Heroes Or Traitors?

by eileen fleming - http://www.wearewideawake.org Fri Jun 03, 2011 22:40 eileenfleming4house2012 at gmail dot com USA 352-242-1919

On March 2, 2011, The Army announced it had filed 22 additional charges against Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the soldier suspected of providing classified government documents published by the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group. The counts against him involve the leaking of the Afghan and Iraq war logs as well as the quarter million State Department cables disseminated last year.

CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reported that the new charges formally accused Manning of using unauthorized software on government computers to extract classified information, illegally download it and transmit the data for public release by what the Army termed "the enemy."

CBS Radio News chief legal analyst Andrew Cohen reported that military officials look like they want to throw the book at Manning, not just to punish him, but also to send a message to other service members who may be tempted to do what Manning allegedly did.

On January 27, 2011, McClatchy Newspapers reported that Bradley Manning’s, direct supervisor warned that Manning had thrown chairs at colleagues and shouted at higher-ranking soldiers in the year he was stationed at Fort Drum, N.Y., and advised he not be sent to Iraq, where his job entailed accessing classified documents through the Defense Department's computer system. But superior officers ignored that advice because the unit was short of intelligence analysts and needed Manning's skills.

“An Army report into the service's high suicide rate concluded in July that military commanders had become so focused on training troops for deployment that they no longer had the time to address issues such as alcoholism, prescription drug abuse and even violence, and instead hoped they'd disappear in combat…The result was a ‘comedy of errors’ as one commander after another assumed someone else was addressing Manning's problems, one official said.” [2]

Manning is allowed no meaningful physical exercise, he is allowed no social interaction with other inmates, he is kept in his cell at least 23 hours per day, and he is not allowed out of his cell without restraints…There is no allegation that Manning did anything but share truthful information with the American public regarding the realities of our nation's ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with absolutely no benefit to himself, in order to spark public debate regarding foreign policy.” [3]

In 2002, President Bush declared U.S. citizen, Jose Padilla an enemy combatant and he was stripped of all rights and detained at a Navy brig in South Carolina where he was held in solitary isolation for 43 months and denied access to an attorney for two years.

Forensic Psychiatrist Angela Hegarty examined Padilla [in 2006] and concluded the extreme isolation and torture had left Padilla essentially brain damaged, "What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being's mind." [4]

From 1986 to 2004, Israel kept Vanunu in a tomb sized windowless cell-most all of it in solitary confinement. When he was released he was forbidden to leave the state and speak to foreigners.

On May 23, 2010, Israel sent Vanunu back to solitary confinement for 78 days-the outcome of his freedom of speech trial, which began on January 25, 2006, because he spoke to foreign media in 2004.

A Brief History @
Before Manning and Assange: There was Vanunu Mordechai

by eileen fleming - http://www.wearewideawake.org Fri Jun 03, 2011 22:36 eileenfleming4house2012 at gmail dot com USA 352-242-1919

I was not a reporter when I met Vanunu for the first time in June 2005, but I knew I had to become one when he told me:

“Did you know that President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons? In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor is only for peace.’

“Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for inspection.

“The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona. The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay their way out. Everything inside was written in French, when I was there, almost twenty years ago. Back then, the Dimona descended seven floors underground.

“In 1955, Perez and Guirion met with the French to agree they would get a nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the Sinai and Suez Canal. That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel leave the Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on.

“When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.

“Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year.”

the rest @
An Evening with Helen Thomas and Flashback to John Lennon and Vanunu Mordechai