News coverage of the latest developments in Bradley Manning's trial focus on the mistreatment of him in pre-trial detention which will likely earn him time off his sentence.
This is what I discussed in a previous post and speculated also that the reason we never heard his lawyer complaining as much as the WikiLeaks and Anonymous gangs is because he was calculating on just such a write-off.
Here's what my same knowledgeable source had to say:
Sounds like he got one for one Allen credit (which is no big win for him) and they are doing a pretrial agreement for 16 years. That's about right, I think. And....the little bastard will have to allocute, which means he has to be guilty and admit he's guilty. No Alford pleas in the military. And I'll bet there's a deal provision that he cooperates on providing info on the wiki leaks end of it. So alls well that ends well.
So...while the lawyer may keep manfully trying to get Manning off completely on some contrived "whistle-blower" defense, it's not likely to fly.
I've explained in detail why I believe Bradley Manning is not a whistle-blower.
Now the other development is that prosecution of Manning may involve implicating him with helping Al Qaeda, as WikiLeaks items, namely the Collateral Murder film, were in Bin Ladn's lair when he was assassinated.
That's interesting.
I think the script kiddies donating to the Free Bradley fund are about to see him confess to harming his nation's security and admitting his guilt, and not fighting their anarchic fight. I don't think they realize -- because they aren't steeped in knowledge about the rule of law, trials in general, and military trials in particular -- that if you got the Allen credit, and you can't do the Alford plea, i.e. "I'm guilty in trial terms but I maintain my innocence", then...no hero. AND we may get the bonus that he implicates Assange or others.
And we'll see no end of whining from the "progressives" about how this is all a "chill" on free speech and free media, but I suspect even Obama won't be able to get the socialist line put over on this one (socialists oppose prosecution of Manning because they think the Amerikan state is evil and that he is some kind of brave freedom-fighter; Obama, being the state himself, isn't going to take quite that position...)
There's a difference between anarchist collectivsts that hack and incite hacking to do damage to states out of an ideological political plan, and media, which can legitimately claim that it is covering the news of this hack as another layer in the content sourcing stream. The former can't claim immunity; the latter can. WikiLeaks liked to style itself as some kind of mediator-media which is promoting transparency or is some kind of lever of transparency "We open governments," is one of their slogans.
But by weaponizing the video of the helicopter into a piece of agitprop for the anti-American anarchist cause, and by having their henchmen like Jacob Appelbaum lie about the significance of this film and claim falsely that American troops deliberately harmed children, the WikiLeaks operation loses any claim to being "media". As Floyd Abrams, the vetern First Amendment lawyer put it, WikiLeaks is just a source. It's not media itself; it's a source.
The Lamo chat logs published in Wired let us know that Assange in fact *was* in touch with Manning, and more has come out in discovery and even more will likely emerge that will put paid to this idea that WikiLeaks "doesn't hack" but "only publicizes hacking". It incites and enables hacking and there may be more.
Glenn Greenwald, now in exile at The Guardian, asks why Bob Woodward's sources aren't on trial along with Manning.
That's easy: because they are government employees who provided leaks for what they persuasively believed to be the public interest.
Meanwhile, Manning vindictively vandalized the files and leaked them out of spite and a Leninist "worse the better" for a hated employer and symbol of power he opposed emotionally and ideologically, with in fact no regard for those who would be victimized -- the real sources.
And yes, it makes a difference. For Greenwald, Bob Woodward is bourgeous maintream press and his sources are the kind of people he could have been in a prestigious college with or country club, so he hates them and tries to morally equivocate them. Manning is a nobody and a spunky anarchist fighting the evil corrupt war machine. But again: the sources in Obama's Wars are legitimately exposing what's wrong with the way the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been fought, which is in the public interest; meanwhile, there is no demonstrative public interest in Manning's leak. No war crimes of the US were uncovered, and nothing about, say, US torture abroad was uncovered that wasn't already known by the legitimate work of mainstream media and human rights NGOs. Nothing in WikiLeaks warranted the harm done by it; nothing at all.
And again, those harmed by WikiLeaks -- and I am very familiar with a number of the cases --- are not painting targets on their backs so as to be MORE harmed by a hostile and skeptical "progressive" media and blogosphere that would be happy to crush them into red mist.
Greenwald cites fellow "progressive" (actually, he seems more socialist than Occupy) Kevin Gosztola as an "independent" covering Manning. Nothing of the sort; he's a Kossack and his role as a "dissenter" is in fact the establishment now, not true dissent. But in making Manning a victim-hero, he is about to get a surprise, I predict -- Bradley Manning will allocute.
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