

Bradley Manning leaked Granai Airstrike "~86-147, mostly women and children" - gridmaths
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granai_airstrike#Video_of_the_airstrike

======
gridmaths
I posted the link. I wanted to describe my reasons :

I know that even the most justified war is ugly : there are accidents and
mistakes and innocent people die at times, despite the best precautions.

Im aware that the freedoms I have every day, are a result of a coalition of
democratic countries winning WWII and other conflicts. Many of my freedoms
were won by American strength : military, economic and technological. I'm not
an American, but I hold up the Constitution, the rule of Law and Democracy as
high ideals - the best way humans have come up with so far of coexisting on
this planet.

But a Democracy cannot exist where there is no free speech nor the right to
question the government and the law. Citizens need information on whats
happening : we need freedom to speak and anonymity to discuss in private, if
we are to have a functioning Democracy.

I think Bradley Manning had a moral obligation as a soldier and as a citizen,
to release the information he did. From what I read it seems that he was
careful not to share information that would get other soldiers and spies
killed, nor give the enemy any material advantage in the war.

What I think should happen is that this should be a civil trial by jury to
decide whether he acted legally and morally. He leaked news of military
'mistakes', so he should not be tried by that same organization. A civil jury
should decide whether the obligation to uphold the Constitution, by leaking,
outweighed his obligation as a soldier to keep the information secret.

Even more worrying here is that the Obama administration is pushing for this
to be tried as 'giving information directly to the enemy' ie. treason, when
clearly the motivation was not that.

If there were no Wikileaks, no Press, no privacy.. how would we keep our
secret organisations in check, and have any confidence they are following
their mandate ?

------
jmduke
It's important to note that there is absolutely no proof Manning leaked this,
as the video was never posted online:

> _Assange blamed former spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg for taking the
> video, who said he had deleted it along with 35,000 other files when he left
> Wikileaks in September 2010. To date, the video has never been publicly
> released._

~~~
pyre

      | In March 2013, Julian Assange said Wikileaks had
      | successfully decrypted the video and described it
      | as documenting "a massacre, a war crime".
    

This statement is confusing. I originally read this as stating that the video
was decrypted March 2013.

~~~
m_for_monkey
It's not confusing. It would mean what you originally read only if there were
a comma after "said".

~~~
pyre
s/confusing/easily misread and could probably be written more clearly/

------
jlgreco
I wonder if this is an example of one of the freedoms that they hate us for.

~~~
Myrmornis
What do you mean "freedoms they hate us for"? Can you clarify?

~~~
jlgreco
It is a sarcastic reference to an often repeated line from a speech Bush gave
shortly after 9/11/2001.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/nation/specials/attacke...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/bushaddress_092001.html)

My point here being that "our freedoms" plainly is not why they hate us. The
real reason is because of our involvement and interaction with them. When such
involvement and interaction is kept classified for decades, then the American
public has no hope of correctly evaluating statements such as Bush's.

~~~
twoodfin
Are you sure they don't hate the "decadence" of modern Western society?

~~~
ucee054
Ask Michael Scheuer:

[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgj08e_michael-scheuer-
on-b...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgj08e_michael-scheuer-on-bin-laden-
s-true-motives_news#.UbPIvdvMdXI)

~~~
twoodfin
His argument is that radical Islamists hate us for what we do, not who we are.
But we do what we do because of who we are. That's nearly a tautology in a
democracy. We support Israel because its people largely share our values. We
threw Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and maintained a presence in Saudi Arabia
because we support and defend the sovereignty of our allies, particularly when
those allies supply vital resources. We continued to prop up Mubarak because
we thought he was better than the alternative, etc.

All of these are policies reached through a free, democratic process, which
has not been a hallmark of those societies which have welcomed Al Qaeda into
their midst.

