Bradley Manning Pleads Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!

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Judge accepts Bradley Manning’s guilty pleas on 10 lesser charges; trial on 12 others set for June

A military judge on Thursday accepted guilty pleas by Army Pfc. Bradley Manning to 10 lesser charges against him, leaving the ex-intelligence analyst to face 12 other counts for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of government documents to the WikiLeaks website.

The acceptance of the “naked guilty pleas” — meaning there is no agreement between the government and the defense that would limit the sentence – at a pre-trial hearing means that Manning faces up to 20 years in prison, even if he is ultimately acquitted of the most-serious charges against him.

Col. Denise Lind, the military judge presiding over the case, also accepted Manning’s “not guilty” pleas to the remaining charges, including “aiding the enemy.” His court martial on those charges, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison, is scheduled to begin on June 3.

During the day-long pre-trial hearing, Manning acknowledged that his actions were a discredit to the service and that he knew WikiLeaks was not authorized to have the information he provided.

At one point when Lind asked him whether he knew what he was doing was wrong, he answered simply, “Yes, your honor.”

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I caught a lot of shit for my position on Manning/Assange/Wikileaks. This story has been going on for a couple years now. Assange is still holed up in that embassy in London. Wikileaks is pretty much defunct.

Yes, I do feel vindicated. Manning claims he acted from the purest of intentions but his motives are irrelevant. But at this point there is no real purpose in taking the matter to trial. Justice will be served when he is sentenced for the crimes he has admitted.

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Really bad logic

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From The Confluence

What Susie Said…

From her post Extradition:

You may have caught the grand kabuki of Great Britain insisting it is a matter of preserving international law that they extradite Julian Assange for his alleged sexual crimes.

As Ian Welsh reminds us, Chilean dictator Pinochet had women raped with specially trained dogs, and Britain wouldn’t extradite him.

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I find it hard to believe that three smart lefty brains could not spot the bad logic here.

First of all, don’t we want governments to obey the law? I realize they don’t always do what they should but isn’t that the ideal scenario? But let’s skip over that.

If General Augusto Pinochet was guilty of even a fraction of the crimes of which he was accused, he was a very bad man. But Pinochet was arrested in England on a warrant issued in Spain for crimes allegedly committed in Chile. There were a number of novel legal issues raised in his case. There were also political issues including the fact that he was a former head of state and the Chilean government opposed his extradition to Spain.

Like Assange, Pinochet’s case took a couple years to wind its way through the British courts. In the end, just as with Assange, Britain’s highest court ruled that he could be extradited. But then the British Home Secretary intervened and allowed Pinochet to return to Chile, where he died in 2006 at the age of 91.

The two cases are not identical, but let’s agree that what happened with Pinochet allowed him to escape justice. He should have been extradited and tried for crimes against humanity.

How does the fact that Pinochet escaped justice justify allowing Assange to escape justice as well? Two wrongs don’t make a right.

This is not rational thinking, it is rationalization.

I fully agree that the allegations against Julian Assange are in dispute. But if the victims are telling the truth then he is guilty of four counts of sexual assault. The proper way to resolve this is via the legal system. That should be the desired outcome.

Assange’s supporters are convinced that the sexual assault allegations are a sham and that the US government is behind everything and that the two women are actually CIA operatives who seduced Assange. They claim the US wants to get Assange to Sweden so he can be extradited here where he will be locked up without any trial or due process.

His supporters cannot answer these questions:

1. If the US wants to arrest Assange, why didn’t they do it earlier? Two years ago he was basically bumming around Europe with a gym bag and a Eurorail pass, playing the International Man of Mystery. They could have snatched his ass up any time and it would have taken days or even weeks before anyone realized he was missing.

2. If the US has so much control of the Swedish government, why didn’t they extradite him before he left for England?

3. If the US has so much control over the British government why didn’t they try to extradite Assange from there?

4. If the US is so lawless and brutal, why hasn’t the Obama administration put a hit on Assange?

5. If the US really has a secret indictment against Assange alleging multiple serious crimes, why shouldn’t he be extradited here to face those charges in court?

Hmmmm?

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What if they sent in a drone to blow his ass up?

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Julian Assange’s fate in balance as UK ‘threatens to storm embassy’

The diplomatic and political minefield that is the fate of Julian Assange is expected to come a step closer to being traversed when Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, gives his decision on whether his country will grant the WikiLeaks’ founder asylum around lunchtime on Thursday.

The decision – if it comes – will mark the end of a turbulent process that last night saw Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, raging against perceived threats from Britain to “storm” the embassy and warning that such a “dangerous precedent” would be met with “appropriate responses in accordance with international law”.

