Global Research will be publishing a series of articles and reports with a view to promoting “Boston Truth”. The underlying objective is to confront and challenge the official version of events concerning the Boston bombings as well as the twisted and convoluted interpretations of the mainstream media.
We invite our readers to endorse “Boston Truth” and spread the word on social media, independent media and blog sites.
Nine thousand heavily armed police including SWAT teams were deployed in a manhunt to capture a 19 year old student at U-Mass, after his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston Marathon terror mastermind was shot dead by police allegedly after a car chase and shoot out with police.
Prior to the conduct of a police investigation, the 19 year old student has already been designated as “guilty”. The fundamental legal principle of “innocence until proven guilty” has been scrapped. In the words of President Obama (a graduate of Harvard Law School), the Boston 19 year old student is “guilty” of heinous crimes (without evidence and prior to being charged in a court of law):
“Whatever hateful agenda drove these men [suspects] to such heinous acts will not, cannot, prevail. Whatever they thought they could achieve, they’ve already failed…. Why did young men who grew up and studied here as part of our communities and our country resort to such violence?” (emphasis added)
Coupled with the alleged anthrax and ricin letters in Washington D.C. which mysteriously surfaced in the immediate wake of the Boston tragedy, both Washington and the media have underscored the Tsarnaev brothers tenuous ties to Chechnya’s militant jihadist insurgency.
According to the Wall Street Journal, quoting expert scholarly opinion:
”...the Chechen [family] background is maybe a part of what leads them [the two suspects] to do what they do,” said Lorenzo Vidino, an expert on Chechen militants at the Center for Security Studies in Zurich.” … A profile on the Russian social-networking site Vkontakte that appears to belong to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev includes a propaganda clip rallying jihadists to go to Syria to fight alongside rebels there, citing sayings from the Prophet Muhammad. [Amply documented, it just so happens that the jihadist foreign fighters in Syria are recruited by the US and its allies] (Wall Street Journal, op cit.)
What is implied is that even if the suspects are not tied to a Muslim extremist network, their embedded cultural heritage and Muslim “background” incites them –quite naturally– to commit acts of violence. How does this concept –which routinely associates Muslims with terrorism– repeated ad nauseam in the Western news chain, affect the human mindset?
While the identity and motives of the suspects are currently being examined by police investigators, the Tsarnaev brothers have already been categorized –without supporting evidence– as “Radical Muslims”.
Across the land, Muslims are being smeared and demonized. A new wave of Islamophobia has been set in motion.
The Creation of A New Legend: “The Chechen Connection”
A new legend is unfolding: “The Chechen Connection” is threatening America. Islamism homegrown in the Russian Federation is now being “exported to America”.
Plastered on news tabloids across the United States, the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings on Patriots’ Day are relentlessly compared to September 11, 2001.
According to the Council of Foreign Relations:
Law enforcement agencies at all levels have made advances in surveillance and policing since the September 11, 2001 attacks, but security risks persist. Many counterterrorism experts call for a renewed focus on the ability of the United States to weather and recover from such incidents… (emphasis added)
Is the Boston tragedy being used by Washington to usher in a new wave of police state measures directed against different categories of “domestic terrorists?
Is this catastrophic event being applied to foster public reaction against Muslims?
Is it being used to build acceptance of America’s holy crusade –initiated during the Bush administration– directed against a number of Muslim countries, which allegedly “harbor Islamic terrorists”?
According to the powerful Council of Foreign Relations (which exerts a pervasive influence on both the White House and the State Department), the Boston bombings once again “raise the specter of terrorism on U.S. soil, highlighting the vulnerabilities of a free and open society”. (Ibid)
Counter terrorism and Martial Law –implying the suspension of civil liberties– rather than civilian law enforcement are the proposed solutions. In the words of Secretary of State John Kerry, ‘‘I think it’s fair to say this entire week we’ve been in pretty direct confrontation with evil.’’