Also, have you heard of Sayyid Qutb? Just curious.

~~~
mpyne
Also remember when all the fatwas were proclaimed for a Danish newspapers
publication of a cartoon featuring the Prophet Muhammad? That's not even
considering the issue of extremist religion and Sharia law, as led to the
shooting and near-murder of Malala Yousafzai.

Islamist culture is _not_ entirely compatible with Western democracy, just as
far-right fundamentalist Christian extremism is not entirely compatible with
Western democracy (e.g. the 1996 Olympic Park bombing).

~~~
jckt
Why do you say _Islamist_ and not _radical Islamist_ , while you say
_Christian extremism_ and not just _Christian_?

~~~
mpyne
I'm using Islamist as the term was first defined, which means exactly "Islamic
terrorism". As far as I know there's never been a popularly-agreed-on meaning
of "Islamist" other than that, if you're referring to the peaceful followers
of Allah the term is Muslim, or perhaps Islamic, but never Islamist.

Christian on the other hand is already overloaded with many meanings and I
don't feel like inventing new words when I can simply add adjectives as
appropriate.

Pray tell, is my explanation sufficient?

~~~
tome
"Islamism" certainly does not mean "Islamic terrorism". It means a belief that
Islam should be a force in the public sphere, not just a private religion.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamism)

~~~
gngeal
Which is precisely the thing that is incompatible with Western democracy. Of
would you like to amend the First Amendment?

~~~
tome
It's absolutely incompatible with democracy, and more importantly in my
opinion, with liberalism.

------
SG-
Is anyone else really bothered that Daniel Domscheit-Berg deleted it as well
as all the other things he did to Wikileaks when he left the project?

------
smsm42
Manning supposedly leaked only the video about the airstrike, the facts about
it - including high number of civilians killed - were known long before. Even
the reference article was created before the Manning story. Since the video
was never released, the connection between Manning and this story is rather
weak.

~~~
gridmaths
For such an event, you really want to know there has been a proper
investigation.

I dont know if there was a video, what it showed, how many people died, how
many were combatants, what their ages were.

If I was a soldier.. Id want to know that these things are investigated well..
because I really don't want to kill innocent people by mistake. Where did the
mistake happen along the chain of intel and of command, who didn't double
check, was someone gung-ho or negligent ?

~~~
rhizome
_Where did the mistake happen along the chain of intel and of command_

Let's start here:

[http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/200601011_fbi_un...](http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/200601011_fbi_unable_to_attract_arabic_speakers/)

~~~
smsm42
How the fact how many FBI people speak Arabic has any relationship with the
Granai tragedy?