The dramatic development came two months after Assange suddenly walked into the embassy in a bid to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sexual assault.

At a press conference yesterday, Patiño released details of a letter he said was delivered through a British embassy official in Quito, the capital of the South American country.

The letter said: “You need to be aware that there is a legal base in the UK, the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987, that would allow us to take actions in order to arrest Mr Assange in the current premises of the embassy.”

It added: “We need to reiterate that we consider the continued use of the diplomatic premises in this way incompatible with the Vienna convention and unsustainable and we have made clear the serious implications that this has for our diplomatic relations.”

Last night, appeals were tweeted for Assange supporters to occupy the embassy to prevent British police from arresting Assange, and while there was a police presence outside the embassy, Scotland Yard insisted that officers were simply there to “police the embassy like any other embassy”.

Patiño said he was “deeply shocked” by the diplomatic letter. Speaking to reporters later, he said: “The government of Ecuador is considering a request for asylum and has carried out diplomatic talks with the governments of the United Kingdom and Sweden. However, today we received from the United Kingdom a written threat that they could attack our embassy in London if Ecuador does not give up Julian Assange.

“Ecuador, as a state that respects rights and justice and is a democratic and peaceful nation state, rejects in the strongest possible terms the explicit threat of the British official communication.

“This is unbecoming of a democratic, civilised and law-abiding state. If this conduct persists, Ecuador will take appropriate responses in accordance with international law.

“If the measures announced in the British official communication materialise they will be interpreted by Ecuador as a hostile and intolerable act and also as an attack on our sovereignty, which would require us to respond with greater diplomatic force.

“Such actions would be a blatant disregard of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations and of the rules of international law of the past four centuries.

“It would be a dangerous precedent because it would open the door to the violation of embassies as a declared sovereign space.” Under international law, diplomatic posts are considered the territory of the foreign nation.

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Anyone remember when we invaded the sovereign space of Pakistan to “arrest” Osama bin Hidin’? Maybe the Brits should do things the American way and send a drone in to blow his ass up.

Let’s recap:

1. Two women in Sweden accuse Julian Assange of sexual assault. While the case is under investigation Assange leaves Sweden and goes to England.

2. A warrant for Assange’s arrest is issued in Sweden. Extradition proceedings are started in England.

3. Assange is arrested and then released on bail. As part of his bail conditions he is required to wear an ankle bracelet and live on a large estate belonging to a wealthy supporter.

4. Assange loses his extradition hearing.

5. Assange appeals the extradition ruling.

6. Assange loses his appeal.

7. Assange requests a rehearing.

8. Rehearing is denied. Assange is given a date to turn himself in.

9. Assange goes to Ecuadoran embassy and requests asylum.

According to Assange he has spent all this time, money and effort fighting extradition to Sweden because it is all a plot to send him to the United States so we can execute him even though he denies breaking any laws.

Next month will make two years since this mess started.

Seriously, what would be the repercussions if British police entered the embassy and snatched his ass up and sent him to Skandiland? What’s Ecuador gonna do about it? Declare war?

What gives them the right to keep Assange anyway? He is a fugitive from justice. He’s gone through the legal process and lost. He broke his promise to appear. He is an Australian citizen and Ecuador has nothing to do with the allegations against him.

Imagine if the police in San Diego were chasing a German citizen who was on the run from charges in Japan and who jumped bail after losing an extradition hearing here and they pursued him 100 feet over the border into Mexico before catching him and dragging him back. How upset should Mexico be?

What’s amusing is the people who are suddenly so worried about the sanctity of international law were opposed to enforcing it when Assange was fighting extradition.

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Bradley Manning and Julian Assange – two non-heroes

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Dan Abrams at Mediaite:

Bradley Manning’s Own Defense Appears To Concede He’s No Hero

Hailed as a hero by some for exposing what they claim are U.S. government misdeeds, as well as illegal and immoral conduct, he has websites like BradleyManning.org devoted to him and many prominent supporters — aside from, of course, Wikileaks editor Julian Assange. Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg stated flatly that he “was Bradley Manning” and that he was profoundly affected by Manning’s decision to leak. “I never thought,” he said of Manning, “for the rest of my life, I would ever hear anyone willing to do that, to risk their life, so that horrible, awful secrets could be known.” Manning himself can allegedly be counted among those promoting the lionization of his image, accused of having said about his own conduct: “This is possibly one of the more significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century asymmetric warfare.”