The unfolding mass media consensus (including that of Hollywood) is that America is once again under attack. This time, however, the alleged perpetrators are “Muslim terrorists” not from Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia but from the Russian Federation:
If a connection between the marathon bombing suspects and Chechen separatists was established, it would mark the first time militants from the former Soviet republic have launched a deadly attack outside Russia. Chechen insurgents deny any link to marathon bombing – U.S. News
“The Chechen Connection” has become embedded in a new media consensus. The American Homeland is potentially threatened by Muslim terrorists from the Russian Federation, who have links to Al Qaeda.
There is also a foreign policy agenda behind the bombings. The White House has hinted that if the “Chechen brothers” had links to radical Islam, the administration “could expand intelligence-gathering efforts overseas, as well as widen surveillance and screening measures in the United States.”
Moreover, the new terrorist narrative now involves jihadists from the Russian Federation rather than from the Middle East.
There are geopolitical implications. Will the Chechen Connection be used by the administration as a renewed pretext for pressuring Moscow? What kind of media propaganda is likely to emerge?
Al Qaeda and the CIA
The American public is misled. The media reports carefully overlook the historical origins of the Chechnya jihadist movement and its pervasive links to US intelligence.
The fact of the matter is that the jihadist movement is a creation of US intelligence, which has also led to the development of “political Islam”. While the role of the CIA in support of the Islamic jihad (including most Al Qaeda affiliated organizations) is amply documented, there is also evidence that the FBI has covertly equipped and incited would be terrorists within the US. (See James Corbett, The Boston Bombings in Context: How the FBI Fosters, Funds and Equips American Terrorists, Global Research April 17, 2013)
The CIA’s agenda starting in the late 1970s was to recruit and train jihadist “freedom fighters” (Mujahideen) to wage “a war of liberation” directed against the pro-Soviet secular government of Afghanistan.
Ronald Reagan meets Afghan Jihadist Commanders at the White House in 1985 (Reagan Archives)
The “Islamic Jihad” (or holy war against the Soviets) became an integral part of the CIA’s intelligence ploy. It was supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia, with a significant part of the funding generated from the Golden Crescent drug trade:
“In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166 … [which] authorize[d] stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal. The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies — a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987 … as well as a “ceaseless stream” of CIA and Pentagon specialists who travelled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan’s ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. There, the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels.”(Steve Coll, The Washington Post, July 19, 1992.)
Mujahideen from a large number of Muslim countries were recruited by the CIA. Jihadists from the Muslim republics (and autonomous regions) of the Soviet Union were also recruited.(For further analysis see Michael Chossudovsky, Al Qaeda and the “War on Terrorism”, Global Research, January 20, 2008)
Al Qaeda and the Chechnya Jihad
Chechnya is an autonomous region of the Russian Federation.
Among the recruits for specialized training in the early 1990s was the leader of the Chechnya rebellion Shamil Basayev who –in the immediate wake of the Cold War– led Chechnya’s first secessionist war against Russia.
During his training in Afghanistan, Shamil Basayev linked up with Saudi born veteran Mujahideen Commander “Al Khattab” who had fought as a volunteer in Afghanistan. Barely a few months after Basayev’s return to Grozny, Khattab was invited (early 1995) to set up an army base in Chechnya for the training of Mujahideen fighters. According to the BBC, Khattab’s posting to Chechnya had been “arranged through the Saudi-Arabian based [International] Islamic Relief Organisation, a militant religious organisation, funded by mosques and rich individuals which channeled funds into Chechnya”.(BBC, 29 September 1999).
The evidence suggests that Shamil Basayev had links to US intelligence as of the late 1980s. He was involved in the 1991 coup d’Etat which led to the break-up of the Soviet Union. He was subsequently involved in Chechnya’s unilateral declaration of independence from the Russian Federation in November 1991. In 1992, he led an insurgency against Armenian fighters in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. He was also involved in Abkhazia, the largely Muslim breakaway region of Georgia.
