Claimed US Military Wikileaks Source Arrested 698
svelemor writes "A 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst was ratted out by a fellow hacker, accused of providing the Collateral Murder video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to Wikileaks. He is currently imprisoned in Kuwait."
Re:Feh (Score:0, Informative)
I loved how nobody bothered to point out that there were rocket launchers and AK-47's in the collateral murder video. Anti war people are so gullible.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Feh (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This guy deserves a medal (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Feh (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Feh (Score:1, Informative)
we know that the helicopter pilots DID NOT fire TWICE when there were civilians/children in harms way. Seeing that might change the thoughts slightly on the pieces of video that were seen...
Oh, ok. Wow, that totally changes things. I mean, now that we know they only did it ONCE, there is no problem. ::eyeroll::
Look. I understand that it's war and shit happens. Regardless, they still shot up a van that had kids in it with a wounded journalist being loaded on board. Once, twice, a hundred times...it doesn't matter. They still did it.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
There are ways, such as Congressional investigations, to out that sort of stuff.
Sadly, I don't think there are that many people of the same calibre as Morris Udall (he was the congressman who took up an accusation of US soldiers massacring civilians in Vietnam - twenty nine other recipients of the same accusation ignored it).
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
Why Was He Discussing Operations? (Score:5, Informative)
He's putting US Citizen's lives in danger by exposing a cover up by the US Military? Now there's some Dubya bush logic!
From a BBC article with more details from the person who turned him in [bbc.co.uk]:
I gave them conversation logs that implicated Special Agent Manning. They were particularly interested in a code word for a major operation.
So you know, in addition to the videos and diplomatic cables he was out and about bragging about this and discussing major operations and their code words. While you might be able to justify the videos, I don't know how you could justify bragging to people about it and discussing current military operations on the internet. That could probably be construed as putting the lives of many soldiers in danger.
Re:Feh (Score:3, Informative)
Uh, if they were lying, then the video would show the that. They have the cockipt voices and video from the chopper showing what happened. They made a statement. If there was a contradiction, the JAGs office would have a field day with them....
You said the unedited video doesn't exist. If that's true, then all we have to go on is what the pilots said, pilots which would never implicate themselves (and the military likely wouldn't either, as it would add validity to the fact that what they did was wrong.)
If it DOES exist, and if it clears the military from looking as bad, then why doesn't the army release it?
Re:Context edited for effect? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This guy deserves a medal (Score:1, Informative)
Not to mention that if the foreign governments, agencies or yes, terrorists, have the encrypted versions of these memos, and now have the unencrypted versions, they could find a way to crack our encryption algorithms.
You clearly don't know how modern day encryption works. It would be insane to try to crack the encryption based on encrypted/unencrypted versions instead of cracking algorithm.
And you don't understand intelligence or encryption. They're not trying to crack AES, but if they can determine that there are bugs or mistakes in how our stuff is encrypted, they can go after that. It's much more about learning our techniques and procedures than simply a math problem.
Re:This guy deserves a medal (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No charge (Score:2, Informative)
Because with the 2006 military commission act, there is ZERO need to charge him. The US government, since 2006, can now arrest any US citizen, without charge, on the president (or his agent's) order simply by saying that you are an unlawful enemy combatant (or similar). You have no right to trial, no right to a lawyer, and can expect to be tortured.
This is the government you are currently living with.
It's time to wake up.
Re:A lot of that material SHOULDN'T'VE been secret (Score:5, Informative)
The military all too often makes things secret not because it is sensitive, but because it would generate bad PR. This is not how a democratic government is supposed to function. If you don't like living in a country with a transparent government, you can always move to places like North Korea.
A lot of data is classified because the system its created on is classified and that's a one way trip; once something is classified, its forever classified until someone qualified checks it then declassifies it.
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
Now, how nearby combat affects whether you can shoot at people retrieving the wounded without violating the Geneva Conventions is a different question.
