BULLY BOY
PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID
TABLE
KILLER BARRY O IS A KEYSTONE COP.
WHICH IS WHY THE KEYSTONE PIPELINE WILL GO THROUGH. A NEW REPORT FROM HIS STATE DEPT. SUPPORTS THE PIPELINE AND ALL THE DESTRUCTION IT WILL DO TO THE ENVIRONMENT.
THE ONLY THING THAT BRINGS A SMILE TO THE LIPS OF KILLER BARRY QUICKER THAN USING A DRONE TO KILL INNOCENT CHILDREN IS STRAPPING ON A G-STRING AND GOING INTO A SMOKY ROOM WITH CORPORATE HONCHOS WHERE HE CAN GIVE EACH AND EVERYONE A LAP DANCE.
REMEMBER, BIG BUSINESS, KEEP YOUR HANDS AT YOUR SIDES AND DO NOT TOUCH DANCING BARRY.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
We're starting with Iraq War veteran Bradley Manning who confessed yesterday that he passed on documents to WikiLeaks. Alexa O'Briean has transcribed his statement in full. We're going to note a section at the top:
The CIDNE system contains a database that is used by thousands of
Department of Defense--DoD personel including soldiers, civilians, and
contractors support. It was the United States Central Command or
CENTCOM reporting tool for operational reporting in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Two separate but similar databases were maintained for
each theater-- CIDNE-I for Iraq and CIDNE-A for Afghanistan. Each
database encompasses over a hundred types of reports and other
historical information for access. They contain millions of vetted and
finalized directories including operational intelligence reporting.
CIDNE was created to collect and analyze battle-space data to provide
daily operational and Intelligence Community (IC) reporting relevant to a
commander's daily decision making process. The CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A
databases contain reporting and analysis fields for multiple disciplines
including Human Intelligence or HUMINT reports, Psychological
Operations or PSYOP reports, Engagement reports, Counter Improvised
Explosive Device or CIED reports, SigAct reports, Targeting reports,
Social and Cultural reports, Civil Affairs reports, and Human Terrain
reporting.
[. . .]
I felt that we were risking so much for people that seemed unwilling to
cooperate with us, leading to frustration and anger on both sides. I
began to become depressed with the situation that we found ourselves
increasingly mired in year after year. The SigActs documented this in
great detail and provide a context of what we were seeing on the ground.
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.
I don't get -- or I didn't -- why people still
aren't covering counter-insurgency. Bradley Manning's been behind bars
for over 1000 days because he hoped to spark a national dialogue. 24
hours after he states that, there's still nothing in the media.
For those late to the party, Monday April 5,
2010, WikiLeaks released US
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."
At Rolling Stone, Janet Reitman asks, "Did the Mainstream Media Fail Bradley Manning?"
And suddenly it falls together. Not because of what Reitman finds --
she finds nothing. Not because of Kevin Gosztola's hypothesis that the Washington Post and the New York Times might have been too scared to publish it.
Check
the archives, but we covered the WikiLeaks releases in real time.
Today, a lot of people like to pretend they did but they didn't. In
Little Media, they wrote for magazine websites and for magazines and
they had their own programs but they never used them to explore what was
released. They didn't have time for it. They didn't give a damn until
they got their postage of Julian Assange.
They still don't give a damn about Bradley. But Julian they could get behind.
Janet Reitman wants to know if the press failed Bradley? It wasn't about Bradley. It was about Iraq.
And, yes, the US press failed Iraq. Failed before the start of the war, failed it after.
Did
you pay attention to the recap earlier. People pretend like there was
great interest in the WikiLeaks 2007 video. No, there wasn't. There
should have been but there wasn't. And there was even less interest
when they began publishing various documents.
The question to ask
is "Did the press fail Iraq?" Yes, it did. By the time WikiLeaks
released the Iraq information, there had been a withdrawal from Iraq -- a
press withdrawal. ABC closed down their operation and lied that they'd
grab BBC if there were any developments. (Use the BBC for their
evening news.) They didn't really. NBC was out. The networks pulled
out. McClatchy Newspapers was pulling out. No one gave a damn in the
US press about Iraq.