The first Chechnya war (1994-1996) was waged in the immediate wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was part of a US covert operation to destabilize the Russian Federation. The Second Chechnya war was waged in 1999-2000.
Broadly speaking the same guerrilla terrorist tactics applied in Afghanistan were implemented in Chechnya.
According to Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congress’ Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the insurgency in Chechnya had been planned during a secret summit of HizbAllah International held in 1996 in Mogadishu, Somalia. (Levon Sevunts, “Who’s Calling The Shots? Chechen conflict finds Islamic roots in Afghanistan and Pakistan”, The Gazette, Montreal, 26 October 1999.)
It’s obvious that the involvement of Pakistan’s ISI in Chechnya “goes far beyond supplying the Chechens with weapons and expertise: The ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually calling the shots in this war.”(Ibid)
The ISI is in permanent liaison with the CIA. What this statement signifies is that US intelligence using Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) as a go-between was calling the shots in the Chechnya war.
Russia’s main pipeline route transits through Chechnya and Dagestan. Despite Washington’s condemnation of “Islamic terrorism”, the beneficiaries of the wars in Chechnya were the Anglo-American oil conglomerates which were vying for complete control over oil resources and pipeline corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin.
The two main Chechen rebel armies (which at the time were led by the (late) Commander Shamil Basayev and Emir Khattab), estimated at 35,000 strong, were supported by CIA and its Pakistani counterpart the ISI, which played a key role in organizing and training the Chechen rebel army:
“[In 1994] the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence [in liaison with the CIA] arranged for Basayev and his trusted lieutenants to undergo intensive Islamic indoctrination and training in guerrilla warfare in the Khost province of Afghanistan at Amir Muawia camp, set up in the early 1980s by the CIA and ISI and run by famous Afghani warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In July 1994, upon graduating from Amir Muawia, Basayev was transferred to Markaz-i-Dawar camp in Pakistan to undergo training in advanced guerrilla tactics. In Pakistan, Basayev met the highest ranking Pakistani military and intelligence officers: Minister of Defence General Aftab Shahban Mirani, Minister of Interior General Naserullah Babar, and the head of the ISI branch in charge of supporting Islamic causes, General Javed Ashraf (all now retired). High-level connections soon proved very useful to Basayev.” (Ibid, emphasis added)
Following his training and indoctrination stint, Basayev was assigned to lead the assault against Russian federal troops in the first Chechen war in 1995. His organization had also developed extensive links to criminal syndicates in Moscow as well as ties to Albanian organized crime and the KLA. (Vitaly Romanov and Viktor Yadukha, “Chechen Front Moves To Kosovo”, Segodnia, Moscow, 23 Feb 2000)
The Chechen insurgency modeled on the CIA sponsored jihad in Afghanistan has also served as a model for several US-NATO sponsored military interventions, including Bosnia (1992-1995), Kosovo (1999), Libya (2011), Syria (2011- ).
Chechen Rebels: US Covert Operation to Destabilize the Russian Federation
The 1994-1996 Chechen war, instigated by the main rebel movements against Moscow, served to undermine secular state institutions. The adoption of Islamic law in the largely secular Muslim societies of the former Soviet Union served US strategic interests in the region.
A parallel system of local government, controlled by the Islamic militia, had been implanted in many localities in Chechnya. In some of the small towns and villages, Islamic Sharia courts were established under a reign of political terror.
Financial aid from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to the rebel armies was conditional upon the installation of the Sharia courts, despite strong opposition of the civilian population. The Principal Judge and Ameer of the Sharia courts in Chechnya was Sheikh Abu Umar, who “came to Chechnya in 1995 and joined the ranks of the Mujahideen there under the leadership of Ibn-ul-Khattab. … He set about teaching Islam with the correct Aqeedah to the Chechen Mujahideen, many of whom held incorrect and distorted beliefs about Islam.” (Global Muslim News, December 1997).
