44% OF AMERICANS APPROVE OF THE 'JOB' BARRY O IS DOING WHILE 48% DISAPPROVE.
REACHED FOR COMMENT THIS MORNING, A SOBBING BARRY O INFORMED THESE REPORTERS, "ALL I EVER AGREED TO DO WAS WHAT I DID WHILE CAMPAIGNING, SMILE, WAIVE TO THE CAMERA, GO SHIRTLESS. NOW THEY WANT TO GIVE ME ADDITIONAL JOB DUTIES! I'M OVERTAXED AS IT IS!"
INDEED.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Monday April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks released military video of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were killed in the assault including two Reuters journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. Monday June 7, 2010, the US military announced that they had arrested Bradley Manning and he stood accused of being the leaker of the video. Leila Fadel (Washington Post) reported in August 2010 that Manning had been charged -- "two charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The first encompasses four counts of violating Army regulations by transferring classified information to his personal computer between November and May and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system. The second comprises eight counts of violating federal laws governing the handling of classified information." In March, 2011, David S. Cloud (Los Angeles Times) reported that the military has added 22 additional counts to the charges including one that could be seen as "aiding the enemy" which could result in the death penalty if convicted. The Article 32 hearing took place in December. At the start of this year, there was an Article 32 hearing and, February 3rd, it was announced that the government would be moving forward with a court-martial. Bradley has yet to enter a plea. The court-martial was supposed to begin before the November 2012 election but it was postponed until after the election so that Barack wouldn't have to run on a record of his actual actions. Independent.ie adds, "A court martial is set to be held in June at Ford Meade in Maryland, with supporters treating him as a hero, but opponents describing him as a traitor." February 28th, Bradley admitted he leaked to WikiLeaks. And why.
Bradley Manning: In attempting to conduct counter-terrorism or CT and counter-insurgency COIN operations we became obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists and not being suspicious of and avoiding cooperation with our Host Nation partners, and ignoring the second and third order effects of accomplishing short-term goals and missions. I believe that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information contained within the CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A tables this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as [missed word] as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.
I also believed the detailed analysis of the data over a long period of time by different sectors of society might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to even to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the effected environment everyday.
2010. Not 2008. Not 2007. 2010. Barack's in office, that's one of the key reasons that date is important. There's another there. This is Thomas Gaist (WSWS) report on Monday's proceedings:
While Manning’s defense team made arguments Monday presenting his decision to leak classified documents as motivated by concern for the well-being of the United States, its military, and the Iraqi people, Lind’s ruling prevents the defense from basing their case on the defendant’s principled opposition to US policies.
On Monday, the defense called Lauren McNamara, a woman who corresponded with Manning during the period when he made the leaks. She testified that he was “concerned with saving the lives of families in foreign countries” and that he “considered human life to be valuable above all.” McNamara quoted from her correspondence with Manning, reading his statement that was “concerned about making sure that everyone, soldiers, marines, contractors, even the local nationals, get home to their families.”
US Army sergeant David Sadtler, who oversaw Manning’s intelligence work, testified that Manning was angered by the jailing of 15 Iraqi civilians, with US approval, for distributing written material criticizing the government. “He was upset at the situation,” Sadtler said. Previously, Manning stated before the court that the Iraqis involved had no ties to the armed resistance against the US occupation, and that their materials contained a “scholarly critique” of the current regime.
2010. The Reuters video got attention. That was really it from our 'alternative' media in the US (The Nation, Democracy Now, etc.).
The issue wasn't the video. The video was from Bully Boy Bush's time in the White House.
What worried and bothered the White House was what Brad did that people might notice at any point. They didn't notice (and I only noticed it yesterday after hearing for the third time this month from a White House friend that the Reuters video didn't really matter). There were many Iraq revelations (and others but our focus is Iraq) from Brad's leaks. And we covered them here. Unlike 'live blogger' Gregg Mitchell who had no interest until Julian Assange encountered legal problems.
Ned Parker is a journalist with the Los Angeles Times. He's done great reporting in Iraq. And it's that reporting that has a lot to do with 2010. We've repeatedly asked, "Why did the administration back Nouri after Parker had repeatedly exposed Nouri's use of secret prisons?"
Brad angered the White House by ripping away the final veil.
2010. In February 2010, Brad begins leaking to WikiLeaks in part because of fear of the way the Iraqi people are being treated, especially those whose only 'crime' is speaking out against Nouri.
But if Brad knows these things, then so does our US government. Brad didn't share his notebook spiral of poetry with WikiLeaks, he shared government documents.