Article 50 [deoxy.org] of the Geneva Convention defines a "civilian", and makes it clear that there is a presumption of innocence on the part of civilians - a solder is not allowed to "assume" that an unidentified person is an enemy combatant and then fire upon them:
"Article 50: Definition of Civilians and Civilian Population
1. A civilian is any person who does not belong to one of the categories of persons referred to in Article 4 A 111, lIl, (31 and 161 of the Third Convention and in Article 43 of this Protocol. In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.
2. The civilian population comprises all persons who are civilians.
3. The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character."
It is the soldiers job to clearly identify that a target is a combatant before opening fire. If the soldier is unclear as to whether or not a target is a combatant, then that person is to be treated as a civilian: "In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.". The presence of combatants within a civilian population does not excuse firing on civilians: "The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character." The rules are very clear on this issue.
One of the important distinctions is that this was an occupying military force battling internal resistance fighters. It was not a war between nation states. Under the Geneva Conventions, an occupying force has the absolute responsibility of providing for the basic needs of the people under its control, including food, clothing, shelter, medical attention, and the maintenance of law and order. It is not supposed to kill them. Under the conventions, in an actual battle with soldiers of an opposing nation state, a commander has a duty to protect civilian life, even if it comes at the cost of exposing his troops to greater danger. The commander/soldier must be able to justify any military action that results in the loss of civilian life as being "reasonable" and "unavoidable" in the context of the military target. Hence, a soldier could not slaughter a million civilians in order to kill 100 enemy, but if the enemy had one civilian amongst them, then the killing of that civilian as a side effect of killing the enemy may be justifiable. But this is a completely different matter to that of killing civilians because you "presume" them to be combatants due to their presence in an occupied city. Baghdad is one of the most populous cities on the planet - ranked 22nd with a density of 9,250 per square kilometer. Within a few hundred meters of this incident there are thousands of people living. The men in the street could have been anyone - there was no attempt made to identify them as being combatants or civilians, and therefore the laws of war state that they must be treated as civilians.
Re:Feh (Score:4, Informative)
Guys like this should get the Medal of Honor. Instead, they're way more likely to get long prison sentences.
The days when people who go against the government are rewarded are long gone.
Re:War is not pretty (Score:3, Informative)
Of course civilians have been killed in every war, but only recently have they been able to get the videos out on YouTube.
"Bringing the War Home" was something that started with the nightly news footage of the Viet Nam war, and news organizations routinely cleaned up the footage before showing it over the air. The ubiquitous video culture (what Bruce Sterling calls "everyware") is going to "bring the war home" in an even more immediate way. It may not be enough to end wars unfortunately, but it's going to change the way the military does business. You can bet on that.
No army has been able to wage war without the financial support of the population "back home". When the support dries up or even comes under serious scrutiny, wars tend to fizzle out, as Viet Nam did. If nothing else, it might force governments to make goddamn sure they can portray what they're doing as right and necessary before they send out the armies. But of course, with ubiquitous video come even more ubiquitous marketing, and the war machine's ability to "sell" their war back home has never been greater.
or like Sen. Frank Church (Score:2, Informative)
And sadly for him I don't think this kid is an Col. Edwards either. He went to presidents with counsel to object, then left detailed CYA memos, then tipped off Congress. Sen. Frank Church is the one that went on the hunt. Edwards died after testifying. He knew he was in ill health but was insistent his memos get the weight of his presence before he died. I've never met a more politically cynical person. This young kid looks like a fresh-faced idealist. It's going to cost him, even if Lamos story also seems a little fishy. We'll see if he went to counsel and left CYA memos too. I doubt it.
Col. Edwards had a lot to do with why we know as much about the Bay of Pigs and Castro assassination attempts as we do.
I know my current state Senator, on the armed services committee is a useless ass. Meh.
Re:Feh (Score:4, Informative)
YEah, those damn baby-rapists...