The Wahabi movement from Saudi Arabia was not only attempting to overrun civilian State institutions in Dagestan and Chechnya, it was also seeking to displace the traditional Sufi Muslim leaders. In fact, the resistance to the Islamic rebels and foreign fighters in Dagestan was based on the alliance of the (secular) local governments with the Sufi sheiks:
“These [Wahabi] groups consist of a very tiny but well-financed and well-armed minority. They propose with these attacks the creation of terror in the hearts of the masses. … By creating anarchy and lawlessness, these groups can enforce their own harsh, intolerant brand of Islam. … Such groups do not represent the common view of Islam, held by the vast majority of Muslims and Islamic scholars, for whom Islam exemplifies the paragon of civilization and perfected morality. They represent what is nothing less than a movement to anarchy under an Islamic label. … Their intention is not so much to create an Islamic state, but to create a state of confusion in which they are able to thrive.( Mateen Siddiqui, “Differentiating Islam from Militant ‘Islamists’” San Francisco Chronicle, 21 September 1999)
The second Chechnya war was launched by Vladimir Putin in 1999, with a view to consolidating the role of the central government and defeating the US sponsored Chechen terrorists against the Russian Federation.
“False Flags”
The 19 year old suspect is being used as a patsy. He was not even born in Chechnya. While he and his brother had no connection to the jihadist movement, the US media is carefully crafting a “Chechen Connection” pointing to an inherent behavioral pattern associated with Muslims:
The brothers spent 10 years in the U.S. during a formative period of their lives, exhibiting normal behavior for first-generation immigrants, said Mitchell Silber, a former intelligence official in the New York Police Department. “The question is, what catalyzed the change? Was it Chechen nationalism? Did it start with Chechen nationalism and somehow migrate to a pan-Islamist jihad cause?” (Renewed Fears About Homegrown Terror Threat,” WSJ April 20, 2013)
There is evidence, however, from the testimony of family members that the Tsarnaev brothers were on the radar of the FBI for several years prior to the Boston bombings and were the object of recurrent threats and harassment. Confirmed by the Wall Street Journal, the FBI had “interviewed” Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011. (Ibid)
What is abundantly clear is that the US government is not committed to fighting terrorists.
Quite the opposite. US intelligence has been recruiting and grooming terrorists for more than thirty years, while at same time upholding the absurd notion that these terrorists, who are bona fide CIA “intelligence assets”, constitute a threat to the American Homeland. These alleged threats by “An Outside Enemy” are part of a propaganda ploy behind the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT).
What is the Truth?
The development of an Islamist terrorist militia in different countries around the World is part of an intricate US intelligence project.
While the Tsarnaev brothers are casually accused without evidence of having links to Chechen terrorists, the important question is who is behind the Chechen terrorists?
In an utterly twisted logic, the protagonists of the ‘Global War on Terrorism” directed against Muslims are the de facto architects of “Islamic terrorism.”
The “Global War on Terrorism” Mindset
The “war on terrorism” mindset builds a consensus: millions of Americans are led to believe that a militarized police apparatus is required to protect democracy. Little do they realize that the US government is the main source of terrorism both nationally and internationally.
The corporate media is Washington’s propaganda arm, which consists in portraying Muslims as a threat to national security.
At this juncture in our history, at the crossroads of global economic and social crisis, the Boston bombings play a central role. They justify the Homeland Security State.
The evolving US Police State is thereby upheld as a means to protecting civil liberties. Under the guise of counter-terrorism, extrajudicial killings, the suspension of habeas corpus and torture are rightfully considered as a means to upholding the US Constitution.
At the same time, the terrorists –created and supported by the CIA– are used to participate in “False Flag” terrorist acts with a view to justifying the conduct of a global military crusade against Muslim countries, which so happen to be major oil producing economies.