He began sharing government documents on Iraq in February 2010 and was clearly done sharing by May 2010 (at the end of May is when he was arrested). This isn't minor, this goes to why he needs to be silenced.
Nouri didn't win re-election to a second term as prime minister. A month after Brad began leaking, March 2010, is when Iraq holds parliamentary elections. Nouri disputes the results so the intimidated IHEC (Independent High Electoral Commission) tosses a few votes he didn't earn his way in the recounts but can't toss enough his way to allow his State of Law to come in first.
Iraqiya came in first. What followed was Nouri stomping his feet like a spoiled child and throwing a tantrum, refusing to step down and bringing the country to a political halt -- a political stalemate that lasted over eight months. How did he get away with it? The White House backed him.
The White House didn't back democracy, didn't back the Iraqi people, didn't back the Iraqi Constitution, it backed Nouri.
And we've decried that here in real time and since. We've pointed out that Ned Parker was doing exposes on secret prisons Nouri was running and the torture taking place there.
(And credit to the Guardian who, by the summer of 2010 was also noting the White House involvement. For the longest time, we were the only ones noting it.)
But until repeated hints from a White House friend this month, I wasn't connecting Brad to this time period.
Brad's revelations are even more important than Ned Parker's excellent reporting. Brad's revelations go to the fact that Barack and his underlings were not learning from the press of Nouri's corruption, of Nouri's targeting people because they criticized him. They knew it from their own US government reports.
In 2006, we began noting here that the US State Dept was noting how paranoid Nouri was. Brad's 2010 release included State Dept cables and that included Nouri and his paranoia. There wasn't a great deal about Iraq in the WikiLeaks publications that surprised us in terms of Iraq because we'd already noted a number of things as they happened. And that may be why the obvious escaped me or maybe just because I can be a real idiot sometimes.
But that is why the White House was furious about the leaks in terms of Iraq.
Let's again note John Barry's "'The Engame' Is A Well Researched, Highly Critical Look at U.S. Policy in Iraq" (Daily Beast):
Washington has little political and no military influence over these developments [in Iraq]. As Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor charge in their ambitious new history of the Iraq war, The Endgame, Obama's administration sacrificed political influence by failing in 2010 to insist that the results of Iraq’s first proper election be honored: "When the Obama administration acquiesced in the questionable judicial opinion that prevented Ayad Allawi's bloc, after it had won the most seats in 2010, from the first attempt at forming a new government, it undermined the prospects, however slim, for a compromise that might have led to a genuinely inclusive and cross-sectarian government."
The White House decision to back Nouri is why he could bring the country to a halt for over eight months after the elections and refuse to step down as prime minister. It was Barack that ordered the US-brokered contract (The Erbil Agreement). As the Constitution outlined things, Nouri couldn't be prime minister. So the White House had to do something extra-Constitutional to go around it. The Erbil Agreement is a contract among leaders of the various political blocs. Nouri signed it as leader of State of Law and agreeing to various terms, conditions and concessions if he could have a second term. The other leaders came up with their wish-list in exchange for giving Nouri a second term.
The US government knew the score. That's what Brad's leaks make clear. So they likely knew that Nouri would use The Erbil Agreement to get his second term and then trash it and refuse to honor it. But while they likely knew that, they absolutely knew he was a tyrant.
And yet they backed him.
Let's go back to Thomas Gaist (WSWS):
While Manning’s defense team made arguments Monday presenting his decision to leak classified documents as motivated by concern for the well-being of the United States, its military, and the Iraqi people, Lind’s ruling prevents the defense from basing their case on the defendant’s principled opposition to US policies.
On Monday, the defense called Lauren McNamara, a woman who corresponded with Manning during the period when he made the leaks. She testified that he was “concerned with saving the lives of families in foreign countries” and that he “considered human life to be valuable above all.” McNamara quoted from her correspondence with Manning, reading his statement that was “concerned about making sure that everyone, soldiers, marines, contractors, even the local nationals, get home to their families.”
US Army sergeant David Sadtler, who oversaw Manning’s intelligence work, testified that Manning was angered by the jailing of 15 Iraqi civilians, with US approval, for distributing written material criticizing the government. “He was upset at the situation,” Sadtler said. Previously, Manning stated before the court that the Iraqis involved had no ties to the armed resistance against the US occupation, and that their materials contained a “scholarly critique” of the current regime.
Manning’s pre-trial statement shows that he was motivated by a growing consciousness of the criminal character of US foreign policy. In the statement, delivered to the military judge in February, the soldier asserted that his actions were intended to initiate a process of “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms.”
