Chelsea Manning Has No Explanation for Endangering Afghan Civilians

[VermontKevin]

Yesterday, Chelsea Manning appeared at the New Yorker Festival. She could not, or would not answer for her decision to leak the names of Afghani civilians who helped overthrow the Taliban.

SUN., OCT. 8 | 11:00 A.M. | 90 MINUTES
Chelsea Manning talks with Larissa MacFarquhar
Facing our future.

https://festival.newyorker.com/event/chelsea-manning-talks-larissa-macfarquhar/

But she really, really didn't want to talk about WikiLeaks.

"I'm not going to have this debate right now," Manning snapped, after The New Yorker's Larissa MacFarquhar asked about WikiLeaks' decision not to redact the names of Afghan civilians mentioned in the documents Manning had leaked to the organization in 2010.

Her agitation seemed misplaced; no one had challenged her to a debate, and Wikileaks was central to the story many had paid money to hear her tell. But she insisted, upon further questioning from MacFarquhar about how and why she decided on WikiLeaks, that she "hadn't had time to think about these questions."

"I've just been fighting for my life over the past seven years," she said.

http://www.businessinsider.com/chelsea-manning-really-doesnt-want-to-talk-about-wikileaks-2017-10

The lack of redaction has been decried by human rights groups:

Then there is the matter of redaction. After the Manning cache came in, WikiLeaks partnered with a number of “legacy” newspapers, including The New York Times and The Guardian, to bring the material out into the world. While initially going along with those publications’ policies of removing identifying information that could put innocent people in harm’s way and excluding material that could not be verified, Assange soon balked. According to the Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding in WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, their 2011 postmortem of their contentious collaboration with Assange on the so-called Afghan war logs—the portion of the Manning leaks concerning the conflict in Afghanistan—the WikiLeaks founder was unmoved by entreaties to scrub the files of anything that could point to Afghan villagers who might have had any contact with American troops. He considered such editorial intervention to “contaminate the evidence.”

“Well they’re informants. So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it,” Leigh and Harding report Assange saying to a group of international journalists. And while Assange has denied making these comments, WikiLeaks released troves of material in which the names of Afghan civilians had not been redacted, an action that led Amnesty International, the Open Society Institute, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission to issue a joint rebuke. The group Reporters Without Borders also criticized WikiLeaks for its “incredible irresponsibility” in not removing the names. This was in 2010, not long after Poitras approached Assange about making a film.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/07/13/nihilism-of-julian-assange-wikileaks/

[snooper2]

1. She needs to go get a job at Costco or something

[VermontKevin]

2. Her prior assault on a female at work would indicate that she may not be suited for

any type of work that involves taking orders.

[cwydro]

3. Im not a fan of this person.

She sounds truly self-centered, among other things.

[VermontKevin]

4. She has served her time, so her crimes are paid for. But I don't value her opinion on anything.

[Voltaire2]

5. Our government didnt just endanger Afghanistan civilians

it routinely slaughters them, along with civilians anywhere else it feels the need to do so.

Chelsea paid the price for her disclosures of what we actually do. She is a hero in my book.

[VermontKevin]

6. Whataboutism isn't an answer to Manning's personal responsibility.

[Voltaire2]

10. Her disclosures are directly related to our imperialism.

Your objections are irrelevant. We all have a moral obligation to do whatever we can do to put an end to the post Vietnam revival of American militarism.

[VermontKevin]

12. I think I'm going to agree with the human rights organizations that condemned endangering

these civilians. I think a more careful vetting of the materials would have been the responsible thing to do.

[Weekend Warrior]

7. The Taliban was not overthrown.

Chelsea did not make the information directly public.

Fuck Assange and the fake news.

" after The New Yorker's Larissa MacFarquhar asked about WikiLeaks' decision not to redact the names of Afghan civilians"

Headline does not match reality.

[VermontKevin]

8. She admits that she knew there were unredacted civilian names:

Manning cut her off: "I did know what was in them!" she insisted. "The government has framed this in a particular way … but this was historical data, there was nothing sensitive in there. And it was two months old by the time I even uploaded [the files.]

Do you think leaking Afghan civilian names was the right move?

[Weekend Warrior]

9. I never said she didn't.

Fuck Assange for leaking their names. Well, there are many reasons to say fuck that asshole.

[Azathoth]

11. The support for Manning, who also attacked our DIPLOMATIC channels, was a disgrace

Kind of makes you wonder whether the 6 and a half years she served was really full payment for the people who were likely tortured and murdered as a result of her actions.

[VermontKevin]

13. For some, Manning was a means to express anti-Obama rhetoric. As was Assange.

As is Snowden.