“Massive Casualty Producing Events”
Former CENTCOM Commander, General Tommy Franks, who led the invasion of Iraq in 2003, had outlined a scenario of what he described as “a massive casualty producing event” on American soil, (a Second 9/11) . Implied in General Franks statement was the notion and belief that civilian deaths were necessary to raise awareness and muster public support for the “global war on terrorism”.
“[A] terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event [will occur] somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event.” (General Tommy Franks Interview, Cigar Aficionado, December 2003, emphasis added)
While the Boston bombings are of an entirely different nature to the “catastrophic event” alluded to by General Tommy Franks, the administration appears, nonetheless, to be committed to the logic of “militarizing our country” as a means to “protecting democracy.”
The Boston events are already being used to galvanize public support for an extended domestic based counter-terrorism apparatus. The latter would be implemented alongside extrajudicial assassinations against so-called “homegrown self radicalized terrorists”:
“U.S. counterterrorism policy has since 2001 focused largely on killing terrorists overseas or preventing them from getting into the U.S. But the Boston bombings show how the diffusion of terrorist tactics easily transcends borders. Countering small groups of individuals inside the U.S. can be a bedeviling assignment.
Bruce Riedel, director of the Intelligence Project at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan Washington think tank, said the Boston attack was likely a harbinger. “We are likely to see this as the future face of terrorist threats to the United States,” he said, adding that the case of a small number of radicalized participants who have lived in the U.S. and execute a plot is “the counterterrorist community’s worst nightmare, homegrown, self-radicalizing terrorism that learns its skill set off the Internet.” (WSJ, April 20, op cit)
The “terrorist massive casualty-producing event” was upheld by General Franks as a crucial political turning point.
Do the Boston Bombings constitute a point of transition, a watershed which ultimately contributes to the gradual suspension of constitutional government?
ORDER DIRECTLY FROM GLOBAL RESEARCH
America’s “War on Terrorism”
by Michel Chossudovsky
In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”. Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.
The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarization of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.
According to Chossudovsky, the “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalization is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.
September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State
http://www.globalresearch.ca/boston-truth-the-chechen-connection-al-qaeda-and-the-boston-marathon-bombings/5332337
Blowback From Drone Strikes?
What If the Tsarnaevs’ Motive Was Revenge for U.S. Foreign Policy?
by SHELDON RICHMAN
On the day of the Boston Marathon bombings, President Obama stood in the White House briefing room and said, “We will find out who did this; we’ll find out why they did this.”
What motivated the murderous acts allegedly committed by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarvaev is the question on everyone’s mind. We would be surprised if it were not.
But will people remain interested in the motive if they don’t like what they hear?
Judging by the recent past, the answer might well be no. After 9/11, people wondered why anyone would kill indiscriminately by flying airplanes into buildings. The Bush administration and others leapt to an unlikely conclusion: the hijackers “hated our freedom.” That seemed to satisfy most people. But it made little sense, and based on previous incidents, we already had ample reason to believe the answer lay elsewhere. Earlier perpetrators of violence from the Middle East had made clear that what fueled their hatred of America was U.S. foreign policy in the region and the larger Muslim world.
Osama bin Laden’s own fatwa against the United States named three offenses: support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the presence of American military forces near Muslim holy sites in Saudi Arabia, and the devastation of Iraq through 10 years of bombing and economic sanctions.
But most American officials did not want to hear — and did not want the American people to hear — that Muslim violence was in retaliation for U.S. foreign policy. When Ron Paul, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, criticized U.S. interventionist foreign policy during a primary debate, he was admonished by another candidate, Rudy Giuliani, among others, who claimed he had never heard such an outrageous thing. Giuliani was either lying or unaware that the official 9/11 commission and the Pentagon had previously acknowledged that U.S. foreign policy creates resentment among Muslims.
