Bradley Manning’s statement: A forced “confession”
concludes a drumhead tribunal
By Eric London
15 August 2013
15 August 2013
Army PFC
Bradley Manning addressed the military tribunal at Ft. Meade, Maryland
yesterday in the eleventh day of post-trial sentencing hearings. The
25-year-old whistle-blower was found guilty last month on 19 counts, including
six charges of espionage. He faces up to 90 years in prison.
Manning’s
comments yesterday reflect the tremendous element of coercion in the entire
proceedings. In all, the episode more closely resembled a Stalinist show trial
than a democratic court of law.
“First,
your honor, I want to start off with an apology,” he told Army Col. Denise
Lind, the military judge overseeing the proceedings. “I’m sorry that my actions
hurt people, and I’m sorry that it hurt the United States. I understand what I
was doing and the decision that I made. I’m sorry for the unintended
consequences of my actions.”
Noting
that he would “have to pay a price for my decisions and actions,” Manning pled
for a lower sentence.
“How on
Earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for
the better over those with the proper authority? I know that I can and will be
a better person. I hope that you can give me the opportunity to prove, not
through words but through conduct, that I can return to a productive place in
society.”
Manning
delivered these comments in a visible state of despondency—he shook and grew
tearful as he spoke. That a defendant in a legal proceeding is forced to
apologize for and denounce his acts of opposition underscores the advanced
state of decay of American democracy. Such sordid events bear the badge of a
police state.
In fact,
Manning’s actions did not hurt anyone but the politicians and military
officials that have waged one illegal war after the next. In providing
documents to WikiLeaks, he performed an immense service to the population of
the United States and the entire world.
Moreover,
in verbally repudiating the suggestion that he, as an individual, “could change
the world for the better over those with the proper authority,” Manning
implicitly condemns the state and the Obama administration. It is as if the
American ruling class, through this confession, is seeking to convince the
population, and itself, that opposition is useless.
That the
state feels compelled to extract this mea culpa is a reflection of its
own deep-seated fear. Those with the “proper authority” are well aware that
they have committed grave crimes, even as they dare to stand in judgment of
those who, like Manning, have revealed them.
Considering
his past treatment, it is understandable that Manning wants to put an end to
the entire antidemocratic charade perpetrated against him.
In his
three years in captivity, Manning has been subjected to mental and physical
forms of torture, including being placed for months in a 6 foot by 12 foot cell
for 23 hours a day. This so-called pretrial detention was in direct violation
of the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to a
speedy trial, and the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment
of prisoners.
His sham
military trial, like his imprisonment, has been a mockery of due process. Judge
Lind has barred the utilization of any politically motivated defense by
Manning. The court has drastically limited the rights of journalists covering
the trial. The proceedings occur under censorship—the military has been able to
limit access of key information to journalists and the public, ostensibly on
account of potential damage to national security.
There is
a sharp contrast between Manning’s comments yesterday and a statement he made
in February, in which he asserted that the American people had the right to
know the “true costs of war.”
“I
believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see this that
it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general
[that] might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in
counter-terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged
with every day.”
In an
attempt to neutralize Manning’s potential as an icon of opposition, both the
prosecution and the defense have worked at length to portray Manning as
mentally unstable and plagued with eccentric personal insecurities. The trial
has been marked by an obsessive focus on Manning’s sexuality, his psychological
motives. Photographs of Manning dressed in make-up, wig, and women’s clothing
have been published.
One reads
with sadness Manning’s verbal repudiation of his noble actions, a repudiation
extracted through psychological and physical abuse and the threat of a life in
prison. That the Obama administration and the state apparatus feel the need to
extract such statements and to compel political prisoners to speak in this way
only adds to their own moral degradation, giving further proof of the
putrefaction of what passes for American democracy.
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