But funny how some of those means and roads lead to Russia, yes?

[Weekend Warrior]

14. "funny how some of those means and roads lead to Russia"

Snowden arrived by way of air travel when going to turn over stolen material to Putin.

[VermontKevin]

15. Manning's leaks helped Putin allies torture and imprison:

Most egregious, perhaps, was Assange’s collaboration with Israel Shamir, an unapologetic anti-Semite and Putin ally to whom Assange handed over all State Department diplomatic cables from the Manning leak relating to Belarus (as well as to Russia, Eastern Europe, and Israel). Shamir then shared these documents with members of the regime of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who appeared to use them to imprison and torture members of the opposition. This prompted the human rights group Index on Censorship to ask WikiLeaks to explain its relationship to Shamir, and to look into reports that Shamir’s “access to the WikiLeaks’ US diplomatic cables [aided in] the prosecution of civil society activists within Belarus.” WikiLeaks called these claims rumors and responded that it would not be investigating them. “Most people with principled stances don’t survive for long,” Assange tells Poitras at the beginning of the film. It’s not clear if he’s talking about himself or others.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/07/13/nihilism-of-julian-assange-wikileaks/

Last year, the free-press advocacy group Index on Censorship cited evidence that WikiLeaks' "accredited" representative in Belarus, Israel Shamir, may have provided the Lukashenko regime with intelligence from US diplomatic cables to help determine who to round up. Lukashenko boasted in the state-controlled media of receiving WikiLeaks intelligence that revealed who was "working behind the scenes" in the December protests. Shamir was meanwhile boasting claims on CounterPunch website that WikiLeaks cables provided "proof positive" the protests were "orchestrated" by the State Department. (The "proof positive" consisted of some indications of a US AID contractor's involvement in money smuggling.)

Did Shamir turn over WikiLeaks cables to Lukashenko that "named names" of activists identified or cultivated by the State Department? Index on Censorship queried WikiLeaks on the issue, submitting a list of questions about what material WikiLeaks or Shamir may have provided the Lukasheno regime, and Shamir's official status in the WikiLeaks organisation. One WikiLeaks representative responded tersely: "We have no further reports on this 'rumour/issue'." Another told Index: "Obviously it is not approved."

Adding to the controversy, Israel Shamir is a notorious and obsessive Anti-Semite. The charge of anti-Semitism is of course often used unfairly against critics of Israel - but even Palestine solidarity activists have issued denouncements of Shamir, warning that association with him could hurt the movement. Shamir's website avidly promotes Holocaust revisionists, and runs such non-ironic headlines as "Down With Human Rights" and "In Defense of Prejudice" - this in response to protests of Shamir's references to war-mongering "Jewish media-lords". Lukashenko, perhaps not coincidentally, has also used ugly Jew-baiting rhetoric against the opposition movement.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/09/20129410312450511.html

[Weekend Warrior]

18. It's sick what Assange did. I agree.

It also has noting to do nor does it negate Snowden and my comments about him. Anyone can see the difference.

I agree that trusting the rapist Assange was a bad move.

"funny how some of those means and roads lead to Russia"

With Snowden the transportation method was by way of airplane.

[Azathoth]

16. Russia has been ratfucking us for awhile, but I remember it being the Glenn Greenwald left

who really supported Manning and who pressured Obama to pardon him (which, thankfully, Obama refused to do). A good 40%-50% or more of boards like this thought Manning was a hero. I remember arguing with them. Russia and Assange and eventually Comrade Cheeto may have provided them the means to attack Obama and the US, but their motivations can't be laid at Putin's feet.

To this day, the Chomsky-Greenwald left wax poetic about how great Manning's "achievement" was, cherry-picking things like the corruption in Zimbabwe, without bothering to mention that the source of that information were US diplomatic cables whose purpose was to give the State Department and its diplomats an understanding of the countries they were attempting to conduct diplomacy with. These were the same people who several years before shrieked that the Bush Administration was "undermining diplomatic efforts" in favor of military action in Iraq. Then they turn around and applaud someone for sticking a dagger into our diplomatic capabilities.

[VermontKevin]

17. That's a great point: killing off diplomatic efforts only enables the likes of Putin and his fellow

dictators.

As for Greenwald, his racism is long and well documented so I'm not surprised that he reacted to Obama's election in the manner he did. Let me be specific: some on the extreme Left seemed to think that the election of America's first Black President would get them seats at the table. Greenwald, the Firedoglake types, really thought they would be looked up to as elder statesmen. They weren't, and President Obama seemed prepared to govern without their helpful advice. Greenwald reacted like a scalded cat.

Greenwald took money from the Koch brothers. I have no doubt there's quite bit more there.