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Brad/Chelsea Manning: Charged w/AFG file leak, Cdn angles, disposition (merged)

  • Thread starter Thread starter jollyjacktar
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ArmyRick said:
On a different note but same topic, I read the comments made by people on CBC.ca. Man is there ever alot of conspiracy theorist. Even when people who were there made comments, they were being ignored or discredited.

My beleif is this, there are lots of people with "agendas of their own" that are exploiting this unfortunate incident to spread their own message. that is absolutely unacceptable in my view.

Lets not forget that it was four brothers that have fallen, and many were there when it happened.

No conspiracy, no cover up. There never was.


So many people have a real need to find some way to validate their ingrained anti-American and, consequentially, anti-war (any war in which the US is involved?) feelings. This erroneous report provides them with a 'hook' upon which they can hang those feelings.

Despite all the red T-shirts and bumper stickers, the "support" for the troops is very, very shallow - wide, perhaps, but not deep. Our four friends, comrades-in-arms, members of our regimental families, etc are lost and forgotten n the firestorm of righteous indignation that has been ignited by an act of journalistic vandalism. The same applies to the nearly 150 others - they have become inconvenient truths in an ideological debate.
 
Perhaps the source of the story mixed up Tarnak Farms with the 2006 incident?  Wouldn't be the first time a civilian got military-related facts just plain wrong.
 
No.
Look up the incident. Tarnak farms happened in 2002.
 
Michael O'Leary said:
It's a question of context for each and every document.

Zackly!  Best summary I've seen today about this issue is here via The Atlantic:
.... It's like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle. You maybe have 200 pieces of the puzzle. The first thing you don't know is, is this a 500-piece or 1,000-piece puzzle? And then with the 200 pieces you have, maybe half of them don't belong to this puzzle at all. They're in the wrong box. And then every hour or so, someone comes along and dumps 10 more pieces on your desk -- and nine of them aren't even part of it ....
 
Jammer said:
No.
Look up the incident. Tarnak farms happened in 2002.

I know.  I meant mixing up the 4 friendly fire deaths in 2002 with the 4 in Panjwaii 2006.  Same number; mixed up dates, mixed up reasons.  Why attribute to malice something that could be explained by stupidity?  (Understanding that stupid malice is always a possibility.)
 
.... via Juliet O'Neill of Postmedia News, shared in accordance with the "fair dealing" provisions, Section 29, of the Copyright Act. - highlights mine:
A WikiLeaks document categorizing the deaths of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan on Sept. 3, 2006 as a "friendly fire" incident has been discounted by witnesses and the public record, supporting the Defence Department's finding Tuesday that the leaked military document is "obviously incorrect."

Survivors of the battle say there was friendly fire in the form of a one-tonne bomb dropped by coalition aircraft through Canadian lines during Charles Company's intense firefight that day at the epicentre of the Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan.

But it has previously been documented the bomb did not explode, and the Canadians were killed by grenades, rifle fire and rockets from Taliban insurgents who surrounded them on three sides, hiding in trenches and fortified buildings.

Military blogs and Twitter postings Tuesday contained first-hand statements from some of the 50 or so Canadians who were at the scene, asserting the American operations report released by the website WikiLeaks wrongly categorizes the casualties as "friendly fire, blue-blue."

"I was there and our boys were not killed by friendly fire," Corp. Jody Mitic wrote on Twitter. "Ask anyone from Charlie Company. Friendly fire my ass . . ." (link to Mitic Twitter post)

Mitic was a sniper who lost both legs when he stepped on a land mine during another mission in Afghanistan in January, 2007; he has since made a name for himself as an athlete.

Lt. Col. Norbert Cyr, a Department of National Defence official, told Postmedia News the document drafted by a U.S. unit and released by WikiLeaks appears to be an authentic military situation report of the events in "real time" with an erroneous heading of friendly fire.

"It is a mistake," he said, adding the department is looking into whether it was later corrected.


