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Claimed US Military Wikileaks Source Arrested
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."
Yeah, kudos for doing a self-edit on the video before releasing it to Wikileaks (who did another self edit) that could put the military into a worse light than they would've been with the missing footage in there. In the missing footage, 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...
It doesn't exist. Manning edited it before sending to Wikileaks. Wikileaks further edited it. Here are the details http://gawker.com/5513068/the-full-version-of-the-wikileaks-video-is-missing-30-minutes-of-footage
There are actually THREE versions. There are the Collateral Murder version. The "unedited" Wikileaks version which is what Manning sent. And the TRUE unedited version that Manning edited before sending to Wikileaks. http://gawker.com/5513068/the-full-version-of-the-wikileaks-video-is-missing-30-minutes-of-footage
Even if the video never got out, he still released 250,000 other communications memos that have potentially sensitive information in them.
Umm...yes, we do have an idea what has happened. Read the Gawker article that I linked, or the actual SWORN Statements from the soldiers themselves. http://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%20CCR%2025210/Death%20of%20Reuters%20Journalists/2--Sworn%20Statements%20.pdf
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).
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....
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:
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.
My work here is dung.
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.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
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 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.
The United States didn't sign the addtional protocals mainly because
Wrong. "the United States (..) signed it on 12 December 1977". 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: "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.
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
(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.)