And if you complained -- and I did to many
producers and editors -- you were told that the viewers were tired of
Iraq. I didn't then and don't now see how that's possible.
Among the trash that passes for 'independent' media in the US, Demcoracy Now! couldn't be bothered with the topic, nor could The Nation magazine, nor could The Progressive.
In the spring of 2009, Steven D. Green went on trial. We covered it every day here. May 7th Steven D. Green was convicted for his crimes in March 12, 2006 gang-rape and murder of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi,
the murder of her parents and the murder of her five-year-old sister
while Green was serving in Iraq. Green was found to have killed all
four, to have participated in the gang-rape of Abeer and to have been
the ringleader of the conspiracy to commit the crimes and the conspiracy
to cover them up. May 21st, the federal jury deadlocked on the death penalty and instead he was sentenced to life in prison.
This
was a War Crime. It should have been covered widely. Instead it was
Kentucky media. It was the Associated Press' Brett Barrouquere and Time
magazine's Jim Frederick. That was it for the national mainstream
press. Arianna Huffington deserves credit for sending a reporter down
there (Gail Mellor) and even more for realizing the best reporting was
coming from high schooler Evan Bright and carrying his coverage at The Huffington Post. We interviewed Evan for a May 3, 2009 piece at Third. Evan was covering every day of the trial. Evan wasn't shy. Why wasn't he on Democracy Now!
during the trial? Why did Pacifica Radio waste all that money on the
garbage that was Mitch Jeserich's Letters from Washington but fail to
send even one reporter to Kentucky for a War Crimes trial? Why wasn't
Matthew Rothschild or Katrina vanden Heuvel at all concerned with the
gang-rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by US soldiers?
It's
in that climate that Bradley Manning tries to interest the media in
what he has. It wasn't about Brad, it was about the complete lack of
interest on the part of the press with anything to do with Iraq by
2010. If you need a 'reputable source' making that observation, here's PEW on Iraq War coverage in 2010:
The ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were on the periphery of both
the American public’s and news media’s radar in 2010. Just 1% of the
total news coverage last year was devoted to events related to and
policy debates about the Iraq war. In no single week did Iraq consume
more than 10% of the newshole. With the exception of a week in
September, during a large troop withdrawal, most of the public reported
they were not following events in Iraq very closely when surveyed
throughout the year.
Get it? The media didn't fail Bradley. Long before Bradley tries to interest the media, it had already failed Iraq.
And
the Amy Goodmans and Greg Mitchells can pretend they did something but
they didn't. They didn't treat the WikiLeaks releases seriously in real
time. After Julian Assange became a folk hero to some, once they had
their poster on the wall, the Goodys and Mitchells suddenly could give a
damn . . . about Julian Assange. Not about Iraq, not about Iraqis,
never about Iraq, never about Iraqis.
And what we're seeing yet
again, right now, is an attempt to posterize. We're not talking about
the War Crimes, we're not writing about the War Crimes, we're rehashing
this and that and blah blah blah. I'm not going into counter-insurgency
today. Unlike Amy Goodman, we've covered it here (and called it out)
regularly. I don't have the time or space for/in this snapshot today
to go over counter-insurgency again.
But we've covered it (including yesterday -- and we first covered it in 2006 when the ridiculous Montgomery McFate got her first press via The New Yorker.
These are the issues of substance. A whole rag-tag assembly wants to
pretend that they support Bradley. Yet they still won't take the time
to write and talk about counter-insurgency. Even now, 24 hours after
Bradley outlined his hope/intent to spark a debate on the policy.
You
can't argue whether Bradley was in the right or in the wrong to release
the documents if you can't address the importance of the documents.
Support him? Then kick-start the national dialogue on
counter-insurgency. Yeah, it might take a little work and, goodness
knows, a little work's too much for our Panhandle Media.
But if we want the mainstream to cover it and if we want people to know
the importance of Bradley's actions, then we're going to need to do a
little work.
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