No one said they raped babies. But their presence has caused the deaths of tens of thousand of Iraqi children, mostly due to destroyed infrastructure. It's forced millions of professional Iraqis out of their own country, forced many to live near pools of raw sewage, forced many Iraqi women to become prostitutes to provide for their family, and has created the ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda that did not exist before we invaded.
It's a fucking brutal mess that could have been avoided. The video is just proof of how many people die when Americans make mistakes. I'd bet my last dollar that a hundred times more people have died because of American "collateral damage" in the Iraq war than died on 9/11.
PS The last two generations of my family served. I chose not to because fighting for the US Military has nothing to do with defending the United States.
Re:This guy deserves a medal (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Feh (Score:5, Informative)
The United States didn't sign the addtional protocals mainly because
Wrong. "the United States (..) signed it on 12 December 1977" [wikipedia.org]. However, the U.S. has not ratified them. Nevertheless, "a number of the articles contained in both protocols are recognized as rules of customary international law valid for all states."
Also note of the 4th Geneva Convention [wikipedia.org]: "In 1993, the United Nations Security Council adopted a report from the Secretary-General and a Commission of Experts which concluded that the Geneva Conventions had passed into the body of customary international law, thus making them binding on non-signatories to the Conventions whenever they engage in armed conflicts." The United States is a member of the U.N. Security Council.
... the Russians wrote this section during the Cold War, so they do not apply to this.
What are you talking about? The Protocols were written by experts in the law of war and were endorsed by Ronald Reagan. [utexas.edu]
Oh, that is a nice link to a Bush-Cheney War Crime website.
The text itself is a direct copy of the original source. Here's the same text on Wikisource [wikisource.org]
(I linked that particular site because it is one of the first search results I found for the citation from Google, but this is really irrelevant - the text of the Convention is what is important.)
Re:Feh (Score:1, Informative)
I'll repeat myself - read what the Geneva Convention(s) have to say. If you cannot tell if someone is a combatant or not, you have to assume that he is a civilian and thus protected. Helping wounded combatants does not make a non-combatant a combatant. Unless the aircrew actually saw the men pick up weapons, they where not allowed to open fire on them.
Re:War is not pretty (Score:1, Informative)
The video clearly showed an RPG. The cameras/tripods were also misidentified as RPGs.
Of course, if they were not militants, one has to wonder what a bunch of armed Iraqi civilians are doing loitering down the street from where US troops are battling or just recently battled insurgents (which is why the reporters were there).
Re:Feh (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Feh (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Feh (Score:4, Informative)
As for the Geneva convention, it is not clear to me whether it applies in this case.
It does.
After all, the responsibility is on the insurgents to wear uniforms, so that the Americans can know whom to shoot.
It is the responsibility of insurgents in a sense that, as soon as they are clearly identified as insurgents, they become illegal combatants not protected by the Convention in any way due to not wearing uniform. There is nothing in the Convention, however, that relaxes the protections civilians of the other party in the conflict enjoys if enemy combatants illegally pretend to be civilians. You can legally execute any captured insurgent dressed in a civilian clothing - once you reasonably ascertain that he is indeed an insurgent - but you can't shoot at any random civilian claiming that he might be an insurgent, just because insurgents dress as civilians.
Simply put, the rule is this: when someone looks like a civilian, does not engage in any activity that would identify him as a combatant, and there is no past information that identifies him as such, then he should be assumed to be a civilian, and all provisions of Geneva Conventions applicable to civilians should apply.
Re:Feh (Score:3, Informative)
I soldier helping a wounded soldier is a legitimate target.
True, but that is because he himself is a soldier, not because he is helping one.
In this kind of insurrection who is a soldier and who is a civillian gets really blurry.
It does, and Geneva Convention explicitly says that, were it is not possible to clearly identify someone as one or another (e.g. a guy firing at you is clearly not a civilian), he should be assumed to be a civilian, and treated as such.