~~~
gngeal
I means that when you're a scrooge and decide not to attract people to fill
positions that you need by offering them some monetary incentive, you have to
spend even more money on bombs and spare parts that fall in the wrong places.

~~~
smsm42
I don't think the situation we're discussing here has any connection with
anybody being not paid enough.

------
kunai
"Hi. How are you? I'm an army intelligence analyst, deployed to Eastern
Baghdad, pending discharge for "adjustment disorder" in lie of "gender
identity disorder." I'm sure you're pretty busy.

If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day, 7 days
a week for 8+ months, what would you do?

"I'm in the desert, with a bunch of hyper-masculine trigger-happy ignorant
rednecks as neighbors... and the only safe place I seem to have is this
satellite internet connection. I already got myself into minor trouble,
revealing my uncertainty over my gender identity. Which is causing me to lose
this job. And putting me in an awkward limbo...

At the very least, I managed to keep my security clearance (so far), and
little does anyone know. But, among this "visible" mess, there's the mess I
created that no one knows about yet.

Hypothetical question: if you had free reign over classified networks for long
periods of time, say, 8-9 months ... and you saw incredible things, awful
things ... things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server
stored in a dark room in Washington, D.C. ... what would you do?

Say ... a database of half a million events during the Iraq war. From 2004 to
2009, with reports, date time groups, lat-lon locations, casualty figures...?
Or 260,000 state department cables from embassies and consulates all over the
world, explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an
internal perspective?

Let's just say _someone_ I know intimately well, has been penetrating U.S.
classified networks, mining data like the ones described, and [has] been
transferring that data from the classified networks over the "air gap" onto a
commercial network computer ... sorting the data, compressing it, encrypting
it, and uploading it to a crazy white-haired Aussie who can't seem to stay in
one country very long.

Crazy white Aussie = Julian Assange..

In other words, I've made a huge mess.

"And, it's important that it gets out, I feel, for some bizarre reason. It
might _actually_ change something. I just ... don't wish to be a part of it.
At least not now. I'm not ready ... I wouldn't mind going to prison for the
rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn't for the possibility
of having pictures of me plastered all over the world press, as a [poster]
boy.

I've totally lost my mind. I make no sense. The CPU is not made for this
motherboard. I cannot believe what I'm confessing to you.

"So, it was a massive data spillage, facilitated by numerous factors. Both
physically, technically, and culturally. [It's a] perfect example of how _not_
to do INFOSEC. [I] listened and lip-synced to Lady Gaga's Telephone while
exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history.

Weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counter-intelligence,
inattentive signal analysis ... a perfect storm.

I mean, what if I were someone more malicious? I could've sold to Russia or
China, and made bank."

Adrian shot back, "Why didn't you?"

"Because it's public data. It belongs in the public domain.

Information should be _free_." \- Bradley Manning

======================================

This is true bravery. This is courage. This is heroism. Capitol Hill does
_not_ have the intelligence quotient to understand this.

Either that, or they're just corrupt. It's probably the latter.

I am praying to a God I know doesn't exist, if only because I feel helpless in
this matter. Bradley Manning, please be free. Just like the information you
set out to liberate, be yourself liberated from tyranny.

~~~
mtoddh
_" I'm in the desert, with a bunch of hyper-masculine trigger-happy ignorant
rednecks as neighbors..._"

Funny how averse most HNers are when it comes to perpetuating stereotypes and
making negative generalizations based on race or gender, but when it comes to
the military or people from "flyover states", it suddenly becomes acceptable.

~~~
kunai
In case you didn't notice, those were Bradley Manning's words, not mine.

------
joering2
God bless Manning; a true American Hero that remembered he swear to protect
his mother's soil from enemies foreign AND DOMESTIC.

He will probably rot in jail for the rest of his life for what he did. And I
salute him for taking the hit!

~~~
znowi
> He will probably rot in jail

This is where we, the people, must step in to make sure it doesn't happen.

~~~
smsm42
And how you plan to achieve that? Short of overthrowing US government, I don't
see how it is possible to not have Manning, who violated a ton of US laws and
already pled guilty for some of those violations, not going to jail. The law
is not American Idol, so ending a lot of SMSes to some paid number is not
going to work. Neither liking some page on Facebook would. Any other ideas?

~~~
lostlogin
The law is not American Idol - the rich and well connected don't win that
contest so easily.

~~~
smsm42
They win because you enable them by your votes. Each politician elected today
had people voting for them. Each of this people decided to vote for this
politician in his own free will. However rich you are, you still have to have
people voting for you. So these "well connected" people are there because of
the voters that put them there.

------
ianstallings
You know what bothers me about this? Look how this event and everyone like it
is surrounded by newspeak. We were uncertain. Unfortunate casualties.
Inconclusive intelligence. Imminent threat. American interests. It's all
bullshit. The US government can't even tell _themselves_ the truth let alone
anyone else. They are drinking the kool-aid through a firehose.

~~~
theorique
It's war. Shit happens in war.

It's terrible, of course, but I don't think anybody in the military _intends_
things like this to happen (aside from a few legitimate psychopaths who use
the chaos for their own ends). It's 'just' a horrifying side effect of using
war and military power as a blunt instrument for statecraft.

~~~
tinco
> It's war. Shit happens in war.

Fuck that, the U.S. has a huge dominant army with superior technology and well
trained personnel. They bombard a village because it's easy and effective.

Someone made a decision that the lives of American soldiers were worth more
than an entire Afghan village. That's a war crime, and someone should pay for
that. And that person should not be Bradley Manning..

