouldn't be the first time a civilian got military-related facts just plain wrong.


----------



## Jammer

No.
Look up the incident. Tarnak farms happened in 2002.


----------



## The Bread Guy

Michael O'Leary said:
			
		

> It's a question of *context* for each and every document.



Zackly!  Best summary I've seen today about this issue is here via _The Atlantic_:


> .... It's like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle. You maybe have 200 pieces of the puzzle. The first thing you don't know is, is this a 500-piece or 1,000-piece puzzle? And then with the 200 pieces you have, maybe half of them don't belong to this puzzle at all. They're in the wrong box. And then every hour or so, someone comes along and dumps 10 more pieces on your desk -- and nine of them aren't even part of it ....


----------



## paffomaybe

Jammer said:
			
		

> No.
> Look up the incident. Tarnak farms happened in 2002.



I know.  I meant mixing up the 4 friendly fire deaths in 2002 with the 4 in Panjwaii 2006.  Same number; mixed up dates, mixed up reasons.  Why attribute to malice something that could be explained by stupidity?  (Understanding that stupid malice is always a possibility.)


----------



## The Bread Guy

.... via Juliet O'Neill of Postmedia News, shared in accordance with the "fair dealing" provisions, Section 29, of the _Copyright Act._ - highlights mine:


> A WikiLeaks document categorizing the deaths of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan on Sept. 3, 2006 as a "friendly fire" incident has been discounted by witnesses and the public record, supporting the Defence Department's finding Tuesday that the leaked military document is "obviously incorrect."
> 
> Survivors of the battle say there was friendly fire in the form of a one-tonne bomb dropped by coalition aircraft through Canadian lines during Charles Company's intense firefight that day at the epicentre of the Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan.
> 
> But it has previously been documented the bomb did not explode, and the Canadians were killed by grenades, rifle fire and rockets from Taliban insurgents who surrounded them on three sides, hiding in trenches and fortified buildings.
> 
> Military blogs and Twitter postings Tuesday contained first-hand statements from some of the 50 or so Canadians who were at the scene, asserting the American operations report released by the website WikiLeaks wrongly categorizes the casualties as "friendly fire, blue-blue."
> 
> "I was there and our boys were not killed by friendly fire," Corp. Jody Mitic wrote on Twitter. "Ask anyone from Charlie Company. Friendly fire my ass . . ." _(link to Mitic Twitter post)_
> 
> Mitic was a sniper who lost both legs when he stepped on a land mine during another mission in Afghanistan in January, 2007; he has since made a name for himself as an athlete.
> 
> *Lt. Col. Norbert Cyr, a Department of National Defence official, told Postmedia News the document drafted by a U.S. unit and released by WikiLeaks appears to be an authentic military situation report of the events in "real time" with an erroneous heading of friendly fire.
> 
> "It is a mistake," he said, adding the department is looking into whether it was later corrected.*
> 
> The Defence Department delayed characterizing the report when it first came out because officials wanted to try to get to the bottom of it. They are still waiting for answers to queries about the source of the report, listed as 205th Regional Corps Assist Group.
> 
> The 205th is the Afghanistan military unit that American, Canadian and other coalition forces train and mentor.
> 
> The date, time, operations, and casualties listed in the report match up to the fight in which the four Canadians were killed.
> 
> *One soldier who was at the scene wrote on a military blog about how he was almost killed during the Taliban ambush and treated Shane Stachnik — an engineer sargeant who died — and others in a vehicle that had been hit by Taliban fire. The bomb was a dud, causing the commander to redeploy his troops, he wrote.*
> 
> A 2007 account of the battle in Legion Magazine by Adam Day tells how "there was little left to do but retreat" after the errant bomb landed in front of the Canadians during hours of fighting in which "the radios were full of screaming voices, some calling for medics, some just looking for help."
> 
> Capt. Derek Wessan radioed in after the bomb landed, the Legion account says. "We've gotta get the f—k out of here. And then we've gotta blow this place up."
> 
> *Cyr said any suggestion the American report is accurate in its use of the term "friendly fire", and that Canada tried to cover it up, "is ludicrous."
> 
> "There were so many witnesses that it never could have been hidden," Cyr said. "And there's no reason to hide it."*



I'm guessing the word of people who were there, and a military official saying it was a mistake aren't going to be enough for the nay-sayers, but there it is.


----------



## Dog Walker

If the media wants to better understand these documents they should first look at how they themselves conduct their business. 

When a major news story breaks, the media receives reports from many sources and then rushes to get the information on the air or in print as soon as possible, because they all want to be the first. Those first news stories always contain incomplete information, and errors both in fact and in context, or are just plain wrong. Sometimes the media will tell the public that these are raw reports that have not being confirmed, but not always. Stories are updated and corrected as more verified information becomes available. However, viewers who only saw the first reports and not the updated or corrected reports are left with the wrong impressions. 

I suspect that in the military, the early or raw reports are just filed away and forgotten about until some idiot finds them and thinks that he has found evidence of a great conspiracy or cover-up.


----------



## aegishjalmar

George Wallace said:
			
		

> I wonder how long Julian Assange is going to be allowed to remain a free man?  What he has gone and done now, is cross a very fine line.  I am sure his Wikileaks will soon be closed down, and his finding himself jailed.



The publication of the documents is legal because the Wikileaks\Julian Assange did not solicit the documents. Julian Assange never asked anyone to get him the secrets so he could publish them, as they were provided to him anonymously. The person who provided the leaked documents can be charged, but Julian Assange hasn't done anything which he could be charged for.


----------



## The Bread Guy

Dog Walker said:
			
		

> I suspect that in the military, the early or raw reports are just filed away and forgotten about until some idiot finds them and thinks that he has found evidence of a great conspiracy or cover-up.


Or until they're corrected.  Gotta wonder how many folks have time to look through the 92K reports to find any updates of earlier ones (or whether those updates have been shared by the leaker?).

As for the "first, fragmentary, far-from-full-picture report" nature of these documents, here's something from an embeded blogger/journalist going over what he saw, compared to what the reports showed:


> Echo company got into a gunfight last Aug. 25 in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. You'll learn that by reading the report found in WikiLeaks's database of Afghan war documents released on Sunday night. You'll learn that, after a chase, the Marines killed one insurgent. You'll learn that the insurgents supposedly fled and that the troops decided to stay the night in the area in case the militants returned.
> 
> What you won't learn is that a Marine sniper team sparked the shoot-out with a surprise assault on the insurgents; that every member of that team was nearly killed in the battle; or that the incident would kick off a three-day siege in which the Taliban nearly surrounded the Echo company squad.
> 
> You also won't learn that, in the midst of this battle, British and Afghan troops waged a more gentle counterinsurgency nearby, as they sat cross-legged under shady patches of farmland and talked with village elders. I know this because I was there with Echo company, reporting for Wired magazine.
> 
> (....)
> 
> Any time a signal gets compressed, information is lost. Think about the difference in sound quality between a live rock show and an MP3. Think about a news report of a political rally, and the feeling of actually being there.
> 
> These field reports are no different. The military needs a system that better captures the entirety of the Afghan campaign. The rest of us should be careful about putting too much stock in the WikiLeaks documents.


----------



## danchapps

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> One soldier who was at the scene wrote on a military blog about how he was almost killed during the Taliban ambush and treated Shane Stachnik — an engineer sargeant who died — and others in a vehicle that had been hit by Taliban fire. The bomb was a dud, causing the commander to redeploy his troops, he wrote.



I wonder if the military blog they are reffering to is this one. Another reminder about watching what we say I guess. This thread seems to be a prime example of self control even when we just want to rant. Thank you to those that set the record straight on the subject, and here's to hoping the tin hat brigage has enough sense to listen for once.


----------



## George Wallace

aegishjalmar said:
			
		

> The publication of the documents is legal because the Wikileaks\Julian Assange did not solicit the documents. Julian Assange never asked anyone to get him the secrets so he could publish them, as they were provided to him anonymously. The person who provided the leaked documents can be charged, but Julian Assange hasn't done anything which he could be charged for.



I don't think you understand the gravity of what he has done, nor the laws that he has broken.  Your conception that someone else passed him "Secret" documents absolves him of any responsibility and charges under the Law, are totally out to lunch.  It doesn't matter who has possession of these documents, if they are not properly protected it is a chargable offence.

Let's try something with your statement, by changing a few words:



			
				aegishjalmar said:
			
		

> The possession and sale  of the items is legal because the Wikileaks\Julian Assange did not solicit the items. Julian Assange never asked anyone to get him the items so he could sell them, as they were provided to him anonymously. The person who stole the items can be charged, but Julian Assange hasn't done anything which he could be charged for.



It doesn't pass the litmus test.  Julian Assange was knowingly in possession of stolen items.  He is as guilty as the person who stole them and gave them to him.  That is the Law.


----------



## HItorMiss

Chap

The Military Blog is this one, those were my comments and I stand by them as everything I said was already a matter of public record as detailed in the Legion magazine in an interview I was ordered to give by my CoC at the time. I stand by those comments then and now.

Any questions?


----------



## danchapps

Absolutely no questions whatsoever. I thought that with how this thread has progressed, this was a great example of how we govern ourselves when there is a media pressence observing our interactions. Again, I thank and commend you for sticking to them as they are the truth. It is unfortunate that this whole issue has had to come up again as I'm sure it is bringing back many memories that some may or may not wish to bring back. What you and the rest of Charlie Company did that day will always have a place in history, and it drives me insane when some tin hatter tries to muddy that.

I will be the first to say I was not there, so I can not relate to how those that were feel. However I'm sure my disgust is well overshodowed by those more in the know.

On a side note,  I saw a report on the news last night that showed the American PFC that smuggled the documents out of the secure areas and released them to Wikileaks. Apparently he was already in military detention as of the time that story hit the air, so there is some good news there. They did not mention what charges he was faces, but I'm hoping they throw several volumes of the book at him.


----------



## aegishjalmar

George Wallace said:
			
		

> I don't think you understand the gravity of what he has done, nor the laws that he has broken.  Your conception that someone else passed him "Secret" documents absolves him of any responsibility and charges under the Law, are totally out to lunch.  It doesn't matter who has possession of these documents, if they are not properly protected it is a chargable offence.
> 
> Let's try something with your statement, by changing a few words:
> 
> It doesn't pass the litmus test.  Julian Assange was knowingly in possession of stolen items.  He is as guilty as the person who stole them and gave them to him.  That is the Law.



I seemed to have missed the part in all of this where Mr. Assange sold these stories for profit. I didn't realize that Wikileaks was in the business of selling secrets to the highest bidders. 

All joking aside, please do enlighten me. Name me the specific laws he has broken and provide me evidence that can stick to a conviction. Mr. Assange and his organization has been publishing leaked documents from other whistleblowers since 2006, so if he were guilty of anything, they would have slammed him by now. I don't even agree with what he has done, but legally, he appears to be almost untouchable. They WILL find the original source of the leak, there is no doubt about that, and that person will be brought to trial. Mr. Assange will remain as free as a bird and will keep doing what he is doing for a very long time.


----------



## ModlrMike

aegishjalmar said:
			
		

> All joking aside, please do enlighten me. Name me the specific laws he has broken and provide me evidence that can stick to a conviction.



Are you at all familiar with the concept of possession of stolen property?  :


----------



## George Wallace

aegishjalmar said:
			
		

> I seemed to have missed the part in all of this where Mr. Assange sold these stories for profit. I didn't realize that Wikileaks was in the business of selling secrets to the highest bidders.



There is no need to sell for a profit, only to be in possession of stolen property.  



			
				aegishjalmar said:
			
		

> All joking aside, please do enlighten me. Name me the specific laws he has broken and provide me evidence that can stick to a conviction. Mr. Assange and his organization has been publishing leaked documents from other whistleblowers since 2006, so if he were guilty of anything, they would have slammed him by now. I don't even agree with what he has done, but legally, he appears to be almost untouchable. They WILL find the original source of the leak, there is no doubt about that, and that person will be brought to trial. Mr. Assange will remain as free as a bird and will keep doing what he is doing for a very long time.



He may have been skating on thin ice before, with whistle blowing using documents from other Government Agencies, but now he is dealing with documents that fall under National Defence and National Security.  As was mentioned in the article:


LINK


> "The fact that it is so controversial and the fact that so many people talk about it tells me that WikiLeaks touches on a very, very important point," said Schneider.  "And I think that this discussion between what should be private and what should be public touches a lot of peoples nerves, and I think it is important that we talk about it."
> 
> But former intelligence analyst Bob Ayers is not convinced WikiLeaks is a force for good.
> 
> "The fact that we have a bunch of liberal amateurs trying to do intelligence assessments of material does not give me a strong feeling of confidence," said Ayers.
> 
> Ayers cites WikiLeaks most recent revelations, the release of more than 75,000 U.S. military documents relating to Afghanistan.
> 
> "The information that was released is not a threat to the United States per se," said Ayers.  "It has the potential to be a threat to combatants that are fighting in the area, it has the potential to destabilize the trilateral relationships between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the U.S.  And it has the potential to place the intelligence community at some level of risk if their sources are being compromised publicly."
> 
> WikiLeaks founder Assange says his organization has a harm-minimization process to identify, redact or withhold anything that might hurt a source or anyone involved in the documents.  Assange says for that reason, they did not release more than 15,000 Afghanistan-related documents, and he says because what they did make public was seven months old, he believed it contained no information that could harm NATO troops.
> 
> Ayers disagrees.  "The fact it is seven months old is immaterial.  It is irrelevant.  They are not going to change their patrolling patterns in seven months, they are still going to patrol the same way.  So now what you have done is you have informed the enemy of information that can assist them in planning how to attack NATO forces in Afghanistan when they are on patrol," said Ayers.
> 
> Ayers believes the American government will have to do something about WikiLeaks.  Under U.S. law it is illegal to disclose classified information.
> 
> "There is a real dilemma here as to how to deal with a site like WikiLeaks," said Ayers.  "Are they acting in the public good?  Are they acting sensationally? Are they endangering the public good?  Are they endangering lives by their actions?  And those are things that I think we will still see addressed and sorted out over the next six months or so."
> 
> To thwart censorship, WikiLeaks released the leaked documents in three jurisdictions, the United States, Germany and Great Britain.


----------



## Sig_Des

aegishjalmar said:
			
		

> All joking aside, please do enlighten me. Name me the specific laws he has broken and provide me evidence that can stick to a conviction. Mr. Assange and his organization has been publishing leaked documents *from other whistleblowers since 2006*, so if he were guilty of anything, they would have slammed him by now. I don't even agree with what he has done, but legally, he appears to be almost untouchable. They WILL find the original source of the leak, there is no doubt about that, and that person will be brought to trial. Mr. Assange will remain as free as a bird and will keep doing what he is doing for a very long time.



You give the source of this leak way too much credit by lumping them in with "whistleblowers".

The fact is, someone who had access to all these secure documents would know about security classifications, the control of such, and ramifications of releasing these documents.

If he/she wanted to raise concern about wrondoings that occured (the definition of a whistleblower) there are many internal investigative and IG departments they could have gone too. They chose to go to an organization who's editor-in-chief self-admittedly does not care about "national-security".

I don't know what will happen to Assange, but whomever leaked the documents should, in my personal opinion, have certain parts of their anatomy put into a cross-cut shredder.


----------



## aegishjalmar

ModlrMike said:
			
		

> Are you at all familiar with the concept of possession of stolen property?  :



Alright, well if you are talking US law here, are you at all familiar with the concept of the First Amendment? Particularly the First Amendment’s free-press protection shields which legally protect those who publish classified documents obtained by others? 

You can thank the US Supreme Court for setting that precedent after the leak of the "Pentagon Papers".

Look, I am not getting into a war of words with anyone here, I am merely stating that Julian Assange will never see prison time over this leak. He may not want to come to the US anytime soon, though, because I bet some people would want to question him regarding his role in obtaining the information (spoiler alert: There was none), but jail time? Nope.


----------



## Dog Walker

Warning – Reading the following will be bad for your blood pressure!

NDP wants proof Taliban killed Canadians
Last Updated: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 | 4:22 PM NT 

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2010/07/28/nl-harris-wikileaks-728.html?ref=rss

 The federal NDP is calling on the Canadian government to prove that four Canadian soldiers who died in Afghanistan in 2006 were killed by enemy fire rather than a U.S. bomb.
NDP defence critic Jack Harris reacted Tuesday to leaked U.S. military documents suggesting the Canadians were killed by friendly fire.
He said the Canadian military must produce evidence to prove its assertion to Canadians that the soldiers were shot by insurgents
"They deserve the truth. They deserve to know what actually happened and if there's any doubt cast by this and I think there is some doubt because those two stories cannot live together," said Harris, a member of Parliament who represents the riding of St. John's East.
One of the thousands of U.S. military documents that were posted on a website called WikiLeaks is raising questions about how a soldier from eastern Newfoundland was killed.

 Warrant Officer Richard Nolan,39, died in Afghanistan in 2006. He was born in Mount Pearl, a city near St. John's
Days after his death, Canadian military officials said Nolan was one of four soldiers killed by the Taliban.
The military's Maple Leaf newsletter also said on Sept. 13, 2006, that "four soldiers were killed Sept. 3 during Operation MEDUSA, a significant combined effort between the Afghan National Security Forces, Canada and other NATO partners in the International Security Assistance Force as they fought to drive Taliban fighters from a region west of Kandahar city."
Warrant Officer Frank Mellish of P.E.I. and Nova Scotia, Sgt. Shane Stachnik of Alberta and Pte. William Cushley of Ontario were the other three soldiers who died that day.
Despite what the leaked U.S. documents say, the Canadian military is standing by its assertion that insurgents killed the four Canadian soldiers in 2006.
"There has to be further verification, not just assurances that have been made already that what we said before was in fact the truth," Harris said Tuesday.


----------



## The Bread Guy

WTF?

Let's see, we have eyewitness accounts, and we have journalists who've spoken to eyewitnesses.  I guess the eyewitnesses and the journalists a fascist cabal of some sort covering up some crime of the U.S., right? :  Yet another member of the "opposition only for the sake of opposition" club  

Contact co-ordinates for MP Jack Harris (remember, snail mail to MPs in Ottawa doesn't need a stamp) if you want to share your thoughts:

*Contact
Constituency Office
342 Freshwater Road
St. John’s , NL A1B 1C2
Telephone: 709-772-7171

Parliament Hill Office
House of Commons
Ottawa ON K1A 0A6
Telephone:613-996-7269
Harris.J@parl.gc.ca*

and for his boss Jack Layton:

*Parliament Hill:
634-C Centre Block, House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
Tel: (613) 947-0867
Fax: (613) 947-0868
laytoj@parl.gc.ca

Constituency:
221 Broadview Avenue, Suite 100
Toronto, ON M4M 2G3
Tel: (416) 405-8914
Fax: (416) 405-8918
info@jacklayton.ca *

_- edited for grammar fix -_


----------



## Fusaki

I was there.  My LAV CASEVACed Bulletmagnet after he was hit by the same shrap that got Mellish and Cushley.  It was a Taliban Spig 9, not friendly fire.

Jack Harris is a tool.


----------



## The Bread Guy

Wonderbread said:
			
		

> Jack Harris is a tool.


Hmmm, there might be a t-shirt graphic in there somewhere...  ;D


----------



## ArmyRick

This absolutely boils my blood. What do these people need? Not to mention on CBC.ca there are also a large number of "conspiracy theorist".

Enough. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quaks like a duck, eats like a duck, swims like a duck, craps like a duck, then its a bloody duck!!!

It seems some of the comments and the political grandstanding is uncalled for. In the memories of our fallen comrades, I see this shamefull conduct and remarks. This really disturbs me.


----------



## RCR Grunt

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> Hmmm, there might be a t-shirt graphic in there somewhere...  ;D



I know an EXCELLENT custom t-shirt company out of Oakville.  Fast and friendly, a pleasure to work with.  Entripy has helped me in the past with shirts for courses I've been on.  Just send them the graphic, tell them what colour shirt and your in T-shirts within a week.

I was also present on 03SEP06, and for 5 minutes or so I was the most forward deployed Charles company element.  RPG and SPG-9 fire are to blame for the loss of our friends, not friendly fire.

Jack Harris is a tool.


ETA:  Milnews, thanks for the contact coords ... I'm on leave, I will be in touch.

Re-ETA:  Nevermind.  After a brief phone call with a comrade, I won't be contacting anybody.... but I'm still pissed!


----------



## HItorMiss

Angry does not begin to cover what I am feeling right now, nor does rage.... Sadly I am not able to do anything beyond what I have done.


Any member of the NDP thats reads this you can all take a long hard suck on my weewee!


----------



## medicineman

I wonder if Mr harris would be willing to consent to being part of my ongoing study I want to publish in the New England Journal to do with CRIS - Cranio-Rectal Insertion Syndrome.  To be honest, there isn't likely enough KY in the world to get his out.

MM


----------



## PuckChaser

Are we, as members of the CF, allowed to contact this MP? I know it wouldn't be prudent to contact the MND on military matters, but this yahoo isn't anywhere close to being in the Chain of Command.


----------



## riggermade

BulletMagnet said:
			
		

> Angry does not begin to cover what I am feeling right now, nor does rage.... Sadly I am not able to do anything beyond what I have done.
> 
> 
> Any member of the NDP thats reads this you can all take a long hard suck on my weewee!



LOL my sentiments exactely...there is a reason I hate the NDP so much


----------



## MarkOttawa

Post at _Unambiguously Ambidextrous_, read the Christie Blatchford piece linked to--devastating:

Leaked AfPak docs: Journalistic ethics? Shmethics! Plus: “Shame on [Canadian] us”–and the NDP
http://unambig.com/leaked-afpak-docs-journalistic-ethics-shmethics-plus-shame-on-canadian-us/

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## The Bread Guy

How's this for a graphic?   ;D


----------



## Hawk

Good graphic! I'm not too worried about what the NDP has to say. They're leader reminds me of a yappie little dog - and should be dealt with with a big boot, or (more humanely) "Ah-h shaddap!!!"

Hawk


----------



## wildman0101

This is in reply to E.R. Campbells post.
E.R. Campbell

Despite all the red T-shirts and bumper stickers, the "support" for the troops is very, very shallow - wide, perhaps, but not deep. Our four friends, comrades-in-arms, members of our regimental families, etc are lost and forgotten n the firestorm of righteous indignation that has been ignited by an act of journalistic vandalism. The same applies to the nearly 150 others - they have become inconvenient truths in an ideological debate.

Dear Sir,
In regard's to your comment about (red friday) red t-shirts's and bumper sticker's.
You are so very  wrong if you think the general public does'nt give a damn. Sir 
you are very mistaken. I'am sure you have heard about The Highway of Hero's,
and here way out in B.C. we sure do give a damn. I know you have lost comrade's, member's
of your Regimental Family, and Spouse's,children,friend's have been devastated when hear-
ing bad new's. In closing. Damn straight we give a damn. And we will never forget the 
sacrifice's and losses our men and women in uniform have made, be it the Boer war,
1st world war,2nd world war,korea,vietnam,peacekeeping,nato,bosnia,rwanda,cyprus,
and many other's. 
So in closing yes "We give a Damn".
Best Regard's,
Scoty B. (AKA the Brat)


----------



## danchapps

Wonderbread said:
			
		

> Jack Harris is a tool.



I'm sorry to correct you here, but where I come from, tools are usefull, and Jack Harris appears not to be. Just sayin'.


----------



## medicineman

PuckChaser said:
			
		

> Are we, as members of the CF, allowed to contact this MP? I know it wouldn't be prudent to contact the MND on military matters, but this yahoo isn't anywhere close to being in the Chain of Command.



You certainly have a right to send a letter to your own MP, regardless of party, as Joe Citizen.  While you're at it, CC Hammer, oops,  Mr. Harris.  Just remember, as I found after writing a similar letter after another outrage, if you're MP is NDP and certainly in this fellow's case, they have firm and fixed beliefs in their policies, but a limp grasp on reality.  Be prepared to smack your head against the wall.   

MM


----------



## armyvern

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> Hmmm, there might be a t-shirt graphic in there somewhere...  ;D



Yep; I can picture it now.

A great big pile of steaming brown stuff named "Wiki-Leaks" ... with a shovel handle holding a "face-blade" piling more on.

What a load of el toro poo-poo. Although - I'm not sure why I'm really surprised at the fact that the Oppostion is, once again, trying to score political points on the memories of our Fallen and the backs of our troops. FFS.


----------



## The Bread Guy

ArmyVern said:
			
		

> I'm not sure why I'm really surprised at the fact that the Oppostion is, once again, trying to score political points on the memories of our Fallen and the backs of our troops.


Not to mention CBC showing the "glasses it wears" when it comes to who to believe:  Wikileaks, people who say the first version MUST be true (in this case, former Canadian and American officers, on "As it Happens"
http://www.cbc.ca/radioshows/AS_IT_HAPPENS/20100726.shtml
http://www.cbc.ca/radioshows/AS_IT_HAPPENS/20100727.shtml ) or those who were there.

But that's not really "news", is it?
http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/18397.0.html


----------



## Old Sweat

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> Not to mention CBC showing the "glasses it wears" when it comes to who to believe:  Wikileaks, people who say the first version MUST be true (in this case, former Canadian and American officers, on "As it Happens"
> http://www.cbc.ca/radioshows/AS_IT_HAPPENS/20100726.shtml
> http://www.cbc.ca/radioshows/AS_IT_HAPPENS/20100727.shtml ) or those who were there.
> 
> But that's not really "news", is it?
> http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/18397.0.html



The second As It Happens segment includes an interview with US Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski. I thought the name was familiar, and please note I did not listen to the segment.

While not authoritative, this source gives some of her background.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janis_Karpinski

Interesting choice of sources, considering the number of retired American officers available.


----------



## The Bread Guy

Old Sweat said:
			
		

> The second As It Happens segment includes an interview with US Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski. I thought the name was familiar, and please note I did not listen to the segment.


The bit I heard on the radio (about 2-3 minutes) had the former General saying, in effect, the very first reports of events tend to be truer and more correct than later ones - sort of an a "counter-Hillier" thing.


----------



## George Wallace

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> The bit I heard on the radio (about 2-3 minutes) had the former General saying, in effect, the very first reports of events tend to be truer and more correct than later ones - sort of an a "counter-Hillier" thing.



 :

So?  When all the dust has settled, those brief snippets of reports trump eye-witness reports of people who were actually there.  

If we were to make up a brief report that Jack Harris is not, nor has he ever been, a member of the NDP and a member of  Parliament; even though people have seen him in these positions, would Wikileaks accept that as trump over the eye-witness accounts of Jack Layton?


----------



## Old Sweat

Now, let's check the sources As It Happens used. One is a retired logistics officer while the other was in the military police. Nothing against either branch, but they are hardly authoritative sources on combat operations. Mind you, this sort of things is in the best traditions of the program. During the build up before operations began in Gulf 1, As It Happens aired a segment on how the US military was incompetent and faced crushing defeat by the Iraquis.


----------



## The Bread Guy

Old Sweat said:
			
		

> Now, let's check the sources As It Happens used. One is a retired logistics officer while the other was in the military police. Nothing against either branch, but they are hardly authoritative sources on combat operations. Mind you, *this sort of things is in the best traditions of the program*. During the build up before operations began in Gulf 1, As It Happens aired a segment on how the US military was incompetent and faced crushing defeat by the Iraquis.