Also in this case the gunners considered the wounded as combatants which is why they fired on them.
So your statment about civilians helping wounded none combatants doesn't really apply.
The journalists were considered combatants and fired upon. However, even a legitimate enemy combatant becomes non-combatant once he is incapacitated, so long as he does not hold a weapon (hence why the recording of chopper gunner mentioning this "cmon dude just pick up a gun" - if the wounded man did that, he'd become a combatant and a legitimate target) or attempt to retreat on his own:
Art 41. Safeguard of an enemy hors de combat
1. A person who is recognized or who, in the circumstances, should be recognized to be hors de combat shall not be made the object of attack.
2. A person is hors de combat if: (a) he is in the power of an adverse Party; (b) he clearly expresses an intention to surrender; or (c) he has been rendered unconscious or is otherwise incapacitated by wounds or sickness, and therefore is incapable of defending himself;
So by the time civilians on the van entered the picture, there were no combatants there, and they weren't aiding any.
Re:Feh (Score:4, Informative)
Before making comments like that, you may want to check your numbers a bit better, because you just hit grand prize on the exaggeration scale... if you can bring positive proof that tens of thousands of Iraqi children have died as a consequence of this war, as well as proof that millions of professional Iraqi men even exist, then you my friend would almost certainly make the headlines in every major newspaper and station in the country
Do you think the major media outlets are in the habit of telling the truth about the Iraq War? From 2003 to 2008, about 9% of all violent deaths in Iraq were children [iraqbodycount.org]. That brings the number of dead children to a minimum of 9,000, and that's the lowest estimate possible according to Iraq Body Count. If you believe the Lancet, that number could be as high as 54,000. This does not even begin to address infant mortality issues, or deaths caused by the deplorable conditions we created by destroying Iraq's infrastructure.
As to your comment about professional Iraqi men, that just illustrates your unbelievable ignorance. Iraq was one of the most secular, highly educated and literate cultures in the Middle East. It was one of the few places were women could receive an education. And yes, over two million Iraqis have fled their home country because of the civil war there, with millions more internally displaced. Most of these people are middle class citizens.
I'm just saying get your damn numbers right
I'm just saying you're an ignorant fuck. Full stop.
Oh, and you know what's funny, the professional Iraqi citizens were leaving the country at every opportunity even BEFORE the war! I think it had something to do with a very controlling leader, and a lack of well paying jobs... America has done nothing but made it a much more easy and pleasant process to leave. Sad but true.
Actually, it was the US sanctions that were strangling the country and killing half a million kids over a ten year period according to the UN. And no, the US has not made it easy to immigrate. There are less than 25,000 Iraqi immigrants in the United States. That's less than 3,500 per year.
you should be ashamed for badmouthing the hard working men and women who do serve, if anyone in your family really DID
I didn't say anything negative about anyone. I just said that while my grandparents both served in WWII, and two of their children served in Vietnam, I chose not to because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't providing safety or security to US citizens.
Re:How did this guy get clearance? (Score:3, Informative)
There are two major Army regulations and one DOD directive that cover this sort of thing (use of media, access control, etc) and local SOPs built on those regulations. any IA office can tell you what they are off the top of their heads because they are basically the Army IA bible.
there are multiple and INCREDIBLY COMPREHENSIVE inspections and accreditations that must be passed and signed off on for a network to be operational (i was involved in a particular one that was the SECOND of FOURTY to have passed on the first try).
let me tell you, the Army is way TOO secure in a lot of ways; ways that make people's jobs more difficult for absolutely no benefit in security posture. incidents like this and the afganistan thumb drive spillage drive the higher-ups to shove aside well thought-out policies that some people fail to enforce and implement simple and draconian quick-fix policies like "no external media whatsoever" that some people will STILL fail to enforce.
the problem is people, and while we do our best to make sure only the most trustworthy ones have access to sensitive or greater information, it can never be perfect.