Depiction of PFC Manning. Credit: Creative Commons.
None other than a former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo, Col. Morris Davis, has cut us a stunning and revealing swath of reality during the military court martial of PFC Bradley Manning, after the prosecution and the mainstream media painted PFC Manning’s acts in hyperbole, pseudo-psychological gossip, and hysterical cries of “aiding the enemy.”
Yes, Col. Morris Davis, a former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo, testified strongly for Manning’s defense team. He also appeared on Democracy Now! to express his hope that the military judge presiding at the court martial will drop the more hyperbolic charges against PFC Manning.
Col. Davis testified that released Guantánamo Detainee Assessments included in the files sent to Wikileaks were not a threat to national security, and that they revealed much less than other documents already published by the Pentagon. Hello! As Manning stated in his chatlogs, he had taken great care not to release highly classified files to Wikileaks…
Col. Davis told Democracy Now! that he felt it was important to prove that Manning hadn’t endangered the military, its troops, or anyone else with the leaked material.
But Davis revealed something much more interesting and important when he recounted the testimonies of PFC Manning’s superior officers, sergeant, and captains: every single person who testified told the court that, contrary to being alienated, inept, or a weakling of any kind, PFC Manning was the “go-to person” if anyone needed information. They emphasized that they all depended on Manning.
Well, well, well. Doesn’t that just contradict totally the blather that one Democratic, yes, Democratic pundit Joy Reid was spouting about PFC Manning’s “seeking anarchy as a salve for his own personal, psychological torment”? And how about the nonsense from Alyssa Rosenberg, a blogger for the Center for American Progress whose “main opinion of Bradley Manning [was that] it sounds like he has pretty serious emotional problems and turned out not to be a particularly effective whistleblower”?
Truly it would be funny if it weren’t so very pathetic. And these comments are from the mainstream Democratic pundits. I don’t research much into Fox News, so I’ll leave it to your imagination, gentle reader, as to what Fox offered to the boiling pot of tar intended for PFC Manning.
Now suddenly, at the last possible moment, perhaps to con the public into dumping PFC Manning as “un-American,” the military judge on this case has allowed “Specialist Jihrleah Showman” to have one of the last words on Manning. A final smear attempt.
Showman suddenly recalls, it seems, a conversation she had with Manning when she was Manning’s supervisor. Never mind that Showman was disciplined pursuant to a complaint filed by Manning over homophobic remarks made by her.
Nixon and Hoover. Credit: Creative Commons.
But would that fact make Showman more likely to manufacture a conversation she suddenly recalls now – at the end of Manning’s court martial – that could make Manning look bad? Oh no, never!
The dirt blows on….
The Nixon administration did the same sort of pseudo-psychological smears on Daniel Ellsberg, when Ellsberg published the Pentagon papers…. and in my humble opinion, the “collateral murder” video was as powerful an indictment of our military as all of the Pentagon papers put together.
How’s that for “effective,” Alyssa?
Of late, Joy Reid has been going off on Edward Snowden, and big time on Glenn Greenwald, who is to be punished, evidently, for doing his journalistic job in a manner that would do any journalist credit.
And what about the journalist Barrett Brown – over 300 days in jail without any sort of hearing or trial – charged with all sorts of misdoings including credit card fraud and threatening an FBI agent? Evidently Brown dared to investigate private intelligence and military contractors like the sinister Stratfor – and uncovered a secret plan to ruin the reputations of Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald!
Small memorial at the site where Michael Hastings died in the crash and explosion of his car on June 18th, 2013. Credit: Creative Commons.
It seems character assassination is as common as rape these days… It has trapped John Kiriakou, Jeremy Hammond, Aaron Schwartz, Julian Assange…
And this is how the government-military-mainstream media machine works… to convict the people it wants to destroy.
Never mind that the Commander in Chief himself convicted PFC Manning prior to Manning’s first hearing… which renders the military court martial nothing but a kangaroo court… No, never mind that.
Gossip, hearsay, what we Jews call “lashon hara” – bad mouthing – is the weapon of choice against conscientious journalists, if one can’t put them in the crosshairs – or crash them on the road (Michael Hastings).
But as Bob Dylan said, “Come, you masters of war … I just want you to know I can see through your masks.”