Oh yeah - if you get a call from a producer with "As It Happens", I get the feeling that one should be prepared to be either:
1)  the good guy sharing his/her tale of oppression/chain-pulling by someone or some institution; or
2)  the bad guy someone/institution who will get zero slack for any explanation.


----------



## armyvern

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> The bit I heard on the radio (about 2-3 minutes) had the former General saying, in effect, the very first reports of events tend to be truer and more correct than later ones - sort of an a "counter-Hillier" thing.



Surprised then that noone called the former General who was interviewed on this to point out to him that:

"The very first reports" (& thus the truer version of events) WERE those reports called in by the boots on the ground _as_ it happened.

Some staff officer not directly involved making an assumption that due to an airstrike occuring on another target at roughly the same time our troops took incoming fire from the Talib in a report drafted from the confines of their lovely office elsewhere is actually the report that happened LATER. This SO's linked of two seperate and distinct incidents into one does not for good, factual, accurate or just reporting make ... but, apparently, it makes for good headlines and allows more loons to beak off with their conspiracy theories on CBC and in their comments section. 

BTW Bulletmagnet, visited Frank last month while I was in PEI and left him a drink. Haven't been there since his funeral. It was a day of reflection.


----------



## The Bread Guy

ArmyVern said:
			
		

> Some staff officer not directly involved making an assumption that due to an airstrike occuring on another target at roughly the same time our troops took incoming fire from the Talib in a report drafted from the confines of their lovely office elsewhere is actually the report that happened LATER. This SO's linked of two seperate and distinct incidents into one does not for good, factual, accurate or just reporting make ...


It _could_ also have been just a clerical error/mistake re:  which category of report this became.  THAT's the key question (how did it get classified as such?), not, "is Canada hiding something about this based on this one piece of paper out of millions out of AFG?"  I'm certain those who were there aren't hiding anything or making it up.


----------



## McG

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> The bit I heard on the radio (about 2-3 minutes) had the former General saying, in effect, the very first reports of events tend to be truer and more correct than later ones - sort of an a "counter-Hillier" thing.


I'm not sure how one could believe that the first reports, based on less complete information, could be truer.  My observations match Hillier's - As more information becomes available (from subsequent SITREPS or more detailed post-op reports, the picture of what really happened becomes more clear.  Often, new information will be incompatible with previous HQ interpretations of earlier SITREPS, lower stations will be asked to clarify and a significantly revised understanding of the events is established.

… this challenge of communication is one of the reasons it is so important to trust the soldiers on the ground without second guessing during a fight.

Giving some benefit of the doubt to BGen Karpinski, it may be that she intended to suggest that later reports are more influenced by “messaging” – where, in addition to processing the information, various HQs attempt to add a spin so that desired conclusions will be reached higher (or laterally).

However, even with the messaging, the accumulation of facts does results in progressively more accurate reports and (I suspect) each higher level of HQ is able to see through the messaging of the HQ one lower.

The erroneous blue-on-blue report is just that – erroneous.  There is no sugar-coating of such events, and if it had been a blue-on-blue we (the nation) would have know about it back in Sept ’06.  The facts are that the men were killed by the enemy.


----------



## Dog Walker

A good piece from the Ottawa Citizen

Weak leaks
By Eric Morse, Citizen Special
July 29, 2010 12:21 PM

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Opinion+Weak+leaks/3334740/story.html

For all the uproar he has managed to cause in the past few days, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's behaviour is that of a small boy throwing stinkbombs, for which he could well receive a nasty spanking. 
He seems to be aware of it. Breathless media report that Assange "has no permanent address and travels frequently -- jumping from one friend's place to the next, occasionally disappearing from public view for months at a time, only to reappear in the full glare of the cameras at packed news conferences to discuss his site's latest disclosure." 
He needs to. Whatever attention he has had in the past is nothing compared to what he'll attract after the brouhaha that this week's massive dump of U.S. field-level reports has created. Some of those paying attention are not people or organizations one would wish to stir up in the normal course of events. 
You could even start with the friends and relatives of four Canadian soldiers who died in battle in September 2006, whom a document in the dump wrongly identifies as killed by "friendly fire." That particular piece of paper was blasted all over Canada by a media that for 24 incredible hours seem to have taken it at face value, until it occurred to the Citizen and to the Globe's Christie Blatchford that there were plenty of eyewitnesses who could easily cross-check the story. 
If one bad report does not discredit the whole pile, it at least points up that raw bulk data are never to be trusted without far better editing than this lot has received. But it is the conceit of the age that "citizen journalists" -- including the anonymous volunteers who helped "edit" the heap -- are far more trustworthy than any "mainstream" media (who have an agenda, so it is said) or, it goes without saying, than any elected government, since it is axiomatic these days that governments always lie. 
Governments do sometimes lie, and the mainstream media often do have an agenda, though these days that seems mainly driven by an uncritical desperation for news that too often stifles perspective. And whistleblowers have their place. But the issue of balance remains. 
That is the problem with the "information wants to be free" fetish that the Internet has spawned. So does a plague bacillus, I imagine, but organized society cannot afford either in large doses, or it rapidly ceases to be organized. The oldest social contract is freedom vs. protection, and the Internet has not altered that paradigm one bit. Who will watch the latest self-appointed custodians of freedom? 
Assange claims that this information dump rivals the Pentagon Papers in importance. Apart from inconveniencing U.S.-Afghan-Pakistani relations (admittedly no minor matter), this is nonsense. The Pentagon Papers were a finished policy document, leaked by a senior analyst who had participated in drafting it and who knew exactly the worth of what he had -- as did his chosen recipient, The New York Times. Nothing in the Wikileaks dump comes close to what the Pentagon Papers said about American policy, or mendacity. 
Assange has made other claims: "We have files that concern every country in the world with a population of over one million," he said this week. "Thousands of databases and files about all sorts of countries." 
It's reasonable -- from his point of view -- that he should release this particular lot. It is far more sensational than, say, a similar dump of Russian Federation Security Service files on the brutal North Caucasus counterinsurgency -- if he has anything like that in the first place. He is also playing it smart -- but perhaps not smart enough. 
In the past week Assange has risen from a minor irritant to a major one, and just possibly attained the coveted status of "threat" in a few capitals, not necessarily the ones that spring to mind, on the principle, "if he has that on them, what's he got on us?" He has certainly got the undivided attention of every counterintelligence agency on earth, and many of them play very rough. He will have to accelerate his nomadic existence to avoid that spanking -- which when it comes might well be tipped with any of several interesting substances. 
Heaven knows I wish him no harm, but he has, wittingly or otherwise, made himself a very prominent target. 
Eric Morse is a former Canadian diplomat and is now vice-chair of the Security Studies Committee at the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Edit: To add piece on Julian Assange from PBS News Hour on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az1iMRx6qhc&feature=player_embedded#!


----------



## MarkOttawa

Following up on Mr Morse:

AfPak WikiLeak: Biased, er, exposure?/Dead Afghans Update
http://unambig.com/afpak-wikileak-biased-er-exposure/

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## The Bread Guy

...from an eyewitness who says Wikileaks documents don't come close to telling the whole story:


> .... (journalist/blogger and former embed for Wired.com Noah) Shachtman doesn't think the omissions are intentional. "I think these are really short, really fast, really compressed reports given from a junior officer to a more senior officer."
> 
> Based on the discrepancies between what he experienced and what he found in the report, he explains how he thinks readers should interpret the 92,000 documents.
> 
> "You can read them almost like interoffice memos," says Shachtman. "And we all know interoffice memos don't necessarily tell us what happens a the office."


----------



## The Bread Guy

This from UK's Channel 4 News - highlights mine:


> The Taliban has issued a chilling warning to Afghans, alleged in secret US military files leaked on the internet to have worked as informers for the Nato-led coalition, telling Channel 4 News "US spies" will be hunted down and punished.
> 
> Speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location, Zabihullah Mujahid told Channel 4 News that the insurgent group will investigate the named individuals before deciding on their fate.
> 
> *"We are studying the report,"* he said, confirming that the insurgent group already has access to the 92,000 intelligence documents and field reports.
> 
> "We knew about the spies and people who collaborate with US forces.  *We will investigate through our own secret service whether the people mentioned are really spies working for the US.  If they are US spies, then we know how to punish them."* ....



_(A hat tip to Joshua Foust of Registan.net for this one.)_

Now, it's not impossible the Taliban is just saying this to scare people.  That said, way to help out in helping cause "collateral murder", Wikileaks - hope you're happy.


----------



## OldSolduer

In my opinion Wikileaks and its founder are aiding and abetting a terrorist organization. 
The soldier who leaked these documents should be jailed FOREVER.
 :2c:


----------



## GeorgeD

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/39721/20100730/taliban-warns-informers-talibans-warns-afghans.htm



I havent read any of the files, but it seems logical that this could happen.


----------



## The Bread Guy

...with her latest column here:


> .... The parents all knew how their boys had been killed. They knew because when their sons’ friends were back in Canada, they sought them out, as they always do no matter how excruciating the exercise, to tell them. As Barry Mellish told the CBC, he has probably talked to between 20 and 25 witnesses to his son’s death. “They have nothing to gain by covering it up,” Mr. Mellish said. “The military has nothing to gain by covering it up.”
> 
> (....)
> 
> These were merely soldier witnesses (simple fellows after all, who might be lying or have been lied to, not like those smart reporters in the nation’s capital) and the poor parents of the dead (who as the parents of such simple fellows could be so easily tricked or misled). Plus, their versions of events lined up with how the Canadian Forces and the evil Stephen Harper government had described the four deaths at the time: The cover-up (CTV actually suggested there was a cover-up in its first, newscast-leading report) was still a possibility.
> 
> Thus, the Tuesday evening edition of CBC’s As It Happens. The hosts dutifully gave the disclaimer (yes, witnesses had come forward disputing the document on WikiLeaks; parents had spoken up; the government still insisted there had been no friendly fire), then smarmed, “However, the fact the document even exists raises questions.”
> 
> This is akin to saying, well sure, there is plenty of evidence the Holocaust occurred, and testimony from survivors, but the mere existence of Holocaust deniers raises doubts. Well, no, it doesn’t ....


----------



## Dog Walker

Media conduct questionable in WikiLeaks affair 

BOGDAN KIPLING
Sat, Jul 31 - 7:27 AM

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/1194648.html

If the world were saner, we would know better than to get excited over any orchestrated leak of dark secrets. We would discount Washington’s cathouse promiscuity with the "Top Secret" stamp and mutter something about patients running the insane asylum on reading the Afghanistan papers story the New York Times, the Guardian in London, or Der Spiegel in Germany published last Sunday.
The troika disclosed nothing new about the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban insurgents and Pakistan’s alleged double-dealing.
In that sense, the hot papers are like the CIA microfiche I bought at a National Press Club documents sale some yeas ago. It was an "eyes only" report informing President Eisenhower that George Diefenbaker had won the 1958 election, including the source of the information: "Canadian Press and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation."
Nothing quite so funny and so revealing has come over my transom since then — and that is a pity. Whipping up such froth is fun, and readers love it.
The Afghanistan papers story may be hollow but it is not funny. It raises questions about journalism and concerted political action and which is which. If it is the latter, why not declare it? But if newspapering is still the game, what happened to the abhorrence of being sued?
What I see here is a joke on the news side and severe damage to confidence on the part of America’s allies. Why should Canada’s secret service trust American services to keep shared secrets? And what’s true for Canada is true for all America’s allies in the world.
Why have three serious news organizations decided to lend their simultaneous media power to Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks blog? Mr. Assange is a self-described "madman of hacking." If this is a certificate of maturity, then there is no such thing as recklessness with access where life-and-death decisions are made.
Disapproving or approving of a war is everybody’s right in a free society. But it gives pause that these eminent news organizations agreed to sit on the information — such as it is — until a chap much given to self-promotion was ready to set off his big bang.
Mr. Assange says Americans and all their foreign allies must get out of Afghanistan. Many Americans agree with him — and so do Canadians, Britons, Germans, Poles and others in the vast military alliance fighting al Qaida and the Taliban.
That people in Afghanistan and Pakistan want to see the end of the war is so obvious it is embarrassing to mention it. They are at the receiving end of missiles, bombs, grenades and bullets. They want the shooting to be somewhere else even when they see the war as their own liberation.
Mr. Assange would talk to the Taliban to end the war. He sees the Americans as aggressors and condemns their killing of civilians. He is less outspoken about the murders of innocent people that the Taliban al Qaida commit, but then, the activist crowd regularly hates only one villain.
Seeing as I am talking about a mad world where anything can happen, maybe Mr. Assange is promoting peace with the Taliban for Big Gas and its pipelines.
Ahmed Rashid’s definitive book "Taliban — Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia," put the seed of this idea in my head. The author says his book "has been 21 years in the writing — about as long as I have covered Afghanistan as a reporter."
Washington, he writes, has "strongly backed" Unocal, an American energy company, "to build a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan across Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
He says when the Taliban captured Kabul in September 1996, Unocal executive Chris Taggert "told wire agencies that the pipeline project would be easier to implement" now that the Taliban are in the saddle.
Mr. Rashid reminds us that the State Department announced "within hours" of Kabul’s capture by the Taliban, that the United States would establish diplomatic relations with the new rulers.
Their crimes against Afghan women caused some delays, but diplomacy had to move on — and it did. The Taliban foreign minister talked pipelines in the State Department while President Clinton pounded Osama bin Laden’s camps in his country.
In a mad world, it is easy to imagine that Mr. Assange works for Big Gas and its pipelines and coddles the Taliban as the chaps you can do business with.
Bogdan Kipling is a Canadian journalist in Washington.


----------



## George Wallace

Short of outright branding Julian Assange as a Fifth Columnist:


Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.


WikiLeaks morally guilty in classified documents case: Gates

By Phil Stewart, Reuters 
August 1, 2010 10:02 AM

LINK


WASHINGTON, Aug 1 (Reuters) - WikiLeaks is at least morally guilty over the release of classified U.S. documents on the Afghan war, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday, as investigators broaden their probe of the leak.

The whistle-blowing website published tens of thousands of war records a week ago, a move the Pentagon has said could cost lives and damage the trust of allies by exposing U.S. intelligence gathering methods and names of Afghan contacts.

Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, the top U.S. military officer, appeared on television talk shows renewing those concerns amid fears WikiLeaks may publish more documents.

"My attitude on this is that there are two areas of culpability. One is legal culpability. And that’s up to the Justice Department and others — that’s not my arena," Gates told the ABC News show "This Week with Christiane Amanpour."

"But there’s also a moral culpability. And that’s where I think the verdict is ’guilty’ on WikiLeaks. They have put this out without any regard whatsoever for the consequences."

The release of the classified documents has fanned doubts about President Barack Obama’s strategy to turn the tide in the unpopular war. July was the deadliest month for U.S. forces since the conflict started in 2001.

Mullen, speaking on NBC’s "Meet the Press," called the leak "unprecedented" in its scope and volume.

The U.S. investigation is focusing on Bradley Manning, who worked as an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq, U.S. officials say. Manning is already under arrest and charged with leaking a classified video showing a 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists.

Adrian Lamo, who reported Manning to authorities this year after receiving what appeared to be incriminating messages from him, told Reuters he believed U.S. investigators were also looking at people close to Manning with ties to WikiLeaks.

Lamo said in a telephone interview he told investigators he believed Manning would have needed outside help.

"I didn’t believe he had the technological ... expertise to pull this off by himself," Lamo said.

U.S. officials declined to comment on the investigation. Gates said last week he had brought in the FBI so the probe could go "wherever it needs to go."

Manning, being held at a detention facility at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, has not been officially named as a suspect in the latest leak.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said his group held back 15,000 papers to protect innocent people from harm and was reviewing them at the rate of about 1,000 a day. In an interview with the BBC last week, he did not say if and when they would be published.

The group’s stated aim is to expose government and corporate corruption. Assange has accused Gates of attacking WikiLeaks to distract attention from civilian killings and other bloodshed in the Afghan conflict.

WHAT’S THE WAR STRATEGY?

Gates voiced frustration at critics who say the United States lacks a plan to win the war, despite Obama’s lengthy review last year which ended with a December decision to deploy an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

"I think that the president’s strategy is really quite clear," Gates said. "I hear all the stories that say what’s the strategy, what’s the goal here?"

The objective, Gates said, was to reverse the momentum of Taliban insurgents, deny them access to towns and cities and ramp up Afghan security forces so they can defend themselves and prevent al Qaeda from returning to the country.

Mullen, chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the release of the documents had not caused any revelations that would affect the war strategy. U.S. officials have portrayed them as a collection of outdated, ground-level reports that lack analysis or perspective.

One of the documents released by WikiLeaks raised concerns the Taliban might have surface-to-air Stinger missiles to shoot down U.S. aircraft.

Asked whether the Taliban had any Stinger missiles, Gates said: "I don’t think so."

The leaked documents also threw an uncomfortable spotlight on links between Pakistan’s spy agency and insurgents who oppose U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

Gates said links to insurgents was a concern but he and Mullen voiced support for recent moves by Islamabad and Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency.

"What I see is a change in the strategic calculus in Pakistan," Gates said.

(Editing by John O’Callaghan)

© Copyright (c) Reuters


Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/WikiLeaks+morally+guilty+classified+documents+case+Gates/3348805/story.html#ixzz0vMq1j836


----------



## George Wallace

Yet another view on the TREACHERY involved in these acts.

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.


Peter Worthington: Treachery of the leakers

National Post  July 29, 2010 – 8:47 am 

LINK


The most damaging thing about the leaking of some 92,000 documents on the Afghanistan war, seems not to be their content so much as who did the leaking.

It’s always newsworthy and titillating when confidential documents are leaked – witness the Pentagon Papers in the Vietnam war, and more recent leaks about Canadian soldiers turning over Taliban prisoners to Afghan authorities who might mistreat them.
This “scandal,” as claimed by WikiLeaks which specializes in revealing secrets and protecting whistle-blowers, so far doesn’t seem particularly damaging. Embarrassing, maybe, but not damaging. The revelation that the Afghan leadership tends towards corruption, is hardly news. “Exposing” this seems simply a declaration of the obvious.

Of course, one would never expect U.S. President Barack Obama or Canadian PM Stephen Harper to speak openly about Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai being corrupt, but you can bet your last toonie that both of them are quite aware that the guy is probably a crook by any rational standards.

So what? A lot of world leaders got there by means that were criminal and treacherous – until they won power. As the old saying goes: “Treason doth never prosper, for if it prospers, none dare call it treason.”

Name one mid-east regime that isn’t corrupt.

Corruption in Afghanistan is only an issue because it’s a losing war. It was never a concern when Canada followed the Americans into that country and were winning. Documents now available on WikiLeaks.com seem mostly to be old and, if not exactly outdated, events have moved on to other phases.

As in the Cold War days of international spies and Smersh and poisoned umbrella tips and mysterious assassinations, espionage revelations really are mostly fodder for sensation, rather than damaging to national interests.

All governments relish varying degrees of secrecy, probably because it gives them a feeling of power to know stuff that’s not accessible to others. It contributes to egos. “Openness” and “transparency” are ideals that people in positions of power like to cite as goals, but are ever-unwilling to practice if they can be avoided.

Our own access to information laws are used to hide as much as they reveal.

WikiLeaks now has publicized aspects of Afghanistan that were already known. It’s difficult to see how any of the so-called disclosures further endanger troops fighting there.

Of course there is embarrassment – especially for Canadians if, indeed, soldiers supposedly killed by enemy action were, in fact, killed by friendly fire. That shouldn’t make a difference, but it does – bringing added anguish to families of the fallen who feel more caution might have saved their lives. They still died honorably for their country.

WikiLeaks also “reveals” (my quotations are meant to imply irony) that Taliban have infiltrated Pakistan’s Intelligence Service and have alarming support in that country.

So what else is new? That’s been written about and commented on so often that you’d think it hardly worth mentioning. Sure, it’s important, and unless the Pakistani government regains full control of its country, the war against the Taliban cannot be won.

And the Taliban protect al-Qaeda.

So what damage has been done by WikiLeaks’ exposes? The real danger lies in individuals who squeal and steal stuff in order to leak it. They are a menace who violate their oaths and/or betray trust while often posing as people motivated by a concern for truth and principles – all of which camouflages their treachery.

National Post

Peter Worthington is the founding editor of the Toronto Sun and a regular contributor to FrumForum.com, where this originally appeared.



Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/29/peter-worthington-treachery-of-the-leakers/#ixzz0vMsUPZth


----------



## The Bread Guy

*WTF-blood pressure alert*, folks....

*WikiLeaks founder accuses US army of failing to protect Afghan informers*
Julian Assange defends the whistleblowers' website after its publication of 75,000 leaked files of US army secrets
Carole Cadwalladr and Paul Harris
The Observer, Sunday 1 August 2010 


> WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has hit out at the US military, saying that it bears the ultimate responsibility for any deaths of Afghan informers in the wake of the publication by his organisation of 75,000 leaked files of American army secrets.
> 
> Assange and WikiLeaks, the whistleblowers' website that publishes leaked documents from around the world, have come under increasing fire amid accusations that publishing the files put people's lives at risk. But *in an interview with the Observer, Assange said the blame for any deaths lay squarely with US military authorities.
> 
> "We are appalled that the US military was so lackadaisical with its Afghan sources. Just appalled. We are a source protection organisation that specialises in protecting sources and have a perfect record from our activities," he said.*
> 
> WikiLeaks has been accused of disclosing the names of Afghan collaborators who may now be subject to reprisals. Critics also say that the information it published is unchecked and some of it may be of dubious provenance. But Assange responded to those claims by saying: "This material was available to every soldier and contractor in Afghanistan… It's the US military that deserves the blame for not giving due diligence to its informers."
> 
> Assange insisted there was no evidence that anyone had been put at risk and that WikiLeaks had held sensitive information back and taken great care not to put people at risk. "Well, anything might happen, but nothing has happened. And we are not about to leave the field of doing good simply because harm might happen… In our four-year publishing history no one has ever come to physical harm that we are aware of or that anyone has alleged" ....


More, if you can stomach it, here.  

What an a**hole..... :rage:


----------



## George Wallace

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> What an a**hole..... :rage:



He is so full of himself and the shyte that he is spewing that he has lost his grasp of reality.................Unbelievable that such people manage to dupe the majority of the population and be so successful.  Then again, Harris sits in Parliament.   :


----------



## R933ex

I'm not one to get angry on these boards, but for the first time I feel the need to vent. Im watching good friends of different views discussing this, and you know I am absolutely fed up. For one moment I'am going to try to forget the treason in wartime arguments, forget the bringing forward allagations of warcrimes and doing the greater good (as stated by wikileaks) forgetting the comparisons to the pentagon papers. But I cant get it out of this very thick skull that these guys published the names of people whose only crime may have been to talk to a NATO mbr. and tell them that they were about to be blown up or maybe that the community was scared OR WHAT EVER.

Why in Gods name did they allow these documents to go out??? What has the fu$#$ farmer in the middle of no where got to do with Wikilleaks agenda..

Anyways just a vent


----------



## George Wallace

Good vent.  That loser Assange is the one who released the names, not the US.  How he feels he is not to blame, nor does he feel any harm is done, escapes all of my logic.  

What also escapes my logic is all the twits who worship him.


----------



## GK .Dundas

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Good vent.  That loser Assange is the one who released the names, not the US.  How he feels he is not to blame, nor does he feel any harm is done, escapes all of my logic.
> 
> What also escapes my logic is all the twits who worship him.


 George ,this guy really does believe that  he is morally superior to us all . Therefore above any  responsibility He is answering  to a "higher calling". Although in the last couple of of days I've noticed that he's trying to shift responsibility from himself to the victims  or future victims in case those Afghans named in the leaked documents a bit like any other rapist.


----------



## Old Sweat

The following story from today's Hill Times is reproduced under the Fair Comment provisions of the Copyright Act.

*Feds should push U.S. to investigate military log in secret military Afghan doc leaks 
Canada should ask the U.S. government to conduct its own investigation into report at odds with the Canadian version of deaths. * 

By TIM NAUMETZ

Published August 2, 2010   
    

The Canadian government has a duty to ask the U.S. to investigate and reveal the origins of a military log that reopened wounds from the 2006 combat deaths of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan with its claim they were killed by a U.S. bomb instead of enemy fire, says a Liberal MP and a former Canadian army officer. 

Retired Col. Michel Drapeau and Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh (Vancouver South, B.C.) told The Hill Times that despite an internal inquiry at the time by the Canadian Forces, which included a review of Canada's own combat reports on the deaths and the subsequent investigation by Military Police, Canada should ask the U.S. government to conduct its own investigation and explain how it is the U.S. forces in Afghanistan produced a combat report that was completely at odds with the Canadian version of the Sept. 3, 2006, battle in which the Canadians died. 

They said that would be the only way to ease the anguish that was caused last week, to the families of the four soldiers who were killed, after the CBC and other media reported the U.S. log was among more than 90,000 U.S. military documents on the Afghanistan war that were sent anonymously to Wikileaks. 

Mr. Drapeau also criticized the way in which the Canadian Forces reacted to the leaked document last Monday, with an initial statement only from a spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay (Central Nova, N.S.) denying that the U.S. military log was an accurate account of what transpired during the battle—Canada's first large-scale engagement with Taliban insurgents—and at least a day's delay releasing further information.
In another tragic and odd twist to the story, a Canadian soldier was confirmed killed by friendly fire on Sept. 4 when a U.S. aircraft mistakenly strafed the same company of troops who had lost the four soldiers the previous day. The new suggestion that the four were killed by a U.S. bomb was eerily reminiscent of friendly-fire death in Afghanistan in 2002, when the Liberal government of the day ended Canada's initial combat participation in the war soon after a U.S. pilot killed four Canadian soldiers when he mistook them for enemy forces during a nighttime bombing mission. 

Mr. Drapeau said the Canadian government must ask Washington to investigate the friendly-fire report and explain its origin, followed by a Canadian report to the families involved and the public. 
"As long as the department, particularly the leaders of the department, either the political or military leaders of the department, as long as they themselves don't seem to act in a very public way and a very reassuring way and look the camera straight in the eye and make those statements, a doubt will persist in the minds of some people," Mr. Drapeau said. 

Mr. Dosanjh agreed that, as painful a reminder the leaked document has become for the families of the four soldiers, the government has an obligation to uncover all the facts. 

"If the Canadian Forces have determined their own version is correct, I think the Canadian governments has to ask the American government what conclusions they have reached [about the U.S. report], that would clear the air," Mr. Dosanjh said. 

Initially, a spokesman for the Canadian Forces said Canada would not ask the U.S. to investigate the origin of its casualty report, a dry but detailed account of the bomb one of its high-altitude aircraft dropped that day in support of the Canadian troops. 

"The fact is there is no doubt the Wikileaks log is wrong," Lt.-Col. Norbert Cyr said when The Hill Times first asked him about the report. "How they made that mistake, how the U.S. made that mistake, who logged it, we have no idea and we're not asking them, we don't care, the fact is it does not reflect what actually happened." 