What about the Tsarnaevs? We await the facts, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly told authorities his acts were motivated by “religious fervor.” But it’s a good bet this resentment was part of their motivation. The Tsarnaev family is Chechen, but Chechnya’s beef is with Russia, not the United States, so that seems an unlikely source of a desire to kill and injure runners and spectators in Boston.
[UPDATE: Dzhokhar has reportedly told authorities the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan figured in his and his brother's radicalization.]
It is more likely the young men were angered by U.S. drone warfare that has killed thousands of Muslims in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia; brutal occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan; backing for dictators and corrupt monarchs throughout the Muslim world; and unwavering material and moral support for Israel’s oppression and humiliation of the Palestinians, with no end in sight. The Washington Post reports that a neighbor of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older, deceased brother, told him, “In Afghanistan, most casualties are innocent bystanders killed by American soldiers.”
If revenge for U.S. foreign policy was the motive, what will happen next? Will such evidence prompt a national reconsideration of America’s decades-old imperial foreign policy? Or will it be quickly dismissed, while the bombings are exploited in an effort to double down on that foreign policy. U.S. Rep. Peter King, a Republican, has already begun that effort. (Interestingly, Alberto Gonzalez, who was attorney general under President George W. Bush, acknowledged on CNN over the weekend that U.S. foreign policy is indeed resented by Muslims abroad and prompts a desire for revenge.)
There is much we still don’t know about the Tsarnaev brothers and why they chose their deadly path. (What, if anything, did it have to do with Chechen organized crime?) Maybe it will turn out that they simply developed a hatred for what they saw as American licentiousness and felt they needed to strike out at it. (That Dzhokhar Tsarnaev partied at his college after the bombings, casts doubt on that prospect.)
It seems far more likely that the murder-by-drone of Muslim children, the no-knock night raids of Afghan homes, the daily humiliation of and violence against Palestinians, and the support for violent and corrupt rulers are what made these men want to exact vengeance against Americans.
Of course, none of this would justify killing innocents. But if we wish to prevent such wanton crimes in the future, we’d better understand what motivates the criminals who commit them.
Sheldon Richman is vice president and editor at The Future of Freedom Foundation (www.fff.org) in Fairfax, Va. He can be reached through his blog, Free Association.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/24/what-if-the-tsarnaevs-motive-was-revenge-for-u-s-foreign-policy/
Our Invisible Wars
What Dzokhar Tsarnaev and Bradley Manning Have in Common
by ALYSSA ROHRICHT
The media is ablaze right now with discussions about Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Bomber, and whether or not he should receive a fair trial as an American citizen. A few politicians and general lunatics have called for torture, military tribunals, and even “a July 4 celebration of stringing this son-of-a-b-tch up in the Boston Common and letting the crows pick on his rotting flesh.” (That last one is courtesy of Ted Nugent). And despite not being read his Miranda Rights, it does seem that, at the least, Tsarnaev will receive a trial-by-jury. How fair that trial will be remains to be seen, but one thing’s for sure: The only reason Tsarnaev is getting this fair trial is because this case is so predominantly in the public’s eye.
Certainly, it stands to the symbolic greatness of a country who promises a fair trial-by-jury to all of its citizens, regardless of the hideousness of the crimes committed. Unfortunately, this promise is only rhetorical and applies only when it serves the purposes of the power elite. Tsarnaev will get his promise of a trial with a jury of his peers, yet, behind the scenes, the Obama Administration and those in power wage a secret war against whistleblowers that the public does not see.
While the media focuses on Tsarnaev and his eventual trial, Bradley Manning is spending his 1,059th day in detention without trial. On May 29, 2010, Manning was arrested. For the first ten months of his detention, he was kept locked in solitary confinement, was denied social interaction, exercise, and sunlight, and at times forced to stay completely naked, treatment that the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, called cruel and inhumane.
