ASSOCIATED PRESS: A Marine accused of killing unarmed Iraqi women and children pleaded guilty Monday to dereliction of duty in a deal that will mean a maximum of three months confinement and end the largest and longest-running criminal case against U.S. troops to emerge from the Iraq War. Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich of Meriden, Conn., led the Marine squad in 2005 that killed 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha after a roadside bomb exploded near a Marine convoy, killing one Marine and wounding two others. It was a stunning and muted end to a case once described as the […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Free Bradley Manning
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Never before has a supposedly sophisticated military establishment demonstrated such spitefully infantile behavior over a wholly contrived crisis brought on by its own colossally bungling incompetence. You guessed it. I’m talking about that back-in-the-news stupendously-exaggerated-harm-to-national-security Bradley Manning/Wikileaks saga the Pentagon is so determined to prove itself the fool over. No matter the number of embarrassing government-negative exposés, or the considerable public pressure being brought on Bradley’s behalf, the matter continues to prove itself a blatant travesty the injustice of which is exceeded only by the inability and/or unwillingness of its brass-laden pursuers to display so much as a smidgen of contrition or even canine-level […]
HOT DOCUMENT: The Complete Manning/Lamo Logs
WIRED: A little more than a year ago, Wired.com published excerpts from instant messenger chats between accused WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning and Adrian Lamo, the ex-hacker in whom he confided and who reported him to the authorities. It’s now time to reveal the previously unpublished portions of these conversations. […] Where indicated, we have chosen to redact certain names and identifying information to protect the privacy of some third-parties mentioned in the logs, and we’ve redacted one password. Otherwise, the full text of the logs we received from Adrian Lamo are published below. MORE (10:23:34 AM) info@adrianlamo.com: I’m a journalist […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Bradley Manning Is A Hero
EDITOR’S NOTE: William C. Henry is better known to me as ‘Uncle Bill.’ I’ve invited him to weigh in from time to time on whatever is getting his goat at the moment. BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Once upon a time in a far off land a society’s leadership came to the realization it was going to have to come up with a somewhat less “lethal” means of ensuring its hold on power, because constantly riling up the citizenry with displays of naked brutality could be bad for a regime’s longevity. (SEE Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, etc.) Over time that means came […]
WORTH REPEATING: In Defense Of Bradley Manning
CBS NEWS: When Bradley Manning deployed to Iraq in October 2009, he thought that he’d be helping the Iraqi people build a free society after the long nightmare of Saddam Hussein. What he witnessed firsthand was quite another matter. He soon found himself helping the Iraqi authorities detain civilians for distributing “anti-Iraqi literature” — which turned out to be an investigative report into financial corruption in their own government entitled “Where does the money go?” The penalty for this “crime” in Iraq was not a slap on the wrist. Imprisonment and torture, as well as systematic abuse of prisoners, are […]