But on Thursday, Lt.-Col. Cyr told The Hill Times Canada would ask Washington for an explanation as part of a wider joint review of the material given to Wikileaks. He also confirmed the Canadian troops had called in U.S. air bombing support after the infantry company had been ambushed and pinned down by Taliban soldiers, but said one of the two bombs the Americans dropped in response did not explode and the other did not injure or kill Canadians. 

Lt.-Col. Cyr said the reports and investigation results produced internally by the Canadian military in the wake of the casualties would not be made public. 

"There are reports on that day," he said. "Unfortunately, they are all classified because there are lessons learned, and there are after-action reports that are classified. They detail tactics and procedures, and they review them. And I can tell you in this case, there were a lot of lessons learned, because it was a bad situation, a classic ambush. I'm not suggesting they made a mistake, but they wandered into a textbook scenario. There's a lot of stuff in there that cannot be made public, and we've never made public any after-action reports of any incident or death in Afghanistan." 

Even stories of the deaths from comrades who were in the battle differ in accounts that were based on their statements. 

Author Christie Blatchford, who covered Canadian troops in Afghanistan and interviewed members of the same company for her account, quoted an officer as saying one of the men who was killed, Sgt. Shane Stachnik, was walking when the enemy soldiers opened fire. Another account by Legion Magazine writer Adam Day says Mr. Stachnik was standing in an armoured vehicle's sentry hatch. 

The accounts, including the Canadian Forces account based on witness statements, say Sgt. Stachnik and Warrant Officer Richard Nolan were killed when the shooting began soon after the company, along with hundreds of other troops in the Canadian battle group, crossed a river toward their target village early in the morning that day. The accounts say the other two who died, Pte. William Cushley and Warrant Officer Frank Mellish, were killed later in the battle, after they sought cover with other soldiers at an armoured bulldozer the Canadians had brought along to breach Taliban defences. The Canadians had been ordered to withdraw, the accounts say, but Pte. Cushley and Warrant Officer Mellish were pinned down with others after their armoured vehicle crashed into a ditch. 

Pte. Cushley and Warrant Officer Mellish were killed when the bulldozer was struck by an armour-piercing shell from a shoulder-fired 82-millimetre recoilless rifle, according to soldier accounts of the battle. 

The Russian-made weapon reportedly became a favourite of Taliban and other Afghan forces as they fought the Soviet Union occupation of the country in the 1980s. 

"We are 100 per cent sure that the events unfolded as they were reported at the time, and not as suggested in the Wikileaks log, which says that the cause of death, or the injuries, were caused by the dropping of a bomb," said Lt.-Col. Cyr. 

"What we do know about bombs at this particular engagement is two bombs were dropped," he added. "These are all danger-close bombs, in other words, they're being dropped at the minimum safe distance. The first bomb went down, it went thump, and did not detonate. They then had a second bomb released and it did detonate, and that was hitting the intended target. I believe it was a building. The intended target was struck and there were no, and I underline none, no injuries or deaths related to the release or firing of that second bomb. As they were trying to disengage from that firefight and break contact, they had that bomb dropped so they could move safely without being under fire." 

The U.S. log, coded "blue-on-blue" to signify an attack against "friendly" forces, uses military shorthand to describe how troops were receiving small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades from a "sawtooth building." The log says one guided bomb dropped. 

"Sawtooth building is hit," the log says. "No activity observed. Casualties 4x CDN KIA. 4x CDN WIA." Four Canadians killed, four wounded. It includes a following sentence, apparently amended, to say seven Canadians were wounded along with an Afghan interpreter. The log was later updated and reviewed, apparently in 2007. 

Only four Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan that day, and Lt.-Col. Cyr says the Canadian Forces simply "don't know" where the U.S. unit that prepared the log obtained the information behind it. "They are the ones who generated the input into that database. Below them, we don't know, or where did they get that from, we don't know." 
news@hilltimes.com 

The Hill Times


----------



## armyvern

Someone, please, refresh my memory or correct me. 

Colonel (retired) Michel Drapeau *was* a logisitics officer yes? A purple person and *not* hard Army? Did he not also retire long before this current era of insurgent/unconventional warfare and non-linear battlefields even began?

What are the reasons that CBC is continuously quoting this retd service member as a SME in this area?

What am I missing?  ???


----------



## George Wallace

"CBC"

"CBC Comments"

"Col (Ret'd) Drapeau, LogO"





See the connection?   




No accuracy in reporting.  Conspiracy theories.   

Apparently any time in the CF will make you a SME.  We have our favourite Cpl, who has so far remained silent on this matter, unless he is coaching DP and M Drapeau.




[ ;D   To make your day, use Spell Check on "Ret'd" and tell me what the first suggestion is.]


----------



## vonGarvin

I have until now resisted replying to this thread.  I must reply now, because Mr. Drapeau and Mr. Dosanjh just don't get it.  In the course of a battle, many reports are received and all are recorded. They range from the mundane ("0 this is 1.  My callsign complete is past BROKEN HAMMER.  Carrying on with task, over") to the tragic ("0 this is 2, contact, IED, multiple casualties, over").  The report in question appears to be the transcript of one operator interpreting a multitude of single-line reports from troops who were in contact.  And history is full of reports from combat that were either premature or completely wrong.  I think back to late 1941 when German media reported that the war in Russia was over.  This was due to the Germans capturing in excess of 600,000 Soviet troops and their equipment in October 1941.  Naturally, the media were wrong.  Heck, even the Russians thought it was over:



> When word reached Moscow of the defeat, a great many citizens took flight, necessitating the proclamation of martial law in the capital on 19 October.


So, there is no need for an inquiry.  All that needs to be said is this: take all reports as a body of work.  Some are inaccurate, some are only partially correct, and others are just facts that have nothing to do with one another.


----------



## MarkOttawa

A post at _Unambiguously Ambidextrous_:

WikiLeaks derangement syndrome
http://unambig.com/wikileaks-derangement-syndrome/



> I guess lust does overcome reason...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Mark
Ottawa


----------



## George Wallace

I think the word does start with "L", but it isn't "lust".


----------



## medicineman

Chick should stomp on her crack pipe.

MM


----------



## Haletown

Very sad for the families of these fallen soldiers when political trash like Dosanjh and self appointed experts like Drapeau can be given air time on CBC and CTV to spew their venom and deceits

Making cheap gutter politics like Dosanjh and Layton have done with this storyis to be expected  . . .  they are cheap gutter dwelling politicians who despise the military and hate soldiers.

Why Drapeau is spouting off on a topic of which he has no knowledge is more puzzling.  Maybe he has an axe to grind with the CF . . .


----------



## Teeps74

ArmyVern said:
			
		

> Someone, please, refresh my memory or correct me.
> 
> Colonel (retired) Michel Drapeau *was* a logisitics officer yes? A purple person and *not* hard Army? Did he not also retire long before this current era of insurgent/unconventional warfare and non-linear battlefields even began?
> 
> What are the reasons that CBC is continuously quoting this retd service member as a SME in this area?
> 
> What am I missing?  ???



The CBC has a long history of engaging "SME"s that share the CBC's political bent. Drapeau is irrelevant to anyone seeking a real SME on things military and Ops... He has neither the experience, nor the current book knowledge to give even a educated guess anymore. However, the CBC loves him and his decidedly left wing bent.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

Haletown said:
			
		

> Very sad for the families of these fallen soldiers when political trash like Dosanjh and self appointed experts like Drapeau can be given air time on CBC and CTV to spew their venom and deceits
> 
> Making cheap gutter politics like Dosanjh and Layton have done with this storyis to be expected  . . .  they are cheap gutter dwelling politicians who despise the military and hate soldiers.
> 
> Why Drapeau is spouting off on a topic of which he has no knowledge is more puzzling.  Maybe he has an axe to grind with the CF . . .



Dosanjh never misses an opportunity to put himself front and centre at someone elses expense. This person has no shame and is a political opportunist of the first degree.


----------



## HItorMiss

The only comments I have left is why the CF has not just brought out the MANY MANY MANY first hand witnesses to the events members still in uniform in good standing who would take the fight right to these so called SME's and call them on their BS...

I actually in all honesty find the fact they have no a bit mind boggling, sure someone could say "Oh how do you know" but the reply could simply be "Well I was at part of the battle field when y happened while Cpl so and so was over at this part 2 hrs later when z happened unless the Americans can bend space and time with their bombs it is just impossible for this to have happened."

Maybe a current PAO who looks at these boards could shed some light on this either openly or in private.


----------



## OldSolduer

Teeps74 said:
			
		

> The CBC has a long history of engaging "SME"s that share the CBC's political bent. Drapeau is irrelevant to anyone seeking a real SME on things military and Ops... He has neither the experience, nor the current book knowledge to give even a educated guess anymore. However, the CBC loves him and his decidedly left wing bent.


Including my favorites "experts" Scott Taylor and Sunil Ram. There....I've just killed two kittens by mentioning those very names.


----------



## GK .Dundas

BulletMagnet said:
			
		

> The only comments I have left is why the CF has not just brought out the MANY MANY MANY first hand witnesses to the events members still in uniform in good standing who would take the fight right to these so called SME's and call them on their BS...
> 
> I actually in all honesty find the fact they have no a bit mind boggling, sure someone could say "Oh how do you know" but the reply could simply be "Well I was at part of the battle field when y happened while Cpl so and so was over at this part 2 hrs later when z happened unless the Americans can bend space and time with their bombs it is just impossible for this to have happened."
> 
> Maybe a current PAO who looks at these boards could shed some light on this either openly or in private.


 Don't count on this ever happening ,the current regime is is terrified that if they the PMO loose control of the message . The heavens will fall or something along those lines. Looking back over the past few years all  they've proven is that  they're very adept at shooting themselves in the foot.
 When will the Military's political and bureaucratic masters  realize that the average trooper is probably the best advertisement and spokesman they could  find ?


----------



## armyvern

GK .Dundas said:
			
		

> Don't count on this ever happening ,the current regime is is terrified that if they the PMO loose control of the message . The heavens will fall or something along those lines. Looking back over the past few years all  they've proven is that  they're very adept at shooting themselves in the foot.
> When will the Military's political and bureaucratic masters  realize that the average trooper is probably the best advertisement and spokesman they could  find ?



Well, let's be entirely realistic then.

If 'the current regime' were to send those troops who were boots on the ground during this incident out there speaking ... the Opposition would simply spin that out of control into a "This Regime is USING our troops to promote their own Tory agenda and POV of the incident; Where's the investigation??" campaign. That's how it works in politics. 

This is one that the PM himself needs to step up to the plate and address (I think that's been brought up before wrt the whole of the Afghanistan Campaign) publicly and loudly. It's a political bunfight as that is what the Opposition has made it vice a soldier's bunfight. We save those for Yule Logs and *Men's* Christmas Dinners.


----------



## MarkOttawa

WikiLeaks and Mother Corpse in action/Propaganda Update (Paul, linked to, has a personal interest)
http://unambig.com/wikileaks-and-mother-corpse-in-action/

Mark
Ottawa


----------



## HItorMiss

Someone contacted me and had a very good point....

If just one soldier said something along the lines of "This is retarded"  you know darn well the media will spin that into "Soldiers accuse Afghan record takes of incompetence..." or something along those lines. Those picked to give the proper version would be stuck speaking from a very tight script and even those with the proper skill to public speak would come off as wooden and clearly speaking from a script. The no deviations from the script would prompt many to say oh they are just reading this how do we even know they were there etc etc you can see how it would all play out.

Sadly I may not agree with the current way it is being handled but I see a certain point of view as to why it was handled that way. I think this is a damned if you do damned if you don't scenario and the Army PAO office saw it as such drafted a message, stuck to it and ignored everything else. Scream something loud enough and maybe just maybe you can drown out the other voices I guess.


----------



## The Bread Guy

ArmyVern said:
			
		

> If 'the current regime' were to send those troops who were boots on the ground during this incident out there speaking ... the Opposition would simply spin that out of control into a "This Regime is USING our troops to promote their own Tory agenda and POV of the incident; Where's the investigation??" campaign. That's how it works in politics.


Very good point, looking at the other side of the political coin.


----------



## OldSolduer

I just read that some US Congressman wants the leaker (US Army soldier) to be executed.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> I just read that some US Congressman wants the leaker (US Army soldier) to be executed.




Which just goes to show that incredibly stupid people can be elected to the legislative assemblies on both sides of the Canada/US border.


----------



## OldSolduer

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Which just goes to show that incredibly stupid people can be elected to the legislative assemblies on both sides of the Canada/US border.



I fully concur with this assessment.


----------



## George Wallace

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

'Capture or Kill'

Germany Gave Names to Secret Taliban Hit List


08/02/2010

LINK

*The Afghanistan war logs obtained by WikiLeaks revealed the existence of Task Force 373, a secret US unit assigned with eliminating Taliban leaders. Now SPIEGEL has learned that the German government provided names to the hit list used by the unit. At least one of the men is now dead. By SPIEGEL staff. 
*

Omid Nouripour, a member of the German parliament for the Green Party, was wearing the German national team's jersey in honor of the Germany versus Serbia match scheduled that afternoon at the World Cup in South Africa. It was 7:30 a.m. on June 18, and Nouripour and his nine colleagues were expecting the match to be the most exciting event of the day.


In Room 04/100 at the German Defense Ministry, a windowless, bugproof space nicknamed the "U-Boot" ("submarine"), representatives of the defense and foreign affairs committees of the German parliament, the Bundestag, soon discovered that the day would turn out to be much more eventful than they had anticipated. 

After a brief introduction by Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Volker Wieker, the inspector-general of the German armed forces, stood up to give his presentation. By the time Wieker had shown his first few slides, the delegates realized that they were attending a premiere. But this time they weren't being regaled with accounts of the supposed achievements of German reconstruction teams. Instead, they were being given a brief glimpse into the most secret facets of the war in Afghanistan: NATO's ominous list of enemies and "the operations of US special forces units" within the zone controlled by the German military, the Bundeswehr.

The sensitive terrain had been a no-go area for members of the German parliament until then. Until that June morning, the so-called Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL) for Afghanistan was mainly a source of speculation in Germany, even among elected representatives. But now Wieker was explaining to them, using simple Bundeswehr diagrams, the procedure in which the Germans "nominate" candidates for the "Capture or Kill" list. He also told them how Germany adds names to the JPEL, which ranks targets according to their relative importance and lists up to 3,000 Taliban, Al-Qaida fighters and drug dealers targeted to be eliminated, if necessary by killing them.

*K for Kill *

JPEL, Capture or Kill, Task Force 373. Since the whistleblower website WikiLeaks published more than 75,000 secret US documents (out of a total of almost 92,000 that it has in its possession), and since SPIEGEL, The Guardian and the New York Times reviewed and wrote about the material, the world now knows what these abbreviations and phrases mean. It also has a more detailed understanding of how the allies in the war in Afghanistan compile hit lists, which are then handed over to American elite units to process.

Thanks to the WikiLeaks revelations, war-weary Germany now knows that German officials added names to the JPEL at least 13 times. On this list, 13 names translate into 13 potential death warrants. The Germans only mark their candidates with a C for "capture," and not with a K for "kill." But in fact all International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops are authorized to shoot and kill candidates on the JPEL list if, for example, they attempt to avoid capture by fleeing. In other words, although German elite troops do not use the kill option themselves, Germany does provide its tacit approval of the killing of candidates in the zone under its control in northern Afghanistan. 

The WikiLeaks story sparked a tremendous public reaction, both around the world and in Germany. Washington vacillated between studied indifference and alarmism. National Security Adviser James Jones, for example, said that the massive data leak doesn't just threaten the lives and security of US soldiers, but the security of the entire country.


Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that he wants to conduct an "aggressive" search for the sources of the leaks. The FBI has been brought in to aid in the investigation. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote that the documents illustrated how "futile -- and tragically wasteful -- it is to send more young men and women to fight and die in Afghanistan." The Spanish newspaper El País summarily declared the war in Afghanistan a "failure."

The WikiLeaks scoop also made waves in Germany. "The documents have the potential of destroying the last hope of military and political success in Afghanistan," the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote, while Die Welt called the leaks an "exposure of impotence."

*'Nothing New' * 

The initial reaction of the German government and large segments of the political class was in sharp contrast to reactions in the media. Immediately following the leaks, a spokesman for the German Defense Ministry characterized them as "nothing new in terms of news value," as if he and the rest of the ministry had somehow managed to review the immense body of material in only a few hours. 

Soon afterwards, his boss, Defense Minister Guttenberg, claimed that many journalists had known all this already, as did a number of members of parliament -- or at least those parliamentarians on the relevant Bundestag committees should have known about it, if they had paid any attention at briefings. 

It was a transparent but not unsuccessful tactic. Before long, a competition of sorts erupted among provoked delegates over who had had access to what information. "But it isn't any of our business!" said Elke Hoff, a defense expert with the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), after she was asked whether the government should give members of parliament details about the secret assassination teams operated by Germany's allies in Afghanistan. 

*Doing the Dirty Work*

But all attempts at appeasement do not change the fact that war in Afghanistan has acquired a new political dimension once again. It also acquired a new dimension when the German government finally managed to use the phrase "warlike conditions" in referring to the conflict in Afghanistan (previously, the German government had refrained from describing the situation as a war), and when, on Sept. 4, 2009, German Colonel Georg Klein gave the order to bomb two tanker trucks stuck in a riverbed, causing the deaths of up to 142 Afghan civilians. 

And now it's acquiring yet another new dimension. It has becomes clear that, even though German elite units such as Task Force 47 were not deployed to deliberately target people, their counterpart, the American special forces unit Task Force 373, which has since been renamed Task Force 3-10, takes on the dirty work and processes the hit lists -- in the territory controlled by the Bundeswehr and on the basis of German information, no less. For most Germans, this is new information, and anyone with any common sense would argue that it is indeed their business.

The revelations raise important legal and political questions. For instance, why are elite US soldiers simply flying into the German sector to hunt down and kill people, acting in a way that contradicts the Germans' self-imposed policy of restraint? And why were the Germans involved in compiling these lists?

*Putting Names on the List * 

To add a name to the JPEL list, the Regional Command North, which is led by a German, must first propose a candidate based on its evidence. The petition is sent to the German operations command near Potsdam outside Berlin, where it is reviewed and then sent to the Defense Ministry. If a positive decision is made, the petition is sent back to Afghanistan, where it also has to be approved by the supreme commander of the ISAF troops. It is a process that reflects the precision of German bureaucracy, and one that can have serious consequences for the people it affects in Afghanistan.

There are now six lists containing the names of targets. The JPEL list, to which the Germans contribute, is the NATO list. But Task Force 373 isn't operating on a NATO ticket. It receives its orders directly from the Pentagon. The German government would neither confirm nor deny whether the names on the Pentagon list are derived from the NATO list.

There is evidence that the German nomination has already had drastic consequences for 13 Afghans. According to a briefing given to members of parliament, this is the number of men the Bundeswehr has placed on the NATO hit list. Senior German military officials even say that the total number of names submitted lies in the "two to three-digit range." In 2007, the Bundeswehr named two Taliban commanders, who were assigned the file numbers 74 and 77, but Mullah Rustam and Qari Jabar were deleted from the list prior to 2009 due to a lack of evidence. Three others were added a year later, and two of them are now in custody. Four enemies of the Bundeswehr were captured in 2009, and another four in 2010.

The Germans have been relatively restrained compared to other NATO allies. A total of seven Taliban commanders named by the Bundeswehr are still on the JPEL for northern Afghanistan, including Maulawi Shamsuddin, the insurgents' notorious chief strategist in Kunduz, and Abdul Rahman, the head of the Taliban group that abducted the tanker trucks on Sept. 3 that were later bombed by Colonel Klein. 

But the Germans aren't the only ones who nominate candidates for the hit list for Regional Command North. In June, the JPEL list also included 31 other targets added by other allies.





More at LINK


----------



## George Wallace

Be advised that some comments and photos at NY Times link may be inflamatory.

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



Early Struggles of Soldier Charged in Leak Case


By GINGER THOMPSON
Published: August 8, 2010

LINK

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — He spent part of his childhood with his father in the arid plains of central Oklahoma, where classmates made fun of him for being a geek. He spent another part with his mother in a small, remote corner of southwest Wales, where classmates made fun of him for being gay. 

Then he joined the Army, where, friends said, his social life was defined by the need to conceal his sexuality under “don’t ask, don’t tell” and he wasted brainpower fetching coffee for officers. 

But it was around two years ago, when Pfc. Bradley Manning came here to visit a man he had fallen in love with, that he finally seemed to have found a place where he fit in, part of a social circle that included politically motivated computer hackers and his boyfriend, a self-described drag queen. So when his military career seemed headed nowhere good, Private Manning, 22, turned increasingly to those friends for moral support.

And now some of those friends say they wonder whether his desperation for acceptance — or delusions of grandeur — may have led him to disclose the largest trove of government secrets since the Pentagon Papers. 

“I would always try to make clear to Brad that he had a promising future ahead of him,” said Daniel J. Clark, one of those Cambridge friends. “But when you’re young and you’re in his situation, it’s hard to tell yourself things are going to get better, especially in Brad’s case, because in his past, things didn’t always get better.” 

Blond and barely grown up, Private Manning worked as an intelligence analyst and was based east of Baghdad. He is suspected of disclosing more than 150,000 diplomatic cables, more than 90,000 intelligence reports on the war in Afghanistan and one video of a military helicopter attack — all of it classified. Most of the information was given to WikiLeaks.org, which posted the war reports after sharing them with three publications, including The New York Times. 

WikiLeaks has defended the disclosure, saying transparency is essential to democracy. The Pentagon has denounced the leaks, saying they put American soldiers and their Afghan allies in grave danger. 

And while that dispute rages on, with the Pentagon having recently demanded that WikiLeaks remove all secret documents from the Internet and hand over any undisclosed materials in its files, Private Manning is being held in solitary confinement at Quantico, Va., under suicide watch. 

Private Manning’s military-appointed lawyer, Maj. Thomas F. Hurley, declined an interview request. 

Much remains unknown about his journey there from Crescent, Okla., the small town where he was born. But interviews with people who know him, along with e-mail exchanges between him and Adrian Lamo, the computer hacker who turned him in, offer some insights into Private Manning’s early years, why he joined the Army and how he came to be so troubled, especially in recent months. 

“I’ve been isolated so long,” Private Manning wrote in May to Mr. Lamo, who turned the chat logs over to the authorities and the news media. “But events kept forcing me to figure out ways to survive.” 

Survival was something Private Manning began learning as a young child in Crescent. His father, Brian Manning, was also a soldier and spent a lot of time away from home, former neighbors recalled. His mother, Susan Manning, struggled to cope with the culture shock of having moved to the United States from her native Wales, the neighbors said. 

One neighbor, Jacqueline Radford, recalled that when students at Private Manning’s elementary school went on field trips, she sent additional food or money to make sure he had something to eat. 

“I’ve always tried to be supportive of him because of his home life,” Ms. Radford said. “I know it was bad, to where he was left to his own, had to fend for himself.” 

At school, Bradley Manning was clearly different from most of his peers. He preferred hacking computer games rather than playing them, former neighbors said. And they said he seemed opinionated beyond his years about politics, religion, and even about keeping religion out of politics. 

In his Bible Belt hometown that he once mockingly wrote in an e-mail had “more pews than people,” Private Manning refused to recite the parts of the Pledge of Allegiance that referred to God or do homework assignments that involved the Scriptures. And if a teacher challenged his views, former classmates said, he was quick to push back.

“He would get upset, slam books on the desk if people wouldn’t listen to him or understand his point of view,” said Chera Moore, who attended elementary and junior high school with him. “He would get really mad, and the teacher would say, ‘O.K., Bradley, get out.’ ”

It was something he would hear a lot throughout his life. 

After Private Manning’s parents divorced, he moved with his mother to Haverfordwest, Wales, her hometown, and began a new chapter of isolation. Haverfordwest is several times bigger than Crescent. It is also centuries older, with traditions that run much deeper. A bustling market town, it offered a pace of life that was significantly faster. 

Former students at his school there, Tasker Milward, remembered Private Manning being teased for all sort of reasons. His American accent. His love of Dr Pepper. The amount of time he spent huddled before a computer. 

And then, students began to suspect he was gay. 

Sometimes, former classmates said, he reacted to the teasing by idly boasting about stealing other students’ girlfriends. At other times, he openly flirted with boys. Often, with only the slightest provocation, he would launch into fits of rage. 

“It was probably the worst experience anybody could go through,” said Rowan John, a former classmate who was openly gay in high school. “Being different like me, or Bradley, in the middle of nowhere is like going back in time to the Dark Ages.” 

But life ahead did not immediately brighten for Private Manning. After his troubled high school years, his mother sent him back to Oklahoma to live with his father and his older sister. 

He was hired and quickly fired from a small software company, where his employer, Kord Campbell, recalled him as clean-cut and highly intelligent with an almost innate sense for programming, as well as the personality of a bull in a china shop. Then his father found out he was gay and kicked him out of the house, friends said. Mr. Clark, the Cambridge friend, said Private Manning told him he lived out of his car briefly while he worked in a series of minimum-wage retail jobs. 

He enlisted in the Army in 2007, to try to give his life some direction and to help to pay for college, friends said. 

He was granted a security clearance and trained as an intelligence analyst at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., before being assigned to the Second Brigade 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y. 

Before being deployed to Iraq, Private Manning met Tyler Watkins, who described himself on his blog as a classical musician, singer and drag queen. A friend said the two had little in common, but Private Manning fell head over heels. Mr. Watkins, who did not respond to interview requests for this article, was a student at Brandeis University. On trips to visit him here in Cambridge, Private Manning got to know many in Mr. Watkins’ wide network of friends, including some who were part of this university town’s tight-knit hacker community. 

Friends said Private Manning found the atmosphere here to be everything the Army was not: openly accepting of his geeky side, his liberal political opinions, his relationship with Mr. Watkins and his ambition to do something that would get attention. 

Although hacking has come to mean a lot of different things, at its core, those who do it say, is the philosophy that information should be free and accessible to all. And Private Manning had access to some of the most secret information on the planet. 

Meanwhile, his military career was anything but stellar. He had been reprimanded twice, including once for assaulting an officer. He wrote in e-mails that he felt “regularly ignored” by his superiors “except when I had something essential, then it was back to ‘Bring me coffee, then sweep the floor.’ ” 

And it seems the more isolated he felt in the military — he wore custom dog tags that said “Humanist,” and friends said he kept a toy fairy wand on his desk in Iraq — the more he clung to his hacker friends. 

According to Wired magazine, Private Manning told Mr. Watkins last January that he had gotten his hands on a secret video showing a military helicopter attack that killed two Reuters photographers and one Iraqi civilian. 

In a computer chat with Mr. Lamo, Private Manning said he gave the video to WikiLeaks in February. Then, after WikiLeaks released it in April, Private Manning hounded Mr. Watkins about whether there had been any public reaction. “That was one of his major concerns once he’d done this,” Mr. Watkins told Wired. “Was it really going to make a difference?” 

In his computer chats with Mr. Lamo, Private Manning described how he downloaded the video and lip-synched to Lady Gaga as he copied hundreds of thousand of diplomatic cables. 

“Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack,” he boasted. But even as he professed a perhaps inflated sense of purpose, he called himself “emotionally fractured” and a “wreck” and said he was “self-medicating like crazy.” 