Manning’s crime that has caused him to spend three birthdays in prison without trial: releasing classified military documents to the news source Wikileaks that show, among other things, a U.S. Apache helicopter gunning down over a dozen people in Baghdad in 2007, including civilians and two Reuter’s employees, photojournalist Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver Saeed Chmagh, now dubbed the Collateral Murder video. Also released were the Iraq War Logs, chronicling reports from 2004-2009 of thousands of cases of prisoner torture and abuse filed against coalition forces in Iraq. The reports include gruesome description of people being whipped with cables, sexually assaulted, urinated on, and hung from the ceiling on hooks. In addition, the War Logs added 15,000 civilian deaths to the known body count, totalling over 150,000 people, of which about 80% were civilian.
Manning has since pled guilty to 10 of the 22 charges against him, including releasing the documents, but did not plead guilty to the most serious of charges, aiding the enemy. His court date is scheduled for June 3rd, and instead of trying this American citizen in a civilian court with a jury of his peers, as we apparently will with Tsarnaev, Manning’s guilt or innocence will be decided by military judge Col. Denise Lind, a decision that could mean a life sentence for Manning, just 25 years old.
Clearly, Manning’s treatment while in solitary confinement, his over 1,000 day detention without trial, and the very fact that he is being prosecuted, rather than held up as a heroic soldier who blew the whistle on war crimes, is unjust enough. Yet these facts are made worse by the fact that the government is blocking full access to Manning’s trial and has effectively silenced his voice from the mainstream media. During Manning’s pretrial hearing, recordings were banned but a secret recording of Manning’s statement was later released, prompting a response from a military spokesperson saying that the media center at Ft. Meade was “a privilege, not a requirement,” and that “privileges can be taken away.” Following his pretrial hearing, a lawsuit brought on by the Center for Constitutional Rights and a group of journalists seeking access to documents and transcripts in the court-martial proceedings for Manning was rejected by the court.
The secret recording of Manning’s statement marked the first time that Manning was able to defend his decisions to release the documents to Wikileaks. When he spoke of the Collateral Murder Video, Manning described his alarm at watching U.S. soldiers gun down the people on the ground. What was most alarming, he said,
“was the seemingly delightful bloodlust the aerial weapons team—they appeared to have. They dehumanized the individuals they were engaging and seemed to not value human life by referring to them as, quote, “dead bastards,” unquote, and congratulating each other on the ability to kill in a large—in large numbers…For me, this seems similar to a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass.”
Manning also spoke of his desire to bring these issues to the general public to spark debate about the role of the U.S. military and our foreign policy:
“I believed that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information contained within the CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A tables, this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general, as well as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.
I also believed the detailed analysis of the data over a long period of time by different sectors of society might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the debate—that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the effected environment every day.”
And this is exactly why the government has worked so hard to silence Manning and hide him from view of the general public. Debate. Asking questions. Questioning our role abroad. Understanding the complexities of war. These things do not serve the purposes of the power elite. We are meant to see things simply; matter-of-factly. We’re told that modern war is clean. Efficient. Targeted. We don’t see the civilian toll, not only in the numbers of dead, but also in the legacy that war leaves behind. In Iraq alone, for example, recent studies have been released concerning the enormously high rates of cancers, birth defects, and infant mortality in the Iraqi city of Fallujah due to the use of depleted uranium in U.S. weapons during our involvement there.
We are not meant to see the true costs of war. It has been all but removed from our view and our every day lives, and that is precisely how The Empire wants it. If Bradley Manning can be rendered invisible, than so too can the questions that he and the documents he released have raised. Dzokhar Tsarnaev will receive a trial, as he should. But let’s not be fooled about what is happening to our rights in this country. If Manning can be silenced, if debate and questions can be censored, if the media can be gagged, then our empirical wars can be waged across the globe without restraint.
Alyssa Rohricht maintains Crash Culture and can be reached at aprohricht@msn.com.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/24/what-dzokhar-tsarnaev-has-to-do-with-bradley-manning/