Unfortunately, that sort of principled position is far from what his own defense team suggests motivated Manning’s alleged perfidy. No, they appear to be pursuing the defense that he was a gay man in a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell military, struggling with gender identity issues, who never should have had access to the files in the first place. His attorney focused on Manning’s alter ego, Breanna Manning, and quoted an email from Manning where he said his “entire life feel(s) like a bad dream that won’t end. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what will happen to me. But at this point I feel like I am not here anymore.” That characterization suggests he was no hero; not a man standing for principle nor acting in the best interest of the country but, rather, a sad troubled soul worthy of sympathy. It is a defense which appears to concede that he leaked the documents but also abandons any pretense of righteousness in exchange for an apologia for his behavior. That is a trade Assange himself would likely detest since he complained to then New York Times Editor Bill Keller that a profile of Manning “psychologicalized” him while giving “short shrift” to his “political awakening.”

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and Rex Murphy at National Post:

My view of the WikiLeaks disclosures – leaving aside for the time being the Americans own vast carelessness over the files – is that they were absolutely wrong. The action was licensed only by Assange’s own massively arrogant assumption that he, Julian Assange, was somehow “entitled” to do so; that he was the Solon who could determine whether lives could be put at risk, relations between countries ruptured, names named, and life-and death operations opened to all.

We have come to regard almost any and all actions against “the state” automatically as works of virtue and worthy of praise. But our esteem is, in many instances, deeply misplaced and fraught with mischief and peril. Assange is more fame-seeker and groupie-collector than he is a moral agent. We should not confuse Assange, or the immature, morally witless Bradley Manning, with Solhenitsyn or Sakharov. The great Russians were heros who faced imprisonment, torture and ostracism to tell the truth. Assange was taxed to summon the courage for an appearance on the Today Show, with the grand inquisitor Meredith Vierra.

It may come as a surprise to the excitable protestors of the West that not everything a democracy does is wrong; that the United States is not monolithically wicked; that rules and laws have some purpose other than to be broken on some callow individual’s own authority; or that every one who has a secret to spill is not necessarily motivated by conscience.

Assange was a very poor choice of hero from the beginning. He should have been shunned for his recklessness, rebuked for his arrogance, and held to account for the many lives he has either wrecked or put in jeopardy.

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Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m a ratfucking fascist because I don’t follow the politically correct party line.

But it seems to me that a lot of people made some hasty assumptions about Bradley Manning and Julian Assange that just aren’t true. People assumed that Manning was a brave whistle-blower acting on his conscience. It turns out he is a disturbed and pathetic individual. Others defended him as a gay man facing persecution by a homophobic military. Ironically, the evidence showed that his superiors were aware of his sexual orientation but ignored it.

As for Assange, even if he is innocent of any crimes in Sweden his behavior was that of a low-life scumbag. It’s easy to feel pity for Manning, but not Assange.

On the other hand, none of the evidence available so far would warrant a sentence of death or life in prison for either man.

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Justice delayed

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Wikileaks chief Julian Assange ‘thankful’ after winning right to appeal extradition to Sweden

WIKILEAKS chief Julian Assange said he was “thankful” after being granted the right to pursue his appeal against extradition to Sweden at Britain’s Supreme Court.

The 40-year-old Australian, who faces allegations of sexual misconduct in Stockholm, was present at London’s High Court to hear the ruling over his application, which he later praised as the “correct decision.”

The ruling means Assange does not face immediate deportation and now has two weeks to officially lodge a written appeal to the Supreme Court.

Assange, who denies any wrongdoing, was arrested in Britain last December on a European warrant over allegations of rape and sexual assault made by two women over a five-day period in Stockholm last August.

[...]

The transferring of the case to the Supreme Court was expected to keep Assange in the UK for several months before a final ruling is made.

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Time wounds all heels.

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Assange still fighting extradition

Julian Assange seeks to take extradition fight to supreme court

The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is to apply for a supreme court hearing to appeal against extradition to Sweden to face sex crime allegations.

His solicitor, Gareth Peirce, confirmed he will ask senior judges in London on 5 December to certify that his case should be considered by the highest court in the land. He must establish that his case raises “a question of law of general public importance”.

Assange, 40, lost a high court battle against removal on 2 November but has announced he wants to fight on against a European arrest warrant that has been outstanding since last December.

A supreme court hearing would be the third stage of the 40-year old Australian’s appeal against extradition to face allegations of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion by two women he met on a visit to Stockholm in August 2010.

Assange’s decision means a verdict on whether he should be extradited could be delayed until as late as next summer, legal observers said.

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I guess he’s afraid of the repressive Swedish justice system. He should have fled to France when he had a chance. They like rapists there.

Just ask Roman Polanski.

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