And as he faces the possibility of a lifetime in prison, some of Private Manning’s remarks now seem somewhat prophetic. 

“I wouldn’t mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much,” he wrote, “if it wasn’t for the possibility of having pictures of me plastered all over the world press.” 

_Ben Fenwick contributed reporting from Oklahoma City, and Ravi Somaiya from Haverfordwest, Wales. Toby Lyles contributed research._


----------



## tomahawk6

Manning is a traitor and nothing can excuse betraying one's country.


----------



## R933ex

I don't know if this has been added, but now Amnesty international is getting involved in condemning these leaks 

Added with the usual caveats. 

This man, needs to give his head a shake.. Really I still cant get over the fact that he seems to be so absolutey blind to the effects of his work...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703428604575419580947722558.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsTop


----------



## The Bread Guy

R933ex said:
			
		

> I don't know if this has been added, but now Amnesty international is getting involved in condemning these leaks



More than just Amnesty International are waking up to the danger to Afghans named in the material:


> A number of human rights groups have criticised WikiLeaks over potentially endangering the lives of Afghans who helped the US military.
> 
> *Amnesty International, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), the Open Society Institute (OSI), the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, and the Afghan office of the International Crisis Group (ICG) ** * all joined together to send WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a letter voicing their concerns, criticising his approach and pushing for a redaction of documents to omit identifying information that could risk the safety of US sympathisers in Afghanistan.
> 
> “We have seen the negative, sometimes deadly ramifications for those Afghans identified as working for or sympathizing with international forces,” they wrote, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cites an anonymous source. “We strongly urge your volunteers and staff to analyze all documents to ensure that those containing identifying information are taken down or redacted.” ....



Funny how far Amnesty International's come since last summer, when it was quite pleased with Wikileaks exposing assassinations in Kenya (page 2 under "New Media"),  It took them this long to realize the potential for assassinations in Afghanistan?  Better late than never, I suppose.

** - ICG is an international think tank and crisis monitoring organization receiving about 1/2 its annual operating funding from governments around the world, including ABC (Australia, Britain and Canada) and European countries, as well as New Zealand.  Canada's funding is flowed through the Canadian International Development Agency and the Canadian International Development Research Centre.


----------



## Michael OLeary

While the accuracy of individual pieces of data are certainly questionable, there my be some trending extrapolations that can help to describe the evolution of the Afghanistan conflict:

Open Source Tools Turn WikiLeaks Into Illustrated Afghan Meltdown (Updated)

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/open-source-wikileaked-docs-illustrated-afghan-meltdown/#ixzz0wDdPMN2b

Some of the graphs come from this page: http://www.visualisingdata.com/index.php/2010/07/visualising-the-wikileaks-war-logs-using-tableau-public/ (See the Cumulative Casualties by Month graph for a comparison of Taliban casualties compared to NATO, Afghan forces, and civilians.)


----------



## The Bread Guy

There's been some very good playing with the data out there, but one of the questions I have is:  Is this ALL the reports during that period?  What editing filter was the original leaker using to pick/choose material?  Was there selection bias at the collection-before-leak stage?  Apart from the obvious security implications, and problems with some of the reports individually, these questions lead to even more caveats re:  the reliability of the information as a whole.


----------



## McG

> *Loose lips can sink the West*
> Licia Corbella (Calgary Herald)
> The Ottawa Citizen
> 16 Aug 2010
> 
> About one month after Sept. 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden had his favourite television station, Al-Jazeera, run a video of himself warning the United States that more death and destruction were coming.
> 
> Other cable news programs started running excerpts of the tape, and shortly afterward, they interviewed an American geologist telling the world that he thought he knew where bin Laden was by using the rock formations shown behind the mass murderer in the video.
> 
> Jack Shroder, from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, who had spent years in Afghanistan mapping its mountain regions, said that while he watched the bin Laden video, released after the U.S. started bombing Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, "I turned to my wife and told her, 'I know where he is'."
> 
> He concluded that the cave was typical of those found about 200 kilometres south of Kabul in the Paktia or Paktika provinces of the Katawaz basin. It was even mentioned in some newscasts that the U.S. government had brought in ornithologists to try to identify a bird chirp that could be heard on the video.
> 
> At which point, just as Shroder had turned to his wife, I turned to my husband and said: "Why is this guy telling the world all of this? Osama bin Laden is going to use this to his benefit."
> 
> The U.S. government should have told this geologist not to talk about this with anyone. Clearly, it didn't. It's obvious that bin Laden hadn't considered that he was giving his enemies such valuable clues, but he learned. I don't think I'm alone in noticing that every bin Laden video released since that October 2001 video has been filmed indoors where there are no identifiable geographical features visible.
> 
> In other words, by letting this Shroder fella get his 15 minutes of fame, U.S. security forces and the media helped the enemy.
> 
> As Second World War posters used to warn in the U.S.: "Loose lips sink ships."
> 
> It sure would be nice if westerners could learn just a little bit from people like bin Laden. His propaganda videos are not short, but he never tips us off as to his whereabouts, what his next terrorist attack site is or what military strategy he's planning to employ. He never has to worry that one of his recruits is going to hold a press conference on Al-Jazeera that will help his enemies.
> 
> In the West, however, we talk about surges, strategies, withdrawal dates, etc. If I were a soldier, I'm pretty sure I would be screaming "shut the hell up" at the TV on a nightly basis.
> 
> Which brings us to WikiLeaks and the more than 90,000 U.S. military documents that have been vomited out across the Internet, something al-Qaeda is known to monitor closely.
> 
> U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was critical of WikiLeaks' founder Julian
> 
> Assange. "Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing," Mullen said. "But the truth is, they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family."
> 
> U.S. President Barack Obama, however, tried to play down the importance of the leak: "While I am concerned about the disclosure of sensitive information from the battlefield that could potentially jeopardize individuals or operations, the fact is these documents do not reveal any issues that have not already informed our public debate on Afghanistan."
> 
> Several of the files, which date back to 2004 to 2009, track bin Laden; however, the U.S. said it has received no reliable information on him "in years."
> 
> Maybe if that geologist had told his information only to U.S. officials instead of the entire world, he'd be caught by now. We'll never know.
> 
> Thankfully, it appears that Assange went through all of the documents and tried to avoid posting ones that would endanger our brave NATO troops or those equally brave Afghans and Iraqis who are helping our troops. But it is too soon to know for sure.
> 
> Assange is clearly a bright and thoughtful man (reminiscent of the fictional Lisbeth Salander, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in the trilogy by late Swedish author and journalist, Stieg Larsson) who has said he vetted the documents to ensure none would pose a threat to our troops or those helping them. But not everyone is as careful or ethical as Assange and this entire event leaves one wondering, what's next? What will the next hacker reveal?
> 
> Openness and freedom of expression are among the primary reasons why western societies thrive and innovate whereas the ideology that animates bin Laden and his ilk does nothing but stagnate and oppress those societies that ascribe to it.
> 
> But, surely, when it comes to war, we should learn a little bit more discretion -- that, after all, being the better part of valour.


----------



## HavokFour

*Hope you've all taken your blood pressure medication, this one is a doosey!  *​


> *WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange describes possibility of casualties as 'acceptable risk' *​
> •Ignores warnings from US
> •15,000 documents to publish
> •Likely to save "great many" lives
> 
> ANY US and allied casualties that result from the publication of classified Afghan war documents would be an acceptable risk, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said today,, saying "such information is also likely to save a great many lives."
> 
> US military officials have warned about the danger posed to Afghan informants and others since Assange released 76,000 once-secret war documents.
> 
> The founder of the whistleblower website says he will publish the remaining 15,000 documents within a month despite more warnings from the US government.
> 
> In a live webchat hosted by the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, Assange was asked how he felt about the possibility that anyone named in those documents could get "hurt or even killed" based on the information in the document dump.
> 
> He suggested he was weighing the risk against the benefit.
> 
> "As far as anyone can tell, this has never happened," Assange responded.
> 
> "When we deal with such serious issues and such (a) large amount of information, we have to accept the risk that it might, but this is balanced by the understanding that such information is also likely to save a great many lives."
> 
> Though US officials have said the documents released so far do not reveal anything new, they said the information could nevertheless endanger sources in the Afghanistan field.
> 
> Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview this month that the information was published "without any regard whatsoever for the consequences".
> 
> Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Afghan sources used by the United States could be killed as a result of the leak.
> 
> He called the potential for loss of life "significant".
> 
> Assange dismissed the blowback during his wide-ranging chat.
> 
> He said he was "not afraid" of the US government but said "we should not underestimate the significance of the Pentagon" and US military officials.
> 
> Assange said his organisation was taking "appropriate precautions".
> 
> Assange expressed concern that the US government could force Twitter, where WikiLeaks has a following, to ban his group and said WikiLeaks has already been placed on a "financial blacklist" in Australia.
> 
> Read more about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange describing the possibility of casualties as acceptable risk at Fox News.



From: news.com.au

This guy... wow.

I'm not even going to bother, just imagine this post filled with the foulest profanity you can think of


----------



## George Wallace

Reading the comments was like visiting the CBC comments.


----------



## medicineman

I wonder if him becoming a casualty would be considered an acceptable risk...someone might just tune him in if they ran into him on the street.

MM


----------



## George Wallace

medicineman said:
			
		

> I wonder if him becoming a casualty would be considered an acceptable risk...someone might just tune him in if they ran into him on the street.
> 
> MM



That seems to be the running theme on the Fox News comments.


----------



## medicineman

Ain't Kharma a b*&ch?

MM


----------



## owa

It's reasons like this that I hate and love democracy.

It's fantastic that we have so many rights, that we can make decisions, and that public discourse happens regularly.  These things are nice, and whatever you think about the Governments here in Canada or America, we're doing pretty well for ourselves.

What's frustrating is the sense of entitlement that such liberties and rights have given so many people.  I'm gonna go off on a bit of a tangent.  I apologize up front for that.

I'm not saying I want our military's to operate illegally in the international eye, but I understand that in order to win a war against an enemy who has no trouble playing dirty, you have to be prepared to make some sacrifices.  That's why not all information is released right away.  That's why we aren't told exactly what the SEALS, JTF-2, or some other special forces unit do.  It's why we aren't always told what soldiers on the ground are up to, or what they've witnessed.  We have to accept that we can't know everything, we don't want to know everything, and that in order to effectively neutralize the enemy, there's no way the military will tell us everything.

Most of us have learned to accept that sometimes, the military is going to make a mistake -- there's always going to be that idiot (or group of idiots) who does something that gets the public's attention (prisoner's being poorly treated...  Dogs being tossed off cliffs).

I guess the problem is that in theory it's great to preach honesty, integrity, and transparency in a democracy, but sometimes society needs to accept that the military is a different beast...  It isn't democratic, and it isn't always clean cut.  They do their best.  It's good that we demand so much of them, and I like that we keep'em honest by being so questioning, but there's a time and place for that, and I don't think this is one of them.  I would love to hear more people decry this leak for what it is:  a mess of bullshit that's just trying to stir the pot.  There isn't any integrity in this, it's cocked everything up because the owner's an idiot and still thinks he's in high school and it's cool to stick it to the man.  It reminds me of Jurassic Park, when Dr. Malcolm gives Hammond crap for not using discipline to acquire his knowledge on cloning.  He simply took what others had done and repackaged it and shoved it out the door.  It just seems dangerous, childish, stupid, and immature.

Also, I've had a few beers tonight, so just pretend I'm that loud drunk guy at the pub who keeps shaking his fist and yelling about hoodlums and hooligans.


----------



## vonGarvin

By this person suggesting that he accepts the risk that some may die "for the greater good", well, this makes him, in my opinion, an enemy of the state, guilt by association, etc. Why this guy hasn't been picked up by "men in black" is beyond me.  Some may suggest that it's "democracy in action".  Bullshit: it's an act of war against us.


----------



## GK .Dundas

Technoviking said:
			
		

> By this person suggesting that he accepts the risk that some may die "for the greater good", well, this makes him, in my opinion, an enemy of the state, guilt by association, etc. Why this guy hasn't been picked up by "men in black" is beyond me.  Some may suggest that it's "democracy in action".  Bullshit: it's an act of war against us.


I don't know about that ,but every time this guy opens his mouth I become even more convinced that he is a sociopath and a extreme egotist .We have seen  his kind before presiding over Nazi Germany's Death camps and the Khmer Rouge's killing fields . You hear the selfsame rationalizations from those despicable creatures They're doing what was necessary to bring us all in to a golden age.  Oh and it's always somebody else fault as well! 
I view him as an enemy of humanity .

 as an addendum: Normally I don't write on these heavy subjects ,I tend to go for the more humorous,.I make snide  sometimes I suspect in the opinion of some stupid comments . I have weird sense of  humor and it tend to come out in my postings .
However I  am deadly serious about this .This man frightens me! 
 End of serous back to being silly ole' me!


----------



## McG

Technoviking said:
			
		

> By this person suggesting that he accepts the risk that some may die "for the greater good", well, this makes him, in my opinion, ...


I wonder if, in the opinion of a civil court, this statement would make him financially liable to the families of anyone killed because of his information dump?
Some how he is safely evading criminal charges, but I wonder if he would still find this a justifiable risk if his own pocket were to take the hit.


----------



## medicineman

The guy leads a pretty shady life to begin with - moves around alot and the like - so he obviously realizes what he's doing is wrong, morally and legally.  I guess the price for being so much more superior to us mere mortals is social isolation...pity it isn't in a federal prison, or better yet, the national soccer stadium in Kabul after a bumper crop of rocks is harvested from the quarry.  

MM


----------



## The Bread Guy

schadenfreude = pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others  ;D

This from the Associated Press:


> A Swedish tabloid says an arrest warrant has been issued for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on suspicion of rape, and officials have issued a statement "confirming media reports."
> 
> The prosecutor's office in Stockholm "confirms media reports that a foreign citizen has been arrested in absentia" but doesn't name Assange.
> 
> It says the arrest involves one count of molestation and one count of rape ....


The 140-character denial:


> Julian Assange: the charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing.



If you can read Swedish, here's the original article (GoogleEnglish version here)..


----------



## vonGarvin

[snide and silly comment] Well, if Mr. Assange believes that having sex is a human right, and if he expands his little warped theory of utilitarianism to that "domain", then perhaps the suffering of those (allegedely) raped and/or molested was a small price to pay "for the greater (read his) good"
[/snide and silly comment]
I must admit, I'm deep in Schadenfreude heaven right now, even if this proves to be a "smear campaign" as they  assert it is.


----------



## ArmyRick

Seems as though Mr Assange's ego has caught up with him.


----------



## tomahawk6

Karma  ;D


----------



## George Wallace

Didn't he, along with Bgen LCol whatsherface  make the statement that original reports are more accurate than later, edited/corrected/verified/expanded reports?


Here reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act:


Wikileaks founder Julian Assange facing arrest over 'rape' claim 
Julian Assange, the founder of the Wikileaks website, is facing a warrant for his arrest over an accusation of rape. 

By Colin Freeman 
Telegraph.co.uk
Published: 11:48AM BST 21 Aug 2010

LINK

The warrant was issued by prosecutors in Sweden, where the Australian-born internet activist was on a visit last week. 

"We can confirm that he's wanted. He was charged last night - the allegation is suspected rape," said Karin Rosander, director of communications at the national prosecutor's office. 

"One is rape and one is molestation," she said, without giving details. During his visit to Sweden, Assange held a press conference where he announced that his whistleblower website was intending to publish further secret military documents on the war in Afghanistan. 

The website has already published thousands of pages of intelligence information, infuriating the US government, which claims the disclosures may have compromised military security and put informants' lives in danger. 

Supporters of Mr Assange believe he has been the victim of a smear campaign to discredit him. The Wikileaks Twitter page dismissed the assault claims, which first appeared in Sweden's Expressen newspaper, as "dirty tricks". 

It said: "Expressen is a tabloid; No one here has been contacted by Swedish police. Needless to say this will prove hugely distracting." 

Mr Assange, whose current whereabouts are unknown, also sent an email to the Swedish daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, saying that he had not yet been contacted by police. 

"Why these accusations are popping up right now is an interesting question. I have not been contacted by police. These allegations are false," he said. 

Mr Assange has close ties with Sweden, where WikiLeaks has said it keeps some of its servers. The purpose of his visit there was also to apply for a publishing certificate to make sure the website, which has servers in Sweden, can take full advantage of Swedish laws protecting whistle-blowers. 

He also spoke at a seminar hosted by the Christian faction of the opposition Social Democratic party and announced he would write bimonthly columns for a left-wing Swedish newspaper. 

US officials have called the Wikileaks disclosures, including more than 70,000 documents detailing the war in Afghanistan, as one of the biggest security breaches in American military history. 

The Pentagon said this month it would be the "height of irresponsibility" if WikiLeaks went through with a new threat to publish outstanding documents it had on the Afghan war. 

It wants the site to expunge all classified material from the Internet and return the material it had to the US government. 

News of the warrant came as the Wall Street Journal reported that Pentagon lawyers have concluded that Wikileaks acted illegally in disclosing the military documents, and are now considering possible criminal charges. 


Several officials told the newspaper that the Defence and Justice departments were now exploring legal options for prosecuting Mr Assange and others involved on grounds that they encouraged the theft of government property. 

Prosecuting Wikileaks would be a complex procedure, however, and expose the Obama administration to accusations of trying to stifle legitimate journalism. 

===================================================

So now the MSM is starting their FIRST (Only honest view ?) releases of this story.


----------



## vonGarvin

Just saw that the warrant has been cancelled.  
Of course, in the court of public opinion, I wonder if the suspicion has been dropped?


----------



## jollyjacktar

Fling enough feces and some will stick.  Although on this guy, I am not sure one would be able to tell.  As IMO he is a walking feces already.


----------



## The Bread Guy

Technoviking said:
			
		

> Just saw that the warrant has been cancelled.
> Of course, in the court of public opinion, I wonder if the suspicion has been dropped?


In keeping with the Wikileaks philosophy, I choose to believe the initial reports because, after all ....


			
				George Wallace said:
			
		

> Didn't he, along with Bgen LCol whatsherface  make the statement that original reports are more accurate than later, edited/corrected/verified/expanded reports?


 ;D


----------



## OldSolduer

jollyjacktar said:
			
		

> Fling enough feces and some will stick.  Although on this guy, I am not sure one would be able to tell.  As IMO he is a walking feces already.



Agreed my naval friend!!


----------



## George Wallace

Seems I was wrong.  Seems if you are a "whistleblower" in the favour of the MSM, you will have your retraction/correction to previous story printed immediately.

Here reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act:


Sweden drops arrest warrant for WikiLeaks chief

21/08/2010 12:13:06 PM
CBC News 


LINK

*Swedish prosecutors withdrew an arrest warrant for the founder of WikiLeaks on Saturday, saying less than a day after the document was issued that it was based on an unfounded accusation of rape.*

The rape accusation had been labelled a "dirty trick" by Julian Assange and his group, who are preparing to release a fresh batch of classified U.S. documents related to the war in Afghanistan.

The National Prosecutor's Office in Stockholm had issued the warrant late Friday and prosecutors were urging Assange, 39, to turn himself in to police in Stockholm to face questioning in one case involving suspicions of rape and another based on an accusation of molestation.

"I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape," chief prosecutor Eva Finne said in announcing the withdrawal of the warrant. She did not address the status of the molestation case, a less serious charge that would not lead to an arrest warrant.

Earlier, the WikiLeaks Twitter page quoted Assange as saying, "The charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing."

"We were warned to expect dirty tricks. Now we have the first one," another entry said.

Last month, WikiLeaks published a huge batch of secret U.S. military documents related to the war in Afghanistan. The website has said it's planning to publish another 15,000 such documents in the coming weeks.

U.S. officials have condemned the release of the military and intelligence reports, including those suggesting Pakistan's military spy agency has collaborated with Afghan insurgents.

Assange's whereabouts is unclear. He was in Stockholm last week to lecture on the theme "the first casualty of war is truth."

With files from The Associated Press



=================================================

Of course this is the CBC.  I really can't bear the thought of looking at their COMMENTS and the regular number of comments from their usual group of nutcases.


----------



## Old Sweat

It still amazes me how the MSM was unable to assess the difference in relevance between many, many reports including eyewitness testimony and one incorrect post that tied two unrelated events together and was written by somebody who was not there.

If a student had done that as an assignment in journalism school, he or she would have failed. Or maybe not, the piece might have got an "A."


----------



## George Wallace

On another Front.

Here reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act:


Moore backs WikiLeaks accused

21/08/2010 11:27:45 AM
CBC News 



LINK

*Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has donated $5,000 US to the defence of the U.S. Army private  who is suspected of giving classified documents to the WikiLeaks website.*

Moore told The Associated Press that he hopes to make the public understand that Pte. Bradley Manning allegedly exposed what Moore called "war crimes."

The 22-year-old army intelligence analyst is charged with leaking a video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including a Reuters photographer and his driver. WikiLeaks posted the video on its website in April.

Manning faces up to 52 years in prison if convicted.

"He did a courageous thing, and he did a patriotic thing," said Moore, who won an Academy Award for best documentary feature for his 2002 Bowling for Columbine, which explores the nature of violence in the U.S.

The Pentagon is also investigating whether Manning gave WikiLeaks 76,900 Afghanistan war logs, which it posted on July 25.

Moore donated the money to the Bradley Manning Support Network. Mike Gogulski, founder of the network, said he was delighted with Moore's support. The group is raising money for a civilian defence attorney for Manning.

Maj. Thomas F. Hurley, one of Manning's military lawyers, declined to comment.

The White House has asked WikiLeaks not to post anymore classified documents about the Afghanistan war, saying U.S. national security and Afghan lives are at risk.

But WikiLeak founder Julian Assange said on August 14 that the site will publish its remaining 15,000 Afghan war documents within a month.

In an interview with The Associated Press, he said that if U.S. defence officials want to be seen as promoting democracy then they "must protect what the United States' founders considered to be their central value, which is freedom of the press." 

WikiLeaks describes itself as a public service organization for whistleblowers, journalists and activists.

With files from The Associated Press


----------



## HavokFour

Well it's a good thing I never payed a cent to see his movies. ;D


----------



## ModlrMike

HavokFour said:
			
		

> Well it's a good thing I never payed a cent to see his movies. ;D


Likewise!


----------



## The Bread Guy

Interesting thing to remember, folks....



			
				George Wallace said:
			
		

> Sweden drops arrest warrant for WikiLeaks chief
> 
> (....)
> 
> "I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape," chief prosecutor Eva Finne said in announcing the withdrawal of the warrant. *She did not address the status of the molestation case, a less serious charge that would not lead to an arrest warrant.
> *
> (....)



That last bit in yellow means there could be a molestation charge hanging over his head.


----------



## HavokFour

*WikiLeaks releases CIA document on 'exporting terrorism'*​*Sometime later today - 25/08/10*​*CIA Document has been released, story updated.*​


> Wikileaks.org said on its website  that the "Red Cell" report from Feb. 2 looks at what will happen if foreigners view the United States as "an exporter of terrorism."
> 
> "Much attention has been paid recently to the increasing occurrence of American-grown Islamic terrorists conducting attacks against US targets, primarily in the homeland. Less attention has been paid to homegrown terrorism, not exclusively Muslim terrorists, exported overseas to target non-US persons." the memo says. "This report examines the implications of what it would mean for the US to be seen increasingly as an incubator and 'exporter of terrorism.'"
> 
> The report looks at a number purported cases of U.S.-exported terrorism, including attacks by U.S.-based or U.S.-financed Jewish, Muslim and Irish-nationalism terrorists. It concludes that foreign perceptions of the U.S. as a terrorism exporter, together with U.S. double standards in international law, may lead to noncooperation in renditions (including the arrest of CIA officers) and the decision to not share terrorism related intelligence with the United States, according to Wikileaks.
> 
> U.S. officials acknowledged that the "Red Cell" document released Wednesday is a legitimate, classified CIA document.



Read more...


----------



## OldSolduer

I've seen this Wikileaks guy on TV. One word descriptor for him: Slimy.

He's a greasy individual.


----------



## jollyjacktar

Yes, Jim he does give that impression.  To me he's a slug and a waste of rations, but to others he is a bit of a folk hero.  Go figure.


----------



## HavokFour

HavokFour said:
			
		

> *WikiLeaks releases CIA document on 'exporting terrorism'*​*Sometime later today - 25/08/10*​*CIA Document has been released, story updated.*​Read more...



Story updated.


----------



## vonGarvin

He's back in the news:
Rape probe against WikiLeaks founder reopened



> The case was dismissed last week by Eva Finne, chief prosecutor in Stockholm, who overruled a lower-ranked prosecutor and said there was no reason to suspect that Assange, an Australian citizen, had raped a Swedish woman who had reported him to police.
> 
> The woman's lawyer appealed the decision. Director of Public Prosecution Marianne Ny decided to reopen the case Wednesday, saying new information had come in on Tuesday.


Assange rape investigation reopened  



> A senior Swedish prosecutor is re-opening a preliminary investigation into rape charges against Julian Assange, the founder of whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.
> 
> Marianne Ny said the decision to reopen the investigation, which was dropped by a lower official two weeks ago, was taken after further review of the case.
> 
> "There is reason to believe that a crime has been committed," the chief prosecutor said on Wednesday.
> 
> "Considering information available at present, my judgement is that the classification of the crime is rape," she said in a statement.



The CBC has this on its website:



> A senior Swedish prosecutor reopened a rape investigation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Wednesday, the latest twist to a puzzling case in which prosecutors of different ranks have overruled each other.
> 
> Julian Assange, founder and editor of the WikiLeaks website, talks to reporters in London on July 27. (Max Nash/Associated Press) Assange has denied the allegations and suggested they are part of a smear campaign by opponents of WikiLeaks — an online whistle-blower that angered the U.S. government by publishing thousands of leaked documents about U.S. military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.



CTV has this:


> A senior Swedish prosecutor reopened a rape investigation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Wednesday, the latest twist to a puzzling case in which prosecutors of different ranks have overruled each other.
> 
> Assange has denied the allegations and suggested they are part of a smear campaign by opponents of WikiLeaks -- an online whistle-blower that has angered Washington by publishing thousands of leaked documents about U.S. military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.



Side note: CBC's story is under "Technology", whilst CTV has it under "World News".


----------



## ArmyRick

Mr Assange, what goes around, comes around. Again. face justice and suffer the consequences if your found guilty.


----------



## The Bread Guy

ArmyRick said:
			
		

> Mr Assange, what goes around, comes around.


Funny dat.....


> The founder of Wikileaks was denied a Swedish residency permit on Monday and said his whistleblowing website had been cut off by a company that handled many of its donations.
> 
> Julian Assange blamed the financial cutoff on the U.S. government, which denied any involvement. The U.S. did tell reporters that it was bracing for the potential disclosure by Wikileaks of hundreds of thousands of secret Iraq war documents, and asked media companies not to publish them.
> 
> The Pentagon said the group had as many as 400,000 documents from a military database on operations in Iraq but Assange downplayed expectations that a leak was imminent. In a Twitter post, Assange said information were coming from "a single tabloid blog" that had put out a "tremendous amount" of false information about his site.
> 
> In Sweden, the national immigration authority delivered a setback to Assange's efforts to gain protection from its generous media freedom laws by announcing that it had rejected his request for residency.
> 
> Migration Board spokeswoman Gunilla Wikstrom declined to explain why Assange's application had been denied, saying the reason was confidential.
> 
> Allegations of rape and sexual molestation have been made by two Swedish women against Assange, who has denied them. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to file charges in the case, which became public nearly two months ago.
> 
> Speaking generally, Wikstrom said only crimes that have been proven would affect the Migration Board's decision, which Assange has three weeks to appeal.
> 
> Assange did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the residency issue ....