Referring to politically motivated roundups carried out with full US support by the Iraqi regime, Manning said, “I knew that if I continued to assist the Baghdad Federal Police in identifying the political opponents of Prime Minister al-Maliki, those people would be arrested and in the custody of the Baghdad Federal Police and very likely tortured and not seen again for a very long time, if ever.”
Brad knew that and so did the US government, so did the White House. So what you have with the 2010 elections is no longer just a crime against democracy, it's a partnership in torture and abuse. The White House was not surprised by how awful Nouri is, they knew more than anyone, more than Ned Parker, just what he was doing and that's in the documents that Brad released.
They overrode the will of the people to give a tyrant who tortures a second term and they did that not out of political naivete, they did it with their eyes wide open and fully aware of what a second term would mean for the Iraqi people.
Brad's Iraq revelations -- poorly covered in real time -- strip away the illusions and reveal a White House aware of how vindictive and cruel Nouri was, how torture was his immediate answer for everything, and despite this (or because of this) the White House backed Nouri al-Maliki for a second term when even the Iraqi people had rejected him.
This is the fraud who won the Nobel Peace Prize being exposed as a liar and Tricky Dick Nixon willing to destroy an entire people. No wonder Barack declared Brad guilty
Here's the Bradley Manning Support Network's transcript of Barack declaring Brad guilty:
Logan Price: [Shaking hand] Mr. President, why didn’t you talk about Bradley Manning?
Obama: Look, there are better ways and more appropriate ways to bring this up than interrupting and causing a scene…
LP: I understand. That’s why I am asking you now. I wasn’t singing or chanting and I want to know. I am really concerned because I think he is the most important whistle-blower of my generation. Why is he being prosecuted?
Obama: Well, what he did was irresponsible and risked the lives of service-members abroad… he did a lot of damage… [begin video] so people can have philosophical views on…
LP: But I haven’t seen any evidence of that, and how can you say that the leaks did more harm than good? What about their effect on the democratic revolutions in the Arab world? …and isn’t this going to help the war on terror?
Obama: No, no, no, but look, I can’t conduct diplomacy on an open source… That’s not how the world works. And if you’re in the military… And I have to abide by certain rules of classified information. If I were to release material I weren’t allowed to, I’d be breaking the law. We’re a nation of laws! We don’t let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate…No he’s being fine. He is being courteous and asking questions. [ This was because the Secret Service was tugging on my shirt sleeve by this point]
LP: But didn’t he have a responsibility to expose.. [war crimes]
Obama: He broke the law!
LP: Well, you can make the law harder to break, but what he did was tell us the truth.
Obama: What he did was he dumped…
LP: But Nixon tried to prosecute Daniel Ellsberg for the same thing and he is a … [hero]
Obama: No it isn’t the same thing…What Ellsberg released wasn’t classified in the same way.
As the transcript (or video) makes clear, Barack was becoming a little unhinged on the topic. Why? Because the leaks do more than anything else to reveal how little Barack cares about human rights, how little value he placed on the safety of the Iraqi people, how eager to get in bed with despots and tyrants he was. This isn't 'change,' or a Nobel Peace Prize. This is actually criminal behavior. Interfering with a country's election and electoral process to ensure that the tyrant the people just deposed will not be leaving office.
October 22nd 2010, WikiLeaks published the Iraq War Logs. They'd had them for months and it's a shame they weren't able to publish them before October 22nd. The Erbil Agreement was already being negotiated and, November 10, 2010, would be finalized. From the November 11, 2010 snapshot:
Today the KRG website announces:
Baghdad, Iraq (KRP.org) - Iraq's political leaders yesterday agreed to hold the parliamentary session as scheduled on Thursday and to name an individual for the post of Speaker of the the parliament (Council of Representatives). The Speaker post will go to the Al-Iraqiya bloc, which is headed by former prime minister Ayad Allawi.
During the meeting, which was attended by the leaders of all the winning blocs at President Masoud Barzani's Baghdad headquarters, agreement was reached on two other points: to create a council for strategic policy and to address issues regarding national reconciliation.
President Barzani, who sponsored the three days' round of meetings, stated that today's agreement was a big achievement for Iraqis. He expressed optimism that the next government will be formed soon and that it will be inclusive and representative of all of Iraq's communities.
What Brad revealed was the Barack Obama administration got into bed with a man they knew was a tyrant. Even though the Iraqi people wanted him out of office, the White House fought to keep him. And since they knew exactly how vindictive, paranoid and violent he was, that makes the US government culpable in the violence that's followed in Nouri's second term. Brad's revelations destroyed their attempt to have plausible deniability on this issue.
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