U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning on Thursday pleaded guilty to leaking classified material to the public, but pleaded not guilty to aiding the enemy, a charge that carries much heavier penalties.
Manning, the alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower, plead guilty to unauthorized possession and willful communication of classified material to unauthorized persons.
In a courtroom statement, Manning told military judge Denise Lind that he “believed and still believe these are some of the most important documents of our time,” and that he “only wanted documents I was absolutely sure wouldn’t cause harm to the United States.”
Manning claimed that “No one from WikiLeaks pressured me” to leak the material, and in fact that he wanted to give the documents to The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Reuters, but they were all uninterested in what he had to offer.
Manning added that he “became depressed with the situation we were mired in” in Iraq.
Regarding the video of a helicopter gunship shooting what appear to be journalists and wounded individuals in Iraq, entitled Collateral Murder by WikiLeaks, Manning said the “most alarming part to me was the seemingly delightful bloodlust,” and that those in the video “seemed to not value human life by referring to them as ‘dead bastards.'”
“I was disturbed by the response to injured children,” Manning added.
“I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan was a target that needed to be engaged and neutralized,” he said, adding that he had “accomplished something that would allow me to have a clear conscience.”
In his guilty plea, Manning admitted to leaking 10 separate materials, each of which carry a maximum sentence of two years, meaning Manning could face a maximum of 20 years in prison if the judge accepts his plea.
This article drew upon reporting by Nathan Fuller (@nathanLfuller).
If Manning had been a US Soldier that found the Helicopter footage of say Sadaams Pilots doing those dispicable acts he would have been lorded a War Hero, they were war crimes but as they were Americans doing it, he is a traitor.
Pfc Bradley Manning, you are to many a war hero. Know this those that are prosecuting him are committing grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, every prosecutor or judge who has knowledge of those tapes and fails to prosecute the helicopter pilots who shot civilians AND then those that went to rescue, is in fact themselves making a grave breach of various Geneva Conventions and are War Criminals in their own right!
You are right, Lion.
Bradley Manning is being crucified — much like Christ but with one variation.
Manning has exposed the disguised Global Empire that has been posing as America.
He didn't specifically say that he was exposing the Empire — but that's precisely what the files he released showed — that this is an Empire, not any kind of a functioning democracy.
Christ also exposed and confronted a far less disguised Roman Empire, so there was less need for the Empire to go through the charade of making it look like any appearance of legal procedure was followed.
Which all goes to show that Empires have not changed very much in two millennia — except, of course, in the level of disguise.
Best,
Alan
What a sham this trial is. Manning's only mistake in the army was joining up.
20 years in prison for telling the truth to the American people. If he had raped Iraqi girls, or murdered Iraqi civilians, he'd only face 6 months in prison, or less than he's already served, if he served any time at all. That tells you a lot about the "Values" and "Honor" of the modern US military.
Poor Brad. They can't punish him enough.
Almost Gone – Graham Nash (YouTube)
Complicitly criminal in all our own rights and no one left.
Reporting the killing of innocent people is not helping the enemy.., a group of bystander, a journalist, filmmaker and people on a car with children on board wanting to help the wounded is not helping the enemy.., is telling the truth about how a brutal militarism regime operates.
Can the 'imposter' and Amerikan CON gress critters say the same? Give them a lie detector once a year..YOU WILL BE SURPRISED?
Support this BRAVE AMERICAN…
A couple of big questions are, did Manning get anything in return for this plea, as in will the other charges quietly go away or will he get minimum sentencing? Also, was the whole point of the trial to get Manning to admit he submitted the files to Wikileaks, so as to establish a positive case to extradite and prosecute Julian Assange? In fact, has Manning now set himself up to testify against Assange at such a trial?
No, and the judge may not even accept it; the case against Assange is not helped if Brad keeps to his word here. See the Real News Network's excellent interview with Michael Ratner, Assange's lawyer who was at the hearing and describes Manning's words and behaviour.Manning is a hero, and is shown asi ntelligent, strong and well-informed.
Bradley Manning did nothing wrong — it's sad that he feels he has to plead guilty to charges based on what was actually a public service that he performed by helping expose war crimes and make government more transparent and accountable to the people.
The biggest threat to people in the United States is not an external "enemy" like "Iran" (by which people really mean the fundamentalist Islamic regime that runs Iran). That regime is primarily a threat to the life, liberty, and property of people in Iran.
The biggest threat to the life, liberty, and property of people in the United States is the U.S. government, which systematically and deliberately violates the Constitution and engages in crimes against the American people. This is part of a pattern around the world — most people have more to fear from "their own" governments than from any other organization or institution.
People of various countries are manipulated by "their" governments, which seek to turn them against each other in order to distract them from understanding this reality. But increasingly, people are seeing through the deceptions.
The Arab Spring revolutions and uprisings which are still continuing; the unrest in China, Russia, India, many European countries, and elsewhere, is I think part of a pattern that is developing as growing numbers of people see how "their" rulers have sold them a bill of goods and are running the global economy into the ground at the expense of the poor and less privileged, for their own political and financial benefit.
In the United States, a recent Pew Research Center poll has reported that a record number of Americans — a majority, in fact — now see the U.S. government as a threat to their personal rights and freedom.
I am not making this up — you can read about it here:
http://www.people-press.org/2013/01/31/majority-s…
But you probably won't hear this reported very prominently if at all in mainstream U.S. news outlets, which have become increasingly coopted by the government and are largely failing their journalistic responsibilities to the public.
Heroes and martyrs like Bradley Manning are the canaries in our collective coal mine as the U.S. edges closer to becoming an undisputed police state. Already it has the world's highest incarceration rate. Yet the two-party ruling Demopublican cartel shows no signs of serious reform.
Will enough people hear the alarms raised by people like Bradley Manning and wake up and support alternative political parties like the Libertarian Party (www.LP.org) before it's too late? Will fulfilling the promise of America as a free country with liberty and justice for all require an armed uprising, or can we live up to the legacy of heroes like Martin Luther King and achieve this goal through non-violent resistance and the political process? We shall see how far the establishment goes in blocking reform. As John F. Kennedy observed, those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
"That regime is primarily a threat to the life, liberty, and property of people in Iran. "
Not as bad as that of "our" Shah and his SAVAK scret police.
Looks like knowledge of war crimes is now considered "National Security Information." In the upcoming court martial over aiding and abetting, it will be interesting to see who exactly the Defense Department considers to be the "enemy."
knowledge of anything that might embarrass the politicians or the military is now considered secret and not to be shared or revealed to anyone. it might turn voters against the war, which in turn might hinder the war effort, which might in turn hinder the flow of tax dollars for bloated over-priced weapons that don't work, thus its now considered treason.
Since the Iraqis certainly knew that American helicopters were flying over Baghdad killing civilians and children, it was obviously not them from whom this information needed to be kept secret. Thus, in this context, they are clearly not the enemy. Its the American people who both must be kept in the dark as to what's really going on and who are also required to keep paying for all of this … thus in this case, where Mr. Manning's actions helped the American people understand and perhaps exercise their democratic rights to stop or slow this down, its obvious that in the eyes of the Pentagon, the American people are the biggest enemy to be feared because we are the only ones who could possibly stop them
Bradley Mannings should be awarded the noble peace prize for exposing all the lies about the Iraq war. How can you prosecute a person for exposing the truth,wether it was obtained unlawfuly? The truth is the truth and there is evidence all over to back up his claim.