<sarcasm> :'( </sarcasm>

More here.


----------



## OldSolduer

Poor little darling! Ha.....ha.....ha ;D


----------



## Jarnhamar

I bet when he (they) release the doccuments they'll actually mention how the US found WMD's.


----------



## HavokFour

*Wikileaks in Revolt: Spokesman Quits Amid Tension with Founder*​


> Ever since Julian Assange, the enigmatic founder of secret-sharing wbesite Wikileaks, was accused of rape, rumors have swirled of a revolt among Wikileaks organizers. These rumors are justified now, with news that Wikileaks spokesman Daniel Schmitt has quit.
> 
> German newspaper Der Spiegel reports that Schmitt quit amid tensions with Assange. Schmitt told Der Spiegel that Assange had started focusing too much on large projects—like the massive 77,000-document Afghanistan leak—instead of the many smaller leaks that used to be Wikileaks' trade. Anytime Schmitt criticized Assange's plans, Assange shot back "that I was disobedient to him and unloyal to the project."
> 
> Schmitt also sheds light on an apparent morale problem within Wikileaks, which has been battered by harsh criticism both over Assange's sleazy dismissal of the rape and sexual molestation charges against him as a Pentagon "smear campaign," and over allegations that Wikileaks didn't do enough to protect Afghan informants' identities in their Afghanistan leak.
> 
> "We have lost the faith that we are all pulling together," Schmitt told Der Spiegel.



Read more...



> *UPDATE:* Wikileaks' official Twitter account (that is, Julian Assange) claims the Der Spiegel article is 'misleading':
> 
> "Spiegel report Schmitt resigned which is misleading. Schmitt was suspended a month ago."



Gosh golly can you say _damage control_?  ;D


----------



## Edward Campbell

HavokFour said:
			
		

> *Wikileaks in Revolt: Spokesman Quits Amid Tension with Founder*​
> Read more...
> 
> Gosh golly can you say _damage control_?  ;D




Ship, this is Rats; SITREP: you are sinking, over.


----------



## ArmyRick

I read a bunch of the comments below the article in the link and laughed.

It seems that people out there can differ between a true whistle blower and a sensational journalism (if you can call it that)

 ;D


----------



## HavokFour

*WikiLeaks founder says may seek Swiss asylum*​


> *(Reuters) - The founder of WikiLeaks said on Thursday he may seek political asylum in Switzerland and move his whistle-blowing website there to operate in safety.*
> 
> "I'm considering whether I should seek asylum," Julian Assange, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks, told TSR, a Swiss television station. His words were dubbed into French.
> 
> Assange is in Geneva to speak at the United Nations on Friday, when the U.N. Human Rights Council conducts a review of the human rights record of the United States.
> 
> Last month Sweden rejected an application for a work and residency permit for Assange, who has angered the Pentagon by releasing nearly 500,000 classified files on the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
> 
> Assange had been hoping to establish a base in Sweden to take advantage of its strict laws protecting journalists. He has been under investigation there over rape allegations, which he has denied.
> 
> Assange told TSR the idea of setting up a foundation in neutral Switzerland to operate WikiLeaks was under serious consideration.
> 
> Earlier Assange called on the United States to fully examine abuses by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and halt its "aggressive investigation" into WikiLeaks.
> 
> Assange said WikiLeaks would release thousands of documents this year concerning not only the United States, but other countries including Russia and Lebanon.



EDIT: Whoops, forgot the link.

Starting to feel the pressure Mr. Assange? Cold feeling in the pit of your stomach? Clammy hands? Cold feet? You know that funny taste in the back of your throat? That's fear.  

I always knew you were spineless.


----------



## Brad Sallows

I'm looking forward to when Wikileaks releases thousands of files of Russian or Chinese state secrets.  Or even Bulgarian.


----------



## George Wallace

How about Al Qaeda operation plans?




Funny what living in a democratic peaceful society allows you to do.   :


----------



## OldSolduer

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> I'm looking forward to when Wikileaks releases thousands of files of Russian or Chinese state secrets.  Or even Bulgarian.



Bulgarian ones would be good to see,,,,,mind you if they were leaked to Wikileaks........hmmmmmm.....


----------



## HavokFour

Better yet, secret Wikileaks documents and financial records. I can't imagine him flying economy and staying in Best Western's.


----------



## ArmyRick

Is there any update on the rape allegations against the founder, Julian Assange?


----------



## HavokFour

ArmyRick said:
			
		

> Is there any update on the rape allegations against the founder, Julian Assange?



Haven't picked anything up on my radar.


----------



## The Bread Guy

ArmyRick said:
			
		

> Is there any update on the rape allegations against the founder, Julian Assange?


The latest (I'm _sure_ a CIA plot - just ask him), from the Associated Press:


> A Swedish prosecutor requested a court order Thursday to detain WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for questioning on suspicion of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.
> 
> Assange has denied the allegations, which stem from his encounters with two women during a visit to Sweden in August.
> 
> The Stockholm District Court was to rule on the request later Thursday. The move could mean that prosecutors are preparing an international arrest warrant for the Australian, whose whereabouts was not immediately clear.
> 
> "The reason for my request is that we need to interrogate him," Director of Public Prosecution Marianne Ny said in a statement. "So far, we have not been able to meet with him to accomplish the interrogation." ....


----------



## 57Chevy

HavokFour said:
			
		

> Haven't picked anything up on my radar.



Is there a major leak leaking at wikileaks ;D
a portion of article (see link for the rest)

The WikiLeaks founder himself has previously hinted the allegations against him could be part of a "smear campaign" aimed at discrediting his website, which is locked in a row with the Pentagon over the release of secret U.S. documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

WikiLeaks last month published an unprecedented 400,000 classified U.S. documents on the Iraq war and posted 77,000 secret U.S. files on the Afghan conflict in July.

As for the two women at the centre of the Swedish rape and sexual molestation probe, whose names have not officially been made public, Assange admitted in a September interview with AFP that he had met them both, but refused to say if he had sex with either of them, calling it "a private matter."

article link
                       (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)
                  ________________________________________________________


----------



## ArmyRick

Maybe someone should leak it to the public what a slime ball sleaze bag, double standard that Julian Assange is. His affairs are private? Oh and the garbage he leaked out was any of his business? 

Gotta love his double standard.


----------



## HavokFour

*Swedish Police Files International Arrest Warrant For WikiLeaks Founder *​


> STOCKHOLM (Dow Jones)--The Swedish National Criminal Police on Friday told Dow Jones Newswires that it has issued an international arrest warrant for Julian Assange, the founder and chief editor of whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.
> 
> Assange is wanted for questioning in connection with allegations of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion stemming from his encounter with two women during a trip to Sweden earlier this year.
> 
> The international arrest warrant for Assange was placed in the Schengen Information System, or SIS, which is used by the 27 European countries under the Schengen Agreement Application Convention, and the Interpol database.
> 
> It means that countries can arrest and upon court order transfer him to Sweden without having to examine the allegations made against him. Countries in the European Union are required to do so under the European Arrest Warrant, which is valid throughout all EU member states.
> 
> Assange was in London as of Thursday morning, his U.K. lawyer Mark Stephens said Friday. But he said he isn't "prepared to divulge" Assange's current whereabouts.
> 
> "I have submitted an appeal to the Stockholm district court. The appeal will be transferred to the court of appeal for review," Assange's Swedish lawyer Bjorn Hurtig told Dow Jones Newswires. "I expect a decision from the court of appeal in the next couple of days."
> 
> Hurtig added that Assange, who denies the allegations made against him, hasn't attempted to abscond from Sweden to avoid punishment and that he has tried to cooperate with the prosecutor throughout the process.
> 
> "We established contact with the prosecutors when my client left Sweden to ask if they had any objections and they didn't. My opinion is that the detention order and the international arrest warrant is disproportionate considering the circumstances," Hurtig said.
> 
> If the Swedish court of appeal decides to withdraw the detention order made by the Stockholm district court, the Swedish National Criminal Police will have to withdraw its international arrest warrant for Assange, said superintendent Tommy Kangasvieri at the Swedish National Criminal Police.
> 
> -By Sven Grundberg, Dow Jones Newswires; +46-8-5451-3098; sven.grundberg@dowjones.com



Article


----------



## Cpl4Life

ArmyRick said:
			
		

> Maybe someone should leak it to the public what a slime ball sleaze bag, double standard that Julian Assange is. His affairs are private? Oh and the garbage he leaked out was any of his business?
> 
> Gotta love his double standard.



Very true. It would not surprise me to find out he was set up in August though.


----------



## OldSolduer

From the Winnipeg Sun

http://www.winnipegsun.com/comment/columnists/ezra_levant/2010/11/29/16364771.html


----------



## George Wallace

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> From the Winnipeg Sun
> 
> http://www.winnipegsun.com/comment/columnists/ezra_levant/2010/11/29/16364771.html



Looks like there is a bunch of the usual "It is my right to do whatever I want" crowd on that site as well.  "If you don't agree with me, you are a troll" types.  It seems the media allow these comments to save having to print off the comic pages.     :nod:


----------



## The Bread Guy

Dopiest idea of the day, from Berkeley, California's city council agenda for tonight:


> .... 26.  Support and Free Pfc. Bradley Manning and Proclaim Him a Hero (PDF)
> From: Peace and Justice Commission
> Recommendation: Adopt a Resolution to support and free Pfc. Bradley Manning and proclaim him a hero ....



Wording of the proposed resolution, from the PDF (3.9 MB download) linked above:


> WHEREAS, the Peace and Justice Commission advises the City Council on all matters relating to the City of Berkeley’s role in issues of peace and social justice (Berkeley Municipal Code (BMC) Chapter 3.69.070); and
> 
> WHEREAS, the “Collateral Murder” video of a massacre in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2007, released by Wikileaks, in April, 2010, shows a United States Army Helicopter attack that killed eleven civilians, including two Reuters journalists, and wounded two children; and
> 
> WHEREAS, the release of this video harmed no one and is information the people of the world, and especially American citizens, are entitled to know; and
> 
> WHEREAS, the United States Army covered up the evidence and declared this war crime “justified” and now claims that exposing the massacre is criminal; and
> 
> WHEREAS, blowing the whistle on war crimes is not a crime; and
> 
> WHEREAS, Wikileaks subsequently released 92,000 documents that reveal years of whitewashing of the war in Afghanistan, by the United States, and that the United States systematically covered up civilian casualties, evidence of corruption, including the funding of the Afghan Taliban by the ISI, Pakistan’s military intelligence unit, and successful attacks by the Taliban and the significance of those attacks; and
> 
> WHEREAS, the illegal wars waged by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan have cost the lives of thousands of U.S. military personnel, the lives of unknown numbers [likely over a million] of people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and squandered U.S. treasure, in vain, that could have been used for human needs in
> Berkeley and across our nation; and
> 
> WHEREAS, in 1998, thirty years after the My Lai Massacre, former Warrant Officer Hugh C. Thompson, Jr. [who retired from the United States Army as a major in 1983] and his comrades in arms, Specialist Glenn Andreotta and Specialist Lawrence Colburn [the heroes of My Lai, who stopped the continuation of the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968] were awarded [Andreotta, posthumously] the Soldiers Medal, the United
> States Army’s highest award for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy; and at the 1998 Soldiers Medal award ceremony, Army Major General Michael Ackerman said, "It was the ability to do the right thing even at the risk of their personal safety that guided these soldiers to do what they did," and that the three, "set the standard for all soldiers to follow”; and
> 
> WHEREAS, 22 year old, Pfc. Bradley Manning has been accused of leaking the “Collateral Murder” video and faces a possible 52 year prison sentence if convicted of doing so; and is a “person of interest” in the investigation of the release of the “Afghan War Diary” documents, also referred to as “Pentagon Papers II”; and
> 
> WHEREAS, months ago, Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, and Advisory Board Member of the Bradley Manning Support Network, said, “From what I know of [Pfc. Bradley] Manning, he’s a new hero of mine” and then on September 16, 2010, at the Humanist Hall in Oakland at the benefit for Bradley Manning during the International Days of Action for Bradley Manning (September 16th through 19th), Daniel Ellsberg said, “We’re honoring an American Hero.”; and
> 
> WHEREAS, in her article of September 19, 2010 entitled “Bradley Manning: An American Hero,” Marjorie Cohn, professor of International Human Rights Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, concluded by writing, “…if Manning did what he is suspected of doing, he should be honored as an American hero for exposing war crimes and hopefully, ultimately, helping to end this war.”;
> 
> NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Council of the City of Berkeley urges the United States Army to free Pfc. Bradley Manning from confinement in the military brig, where he is being held at Quantico, Virginia, and to drop all charges against him.
> 
> BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Council of the City of Berkeley proclaims that if Pfc. Bradley Manning is the source who provided Wikileaks with the “Collateral Murder” video and/or the 92,000 documents known as “The Afghan War Diary” that he is a hero and we thank him for his courage in bringing the truth to the American people and the people of the world.
> 
> BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Council of the City of Berkeley send copies of this resolution to President Barack Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senator Barbara Boxer, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates, and Secretary of the Army, John McHugh. A record signature copy of said Resolution to be on file in the Office of the City Clerk.



Uh, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight....

More from CNN.


----------



## George Wallace

Remember; this is Berkeley we are talking about.  Center of the Acid Generation.


----------



## The Bread Guy

Berkeley resolution?  Tabled = going nowhere for now


> The Berkeley City Council voted last night to table a controversial resolution calling for the release of alleged military whistle blower Private Bradley Manning from military prison and to honor him as a hero if he did leak sensitive information to WikiLeaks.
> 
> Virtually all council members and Mayor Tom Bates voted to table the resolution, while District 3 Councilman Max Anderson abstained. By tabling the motion, any council member can bring the issue back for consideration at a future date.
> 
> “We’ve gotten to the point in this country,” Anderson said, “where heroes are designed by job category, not action.”
> 
> The move to ultimately table the resolution stemmed from what a number of council members saw as a lack of certainty as to whether Manning was, in fact, the WikiLeaks whistle blower and if he was, what his motives were. That aside, comments from both the public and council expressed the complexity of the issue at hand, where values of transparency, open government, and the need for state secrecy collided into a volatile soup ....


----------



## The Bread Guy

From the Associated Press:


> The United Nations' top anti-torture envoy is looking into a complaint that the Army private suspected of giving classified documents to WikiLeaks has been mistreated in custody, a spokesperson said Wednesday.
> 
> The office of Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur on torture in Geneva, received a complaint from one of Pfc. Bradley Manning's supporters alleging conditions in a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., amount to torture, said spokesperson Xabier Celaya. Visitors say he spends at least 23 hours a day alone in a cell.
> 
> The U.N. could ask the United States to stop any violations it finds.
> 
> The Pentagon has denied mistreating Manning. A Marine Corps spokesman says the military is keeping Manning safe, secure and ready for trial ....



What MSM seems to forget including in many stories is this tidbit:


> .... When he was first arrested, Manning was put on suicide watch, but his status was quickly changed to “Prevention of Injury” watch (POI) ....



Nice to see SOMEONE understands why this might be being done:


> .... What if the POI is lifted and Bradley dies? Would we then point fingers are the brig officers for not taking the necessary precations? Would we ask why they listened only to the recommendations of the psychologist and not the rest of the board? ....


And would _any_ of his supporters believe it would have been suicide when they could (falsely) whip it up as "murder" to support their cause?


----------



## Journeyman

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> ....And would _any_ of his supporters believe it would have been suicide when they could (falsely) whip it up as "murder" to support their cause?


_Whatever_ happens to Manning, it was a government plot. 
Counter-intuitively, life's a lot simpler when you believe in complex conspiracy theories.  :nod:


----------



## The Bread Guy

From the BBC:


> The US Army has charged a soldier held in connection with the leak of US government documents published by the Wikileaks website with 22 extra counts.  The new charges against Private First Class Bradley Manning include aiding the enemy, a capital offence, but prosecutors have said they will not seek the death penalty.  The intelligence analyst is being held at a military jail in Virginia.  He is suspected of leaking 620,000 diplomatic and military documents ....



From AFP:


> The US military on Wednesday unveiled new charges against the soldier suspected of passing a trove of secret government documents to WikiLeaks, accusing him of the serious offense of "aiding the enemy."  US Army authorities announced 22 additional charges against Private Bradley Manning, including the offense of "aiding the enemy," which carries a potential death sentence.  But military prosecutors do not plan to seek the death penalty if Manning is convicted and instead the 23-year-old soldier would face possible life in prison, the army said in a statement ....



From Manning's Lawyer's blog:


> Over the past few weeks, the defense has been preparing for the possiblity of additional charges in this case.  The decision to prefer charges is an individual one by PFC Manning's commander.  The nature of the charges and the number of specifications under each reflects his determination, in consultation with his Staff Judge Advocate's office, of the possible offenses in this case.  Ultimately, the Article 32 Investigating Officer will determine which, if any, of these additional charges and specifications should be referred to a court-martial.



Manning's charge sheet (PDF) downloadable here.


----------



## The Bread Guy

:'(


> The US is violating UN rules by refusing unmonitored access to the Army private who is accused of passing secret documents to WikiLeaks, the UN's chief torture investigator has said.
> 
> UN special rapporteur on torture Juan Mendez said the US had has broken rules by insisting on monitoring conversations with Pte Bradley Manning.
> 
> Mr Mendez says he needs unrestricted access to Pte Manning to do his job.
> 
> (....)
> 
> After being confined alone in a cell for 23 hours per day in a detention facility in Quantico in the state of Virginia, Pte Manning was transferred to Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas in April.
> 
> Mr Mendez said the US had told him Mr Manning was being treated better now than when he was in Quantico.
> 
> But the UN investigator said the US must allow him to determine whether the conditions at Quantico that Pte Manning experienced amounted to "torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment".
> 
> "For that, it is imperative that I talk to Mr Manning under conditions where I can be assured that he is being absolutely candid," Mr Mendez said in a statement ....


Source:  BBC, 12 Jul 11 - more in U.N. news release here


----------



## The Bread Guy

> The US Army analyst suspected of passing classified information to Wikileaks should face a court martial, a military tribunal has recommended.
> 
> Intelligence analyst Bradley Manning is alleged to have leaked US government cables to the anti-secrecy website.
> 
> Accused of leaking thousands of documents and "aiding the enemy", he could face life in prison if convicted.
> 
> Pte Manning, 24, appeared for a pre-trial hearing in December, in which prosecutors pushed for a court martial.
> 
> He was arrested in May 2010 in connection with the leak.
> 
> The US Army said in a statement that the head of the tribunal, Lt Col Paul Almanza, had concluded that "reasonable grounds exist to believe that the accused committed the offences alleged.
> 
> "He (Lt Col Almanza) recommended that the charges be referred to a general court martial," the army statement said.
> 
> The recommendation from Col Almanza will now be referred up the military chain of command.
> 
> The commander of the Washington military district, Maj Gen Michael Linnington, will make a final determination on whether Pte Manning will face military trial ....


BBC online, 12 Jan 12


----------



## The Bread Guy

> A low-ranking intelligence analyst charged in the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history is a step closer to a general court-martial, the Army says, after a second officer signed off on the procedure.
> 
> Col. Carl Coffman sent his recommendation Wednesday to Maj. Gen. Michael Linnington, commander of the Military District of Washington, according to a statement emailed to The Associated Press. Linnington now must decide whether to order a trial for Pfc. Bradley Manning.
> 
> Coffman, garrison commander of Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall near Washington, concurred with Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, the presiding officer at Manning’s preliminary hearing last month, that Manning should be tried by a court-martial. The 24-year-old Crescent, Okla., native faces 22 counts, including aiding the enemy ....


_Marine Corps Times_, 19 Jan 12


----------



## The Bread Guy

> Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army intelligence analyst suspected of passing classified documents to WikiLeaks, will face a full court-martial, the U.S. Army Military District of Washington announced on Friday.
> 
> Manning, 24, faces 22 charges of participating in the largest leak of classified information in American history, including aiding the enemy, wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet and theft of public property.
> 
> Aiding the enemy is an offense that could bring the death penalty, but the prosecution has said it intends to seek a maximum of life in prison for Manning.
> 
> He could also face a reduction to the lowest enlisted pay grade, total forfeiture of all pay and allowances and a dishonorable discharge.
> 
> A military judge will be selected by the U.S. Army Trial Judiciary, and that judge will set the date for Manning's arraignment, motion hearings and trial ....


Reuters, 3 Feb 12


----------



## The Bread Guy

> US soldier Bradley Manning, suspected of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, is to be arraigned later Thursday.
> 
> The charges against him will be read at the arraignment at 1pm (1800 GMT) in Fort Meade, Maryland.
> 
> The military had said earlier this month that Manning would face court martial after reviewing a recommendation by the investigating officer and other evidence.
> 
> Manning faces charges including aiding the enemy, causing intelligence to be published online, theft and computer fraud.
> 
> If convicted, he could face life in prison. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty, which could have been applied for the most serious charges ....


Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 23 Feb 12


----------



## The Bread Guy

While Bradley Manning remains in custody, with protesters still calling for his release, guess where Julian Assange is these days?





> Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has walked into the Ecuadorian Embassy in London seeking political asylum after claiming he had been "abandoned".
> 
> The 40 year-old Australian made the dramatic move after he lost a long-running legal bid to halt his extradition to Sweden, where he faces sex crime allegations.
> 
> In a letter sent to Ecuador’s government, Mr Assange said the Australian government had “effectively abandoned” him and was “ignoring the obligation to protect its citizen, who is persecuted politically".
> 
> His move to claim asylum is the latest twist in a marathon legal battle played out in the glare of worldwide publicity.
> 
> On Tuesday night, he walked into the embassy, in London's Knightsbridge district, and asked for asylum under the United Nations Human Rights Declaration.
> 
> Officials from the South American nation are considering his request. It comes after Ecuador offered Mr Assange residency in the country in November 2010.


Telegraph (UK), 19 Jun 12


----------



## fraserdw

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> While Bradley Manning remains in custody, with protesters still calling for his release, guess where Julian Assange is these days?Telegraph (UK), 19 Jun 12



He's run away he has!  The great leader of free speech run away!


----------



## Sythen

If he is innocent, why is he fighting so hard to not face trial?  :sarcasm: I know Sweden has one of the most biased and corrupt legal systems, but he should man up! :sarcasm:


----------



## The Bread Guy

Bumped with the latest on Manning's court process ....


> The trial of Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private accused of passing hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the WikiLeaks website, has been scheduled to begin in early February. That news came on the last of three days of pretrial hearings held in Fort Meade, Md., this week.
> 
> Of the court date, Wikileaks tweeted, "Manning full trial has been scheduled for Feb 4. He will have spent nearly 3 years detained without trial. Legal max is 120 days."
> 
> If convicted, Manning would face a possible life sentence. The 22 charges filed against him range from aiding the enemy to transmitting defense information, and fraud and related activity in connection with computers ....


NPR, 30 Aug 12


----------



## The Bread Guy

fraserdw said:
			
		

> He's run away he has!  The great leader of free speech run away!


That's how one British judge is reading it (also, a caveat re:  who you should post bail for)....


> The cost of helping WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fight allegations of sexual assault became painfully real Monday for a group of supporters who were ordered by a British judge to pay money they had pledged for his bail now that he has fled inside the Ecuadorean Embassy.
> 
> Nine of the anti-secrecy campaigner’s backers are on the hook for about $150,000 among them because he jumped bail in June by putting himself out of the reach of British police. Assange, 41, sought asylum inside the embassy in central London to evade extradition to Sweden, which wants to question him in connection with allegations that he sexually abused two women last year.
> 
> Chief Magistrate Howard Riddle said Monday that the nine supporters had “failed in their basic duty” to ensure that Assange did not abscond.
> Advertisement
> 
> The group had acknowledged making no attempt to persuade him to give himself up, out of sympathy with his fears that the Swedish investigation was merely a pretext to spirit him to the United States to face possible charges of espionage in connection with WikiLeaks’ release of thousands of classified government files.
> 
> Vaughan Smith, at whose country mansion Assange stayed for months under a form of house arrest, told the court that for him and the eight others to urge the now-fugitive to quit the embassy would have been “a very public betrayal.”
> 
> Riddle wrote in his judgment that he felt “real respect” for the nine backers’ convictions.
> 
> “In declining to publicly (or as far as I know privately) urge Mr. Assange to surrender himself, they have acted against self-interest. They have acted on their beliefs and principles throughout,” Riddle wrote in his judgment. “In what is sometimes considered to be a selfish age, that is admirable.”
> 
> But he said the integrity of the bail system needed to be upheld. Moreover, it should have been clear to the nine supporters that Assange, who had vowed to fight extradition tooth and nail, posed a substantial flight risk, Riddle said.
> 
> The judge reduced the amount of money to be paid from the originally pledged sum of $224,000 to $150,000, out of recognition of some of the backers’ limited means. The nine include Nobel Prize-winning biologist John Sulston and journalist Phillip Knightley ....


_Stars & Stripes_, 8 Oct 12


----------



## Journeyman

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> Vaughan Smith, at whose country mansion Assange stayed for months under a form of house arrest, told the court that for him and the eight others to urge the now-fugitive to quit the embassy would have been “a very public betrayal.”



Yet for Assange to leave them stuck with a $150,000 bill is somehow not a “a very public betrayal.”  :rofl:


----------



## GAP

I think in the future these "advocates" will have a lot less support from the "sheep" when it comes to putting up the $$.


----------



## GAP

Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy, faces 130+ yrs in jail on other charges
Published time: July 30, 2013 
http://rt.com/usa/manning-not-guilty-aiding-enemy-805/

A US military judge has found Army private Bradley Manning "not guilty" of aiding the enemy. However, he was found guilty of 19 remaining charges, meaning that he still faces the possibility of up to 136 years behind bars. Sentencing begins tomorrow.

Sitting in the military courtroom at Fort Meade, Md., Colonel Denise Lind delivered her verdict shortly after 1 p.m. EDT on Tuesday. Manning had chosen to put all his faith in the judge, rather than a panel of his peers – a risky gamble that initially seemed to pay off for the 25-year-old Army intelligence analyst - the charge could have carried a life sentence without parole.

However, Manning still faces the possibility of up to 136 years behind bars, having been found guilty of at least five charges of espionage, five counts of theft, and four counts of embezzlement of government property. In total, Judge Lind found him guilty of 19 of the 21 offenses he could have been charged with. Manning was found not guilty of espionage for the release of the infamous "Collateral Murder" video. 
more on link


----------



## cupper

On a humourous note, all of his supporters are all happy that he was acquitted of aiding the enemy and thus won't be getting a life sentence. I guess it's all relative. Would you rather have a life sentence, or spend the next 130 years in detention.

Hmmm.