~~~
darkarmani
What do you think used to happen with artillery strikes? It doesn't make it
ok, but in war when under fire, they would call in air-strikes or artillery
and clear a whole ridge. The difference is "the heat of battle" versus
intelligence that 3 terrorist operatives where staying in a village of 300
people.

Military operations are not law enforcement. They aren't required to prevent
all deaths other than combatants. I don't know where you draw the line on
collateral damage, but to say that you can't kill any "innocents" is not
practical.

~~~
angersock
_" but to say that you can't kill any "innocents" is not practical."_

Yes, by all means, let us not burden our efficiency at slaughtering our fellow
man with morality!

~~~
mpyne
Why should the soldiers on the ground consider it moral that 5 of them die so
that 1 less civilian dies?

Certainly that's an easy choice for you to make; you're not the one bearing
the brunt of that decision.

~~~
lostlogin
Because they signed up for it and are paid to risk their lives. They then get
another choice - they can refuse to go there. The civilians don't get that
choice. There isn't much fair in the situation, but I sure dont think many
people would argue that the civilians are in the position of strength.

------
zallarak
This begs the question - what's out there that America fears so much as to
carry attacks like this out?

~~~
alan_cx
Non Americans.

It doesn't go unnoticed across the world how Americans refer to Americans as
"Americans" instead of just "people". It is always said as though there is
difference and that Americans have more intrinsic value.

~~~
jafaku
That's why nobody cared about the NSA spying on foreigners. Like your privacy
(or any other human right) was more valuable depending on where you happened
to be born.

------
mpyne
Unless Assange is going to claim that the bomber crew knew there were that
many women and children there and dropped the bombs anyway I don't see how a
video of a horrific event is really supposed to add to the horror. "Massacre"
could be said to follow from the Wikipedia article video or no video; "War
Crime" is much more serious but requires actual evidence of that, such as
occurred at My Lai during Vietnam.

~~~
wavefunction
"oops" is not an excuse

~~~
mpyne
True, but it's also not a war crime.

~~~
chill1
Summary of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Their Additional Protocols -
[http://www.redcross.org/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m3...](http://www.redcross.org/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m3640104_IHL_SummaryGenevaConv.pdf)

Pretty sure there's something in there about destroying entire village(s)
filled with people.

~~~
mpyne
Yes, destroying civilian targets with no valid military usage is considered a
war crime.

Destroying a civilian building being used as a military facility, on the other
hand, is not a war crime, except if there was no valid military purpose to the
strike or the strike was not proportional to the military value that might be
gained (e.g. it would never be acceptable post-Geneva to kill 1000 civilians
just to destroy an enemy soldier). That was one of the justifications the
Germans used to sink Lusitania (which despite American and British
protestations, it appears the Germans had actually been right in retrospect).

------
caycep
An ancillary irony is the B1 Bomber, yet another example of a zombie military-
industrial complex project that should have died decades ago. There's no good
reason for it to be flitting around Afghanistan in the first place.

------
patmcguire
That's a terrifyingly wide range.

~~~
brianobush
any number (> 0) of children killed is terrifying.

------
samstave
Bradley Manning == Smedley Butler

------
Dewie
"mostly women and children"

Of course it would have been much less horrific if it was mostly civillian men
instead of mostly civillian women?

Or would it be more okay because civillian men are more likely to be guerilla
soldiers? So then it wouldn't be so terrible to kill them "just in case"?

~~~
lostlogin
I love how killing >guerrilla< soldiers is ok. You invade a country, collapse
the fragile infrastructure and then accuse the locals of being the problem -
there is no chance than they're fighting for something worth believing in...
It's just, well, their country. Btw, I don't mean you specifically, I mean the
US military/government members who supported this.

~~~
Dewie
Well yeah. It's not often that one side is definitely bad and the other is
definitely good.

~~~
lostlogin
Good comment. I think you could go a step further and say one side is never
all bad. I'm sure there is an exception out there, but I don't know it.

