The Bradley Manning Video

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This video raises many, many issues... but the most significant thing is how somebody like this was ever kept in the army in the first place and then was sent to Iraq and then given the access to the classified information he was given access to.

This is very, very strange... This is NOT about Bradley Manning, this is about the US Army. The US Army is supposed to be the "greatest" army in history, certainly the most expensive one in history... what the hell is going on?

I find it utterly tragic that the only way that a person as potentially valuable in an information economy as Bradley Manning could ever hope to go to university was to enlist in the army... as if Shirley Temple had to join the Marine Corp in order to get dental care

The whole thing is so amazing... It's not that he is gay, gays come in all shapes and sizes, but he is like a little girl. He is blond, blue eyed, about five-nothing tall and practically floats. In an overtly homosexual and violent environment like a prison, he would probably become the "punk" of the most alpha-male doing life and just "keep house" for him and never have to worry about violence or humilliation, but in the "don't ask, don't tell" environment of this weird army, hypocrisy meets sadism bathed in incompetent stupidity... When you get this far into the story, you are not really surprised to find that the passwords to highly classified material are written on post-its and stuck on the computer screens.

Manning's best defense would be temporary insanity and the people who admitted him and kept him the army should be court marshaled. There should be a congressional investigation into the whole thing. DS

Wikileaks: comparing conspiracy theories

Image by Christian Ségal      

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It isn't as if conspiracies don't exist, but generally stupidity or incompetence explain most disasters and even real conspiracies don't tend to be as elaborate as their legion of fans would like to believe. But if we define a "conspiracy" as when two or more people combine to do something that would normally carry punishment in such a way so as not to be punished, then there are quite a few of them around. Certainly the Wikileaks data-dump would qualify as one under that definition.

Until Wikileaks itself leaks, we are forced to speculate. Without entering the baroque, we have to proceed from the simple to the more complex.

The first question would be: is the simplest explanation the true one?

There are two basic simple explanations as far as I can see:

One: Pfc Manning is a brave and principled young man, who, shocked by his country's criminal behavior, decided to blow the whistle and sought out Julian Assange, another brave and principled young man, who decided to help him.

Or

Two: Pfc Manning, who had broken up with his boyfriend was depressed and, feeling a bit spiteful, decided to commit the biggest electronic security coup de main since British intelligence broke the German code, "Ultra" during WWII. Julian Assange, a megalomaniac and a lousy lay, saw his chance for super stardom and a lifetime supply of condom-free groupies and decided to aid and abet him.

There is probably some truth in both versions, but if you think anything this big is that simple, you probably would have no trouble believing that the Swedish prosecutor is chasing Assange around Europe solely because of a broken condom... As well he may be... like I say, for the moment we are flying blind.

I, for one, happen to think that a very competent foreign intelligence service has been involved in this and is using Assange thirst for the limelight to cover their tracks.

Right off the bat, before we go any farther, I'll tell you I don't think Israel is behind Wikileaks' data-dump.

I don't see them gaining very much from it, certainly not enough to justify the risk.

I would say that there are two major countries that have enough motives to take the risks involved: Russia and China.

Russia has the human assets in the west, the experience and the know how to pull it off easily.

China has much more motivation than the Russians, although both countries benefit from the data-dump, witness Putin "nominating" Assange for the Nobel Prize.

For me the prime suspect is still China.

Why would the Chinese do this?

In my scenario, the United States is accusing China of currency manipulation. America's government is very interested in China revaluing their currency in order to make US exports more competitive. The Chinese are not cooperating. To put on pressure, the US has been organizing a human rights, "transparency" and democracy blitz to embarrass the Chinese. This mixture of Internet, bloggers and  human rights NGOs are the formula used in all the "color" revolutions such as the "Orange Revolution" in the Ukraine or the Twitter led "Green Revolution. The Chinese naturally resent having these techniques employed on them.

My idea is that the Chinese have had two objectives. To embarrass the United States and to change the subject of conversation from Liu Xiaobo's Noble Peace Prize, for example, or Tibet, or "The Great Firewall" that blocks access to the Internet in China.

"The Americans demand transparency?" say the Chinese in my scenario, "We'll see how much they really like it."  "You like Glasnost, here two helpings, rice on the side".