----------



## FJAG

The judge's decision is attached here as a pdf. 

Unfortunately it does not include any reasons for her decision. I presume those will be published seperately and I'll keep an eye out for them.


----------



## Inquisitor

136 years? in many cases sentences run concurrently, eg 20 years for charge a 30 for charge b ... I calendar year takes a year off of each. In any event He is not going to be free for a good long time, if ever.


----------



## cupper

But he does get 122 days credit for the 9 months he spent in solitary. The Judge was compassionate in her view on how he was treated prior to trial.


----------



## kevincanada

Inquisitor said:
			
		

> 136 years? in many cases sentences run concurrently, eg 20 years for charge a 30 for charge b ... I calendar year takes a year off of each. In any event He is not going to be free for a good long time, if ever.



I do not understand the American penal system.  Concurrently... The max sentence on a individual charge he was found guilty of is 10 years.   Would that not mean 10 years minus time served?


----------



## George Wallace

Is not "aiding the enemy" still punishable by death by firing squad in the US military?


----------



## cupper

The US system (civilian) allows for consecutive sentencing, and is more the norm than the exception. The military system also (my understanding) allows for consecutive sentencing as well.

The 136 years assumes he gets the full term, and each is served consecutively. I'm not sure if that includes the maximum 20 years he cold get for the charges he previously pled guilty to. _(After reading the verdict, it appears that the guilty pleas were included)_

The Canadian criminal system does have allowances for consecutive sentencing but is more the exception than the norm.


----------



## FJAG

This page very generally sets out the law in Canada on concurrent and consecutive sentences. 

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Canadian_Criminal_Sentencing/Available_Sentences/Concurrent_and_Consecutive_Sentences

 :cdnsalute:


----------



## Inquisitor

I am going to an idea up the flagpole and see what happens to it. 

I recently read somewhere that it is in the government's best interest that justice be seen to be done. 

What he did was illegal and deserving of punishment. 

Here is arelated  little factoid I find interesting, according to a recent poll 70% of the American People favor keeping Guantanamo Bay open. 

It seems that the American People and their Government in cases like this, Assange, and Snowden and Guantanamo  value vengeance more than justice. 

They devalue the damage down to their own rights. 

If true the various "Hysteria" channels are partly to blame. It also smacks of other negative factors such as desperation. 

Desperate organizations or people  typically do not make good decisions that are in their best interest.  

If some of you are still wondering what I am trying to get at, please look-up one of my favorite historical works "The March of Folly - the persuit of policy contrary to self interest" by my favorite  author Barbara Tuchmann "The Guns of August" If the dear Lady were still around she could put out a new edition and any of the last three US presidents could write a new forward. 

It seems that this post belongs on the snowden link as well


----------



## FJAG

Having said the above, please note that under s. 148 of the NDA, "Only one sentence shall be passed on an offender at a trial under the Code of Service Discipline and, where the offender is convicted of more than one offence, the sentence is good if any one of the offences would have justified it." Note that a sentence can include multiple punishments such as a fine and reduction in rank etc.

The UK Court Martial Manual explicitly makes provision for both concurrent and consecutive sentences.

I have made a quick read of the US Uniform Code of Military Justice and while I can't put a finger on any particular provision, I believe it calls for consecutive sentences (although I have seen one article that talks about "one sentence" at a CM). Under a recent ruling by the Court of Appeal of the Armed Forces (US v Campbell) there is a reference to an old principle called " multiplicity for sentencing" and a newer concept of "unreasonable multiplication of charges as applied to sentence". I think even to the experts this is a bit muddled but I think it deals with situations where an accused does a number of related transactions which are charged as separate counts (in the Campbell case a series of thefts by a military nurse of controlled narcotics etc). Under the principle the judge can effectively "merge" the several convictions and enter one sentence.

See one analysis of the decision here and good luck: http://www.caaflog.com/2012/03/03/opinion-analysis-united-states-v-campbell-no-11-0403af/

That said I think this principle may play a part in the Manning case.

Should be entertaining.  op:


----------



## FJAG

Defence seeks merger of some convictions

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/canadian-press-newsalertus-army-pfc-bradley-manning-acquitted-of-aiding-enemy--217616541.html


----------



## cupper

I suspect predict that the final outcome will result in a sentence between 20 and 40 years.


----------



## Kat Stevens

Hollywood weighs in at last, I was getting worried.

http://iam.bradleymanning.org/


----------



## vonGarvin

Kat Stevens said:
			
		

> Hollywood weighs in at last, I was getting worried.
> 
> http://iam.bradleymanning.org/



FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!



/sarcasm



I had to stop watching.  My blood was starting to boil...


----------



## kevincanada

Next up, Feature Film.  Hollywood Conspiracy theories get your tickets now only $9.95   op:  On a serious note.   A news article I read did say the prosecution can now bring up the actual damages he caused with the information distributed if they feel fitting now that the conviction portion of the trial is over.  I am interested to see what harm his actions have caused.


----------



## Inquisitor

It's true that he did damage. 

I suspect In a perfect world at least one of the more serious charges would read "P*ssing in in Fearless Leaders corn flakes"

Here is a link to some of the changes he has made in the world, for good or ill, I'll leave that for you to decide. 

Link here: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/top_10_ways_bradley_manning_changed_the_world_20130731/


----------



## cupper

Inquisitor said:
			
		

> It's true that he did damage.
> 
> I suspect In a perfect world at least one of the more serious charges would read "P*ssing in in Fearless Leaders corn flakes"
> 
> Here is a link to some of the changes he has made in the world, for good or ill, I'll leave that for you to decide.
> 
> Link here: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/top_10_ways_bradley_manning_changed_the_world_20130731/



The article is rife with factual errors right from the opening sentence.



> Bradley Manning *will be sentenced today*, having been found guilty of 20 counts on Tuesday



Manning's release of diplomatic cables that revealed that various regimes in the Arab world were authoritarian and corrupt and lead to the Arab spring movement is a pretty big streatch. It is to say that if Manning had not leaked the info, the Arab Spring movement would not have happened, or would not have been as big a movement as it was.

The so-called "secret" drone in Yeman was a big surprise.  :sarcasm:  Not exactly the best kept secret. The complicity of the Yemani government may not have been as well known, but the uprising and attempt to overthrow the regime would have occurred regardless of the revelation.

Diplomats spying on diplomats? Colour me shocked.

Kerry pressing Israel on return of the Golan? Can't what sort of change this resulted in due to Manning releasing this info.

Afghan Government corruption had been revealed in every inspector Generals report dating back to 2003 and beyond. Not a revelation by Manning in any sense.

The majority of information leaked by Manning, particularly the diplomatic cables were not any great revelation and was generally public knowledge. The damage was to US Diplomatic relations by revealing commentary and assessments which viewed other countries and governments / leaders in a less than flattering light. In other words, the diplomatic equivalent of the Kings New Clothes.

Some of the information did place people in jeopardy, particularly discussions with members of opposition groups in countries with authoritarian governments.

Manning has not changed the world.


----------



## Inquisitor

To reply to the previous post:

I see you and raise >

I put myself in jeopardy here but think "What would Col. David Hackworth do in a situation like this? I predict he would support Manning. 

I suspect  he would also prescribe some moral Viagra for dysfunctional "Moral compasses"  on the part of the administration(s)

Info here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hackworth


----------



## Inquisitor

cupper said:
			
		

> I suspect predict that the final outcome will result in a sentence between 20 and 40 years.



I suspect that this could get really interesting. It seems that much of the testimony will be out of the public view. 

If I was his attorney I would be angling for a Presidential Pardon >, not that either  will ever happen. 

I suspect that the defence playing a Dick  Cheney, Valerie Plame (Undercover CIA agent gets revealed), Iraq WMD (disinformation used to build case for war), Scooter Libby (The revealer)  gets pardon hand might  have some merit.  

This would apply to Snowden as well if ever goes on trial.


----------



## cupper

Inquisitor said:
			
		

> To reply to the previous post:
> 
> I see you and raise >
> 
> I put myself in jeopardy here but think "What would Col. David Hackworth do in a situation like this? I predict he would support Manning.
> 
> I suspect  he would also prescribe some moral Viagra for dysfunctional "Moral compasses"  on the part of the administration(s)
> 
> Info here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hackworth



How is this relevant?


----------



## Jarnhamar

Inquisitor said:
			
		

> To reply to the previous post:
> 
> I see you and raise >
> 
> I put myself in jeopardy here but think "What would Col. David Hackworth do in a situation like this? I predict he would support Manning.
> 
> I suspect  he would also prescribe some moral Viagra for dysfunctional "Moral compasses"  on the part of the administration(s)
> 
> Info here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hackworth


Why do you hate freedom?


----------



## Inquisitor

ObedientiaZelum said:
			
		

> Why do you hate freedom?



Thank you for your question - I do not beleive I do.  In fact I feel quite the opposite. Myself and many others feel that the human rights are being stripped away under the guise of the war on terror. 

We both know that I tend to go off on tangents so. I will include some selected links that I hope will illustrate my points. 

Ahhh!! Please allow me to introduce Paul Craig Roberts - here is a select bio: Paul Craig Roberts is an American economist and a columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and was noted as a co-founder of Reaganomics. 

I hope we can botyh agree he is not some weak kneed liberal. 

As luck would have it his latest column takes shots at the administration  over both the Snowden and Manning trials. 

He also comments on the American economy as well. 

I'll try to give you another example. Both my parents most male members of their age served in WWII. I served in the 70's. 

During most of the ColdWar  "The Free World" was in peril. At time there were serious overreactions that did a lot of Harm to the practice of "Freedom" Mcarrthy era was one. The Red scare was another.  Bader Meinhof Gang, Red Army, Weather Underground, IRA bombings in the 60's and 70's yet another. 

That last point is I think of sigifigance. Despite bombings there was no heavy handed overreaction such as the so-called "Patriot Act"  I have often wondered why that was. A partial answer that occurred to me is  of the Adult population who had lived through WWII knew what REAL TERROR was, the blitz, strategic bombing and were not so easily misled. 

Another point if I may, I am almost 60 and I think this has allowed me a wider view than  others. The ones I am relay concerned about are those  born after 9/11 who have never lived the "Old Normal: Also those born after 1991 who had little experience with the "Old Normal" 

If you are still with me - thank you for your attention. 

For General Hillier to refer to the 90's as "The Decade of Darkness"   to my mind does the Forces a disservice. The decades of Darkness ended when The Soviet Union imploded. 

Now it looks like the same style of mismanagement that took down the Soviet Union will do the same to the US. 

Getting Back To Col. Hackworth. He was an idol to me even in the 70's I suggest you would enjoy his books "Steel my Soldiers Hearts" about how he forged a draftee battalion into a fighting unit. About face - the tale of his carreer started right after WWII  and explaining what he did and why. 

He was a true patriot, as I aspire to be. A champion of the fighting force, a relentless foe of waste and incompetants and "Perfumed Princes". 

I note another of your posts noting the high levels of suicide in the US Military. I have a very strong theory that combat arms pers represent a very high percentage of those. 

I could go and but I can just visualize the  :boring: and  :facepalm: :clown: :blah: I have likely earned. 


One of our WWII vets said - for me every day is Remembrance Day" It is for me as well.  My cousin was one of 10 that died at the Edmonton Air show Crash.  Who on earth came up with the idea of Hercules Transports doing unauthorized formation aerobatics.  At least 6 commissioned officers in on the stunt and no one had the brains to stop.  The pilots were stupid beyond belief AND it was a command failure as well. 

Spell check complete Finally I will provide a quick summary of a defence policy that once worked well. The Abrams - Weinberger -  Powell doctrine  Ah heck - look it up if interested.


----------



## Inquisitor

drat - here's the link to Paul Craig Roberts http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

Thank you


----------



## George Wallace

Inquisitor said:
			
		

> I'll try to give you another example. Both my parents most male members of their age served in WWII. I served in the 70's.
> 
> During most of the ColdWar  "The Free World" was in peril. At time there were serious overreactions that did a lot of Harm to the practice of "Freedom" Mcarrthy era was one. The Red scare was another.  Bader Meinhof Gang, Red Army, Weather Underground, IRA bombings in the 60's and 70's yet another.



Apples and Oranges.  None of those organization had anywhere near the total numbers as what we are currently fighting in the 'War on Terror', even if we were to add them all up together.  Localized factions as you just mentioned, are not comparable to the international web of cells the Al Queda has spread around South West Asia, Middle East, Africa and the rest of the free world.  



			
				Inquisitor said:
			
		

> That last point is I think of sigifigance. Despite bombings there was no heavy handed overreaction such as the so-called "Patriot Act"



Ummmm!  Did you not just mention Northern Ireland above.  Why, yes you did.  Do you not think Parliament in London had not taken appropriate measures and legislated acts to sent British troops to Northern Ireland?   





			
				Inquisitor said:
			
		

> For General Hillier to refer to the 90's as "The Decade of Darkness"   to my mind does the Forces a disservice. The decades of Darkness ended when The Soviet Union imploded.



I see the point he was making swooshed right over your head.  When the Wall came down and the 'Soviet Union imploded' the Canadian Armed Forces saw a decade of Darkness.  Six years of frozen Pay.  No major equipment purchases.  Large cuts to CAF organizations.  Base closures.  If that all passed your field of vision without your noticing it happening, you were totally ignorant of what was going on in this country and around the world.




			
				Inquisitor said:
			
		

> .....  My cousin was one of 10 that died at the Edmonton Air show Crash.  Who on earth came up with the idea of Hercules Transports doing unauthorized formation aerobatics.  At least 6 commissioned officers in on the stunt and no one had the brains to stop.  The pilots were stupid beyond belief AND it was a command failure as well.



And you were privy to the final accident report?  Your last sentence tells me a lot about you.  It is not very positive.


----------



## cupper

Both sides of the debate, Manning Hero or Traitor

*Is Bradley Manning A Hero Or A Traitor?*

http://www.theonion.com/articles/is-bradley-manning-a-hero-or-a-traitor,33322/



> Yesterday, a military judge convicted Army Pfc. Bradley Manning of violating the Espionage Act, but acquitted him on charges of aiding the enemy. Manning, who leaked more than 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks in 2010 and now faces up to 136 years in prison, is being hailed by some as a hero for his whistleblowing and a traitor by others for compromising national security. Here are the cases the two sides are making:
> 
> *ARGUMENTS FOR MANNING BEING A HERO:*
> 
> Sacrificed his dreams of leading a relatively normal life as a lonely outcast questioning his gender identity
> 
> Risked life and limb to reveal documents superiors had mistakenly entrusted to him
> 
> Martyred self in name of higher cause no one really wants to read about
> 
> Leaked videos meant that Akron, OH resident Carolyn Sutter spent 10 extra minutes on her computer on the morning of February 19, 2010, causing her to miss her usual bus—the very same bus that crashed that morning and would have killed her if she’d been on board
> 
> Everybody but the army seems to think he’s a decent enough guy
> 
> The chance of Bradley Manning being the product of the one of his father’s sperm that fertilized his mother’s egg and ultimately became a human is specularly low and, actually, almost unfathomable! One in 10^2,685,000, to be exact! So, whether or not Manning is a hero, he is a miracle. We are all miracles.
> 
> *ARGUMENTS FOR MANNING BEING A TRAITOR:*
> 
> Has thus far failed to demonstrate himself as anything beyond some flash-in-the-pan, one-hit-wonder whistleblower
> 
> Lacks the raw, unadulterated masculinity of an Assange or Snowden
> 
> Stubbornly refuses to leave public eye, months after the American people lost interest in him
> 
> Pompous “Private First Class” moniker
> 
> Closing statement in trial was just “With all due respect, your honor, I fucking hate this country”
> 
> Ultimately, the judgment of Bradley Manning is a far deeper question than whether he is merely a hero or villain, streaked with shades of gray and consumed by moral ambiguity. But yeah, sure, he’s probably a traitor.



 ;D


----------



## Inquisitor

Thanks George. 

I should have stayed focused on Col. Hackworth and Roberts. 

Re: comments on the crash here is bonus link to the mother of all command failures, http://www.uscg.mil/safety/docs/CRM/Darker_Shades_of_Blue.pdf please note the authors copyright instructions. 

One of my overarching concerns and part of the reason that I'm am being so deliberately contrarion is my belief that certain aspects of society are suffering unacceptable and perhaps irreversible levels of collateral damage from the "War on Terror"

For example - The US executive branch granting itself additional powers
                      The NSA issues 
                       Lies leading up to the Iraq war. 
                       Much of the press self muzzling itself 
                       Blatant corruption not just in  Iraq and Afghanistan but the US Government as well. example read "Capitol Punishment - The hard truth about Washington Corruption 
                       from America's most notorious lobbyist" by Jack Abramoff. 
                       Restrictions on Habeas Corpus
                       
 One of the maxims of war is that one should never do what his opponent wants. OBL wanted The West to engage in these wars in so doing going the way of the Soviet union.


----------



## Inquisitor

and that's just North America

Then there's this link http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/iraq-july-death-toll_n_3688443.html?utm_hp_ref=canada&ir=Canada&utm_hp_ref=canada

Going back to my comment about "The March of Folly" a new chapter indeed.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

ObedientiaZelum said:
			
		

> Why do you hate freedom?



That'll teach you to ask questions


----------



## Inquisitor

A lot of the discussion has so far focused solely on Manning, the individual. 

I suggest that we may be missing something much bigger. 

How the system reacts to an individual or individuals who believe, presuably in good faith, that the orders that are commanded to act under are no longer lawful orders. 

God forbid that any find ourselves in such a situation. 

This applies to both Manning, Snowden as well as others likely to follow. 

They did not adhere to the authorized procedures to resolve their issues, likely because of lack of faith in the outcomes. 

I find this article interesting  "
A Real Democracy Would Strip the Military of Court-Martial Jurisdiction Over Whistleblowers

How the Manning Trial Betrayed the Constitution" link here  
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/02/how-the-manning-trial-betrayed-the-constitution/

Its a fairly heavy read and I Include some snippets that seem to stand out under the fair use provision of the copyright act

"The military under its civilian commander in chief denied Bradley Manning his constitutional right to a jury trial under the Sixth Amendment ... This denial of Bradley Manning’s rights also deprived “we the people” of our  constitutional rights to witness a “public trial” as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment and to have our views represented on a fairly selected, representative civilian jury.   Though the efficacy of juries has come into question recently in the Trayvon Martin case, it remains true that a fairly impaneled jury, competently informed by the agency of lawyers, and instructed by an impartial judge, can be fairly representative of, and a legitimate disinterested proxy for, informed public opinion.  This process is the bedrock of democracy by guaranteeing that no one may be denied life liberty or property except upon trial by their peers who are resonant of informed public opinion. 

... 

Keeping secrets of crimes is not related to a legitimate “fighting function,” nor is the revelation of those secrets.  In O’Callahan v. Parker, 395 U.S. 258 (1969), where the Court refused to subject a member of the military to court-martial and insisted upon trial in a civilian court on a civilian criminal charge, the Court warned that “expansion of military discipline beyond its proper domain carries with it a threat to liberty” because  “military law has always been, and continues to be, primarily an instrument of discipline, not justice.”  395 

...

The military was given an opportunity to defer its own conflicting interests in secrecy to the people’s higher right to know.  It failed.  It redefined espionage as telling the truth to the American voter about misdeeds the militiary prefers to hide.  The remedy is now for Congress to amend the Military Justice laws to provide that whistle-blowers must be tried in a constitutional court and not be punished under the guise of a military disciplinary proceeding.  The military has lost its credibility to try such cases.

... 

Under the Constitution it is the people, through the constitutional process of a civilian jury trial, not the military apparatus, who must be the judge of whether Manning’s selfless act of service to the people is deserving of punishment.  So long as the military continues to hold Manning they are denying him the speedy and civilian trial that the Constitution requires.

Rob Hager is a public-interest litigator who filed a Supreme Court amicus brief in the 2012 Montana sequel to the Citizens United case, American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock, and has worked as an international consultant on legal development and anti-corruption issues."


----------



## kevincanada

Inquisitor said:
			
		

> A lot of the discussion has so far focused solely on Manning, the individual.
> 
> I suggest that we may be missing something much bigger.
> 
> How the system reacts to an individual or individuals who believe, presuably in good faith, that the orders that are commanded to act under are no longer lawful orders.
> 
> God forbid that any find ourselves in such a situation.
> 
> This applies to both Manning, Snowden as well as others likely to follow.
> 
> They did not adhere to the authorized procedures to resolve their issues, likely because of lack of faith in the outcomes.



While I will try to avoid finger pointing and character bashing.  If you read a little past the Leak/Court case fiasco surrounding Manning.  You can see that he has exercise what I believe to be poor judgement in a number of issues, some of which had nothing to do with going through proper channels but where merely bad choices before his legal troubles ever began.  Read some of his history online prior to the leak.  It may influence your view of him and the choices he made.


----------



## FJAG

Inquisitor said:
			
		

> I suggest that we may be missing something much bigger.
> 
> How the system reacts to an individual or individuals who believe, presuably in good faith, that the orders that are commanded to act under are no longer lawful orders.



Up to this point you asked a valid question. Unfortunately after that you went off on a naive rant that uses articles authored by equally misguided individuals.

Your argument is that courts martial should be stripped of jurisdiction over whistle blowers in a democracy. That premise is grounded in a presumption that courts martial are intrinsically unfair to someone who feels he has a higher calling than to keep his country's secrets.

In short that is pure claptrap. In short courts martial in the US, like those in Canada, are constitutionally recognized. In the US they are the created by the executive and the legislative branches. The civilian legislature has created the laws governing the powers and processes of courts martial and further have created the laws that they are empowered to adjudicate over. In addition they have created appeal courts that supervise the trial level courts all the way up to the Supreme Court.

What is really at play with Manning is a much simpler principle that applies to all those who feel a need to leak government secrets to the public contrary to the country's secrecy laws: "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."

A properly instructed jury would apply the law and convict him for the utterly stupid and arrogant things he did. What you are really advocating for is an opportunity to appear before an uneducated jury that can be driven by a plea for sympathy into ignoring the law.

Have a good one.   :2c:


----------



## ModlrMike

Had he stuck to reporting a war crime to the CoC rather than releasing 19000 files to Wikileaks then he might be a hero. Now he's a criminal, and a self aggrandizing one at that. You'll notice how quickly Assange et al distanced themselves from him once the trial started. I'm struck once again how the phrase "useful idiots" comes into play.


----------



## Inquisitor

"Obama Promise to Protect Whistleblowers Scrubbed From Website"
Link here http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/16184-obama-promise-to-protect-whistleblowers-scrubbed-from-website

snippet reproduced here under the fair use policy of the coyright act
"Memory hole: a hole in a small chute leading to an incinerator. In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, information — printed evidence of history — that contradicted the ruling party’s official version of events from the past was sent down the memory hole

...

Specifically, in its analysis, Sunlight noticed:

While the front splash page for Change.gov has linked to the main White House website for years, until recently, you could still continue on to see the materials and agenda laid out by the administration. This was a particularly helpful resource for those looking to compare Obama's performance in office against his vision for reform, laid out in detail on Change.gov.

... 

Sunlight suggests that this artifact from the website might hold the key:

Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process."

Comment: Wow, just Wow

Posted on the snowden thread as well


----------



## tomahawk6

There is a law pertaining to whistle blowers - if you follow the procedures.Manning and Snowden are NOT whistle blowers.
Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 .



> The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 provides protection only for individuals within the federal government. The coverage applies to current and former government employees, as well as people who are applying for a job with the federal government. Some federal employees do not receive protection from the 1989 act, including members of the FBI, the United States Postal Service and the National Security Agency.


----------



## Inquisitor

I see your point. I find the exclusions rather interesting.


----------



## Inquisitor

Bradley Manning's Maximum Possible Sentence Cut To 90 Years 

Reproduced under the fair use provision of the copyright act from Huffington Post
link here 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/06/bradley-manning-sentence_n_3713400.html

"FORT MEADE, Md. -- A military judge has reduced Army Pfc. Bradley Manning's maximum possible sentence in the WikiLeaks case to 90 years in prison.

Manning had faced up to 136 years in prison after he was convicted of charges related to his disclosure of classified information to the anti-secrecy website. But the judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, found during his sentencing hearing Tuesday that a number of the charges refer to the same actions and therefore were duplicative for sentencing purposes.

Manning was convicted at his court-martial of 20 counts. His defense attorneys had argued that some of the counts amounted to multiple convictions for a single act.

Testimony during Manning's sentencing hearing was to continue at Fort Meade, near Baltimore."


----------



## cupper

It appears that the defense team is going for the "Well you knew he had problems so you should have done something before it happened" mitigation.  :

*Army ignored Manning’s deteriorating mental health, defense attorney says*

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/army-ignored-mannings-deteriorating-mental-health-defense-attorney-says/2013/08/13/56dd9e70-0451-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html



> Pfc. Bradley Manning was experiencing an intense personal crisis and deteriorating mental health in the months he was leaking large amounts of classified data to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, and he should not have been kept in a war zone, his attorney argued at a court-martial Tuesday.
> 
> In April 2010, while serving as an Army intelligence analyst in Baghdad, Manning sent an e-mail to Master Sgt. Paul Adkins, his superior, to tell him that he was suffering from a gender-identity disorder. Manning attached a photograph of himself wearing a blond wig and makeup.
> 
> “I have had signs of it for a very long time. It’s caused problems within my family,” Manning wrote in the e-mail with the subject line “My Problem,” which was released Tuesday for the first time. “I thought enlisting in the military would get rid of it. . . . I’ve been trying very, very hard to get rid of it. It’s haunting me more and more as I get older. Now the consequences are getting harder.”
> 
> Manning was convicted last month of multiple charges relating to the leaking of classified material, including violations of the Espionage Act. The court-martial is in the sentencing phase, and Manning’s defense team hopes to persuade a military judge not to impose the maximum 90-year sentence on the 25-year-old.
> 
> The defense hopes to show that Manning was on the verge of a breakdown leading up to the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of secret military and diplomatic documents, and that his commanders did not help him or remove him from Iraq.
> 
> Adkins said he did not inform his superiors about the e-mail until after Manning was arrested. “I really didn’t think at the time that having a picture floating around of one of my soldiers in drag as in the best interest of the intel mission,” Adkins told the court.
> 
> The month after he sent the e-mail, Manning was found in the fetal position in a storeroom with a knife at his feet. Adkins testified Tuesday that he found Manning unresponsive but was able to get him to talk about how he felt “fragmented.”
> 
> Within an hour, Adkins said, he escorted Manning to his workstation so he could complete his shift. When he finished work, Manning got involved in an altercation with another person at the forward operating base, Adkins testified.
> 
> When defense attorney David Coombs pressed Adkins on why Manning was not removed, the sergeant responded that the unit was experiencing “manpower allocation” issues and that the analyst’s skills were essential to the mission.
> 
> “My intent was to make sure, if I could possibly do it, that he could maintain his functionality as an intelligence analyst,” Adkins said. “In a perfect world, I think if I could have left him back to make sure he was getting behavior health care, I think I would have.”
> 
> The sentencing phase will continue Wednesday, when Manning is expected to make a statement before the judge, Col. Denise Lind.


----------



## The Bread Guy

Should have thought of this BEFORE hitting "Send" ....


