{"id":9668,"date":"2011-04-29T06:57:13","date_gmt":"2011-04-29T14:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=9668"},"modified":"2011-04-29T06:57:13","modified_gmt":"2011-04-29T14:57:13","slug":"veterans-for-peace-obama-declares-manning-guilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/29\/veterans-for-peace-obama-declares-manning-guilty\/","title":{"rendered":"Veterans for Peace: Obama Declares Manning Guilty"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Veterans for Peace: <\/em><\/p>\n

Obama Declares Manning Guilty Before Trial
\nCan Military Officers Judge Him Impartially and Contradict Their Commander-In-Chief?<\/strong><\/p>\n

President Barack Obama said on April 21 that PFC Bradley Manning \u201cbroke the law.\u201d This statement casts serious doubt on whether Manning can receive a fair trial from officers subordinate to Obama, their Commander-in-Chief.<\/p>\n

\u201cMembers of the military are trained to follow orders. President Obama is the commander of all armed forces,\u201d said Elliott Adams, president of Veterans For Peace. \u201cAny officer who wants to advance in his military career would be wise not to contradict their commander-in-chief, especially after the military’s brutal treatment of Manning this past year. The President seems to have forgotten what he taught his constitutional law classes about being innocent until proven guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government has already violated Bradley Manning\u2019s due process rights by keeping him in pretrial solitary confinement for nearly a year and the President bears ultimate responsibility for the abusive treatment Manning has endured since July 2010 at Quantico Marine Base, and possibly before that in Kuwait. He has been confined to a 6-by-12-foot cell for 23 hours a day, prevented from sleeping during the day, denied exercise, woken up constantly, given limited access to books and writing materials, stripped at night and forced to endure inspection naked, and deprived of his eyeglasses. Many mental health professionals characterize this as psychological torture. President Obama could have stopped this mistreatment at any time with one phone call.<\/p>\n

The President made another critical misstatement in his comments. He claimed that Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, was less culpable because the documents he leaked were \u201cnot classified in the same way.\u201d In fact, the Pentagon Papers were classified at the highest level of secrecy while the WikiLeaks documents were at the lowest level.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s time to free Bradley Manning and pin a medal on the man. He has already been punished beyond constitutional limits and now President Obama has made a fair trial impossible,\u201d said Leah Bolger, vice-president of Veterans For Peace. \u201cIf indeed he\u2019s the one who released those documents, he is a hero for blowing the whistle on war crimes and other misbehavior by U.S. officials.\u201d<\/p>\n

TRANSCRIPT AND LINK TO VIDEO: <\/em><\/p>\n

Obama: \u201cSo people can have philosophical views [about Bradley Manning] but I can\u2019t conduct diplomacy on an open source [basis]\u2026 That\u2019s not how the world works. And if you\u2019re in the military\u2026 And I have to abide by certain rules of classified information. If I were to release material I weren\u2019t allowed to, I\u2019d be breaking the law. We\u2019re a nation of laws! We don\u2019t let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.\u201d [Emphasis added]<\/p>\n

Q: \u201cDidn’t he release evidence of war crimes?\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama: \u201cWhat he did was he dumped\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Q: \u201cIsn’t that just the same thing as what Daniel Ellsberg did?\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama: \u201cNo it wasn\u2019t the same thing. Ellsberg\u2019s material wasn\u2019t classified in the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The video can be viewed here: http:\/\/youtu.be\/IfmtUpd4id0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Veterans for Peace: Obama Declares Manning Guilty Before Trial Can Military Officers Judge Him Impartially and Contradict Their Commander-In-Chief? President Barack Obama said on April 21 that PFC Bradley Manning \u201cbroke the law.\u201d This statement casts serious doubt on whether Manning can receive a fair trial from officers subordinate to Obama, their Commander-in-Chief. \u201cMembers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-9668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9668"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9669,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9668\/revisions\/9669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9668"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}