So far, if they weren't behind the data-dump, they are certainly benefiting from it more than anyone else I can think of. People are talking of little else. Liu Xiaobo's Noble Peace Prize ceremony was overshadowed by the daily delivery of American diplomacy's dirty laundry. Brilliant! Turn the enemy's strength against him. Sun Tzu is grinning from ear to ear somewhere in the Taoist heaven.

Assange's biggest mistake was to take the bait and turn himself, or let himself be turned into, the poster boy for the data-dump. People who have in turn taken the bait and accepted him as a hero are going to be bitterly disillusioned. This is all political and Assange has just made himself the butt of a million jokes. He is the one who insisted that he be the poster boy of Wikileaks... so now this is about him and all his busted condoms.

"Outing" the State Department, using Army personnel, is the ultimate in hardball. If Assange had done it to the Russians he would have died of plutonium poisoning and if he had done it to the Israelis his body would probably never be found. And if he had done it to the Chinese... yum, yum. Assange is counting on the Americans not being as rough as the above mentioned... big mistake, we're just more hypocritical. DS

The travails of Pfc Bradley Manning

From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs. Lt. Villiard protested that the conditions are not "like jail movies where someone gets thrown into the hole," but confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, entirely alone in his cell except for the one hour per day he is taken out. Salon

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We are living is rather surreal times, so it is normal that a conversation like this one about Pfc Manning can have a dream-like quality of disassociation at times. I think I first realized how totally wacky our world had become, when after 9-11 Dubya said that America's reaction to the attack should be to go out shopping. The Manning conversation is moving in that direction.

When we talk about Private Manning (or anyone else wearing the uniform of the US armed forces) we are talking about a member of a collective that is at this moment engaged in two wars. Members of this group, wearing the same uniform as Manning are regularly getting killed and maimed. You might say that this is all deadly serious for this particular collective, group or "family". What has been leaked appears to be State Department material, but it could easily include the order of battle of US forces. From a military point of view, this is all  "code red", heads must roll, serious. For the army the most important thing now is to find out if this is just an isolated individual acting alone and make sure it never happens again.

There is plenty of room to discuss the role of Julian Assange, myself I think he's a messianic scumbag, but most of my friends think he is a hero, like I say, plenty of room for discussion. But Private Manning is either a poor, innocent, chump, who has been skillfully manipulated by Assange, or if not he is person who has betrayed the trust of his comrades and anyone who volunteers to join the army must know that carries a price.

There seems to be some confusion about military discipline. My late father was a US Army officer for over twelve years, with service in field artillery and the Corp of Engineers, and as he colorfully explained it to me once, this is how the military operates, "Cap'n stubs his toe, hollers 'SHIT!', whole company squats and sounds off back, "WHAT COLOR... SIR!!"  Soldiers are supposed to follow orders, fall on grenades, take machine gun nests, sit on bayonets, peel potatoes  and clean latrines with their toothbrushes, not have opinions, that is what soldering is about. If you think differently, you've probably seen "Judgment at Nuremberg" too many times.

I don't defend injustice, but the justice of the military is different from civilian justice, just as military music is different from normal music. The first thing to remember about soldiers, even though it sounds dramatic, is that they are expected to actually die as part of their job description. The first loyalty is to the group, because those are the people that have got your back... to let them down, to put them in any kind of unnecessary danger is a cardinal sin. Loyalty and honor are a fetish, with death around. The mentality is so different from the civilian mentality that there is always tension between them. Manning should never have been allowed in the army in the first place, I don't think he ever understood where he was... maybe now, when it is too late, he is getting the idea.

Reading more about him, I think it would be an understatement to say that he wasn't military material, that he was as cut out for army life as Ewan McGregor's character in  "I love you Phillip Morris". However,  Pfc Manning volunteered to serve, he wasn't drafted against his will, he took an oath, he knew that what he was doing was a serious breech of military discipline. I would think the only possible defense he could have would be temporary insanity. I feel sorry for him, but there are people I feel much more sorry for, like, for instance,  another Pfc, the late Erin L. McLyman. Somehow I don't think Erin would have cut Bradley much slack. DS