> Pfc. Bradley Manning told a military judge during his sentencing hearing Wednesday that he is sorry he hurt the United States by leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive military and diplomatic documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks and he asked for leniency.
> 
> “I’m sorry I hurt people. I’m sorry that I hurt the United States,” said Manning, who was convicted last month of multiple crimes, including violations of the Espionage Act, for turning over the classified material. “I’m apologizing for the unintended consequences of my actions. I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people.”
> 
> The former Army intelligence analyst, who served at a forward operating base in Iraq, had not previously expressed regret for his actions, and during trial had justified the leak as necessary to spark a debate about the nation’s preoccupation with “killing and capturing people.”
> 
> Speaking publicly for only the third time since he was arrested in Iraq in June 2010, Manning said he had been naive. “I look back at my decisions and wonder, ‘How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?’” said Manning, who spoke for less than five minutes, often in a quavering voice ....


_Washington Post_, 14 Aug 13


----------



## cupper

Well. they do say that your net presence will follow you everywhere, forever. ;D

You would think an underground hacker type like him would know that.


----------



## OldSolduer

Now he's blaming gender identity issues over this. 

Really now..... :facepalm:


----------



## Jarnhamar

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> Now he's blaming gender identity issues over this.
> 
> Really now..... :facepalm:



If that excuse works for him then I'll use it for myself and have one more reason why I'm late  ;D


----------



## PMedMoe

ObedientiaZelum said:
			
		

> If that excuse works for him then I'll use it for myself and have one more reason why I'm late  ;D



Because you had to put on make up?


----------



## GAP

PMedMoe said:
			
		

> Because you had to put on make up?



Who knew?


----------



## Kat Stevens

Hey, you think pretty like that just happens?


----------



## Journeyman

Just to keep the tangent going...... ObedientiaZelum _may_ want to consider a new hair-dresser


----------



## Jarnhamar

I meant the other kind of late


----------



## Fishbone Jones

ObedientiaZelum said:
			
		

> I meant the other kind of late



Something wrong with your mangina?


----------



## OldSolduer

ObedientiaZelum said:
			
		

> I meant the other kind of late



rrrrrggnhhhh 

Too funny.....


----------



## PMedMoe

recceguy said:
			
		

> Something wrong with your mangina?



There's sand in it.   >


----------



## cupper

Damned sand gets everywhere.

 :rofl:


----------



## The Bread Guy

> A military judge on Wednesday morning sentenced Army Pfc. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.
> 
> Manning, 25, was convicted last month of multiple charges, including violations of the Espionage Act for copying and disseminating the documents while serving as an intelligence analyst at a forward operating base in Iraq. He faced up to 90 years in prison.
> 
> According to the military, Manning is required to serve one-third of the sentence before he becomes eligible for parole.
> 
> (....)
> 
> Manning will receive a credit of 1,293 days for the time he has been confined prior to the sentence, including 112 days of credit for abusive treatment he was subjected to in the brig at the Quantico Marine Base ....


_Washington Post_, 21 Aug 13


----------



## tomahawk6

Out in 8 or 9 years.He's pretty lucky.


----------



## cupper

cupper said:
			
		

> I suspect predict that the final outcome will result in a sentence between 20 and 40 years.



I guess I won the pool. ;D


----------



## s2184

If this was in China, then death penalty for sure?

Simply he is not trustworthy.

Imagine, similar incident happens in Canada, what should be the punishment?

Probably I might be wrong, but Personally I believe the sentence he has been given is not enough!  :


----------



## George Wallace

s2184 said:
			
		

> If this was in China, then death penalty for sure?
> 
> Simply he is not trustworthy.
> 
> Imagine, similar incident happens in Canada, what should be the punishment?
> 
> Probably I might be wrong, but Personally I believe the sentence he has been given is not enough!  :



You obviously don't watch the news.


----------



## s2184

George, you are correct. I am not following the story in detail. But, my opinion was purely based on logic. I was trying to say that if he was the CF member, then what should be the outcome?


----------



## Teager

s2184 said:
			
		

> George, you are correct. I am not following the story in detail. But, my opinion was purely based on logic. I was trying to say that if he was the CF member, then what should be the outcome?



George was hinting at this.

http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/104137/post-1214692.html#msg1214692


----------



## Retired AF Guy

Listening to the radio (NPR and CBC) on the way home this afternoon, Manning's defence team is already asking Obama to grant him a pardon.


----------



## kratz

s2184 said:
			
		

> George, you are correct. I am not following the story in detail. But, my opinion was purely based on logic. I was trying to say that if he was the CF member, then what should be the outcome?



I know you have not been on BMQ, but if you researched before forming your opinion on the limited sources you have used, you would appreciate a more accurate answer to your own question.

Have you read: Chief Military Judge (CMJ) web pages ?


----------



## s2184

Thanks Teager & Kratz for the links.


----------



## Inquisitor

Well now that that's done with I found a couple of articles you might find interesting. 

Reproduced under the fair dealing provision of the copyright act from Counterpunch (2 articles)

"35 Years for Exposing Us to the Truth

by BIRGITTA JÓNSDÓTTIR


As of today, Wednesday 21 August 2013, Bradley Manning has served 1,182 days in prison. He should be released with a sentence of time served. Instead, the judge in his court martial at Fort Meade, Maryland has handed down a sentence of 35 years.

Of course, a humane, reasonable sentence of time served was never going to happen. This trial has, since day one, been held in a kangaroo court. That is not angry rhetoric; the reason I am forced to frame it in that way is because President Obama made the following statements on record, before the trial even started:


President Obama: We’re a nation of laws. We don’t individually make our own decisions about how the laws operate … He broke the law.

Logan Price: Well, you can make the law harder to break, but what he did was tell us the truth.

President Obama: Well, what he did was he dumped …

Logan Price: But Nixon tried to prosecute Daniel Ellsberg for the same thing and he is a … [hero]

President Obama: No, it isn’t the same thing … What Ellsberg released wasn’t classified in the same way.

When the president says that the Ellsberg’s material was classified in a different way, he seems to be unaware that there was a higher classification on the documents Ellsberg leaked.

A fair trial, then, has never been part of the picture. Despite being a professor in constitutional law, the president as commander-in-chief of the US military – and Manning has been tried in a court martial – declared Manning’s guilt pre-emptively. Here is what the Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg had to say about this, in an interview with Amy Goodman at DemocracyNow! in 2011:


Well, nearly everything the president has said represents a confusion about the state of the law and his own responsibilities. Everyone is focused, I think, on the fact that his commander-in-chief has virtually given a directed verdict to his subsequent jurors, who will all be his subordinates in deciding the guilt in the trial of Bradley Manning. He’s told them already that their commander, on whom their whole career depends, regards him [Manning] as guilty and that they can disagree with that only at their peril. In career terms, it’s clearly enough grounds for a dismissal of the charges, just as my trial was dismissed eventually for governmental misconduct.    But what people haven’t really focused on, I think, is another problematic aspect of what he said. He not only was identifying Bradley Manning as the source of the crime, but he was assuming, without any question, that a crime has been committed.

This alone should have been cause for the judge in the case to rethink prosecutors’ demand for 60 years in prison. Manning himself has shown throughout the trial both that he is a humanitarian and that he is willing to serve time for his actions. We have to look at his acts in light of his moral compass, not any political agenda. ..."

Link Here  
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/21/35-years-for-exposing-us-to-the-truth/

another I'll be mindful of a comment on the Snowden thread that the comments have to apply to the person and not the effect, so only post what I think apply to Manning

"What Bradley Manning Revealed

by BRADLEY MANNING SUPPORT NETWORK



“In no case shall information be classified… in order to: conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error; prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency… or prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.”

—Executive Order 13526, Sec. 1.7. Classification Prohibitions and Limitations

“Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is this awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.”

—Robert Gates, Unites States Secretary of Defense ..."

Link here 
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/21/what-bradley-manning-revealed/

Comment - Good news!!! I plan to exit the thread after this. I imagine the report that Manning wants to live as a woman will be met with mirth in many circles. 

I think looking back we may see Manning and Snowden almost as the Pentagon Papers II. I was around for that debacle as well. The release of those I think turned many of those of my parents generation who still supported US Policy in SE Asia aqainst it. Same for many of the population as a whole.  The US government then as now was revealed as a corrupt institution with a broken moral compass. To bad the Brits have drunk the same Kool-Aid. 

BTW this little hypothesis is not just me 

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.
—John le Carré

With all the ongoing trouble one can but pray for people of good will that saner heads will prevail. 

So if I am going to exit the thread I may as well do so in a big way - Reccesional - Rudyard Kipling


God of our fathers, known of old—
Lord of our far-flung battle line—
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
 Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
 Lest we forget—lest we forget!

 The tumult and the shouting dies—
The Captains and the Kings depart—
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
 An humble and a contrite heart.
 Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
 Lest we forget—lest we forget!

 Far-called our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
 Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
 Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
 Lest we forget—lest we forget!

 If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
 Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe—
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
 Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
 Lest we forget—lest we forget!

 For heathen heart that puts her trust
 In reeking tube and iron shard—
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
 And guarding calls not Thee to guard.
 For frantic boast and foolish word,
 Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
 Amen.


----------



## Teflon

> Comment - Good news!!! I plan to exit the thread after this.




Good News is always good to hear


----------



## Tow Tripod

Something tells me Chelsea Manning may have a "hard" time in jail....... Just saying.


----------



## jollyjacktar

Inquisitor said:
			
		

> Well now that that's done with I found a couple of articles you might find interesting.


Nope, not one bloody bit.


----------



## cupper

Tow Tripod said:
			
		

> Something tells me Chelsea Manning may have a "hard" time in jail....... Just saying.



It's beginning to sound like this is far from over.

His Lawyer is becoming a crusader, fighting for a WH pardon, and fight to allow Mr. Manning to undergo hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery while in confinement.

I wonder if Pte. Manning can see the irony in his last name?


----------



## Inquisitor

Tow Tripod said:
			
		

> Something tells me Chelsea Manning may have a "hard" time in jail....... Just saying.



Guess what???? I lied >

Chelsea is all of about 5" tall. Maybe 100 lbs or so soaking wet. Endured hazing almost from the moment she enlisted.  She is being punished for her actions. 

Never pass a fault. Perhaps something good will come of this, since never again, do I intend to put up with you and your like. 

I don't know what surprises me more that you would post a statement like that, or that no one else would call you on it. 

If this is still whistling over your head, Most people do not find sexual assault jokes comments funny. 

She may be a criminal but what sort of person are you?


----------



## Fishbone Jones

Inquisitor said:
			
		

> Guess what???? I lied >
> 
> Chelsea is all of about 5" tall. Maybe 100 lbs or so soaking wet. Endured hazing almost from the moment she enlisted.  She is being punished for her actions.
> 
> Never pass a fault. Perhaps something good will come of this, since never again, do I intend to put up with you and your like.
> 
> I don't know what surprises me more that you would post a statement like that, or that no one else would call you on it.
> 
> If this is still whistling over your head, Most people do not find sexual assault jokes comments funny.
> 
> She may be a criminal but what sort of person are you?



What the hell are you on about this time?


----------



## Maxadia

Inquisitor said:
			
		

> Comment - Good news!!! I plan to exit the thread after this.



Apparently it's true....no plan survives the first contact.


----------



## Inquisitor

recceguy said:
			
		

> What the hell are you on about this time?



With all due respect, please take a look another look at my repose to tow bipods comment. Thank you


----------



## George Wallace

Inquisitor said:
			
		

> With all due respect, please take a look another look at my repose to tow bipods comment. Thank you



With all due respect; you said you were leaving.  Apparently your sensibilities are offended by others very easily; yet you feel that your comments are not as offensive.  NEWS FLASH:  You lied to us.


----------



## Inquisitor

George Wallace said:
			
		

> With all due respect; you said you were leaving.  Apparently your sensibilities are offended by others very easily; yet you feel that your comments are not as offensive.  NEWS FLASH:  You lied to us.



Where I may have erred is in forgetting that this is a public forum, and people have the privilege of commenting so long as they adhere to the guidelines. Even the remark is questionable, as are many of mine. 

In other circumstances if that comment had been made say in a Defense Establishment or a bar, Tow Tripod would not have heard the last of this. 

George Right now I'm not mad, I'm livid.  Exposure to a couple of cases where the CF/CIC/COATS systems did not identify/deal with cases of physical and sexual assault have left me extremely intolerant of remarks like "Gee I hope nothing bad happens to her"  

Certain comments are just not right, and need to be challenged the sooner the better.


----------



## George Wallace

Inquisitor said:
			
		

> Where I may have erred is in forgetting that this is a public forum, and people have the privilege of commenting so long as they adhere to the guidelines. Even the remark is questionable, as are many of mine.
> 
> In other circumstances if that comment had been made say in a Defense Establishment or a bar, Tow Tripod would not have heard the last of this.
> 
> George Right now I'm not mad, I'm livid.  Exposure to a couple of cases where the CF/CIC/COATS systems did not identify/deal with cases of physical and sexual assault have left me extremely intolerant of remarks like "Gee I hope nothing bad happens to her"
> 
> Certain comments are just not right, and need to be challenged the sooner the better.



Either you have very thin skin and are offended easily or you have an agenda here.  Either way, you LIED to us, and now you are pressing it even more.  One other thing, Tow Tripod did not say "Gee I hope nothing bad happens to her", so don't be putting words in his mouth, or at the very least get the quote correct.  What he said was:



			
				Tow Tripod said:
			
		

> Something tells me Chelsea Manning may have a "hard" time in jail....... Just saying.



If you want to read sexist or discriminatory thought there, that is your own doing.  Anyone who goes to jail is likely to face a hard time.  NOW move along and try to keep your word.


----------



## Loachman

Inquisitor said:
			
		

> Chelsea is all of about 5" tall.



Five inches tall?

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all

Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall

Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice
When she was just small

When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low

Go ask Alice
I think she'll know
When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead

And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
"Feed your head, feed your head"


----------



## The Bread Guy

> Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning is seeking a presidential pardon for leaking reams of classified information that her lawyer says did not merit protection.
> 
> The Pvt. Manning Support Network released documents today that defense attorney David Coombs filed a day earlier with the U.S. Justice Department and the Department of the Army.
> 
> Manning, previously known as Bradley Manning, has declared her desire to live as a woman while serving a 35-year prison sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
> 
> In her petition for pardon and commutation of sentence, Manning wrote: “The decisions I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in.” ....


_Army Times_, 4 Sept 13


----------



## gryphonv

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/obama-commutes-chelsea-manning-s-prison-sentence-1.3939966



> U.S. President Barack Obama is commuting the prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the former army intelligence analyst who leaked classified documents.
> 
> The White House says Manning is one of 209 inmates whose sentences Obama is shortening.
> 
> Manning is more than six years into a 35-year sentence for leaking classified government and military documents to the website WikiLeaks. Her sentence is now set to expire May 17.


----------



## Rifleman62

So the Democrats, through their leader, are commuting the prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, who leaked classified documents to Wikileaks at the same time as going ballistic over the leaking of Hillary's and the DNC emails to Wikileaks.

I guess it depends on who the leaks damaged: the security of the US or the Democrats.


----------



## gryphonv

Yeah, I think the Dem's have really dug themselves a hole. The party is in shatters now, this don't help their cause at all.

One thing about the US is they love and respect their military, and despise traitors. 

Manning is seen, by the vast majority, as a traitor.


----------



## tomahawk6

The commutation of Mannings sentence was a pre-condition of Assange turning himself in to US authorities.


----------



## gryphonv

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The commutation of Mannings sentence was a pre-condition of Assange turning himself in to US authorities.



Yes, but that is still very much a long shot. I know Assange said he would turn himself in. But I have trouble trusting him to follow through.


----------



## tomahawk6

Assange doesnt want to be a virtual prisoner in some embassy,he wants to be able to travel.
Obama pardoned USMC GEN Cartwight today,so it wasnt all bad.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/us/politics/obama-pardons-james-cartwright-general-who-lied-to-fbi-in-leak-case.html?_r=0

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday pardoned James E. Cartwright, a retired Marine Corps general and former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his discussions with reporters about Iran’s nuclear program, saving him from a possible prison sentence.

General Cartwright, who was a key member of Mr. Obama’s national security team in his first term and earned a reputation as the president’s favorite general, pleaded guilty late last year to misleading investigators looking into the leaking of classified information about cyberattacks against Iran.


----------



## gryphonv

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Assange doesnt want to be a virtual prisoner in some embassy,he wants to be able to travel.
> Obama pardoned USMC GEN Cartwight today,so it wasnt all bad.
> 
> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/us/politics/obama-pardons-james-cartwright-general-who-lied-to-fbi-in-leak-case.html?_r=0
> 
> WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday pardoned James E. Cartwright, a retired Marine Corps general and former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his discussions with reporters about Iran’s nuclear program, saving him from a possible prison sentence.
> 
> General Cartwright, who was a key member of Mr. Obama’s national security team in his first term and earned a reputation as the president’s favorite general, pleaded guilty late last year to misleading investigators looking into the leaking of classified information about cyberattacks against Iran.



True, I can respect Cartwright and his motives. 

Manning though I have no respect for, the actions Manning took quite possibly caused servicemen to die, or at the very least put many at extra risk of death. It wasn't that long ago when the treason Manning committed would of resulted in capitol punishment. Still Manning is a small fish in the whole scandal. 

I still feel, Manning went through the sex change transition is more as a smart move to get the support of certain groups. More people to fight for his/her release. It's funny how it all came up after the fact and a little suspicious. But whatever Manning identifies has, should have zero bearing on what was done.


----------



## vonGarvin

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The commutation of Mannings sentence was a pre-condition of Assange turning himself in to US authorities.



Yeah, like *that* is gonna happen...

I'll believe it when I see it


----------



## jollyjacktar

Can Trump overturn Obama's decisions once he takes the oath on Friday?  Manning's not set for release until May...


----------



## tomahawk6

jollyjacktar said:
			
		

> Can Trump overturn Obama's decisions once he takes the oath on Friday?  Manning's not set for release until May...



She wont be released until May and could save the government money on the sex change costs. So commuting the sentence could be reversed,after all its not a pardon.


----------



## tomahawk6

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> She wont be released until May and could save the government money on the sex change costs. So commuting the sentence could be reversed,after all its not a pardon.



WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday pardoned James E. Cartwright, a retired Marine Corps general and former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his discussions with reporters about Iran’s nuclear program, saving him from a possible prison sentence.

General Cartwright, who was a key member of Mr. Obama’s national security team in his first term and earned a reputation as the president’s favorite general, pleaded guilty late last year to misleading investigators looking into the leaking of classified information about cyberattacks against Iran.


----------



## tomahawk6

The Assange extradition is now in the works.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/01/breaking-julian-assange-will-extradited-united-states/


----------



## Lightguns

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The Assange extradition is now in the works.
> 
> http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/01/breaking-julian-assange-will-extradited-united-states/



I am beginning to be impressed by this guy.  Or perhaps a US supermax is more comfortable than a room in a third world embassy.


----------



## The Bread Guy

Lightguns said:
			
		

> I am beginning to be impressed by this guy.


Let's not forget his leaks may have cost lives -- 11 pages of reminder here.


			
				Lightguns said:
			
		

> Or perhaps a US supermax is more comfortable than a room in a third world embassy.


I'll believe it when I see the move happen ...

P.S. -- Also merged this with the rest of Manning's story here @ Army.ca.


----------



## tomahawk6

Mannings leaks may have cost lives.Bergdahl going AWOL in Afghanistan certainly did.


----------



## vonGarvin

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> She wont be released until May and could save the government money on the sex change costs.



12 feet of rope would also save plenty of money.


----------



## The Bread Guy

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Mannings leaks & Assange sharing them may have cost lives.


 :nod:


----------



## jollyjacktar

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Mannings leaks may have cost lives.Bergdahl going AWOL in Afghanistan certainly did.



 :rage:


----------



## The Bread Guy

Lightguns said:
			
		

> I am beginning to be impressed by this guy.


Just a reminder ...


> ... In WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, David Leigh and Luke Harding, reporters for The Guardian, described what allegedly happened when a group of journalists took Assange to Moro’s, a Spanish restaurant in central London. When they discussed the contents of the Afghan war files, one reporter told Assange he was concerned about what could happen to Afghans who worked with the coalition were the documents to release without proper redactions.
> 
> “Well, they’re informants,” Assange replied. “So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them.”
> 
> “They deserve it.”
> 
> The Taliban and other terrorist groups still have this list of names. Thanks to Manning’s decision to trust in Assange, the leak put a potential target on all of their backs, one they will likely carry for the rest of their lives unless the Taliban ever agrees to lay down arms ...


----------



## The Bread Guy

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> *She wont be released until May and could save the government money on the sex change costs*


About that ...


> Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, the national-security leaker and transgender soldier, will lose her entitlement to military health care benefits under the terms of the sentence that President Obama commuted, according to the Army.
> 
> Obama’s commutation Tuesday will allow Manning to leave the Army’s prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., on May 17, about six years before she would have been eligible for parole. The Army has been providing her with treatment for gender dysphoria, including hormone treatments.
> 
> She had been a candidate for gender-reassignment surgery, which would have been paid for under the Pentagon’s new policy for transgender troops.
> 
> But the terms of the 35-year sentence the court-martial imposed includes a “dishonorable discharge,” which the commutation did not affect, Army spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said Wednesday.


----------



## Rifleman62

There are lots of groups who will pay for the operation. Maybe the Obama Foundation?


----------



## The Bread Guy

The latest ...


> Chelsea Manning, the former Army private who leaked a trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks, will be released from prison on May 17, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Manning's 35-year prison sentence was commuted in January by then-President Barack Obama.
> 
> Most recently, Manning has been held in a prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. After her release, her attorney says, she'll live in Maryland ...


More ...


> The soldier imprisoned for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified military documents to WikiLeaks released her first statement Tuesday since being granted clemency, saying she hopes to use lessons she's learned in prison to help others.
> 
> Chelsea Manning, who is scheduled to be released from prison next week, thanked former President Barack Obama, who granted her clemency in the final days of his presidency. She also said letters of support from fellow transgender individuals and veterans inspired her "to work toward making life better for others."
> 
> "For the first time, I can see a future for myself as Chelsea," she said in the statement. "I can imagine surviving and living as the person who I am and can finally be in the outside world. Freedom used to be something that I dreamed of but never allowed myself to fully imagine." ...


----------



## Rifleman62

I always thought a  "Fellow" was a prestigious appointment based on accomplishments. See reactionary tweets at link

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/09/14/harvard-under-siege-for-making-convicted-spy-chelsea-manning-visiting-fellow.html

*Harvard makes convicted spy Chelsea Manning a 'fellow,' igniting firestorm* - September 14, 2017 Fox News

Former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell on Thursday announced his resignation as a senior fellow at Harvard after the university named U.S. Army soldier-turned-convicted felon Chelsea Manning a visiting fellow.

Manning will take on the role at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, the school said on its website. 

“She speaks on the social, technological and economic ramifications of Artificial Intelligence,” the Harvard announcement said. “As a trans woman, she advocates for queer and transgender rights as @xychelsea on Twitter.”

Morell, a former CIA deputy director who twice served as acting director, announced his resignation from Harvard's Belfer Center was a result of Manning's appointment, saying he couldn't be part of an organization "that honors convicted felon and leaker of classified information." 

"Senior leaders in our military have stated publicly that the leaks by Ms. Manning put the lives of U.S. soldiers at risk," Morell said. "I have an obligation in my conscience -- and I believe to the country -- to stand against any efforts to justify leaks of sensitive national security information."

Many people were flabbergasted the university gave Manning the title, calling it “unbelievable” that a person convicted of espionage could be considered a “fellow.”


----------



## The Bread Guy

Rifleman62 said:
			
		

> I always thought a  "Fellow" was a prestigious appointment based on accomplishments ...


Well, they DID appoint Sean Spicer, too ...


----------



## Rifleman62

Surely you jest. Compare the two: their experiences/accomplishments before you post without a smiley.


----------



## The Bread Guy

Rifleman62 said:
			
		

> Surely you jest. Compare the two: their experiences/accomplishments before you post without a smiley.


I'll grant you the convicted (although pardoned, so it's _officially_ off the record with commuted, so she's paid her debt to society) spy as someone worth _*more*_ than just a second look.  

That said, Spicer's been a Republican political operative & a short-time WH spokesperson with a ... less-than-stellar record (in no small part thanks to his boss, but still).  Loads of people with more experience/accomplishments than him have ridden this type of gravy train.

To play the devil's advocate, both of them can share interesting insights about "the system".
- edit to correct Manning's status -


----------



## The Bread Guy

Then again, let's compare & contrast via Harvard - one ...


> Chelsea E. Manning is a Washington D.C. based network security expert and former U.S. Army intelligence analyst. She speaks on the social, technological and economic ramifications of Artificial Intelligence through her op-ed columns for The Guardian and The New York Times. As a trans woman, she advocates for queer and transgender rights as @xychelsea on Twitter. Following her court martial conviction in 2013 for releasing confidential military and State Department documents***, President Obama commuted her 35 year sentence, citing it as "disproportionate" to the penalties faced by other whistleblowers. She served seven years in prison.


... versus another:


> Sean Spicer served as Press Secretary and Acting Communications Director for President Donald J. Trump during the first half of 2017. Before he joined the White House senior staff, he was communications director of the Republican National Committee from 2011 to 2017, and its chief strategist from 2015 to 2017. Spicer’s decades-long career in Republican politics included multiple communications roles in the House of Representatives, as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative and as a top advisor to presidential campaigns. He recently signed with Worldwide Speakers Group, as a speaker on a range of topics including providing perspectives on the Trump administration, politics and conservative issues. A Rhode Island native and Connecticut College graduate, he also holds a master’s degree from the Naval War College and serves as a commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve.


*** - This, via the same outlet a lot of people are happy to see sharing Hillary Clinton emails and is still batting 1000 re:  never sharing any Russian secrets.


----------



## Rifleman62

Thus Tony a convicted Felon, who leaked thousands of classified documents, consequently putting people in harms way, damaging the US ability to gather intelligence, is OK in your books because their sentence was commuted and equal to person who never committed a crime? Is it because Spicer is a Republican that he is equal in your eyes to Ms Manning?


----------



## The Bread Guy

Rifleman62 said:
			
		

> Thus Tony a convicted Felon, who leaked thousands of classified documents, consequently putting people in harms way, damaging the US ability to gather intelligence, is OK in your books because their sentence was commuted and equal to person who never committed a crime? Is it because Spicer is a Republican that he is equal in your eyes to Ms Manning?


Not saying their equal -- hence my line:


			
				milnews.ca said:
			
		

> I'll grant you the convicted (although pardoned, so it's _officially_ off the record with commuted, so she's paid her debt to society) spy as someone worth _*more*_ than just a second look.


I'm just saying that in spite of Manning's criminal record, she may have something interesting to share, and shouldn't be shut out because of her criminal record.  Conversely, Spicer -- who would also have things to share -- shouldn't be considered a far better candidate _just_ because of his political record.

And while Manning f#$%^&*d up big time leaking intelligence - and did her time - I note with interest that the same wikileaks accused of doctoring video from _that_ leak is considered 110% reliable when it comes to sharing Hillary's emails.


