US Army Colonel Says Bradley Manning Telling The Afghan War Truth

After nine years of war in Afghanistan and seven years in Iraq, America finally got an unfiltered glimpse of what those conflicts are like on the ground via disclosures by WikiLeaks, including a 2007 video of a US helicopter gunship mowing down a dozen Iraqi men. The US military has responded by charging Private Bradley Manning, who was a 22-year-old intelligence analyst in Iraq, with leaking the video and investigating his suspected role in also giving WikiLeaks thousands of field reports from Afghanistan. Bradley Manning faces decades in prison for letting Americans see the truth about our wars on Iraq and Afghanistan by allegedly leaking the "Collateral Murder" videos -- of two Reuters’ journalists being shot and killed by a US helicopter -- to WikiLeaks. Much of my own military background concerns the law of warfare. Most Americans do not realize that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have violated domestic and international law, violat ions that have been fully exposed in the WikiLeaks documents that Manning is accused of releasing. Bradley Manning is a patriot of our democracy, who stayed loyal to what is right, risking his own security. His loyalty to the Constitution and the American people transcends partisan politics.

Ann Wright, US Army Col. (Rtd), Stop The War Coalition

Related Links:
* Watch Activist Daniel Ellsberg On WikiLeaks
Dylan Ratigan Interviews Daniel Ellsberg
* Legal Update - Free Bradley Manning
Jeff Paterson, Bradley Manning Support Network
* Collateral Murder
US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff
Information Release, WikiLeaks

Julian Assange: Go Where You Wanna Go?

PARIS (Rixstep) — Both AFP and Le Monde came out with an article earlier today claiming Julian Assange was 'no longer under arrest' and free to go where he wanted. The information is presumably based on a conversation with Björn Hurtig earlier today. Hurtig said the investigation was not completed but the investigators are not yet calling Assange for questioning. 'I've been told there's no arrest warrant against him', Hurtig said - which is close to what everyone understood all along, ever since Eva Finné rescinded the warrant issued by Maria Kjellstrand. Blogger 'Citizen X' came up with a theory on 10 September: 'Marianne Ny is standing there like a donkey between two bales of hay, with poor alternatives to choose from. She's most likely being pressured by the politicians at the same time. Should she choose to dismiss the case before the elections, at the same time the red-green alliance wins, she knows her days in th e prosecutor's office are numbered." 'Citizen X' believes the case must ultimately be dismissed but that the powers that be are apprehensive about losing face after all that's already transpired. Yet jettisoning the case ASAP will hurt less than carrying on any longer. 'Pushing the case to a trial would show the world what an abysmal judicial system we have in Sweden. The entire world would laugh at the trial and at the Swedish judicial system. The only way out is to take care of the matter behind closed doors, but up to now everything in the affair has leaked like a sieve.'

Information Release, Rixstep