----------



## The Bread Guy

Happy now?

_*"Harvard dean rescinds Chelsea Manning’s visiting fellow invitation, calling it a ‘mistake’ "*_ (_Washington Post_)
_*"Statement from Dean Elmendorf regarding the invitation to Chelsea Manning to be a Visiting Fellow" (Harvard statement)*_
Manning's response via Twitter attached


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Yes


----------



## Rifleman62

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> Happy now?
> 
> _*"Harvard dean rescinds Chelsea Manning’s visiting fellow invitation, calling it a ‘mistake’ "*_ (_Washington Post_)
> _*"Statement from Dean Elmendorf regarding the invitation to Chelsea Manning to be a Visiting Fellow" (Harvard statement)*_
> Manning's response via Twitter attached



I was just posting a news item. If Harvard or any other place wants to hire her, so be it. Just don't think, IMHO, that Ms Manning qualifies as a "Fellow" or agree with your obligatory post to counter my news post.


----------



## NavalMoose

"Fellow"?....she's not even a chap


----------



## Jarnhamar

> As a trans woman, she advocates for queer and transgender rights as @xychelsea on Twitter.



What rights exactly is she advocating for?  Maybe one day queer and transgendered will be able to vote or get married in the US?


----------



## NavalMoose

:rofl:


----------



## Blackadder1916

Jarnhamar said:
			
		

> What rights exactly is she advocating for?  Maybe one day queer and transgendered will be able to vote or get married in the US?



Probably something more immediately pressing to most individuals . . . to take a piss in an appropriate, comfortable venue without some arsehole claiming the world will end.  Or the most significant positive (to her perspective) outcome of her legal challenges to the US government, the acceptance (however short lived) that transgender individuals could serve in the US military and that health care to deal with consequences of that would be provided.


----------



## Jarnhamar

Blackadder1916 said:
			
		

> Probably something more immediately pressing to most individuals . . . to take a piss in an appropriate, comfortable venue



Salient point there. When I think of rights I usually think of second amendment, constitution typs stuff but your example is a good one as any. 

It's too bad she didn't think of individuals rights before she committed treason but maybe this is a way to make amends or something. 


without some arsehole claiming the world will end.  Or the most significant positive (to her perspective) outcome of her legal challenges to the US government, the acceptance (however short lived) that transgender individuals could serve in the US military and that health care to deal with consequences of that would be provided.
[/quote]


----------



## The Bread Guy

Any legal beagles:  would what Chelsea served time for in the U.S. be considered treason here or something closer to sharing secret info here?  Either way, I'm more than OK with her not being allowed in, but wouldn't mind hearing from those knowing more about the CCC than I do.


> *Chelsea Manning says she's been denied entry into Canada*
> Manning was convicted on charges under the U.S. Espionage Act and served 7 years in military prison
> 
> Chelsea Manning, the controversial former U.S. intelligence analyst who was convicted in the largest breach of classified information in U.S. history, says she been denied entry into Canada.
> 
> On Monday, Manning tweeted*** that she's been "permanently banned" from entering Canada. She included a picture of a letter that appears to alert the minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship that Manning has not been authorized to enter Canada and is "inadmissible" due to her prior convictions ...


*** - Tweet & photo of letter from GoC attached.


----------



## ModlrMike

I'm inclined to agree with the Minister here.


----------



## Oldgateboatdriver

Here is what our Criminal code, art 46(2)(b) states, Milnews:

_*46 (2) Every one commits treason who, in Canada,

(b) without lawful authority, communicates or makes available to an agent of a state other than Canada, military or scientific information or any sketch, plan, model, article, note or document of a military or scientific character that he knows or ought to know may be used by that state for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or defence of Canada;*_

When someone who has been found guilty of an infraction/crime wishes to enter Canada, the Customs/Immigration officer at the border has to determine admissibility by determining what is the Canadian equivalent infraction. Then, depending on the Canadian equivalent and it's maximum punishment, a determination is made: Admissible (if it was just equivalent to one of our summary conviction offence), inadmissible without first obtaining "permission" from the Canadian Embassy/consulate (usually, criminal acts punishable by a max of ten years), forever inadmissible, for crimes with more than ten years penalty.

In the present case, the officer at the border did his job properly. The document you see is NOT a determination by the Minister, it is the Border services officer's report TO the Minister of the exclusion order he/she issued and the reason for his/her determination, in case of further appeal to the said Minister.


----------



## The Bread Guy

Oldgateboatdriver said:
			
		

> ... _*46 (2) Every one commits treason who, in Canada,
> 
> (b) without lawful authority, communicates or makes available to an agent of a state other than Canada, military or scientific information or any sketch, plan, model, article, note or document of a military or scientific character that he knows or ought to know may be used by that state for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or defence of Canada ...*_


Barring any future court/administrative fracas, that's a pretty good fit, then.  Thanks!


----------



## jollyjacktar

Yup, good and proper.  She may have been given time off for good behavior by Obama but she's still a admitted, convicted felon.  We'd be banned from the States if the tables were turned.


----------



## Retired AF Guy

Martha Stewart was banned for committing a lot less.


----------



## Retired AF Guy

From NewsWeek:



> CANADA'S CHELSEA MANNING BAN LEADS DONALD TRUMP JR. TO MOCK TRANSGENDER WHISTLEBLOWER
> BY JASON LE MIERE ON 9/25/17 AT 3:05 PM
> 
> Chelsea Manning, who was given a 35-year prison sentence for leaking a trove of United States government documents, has been permanently banned from entering Canada. The news was celebrated by some on Twitter, including Donald Trump Jr., who liked an offensive tweet mocking the transgender whistleblower.
> 
> Manning, who served seven years in military prison before being released in May after having her sentence commuted by President Barack Obama, tried to enter Canada as a visitor on Friday. According to a document she shared on Twitter Monday, Manning was denied on the grounds that her offense equated to that of treason in the Criminal Code of Canada.
> 
> Any offense that, if committed inside Canada, would carry a prison sentence of more than 10 years is grounds for refusing an individual entry into the country.
> 
> In further tweets, Manning said she “will be challenging denial of entry” at an admissibility hearing at a date yet to be set. She also challenged the idea that the treason law cited by the Canadian authorities matched her conviction.
> 
> Manning was convicted on multiple espionage and theft charges in 2013, but was acquitted of the most serious charge against her: that of aiding the enemy. One of the offenses defined as treason in the Canadian Criminal Code is “without lawful authority, communicates or makes available to an agent of a state other than Canada, military or scientific information or any sketch, plan, model, article, note or document of a military or scientific character that he knows or ought to know may be used by that state for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or defence of Canada.”
> 
> A secret Department of Defense report into what was the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history concluded that it caused no significant harm to U.S. interests. A counterintelligence official who investigated the impact of Manning’s leaks also said that no individual had been killed by enemy forces as a result.
> 
> Manning’s sentence was the longest ever handed down in the U.S. for leaking government information. Despite Obama declaring that the seven years Manning served cle Link}was already a “tough sentence,” Manning’s sentence was only commuted, rather than fully pardoned, as was the case with President Donald Trump’s recent action toward Joe Arpaio, the controversial former Arizona sheriff.
> 
> Trump has labeled Manning a “traitor.” After Manning's tweet Monday, Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., liked a derogatory tweet aimed at Manning featuring a pair of scissors, two peanuts and a clown's face in makeup, an apparent reference to her being transgender. President Trump recently announced a ban on transgender people serving in the military.



 Article Link


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## Infanteer

This is starting to smell like the Harvard situation.  I am not a fan Manning's insinuation on social media that opposition to her public persona is a smear on the LGBTQ community.  It's because she was disloyal and committed a serious felony.


----------



## MilEME09

Infanteer said:
			
		

> This is starting to smell like the Harvard situation.  I am not a fan Manning's insinuation on social media that opposition to her public persona is a smear on the LGBTQ community.  It's because she was disloyal and committed a serious felony.



I agree, it has 0% to do with being trans gendered, etc... it has everything to do with the actions that got her into this situation in the first place. Unfortunately younger generations seem to not understand actions have consequences that you have to live with.


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## ModlrMike

She will discover over time that it's not just Canada that won't let her in.


----------



## Haggis

This kiss me. Former PFC Manning was dealt with exactly the same as any other US citizen arriving at a port of entry with a US criminal record without having done the appropriate research and secured the required documents prior to their trip. 

The really amusing part is the fact that Manning is a former intelligence analyst and, therefore, should be capable of some simple Google searches of Canadian immigration requirements.  Nobody to blame but herself.


----------



## dapaterson

Haggis said:
			
		

> ... a former intelligence analyst and, therefore, should be capable of some simple Google searches...



You haven't met many folks from the Int branch, have you?


----------



## Blackadder1916

Oldgateboatdriver said:
			
		

> Here is what our Criminal code, art 46(2)(b) states, Milnews:
> 
> _*46 (2) Every one commits treason who, in Canada,
> 
> (b) without lawful authority, communicates or makes available to an agent of a state other than Canada, military or scientific information or any sketch, plan, model, article, note or document of a military or scientific character that he knows or ought to know may be used by that state for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or defence of Canada;*_
> 
> When someone who has been found guilty of an infraction/crime wishes to enter Canada, the Customs/Immigration officer at the border has to determine admissibility by determining what is the Canadian equivalent infraction. Then, depending on the Canadian equivalent and it's maximum punishment, a determination is made: Admissible (if it was just equivalent to one of our summary conviction offence), inadmissible without first obtaining "permission" from the Canadian Embassy/consulate (usually, criminal acts punishable by a max of ten years), forever inadmissible, for crimes with more than ten years penalty.
> 
> In the present case, the officer at the border did his job properly. The document you see is NOT a determination by the Minister, it is the Border services officer's report TO the Minister of the exclusion order he/she issued and the reason for his/her determination, in case of further appeal to the said Minister.





			
				milnews.ca said:
			
		

> Barring any future court/administrative fracas, that's a pretty good fit, then.  Thanks!



As they say, the devil is in the details (or the exacting wording in the case of law).  Should Ms (former Pvt) Manning appeal this finding (if she can) by a Border Services Officer (BSO?), she may have a case in overturning that specific determination of inadmissibility based on the specific item of Canadian law that the officer chose to use as the "equivalent" to the convictions that Manning received in the USA.

That article of the Criminal Code specifically deals with "communicating to an agent of a state other than Canada", thus that element of the offence must be present for it to be "treason".  Choosing that article and associating Manning's offence with treason seems (to me) to be (or have the potential to have been) a deliberate move on the part of the BSO to make a statement as to their opinion on Manning's action and to potentially remove any possibility of her entry to Canada.  With the exception of child sex crimes there is probably no crime that would stir greater disapprobation.  Or, it may have been a simple error on the part of the BSO.  However, in the facts of her case, Manning did not provide information or communicate with "an agent of an other state".  The US Army's prosecution of her did not prove so, nor did they contend it so.  If this article of the Criminal Code was not equivalent, then what should have been the item that justified inadmissibility to Canada?

Remember, (former) Pvt Manning was charged and convicted of multiple violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).  While the UCMJ is roughly equivalent to our Code of Service Discipline (CSD), there are (or so it seems to me) significant differences.  The attached PDF is the US Army's press release that itemized the charges and specifications and the determination (verdict) of each; it can also be found at this link.

In a nutshell, Manning was charged with:

I.  *Violation of UCMJ, Article 104* NOT GUILTY  (Article 104 deals with "Aiding the enemy" and was the one charge that had a maximum penalty of death).

There was one specification to this charge.  It would have been roughly equivalent to some CSD offences in NDA 74 or 75
 Though these CSD offences would have a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, it is moot for inadmissibility since she was found not guilty.

II.   *Violation of UCMJ, Article 134* GUILTY  (Article 134 is the "General article")  

Article 134 seems to roughly equivalent to Sect 129 of the NDA, though since the UCMJ does not have a separate, specific article that address violations of other US laws this article also seems to be used as we would Sect 130

There were sixteen (16) specifications to this charge.  Three (3) of the specifications were stated as actions "prejudicial to good order and discipline" only and the other thirteen (13) referenced violations of other US codes as the basis for actions that were "prejudicial to good order . . .".  The other US codes referenced were:

18 US Sect. 793(e) (Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information) Seven of the specs referenced this, and she was found guilty on six of the specs and not guilty on one.

18 US Sect. 641 (EMBEZZLEMENT AND THEFT - Public money, property or records)  There were five specifications under Charge II that referenced this other US law and the value amount specified in each instance was in excess of $1000.  She was found guilty in all five of these specifications.

18 US Sect. 1030(a)(1) (Fraud and related activity in connection with computers)   There was one specification under Charge II that referenced this other US law and which was a guilty.

III. *Violation of the UCMJ, Article 92* GUILTY (Article 92 deals with "Failure to obey order or regulation")  The rough equivalent in the CSD would be a mix of Sect 83 (Disobediance of a lawful command) and Sect 129 which specifically lists failing to follow regulations.  The three specifications to this charge all referenced Army Regulations as the violations.

If the Canadian Criminal Code offence of Treason is not an appropriate equivalent to the US convictions, what would be.  Should the BSO's report to the Minister have referenced NDA 129 that prescribes punishment as "dismissal with disgrace from Her Majesty’s service or to less punishment" or NDA 130 which prescribes the punishment as that which would be the "minimum" (this section confused me re-read it and no longer confused) the punishment specified for the enactment that was violated with some dismissal with disgrace thrown in.

Without getting any deeper into the weeds about what Canadian law (criminal or otherwise) that might be the best equivalency, I'll look at the most prominent action of Manning, i.e. providing information that she wasn't supposed to.  In that case, my opinion is that the BSO should have referenced the Security of Information Act as the Canadian law (specifically Sect 4(1)) that, had Manning been subject to Canadian law when he committed these acts. would likely have been the offence that he would be charged with.  The punishment prescribed is that, unless otherwise stated (there are some offences lighter and some that go to life), "a person who commits an offence under this Act is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than 14 years".  That would have been sufficient to reach the same result of denying admission without opening up a potential path to appeal and overturn.

And as an example of application of the Security of Information Act, we can look to R. v. Delisle, whose offences relating to providing information was dealt with through Section 16(1) of that act, though most here (including me) would probably believe that the treason offence of the Criminal Code would have been more appropriate.

As it is apparent that Ms. Manning is not someone who will likely avoid the spotlight in the future (either by choice or circumstance), we can probably expect that this is not the last we'll hear on this latest wrinkle in her life.  And, (IMO) there is probably quite a bit for the lawyers to grab onto concerning this and make it last for some time to come.


----------



## Colin Parkinson

Infanteer said:
			
		

> This is starting to smell like the Harvard situation.  I am not a fan Manning's insinuation on social media that opposition to her public persona is a smear on the LGBTQ community.  It's because she was disloyal and committed a serious felony.



Technically "He" was guilty, "she" seems to think she was only along for the ride


----------



## Oldgateboatdriver

Blackadder1916 said:
			
		

> As they say, the devil is in the details (or the exacting wording in the case of law).  Should Ms (former Pvt) Manning appeal this finding (if she can) by a Border Services Officer (BSO?), she may have a case in overturning that specific determination of inadmissibility based on the specific item of Canadian law that the officer chose to use as the "equivalent" to the convictions that Manning received in the USA.
> 
> That article of the Criminal Code specifically deals with "communicating to an agent of a state other than Canada", thus that element of the offence must be present for it to be "treason".  Choosing that article and associating Manning's offence with treason seems (to me) to be (or have the potential to have been) a deliberate move on the part of the BSO to make a statement as to their opinion on Manning's action and to potentially remove any possibility of her entry to Canada.  With the exception of child sex crimes there is probably no crime that would stir greater disapprobation.  Or, it may have been a simple error on the part of the BSO.  However, in the facts of her case, Manning did not provide information or communicate with "an agent of an other state".  The US Army's prosecution of her did not prove so, nor did they contend it so.  If this article of the Criminal Code was not equivalent, then what should have been the item that justified inadmissibility to Canada?
> 
> Remember, (former) Pvt Manning was charged and convicted of multiple violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).  While the UCMJ is roughly equivalent to our Code of Service Discipline (CSD), there are (or so it seems to me) significant differences.  The attached PDF is the US Army's press release that itemized the charges and specifications and the determination (verdict) of each; it can also be found at this link.
> 
> In a nutshell, Manning was charged with:
> 
> I.  *Violation of UCMJ, Article 104* NOT GUILTY  (Article 104 deals with "Aiding the enemy" and was the one charge that had a maximum penalty of death).
> 
> There was one specification to this charge.  It would have been roughly equivalent to some CSD offences in NDA 74 or 75
> Though these CSD offences would have a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, it is moot for inadmissibility since she was found not guilty.
> 
> II.   *Violation of UCMJ, Article 134* GUILTY  (Article 134 is the "General article")
> 
> Article 134 seems to roughly equivalent to Sect 129 of the NDA, though since the UCMJ does not have a separate, specific article that address violations of other US laws this article also seems to be used as we would Sect 130
> 
> There were sixteen (16) specifications to this charge.  Three (3) of the specifications were stated as actions "prejudicial to good order and discipline" only and the other thirteen (13) referenced violations of other US codes as the basis for actions that were "prejudicial to good order . . .".  The other US codes referenced were:
> 
> 18 US Sect. 793(e) (Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information) Seven of the specs referenced this, and she was found guilty on six of the specs and not guilty on one.
> 
> 18 US Sect. 641 (EMBEZZLEMENT AND THEFT - Public money, property or records)  There were five specifications under Charge II that referenced this other US law and the value amount specified in each instance was in excess of $1000.  She was found guilty in all five of these specifications.
> 
> 18 US Sect. 1030(a)(1) (Fraud and related activity in connection with computers)   There was one specification under Charge II that referenced this other US law and which was a guilty.
> 
> III. *Violation of the UCMJ, Article 92* GUILTY (Article 92 deals with "Failure to obey order or regulation")  The rough equivalent in the CSD would be a mix of Sect 83 (Disobediance of a lawful command) and Sect 129 which specifically lists failing to follow regulations.  The three specifications to this charge all referenced Army Regulations as the violations.
> 
> If the Canadian Criminal Code offence of Treason is not an appropriate equivalent to the US convictions, what would be.  Should the BSO's report to the Minister have referenced NDA 129 that prescribes punishment as "dismissal with disgrace from Her Majesty’s service or to less punishment" or NDA 130 which prescribes the punishment as that which would be the "minimum" (this section confused me re-read it and no longer confused) the punishment specified for the enactment that was violated with some dismissal with disgrace thrown in.
> 
> Without getting any deeper into the weeds about what Canadian law (criminal or otherwise) that might be the best equivalency, I'll look at the most prominent action of Manning, i.e. providing information that she wasn't supposed to.  In that case, my opinion is that the BSO should have referenced the Security of Information Act as the Canadian law (specifically Sect 4(1)) that, had Manning been subject to Canadian law when he committed these acts. would likely have been the offence that he would be charged with.  The punishment prescribed is that, unless otherwise stated (there are some offences lighter and some that go to life), "a person who commits an offence under this Act is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than 14 years".  That would have been sufficient to reach the same result of denying admission without opening up a potential path to appeal and overturn.
> 
> And as an example of application of the Security of Information Act, we can look to R. v. Delisle, whose offences relating to providing information was dealt with through Section 16(1) of that act, though most here (including me) would probably believe that the treason offence of the Criminal Code would have been more appropriate.
> 
> As it is apparent that Ms. Manning is not someone who will likely avoid the spotlight in the future (either by choice or circumstance), we can probably expect that this is not the last we'll hear on this latest wrinkle in her life.  And, (IMO) there is probably quite a bit for the lawyers to grab onto concerning this and make it last for some time to come.



Yes. Security of Information Act would have been my choice too, but since the penalty is the same (14 years max. in both cases and therefore, over ten years), the result would still be an exclusion.

If she was consulting me on a potential appeal, I would probably tell her: "You will likely succeed in having a reference to the treason article overturned, but you will then be found to have committed the infraction user the S.I.A. and the result would be the same. Since the Officer's error in choice of law is not dispositive of your right to enter Canada, your appeal will not succeed. Don't waste your time and money."


----------



## FJAG

Oldgateboatdriver said:
			
		

> Yes. Security of Information Act would have been my choice too, but since the penalty is the same (14 years max. in both cases and therefore, over ten years), the result would still be an exclusion.
> 
> If she was consulting me on a potential appeal, I would probably tell her: "You will likely succeed in having a reference to the treason article overturned, but you will then be found to have committed the infraction user the S.I.A. and the result would be the same. Since the Officer's error in choice of law is not dispositive of your right to enter Canada, your appeal will not succeed. Don't waste your time and money."



I think that you can also look to s 75(b) of the NDA which reads:



> 75 Every person who:
> 
> (b) without authority discloses in any manner whatever any information relating to the numbers, position, materiel, movements, preparations for movements, operations or preparations for operations of any of Her Majesty’s Forces or of any forces cooperating therewith,



which has a maximum punishment available upon conviction of life imprisonment.

While Charge II was cited under UCMJ 134 (a near equivalent to our NDA s129) the numerous specifications were described primarily as violations of 18 US Code 793(e):



> (e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it;



or 18 US Code 641:



> Whoever embezzles, steals, purloins, or knowingly converts to his use or the use of another, or without authority, sells, conveys or disposes of any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency thereof, or any property made or being made under contract for the United States or any department or agency thereof; or
> 
> Whoever receives, conceals, or retains the same with intent to convert it to his use or gain, knowing it to have been embezzled, stolen, purloined or converted—
> 
> Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; but if the value of such property in the aggregate, combining amounts from all the counts for which the defendant is convicted in a single case, does not exceed the sum of $1,000, he shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
> 
> The word “value” means face, par, or market value, or cost price, either wholesale or retail, whichever is greater.



which are primarily respecting unauthorized disclosure of information provisions. (Note as well that there were other convictions and also that the way that they use USMC 134 is more a combination of both NDA s 129 and s 130)

Be that as it may, there are more then sufficient equivalencies in our laws to be used which provide a greater than 10 year punishment so as to deny him entry here.

 :cheers:


----------



## Retired AF Guy

dapaterson said:
			
		

> You haven't met many folks from the Int branch, have you?



Whoa Nelly!! Them's fighting words!!


----------



## Shrek1985

Colin P said:
			
		

> Technically "He" was guilty, "she" seems to think she was only along for the ride



Why not? it worked for Bruce Jenner and his car crash.

Kids these days probably get the idea from the 80% sentencing disparity between men and women across the west for the same crimes.


----------



## Loachman

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451986/chelsea-manning-espionage-wikileaks-canada-border-officials-deny-entry-harvard-university?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=170929_Jolt&utm_term=Jolt

Chelsea Manning: Hero? No. Traitor? Yes 

by Deroy Murdock September 28, 2017 5:58 PM

Canadian border officials were right to block the former soldier convicted of disclosing classified U.S. military and diplomatic documents.

Canada dared call it treason.

American’s northern neighbor slammed the door on Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning when she tried to drive into Quebec last week. Canadian authorities blocked Manning “on grounds of serious criminality,” according to official records, “that would equate to an indictable offense, namely treason.”

Canada’s red light mocked the laurels and hearty welcomes offered to Manning since she waltzed out of the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth on May 17. Manning was feted like a conquering heroine in New York City’s gay-pride parade last June. This month’s Vogue magazine showcases Manning in a one-piece swimsuit, snapped by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. Manning will be a headliner at October’s New Yorker Festival. And Harvard recently named Manning a visiting fellow.

“She speaks on the social, technological and economic ramifications of Artificial Intelligence,” Harvard breathlessly announced. “As a trans woman, she advocates for queer and transgender rights as @xychelsea on Twitter.” Tragicomically, Harvard described Manning as “a Washington D.C. based network security expert.”

These plaudits are outrageous, given why Manning landed behind bars: In July 2013, Bradley Manning was convicted of 20 of 22 charges filed against him, including six violations of the Espionage Act of 1917.

Manning received “the stiffest punishment ever handed out in the U.S. for leaking to the media,” the Associated Press reported, “for spilling an unprecedented trove of government secrets.” This included “more than 700,000 classified military and diplomatic documents, plus battlefield footage, to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. By volume alone, it was the biggest leak of classified material in U.S. history, bigger even than the Pentagon Papers a generation ago.”

Manning was acquitted of “aiding the enemy.” Nonetheless, presiding judge Colonel Denise Lind ruled that Manning had “reason to believe the information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” Further, Manning possessed “knowledge that intelligence published on the Internet was accessible to al Qaeda.” She added: “Manning’s conduct was of a heedless nature that made it actually and imminently dangerous to others. His conduct was both wanton and reckless.”

Despite these high crimes, Obama granted Manning clemency, thereby slashing her 35-year prison term to seven years already served. It’s inconceivable that Obama would have spared Manning 80 percent of her sentence were she still named Bradley.

All of this has given intelligence experts fits.

“Senior leaders in our military have stated publicly that the leaks by Ms. Manning put the lives of U.S. soldiers at risk,” said former CIA acting director Michael Morrell. He resigned from Harvard’s Belfer Center on September 14, refusing to associate with an institution “that honors a convicted felon and leaker of classified information.”

Chastened by the reaction to the emoluments that it presented to Manning, Harvard retreated.

“We are withdrawing the invitation to her to serve as a Visiting Fellow - and the perceived honor that it implies to some people,” Kennedy School of Government dean Douglas Elmendorf conceded the next day. “I apologize to her and to the many concerned people from whom I have heard today for not recognizing upfront the full implications of our original invitation.”

“As a Harvard graduate, I was especially offended by the honors bestowed on Chelsea Manning by the Kennedy School,” said Jefferson Adams, professor emeritus of history and international relations at Sarah Lawrence College. The author of Strategic Intelligence in the Cold War and Beyond continued: “When the dean started to backtrack and rescind the fellowship, he only compounded matters with his flimsy statements about diversity. It was radical chic in full display - and will not be forgotten soon.”

“Canada has done absolutely the right thing in refusing entry to Manning based on that individual’s previous conviction for espionage, and was correct in calling his/her actions ‘treason,’” Richard Valcourt, editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, tells me. “Manning is no hero, whistle-blower, or any variation thereof. Nor is Edward Snowden. Both belong in jail for having significantly endangered the security of the American people.”


----------



## The Bread Guy

STILL wants to come to Canada ...


> A decade after Chelsea Manning revealed U.S. state secrets about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, officials in Ottawa are seeking to permanently block her from entering Canada.
> 
> A tribunal hearing to determine Ms. Manning’s admissibility – meaning, her legal ability to enter Canada – is scheduled to take place on Oct. 7.
> 
> In 2013, an American judge ordered the former U.S. Army private to spend 35 years in jail after finding her guilty of providing the WikiLeaks organization with hundreds of thousands of sensitive U.S. military and diplomatic documents. That sentence was later commuted by U.S. president Barack Obama.
> 
> Now, Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), an administrative tribunal that makes decisions about who can enter Canada, is about to revisit the case. Federal officials are preparing to argue that Ms. Manning’s past crimes render her too dangerous to be allowed entry into the country. The government’s position is that she should be blocked on grounds of serious criminality. Thousands of people are turned away at the Canadian border for similar reasons each year ...


----------



## CBH99

What are some of the thoughts on this?  Thoughts/opinions, etc?


----------