The Defence Department delayed characterizing the report when it first came out because officials wanted to try to get to the bottom of it. They are still waiting for answers to queries about the source of the report, listed as 205th Regional Corps Assist Group.

The 205th is the Afghanistan military unit that American, Canadian and other coalition forces train and mentor.

The date, time, operations, and casualties listed in the report match up to the fight in which the four Canadians were killed.

One soldier who was at the scene wrote on a military blog about how he was almost killed during the Taliban ambush and treated Shane Stachnik — an engineer sargeant who died — and others in a vehicle that had been hit by Taliban fire. The bomb was a dud, causing the commander to redeploy his troops, he wrote.

A 2007 account of the battle in Legion Magazine by Adam Day tells how "there was little left to do but retreat" after the errant bomb landed in front of the Canadians during hours of fighting in which "the radios were full of screaming voices, some calling for medics, some just looking for help."

Capt. Derek Wessan radioed in after the bomb landed, the Legion account says. "We've gotta get the f—k out of here. And then we've gotta blow this place up."

Cyr said any suggestion the American report is accurate in its use of the term "friendly fire", and that Canada tried to cover it up, "is ludicrous."

"There were so many witnesses that it never could have been hidden," Cyr said. "And there's no reason to hide it."

I'm guessing the word of people who were there, and a military official saying it was a mistake aren't going to be enough for the nay-sayers, but there it is.
 
If the media wants to better understand these documents they should first look at how they themselves conduct their business.

When a major news story breaks, the media receives reports from many sources and then rushes to get the information on the air or in print as soon as possible, because they all want to be the first. Those first news stories always contain incomplete information, and errors both in fact and in context, or are just plain wrong. Sometimes the media will tell the public that these are raw reports that have not being confirmed, but not always. Stories are updated and corrected as more verified information becomes available. However, viewers who only saw the first reports and not the updated or corrected reports are left with the wrong impressions.

I suspect that in the military, the early or raw reports are just filed away and forgotten about until some idiot finds them and thinks that he has found evidence of a great conspiracy or cover-up.

 
George Wallace said:
I wonder how long Julian Assange is going to be allowed to remain a free man?  What he has gone and done now, is cross a very fine line.  I am sure his Wikileaks will soon be closed down, and his finding himself jailed.

The publication of the documents is legal because the Wikileaks\Julian Assange did not solicit the documents. Julian Assange never asked anyone to get him the secrets so he could publish them, as they were provided to him anonymously. The person who provided the leaked documents can be charged, but Julian Assange hasn't done anything which he could be charged for.
 
Dog Walker said:
I suspect that in the military, the early or raw reports are just filed away and forgotten about until some idiot finds them and thinks that he has found evidence of a great conspiracy or cover-up.
Or until they're corrected.  Gotta wonder how many folks have time to look through the 92K reports to find any updates of earlier ones (or whether those updates have been shared by the leaker?).

As for the "first, fragmentary, far-from-full-picture report" nature of these documents, here's something from an embeded blogger/journalist going over what he saw, compared to what the reports showed:
Echo company got into a gunfight last Aug. 25 in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. You'll learn that by reading the report found in WikiLeaks's database of Afghan war documents released on Sunday night. You'll learn that, after a chase, the Marines killed one insurgent. You'll learn that the insurgents supposedly fled and that the troops decided to stay the night in the area in case the militants returned.

What you won't learn is that a Marine sniper team sparked the shoot-out with a surprise assault on the insurgents; that every member of that team was nearly killed in the battle; or that the incident would kick off a three-day siege in which the Taliban nearly surrounded the Echo company squad.

You also won't learn that, in the midst of this battle, British and Afghan troops waged a more gentle counterinsurgency nearby, as they sat cross-legged under shady patches of farmland and talked with village elders. I know this because I was there with Echo company, reporting for Wired magazine.

(....)

Any time a signal gets compressed, information is lost. Think about the difference in sound quality between a live rock show and an MP3. Think about a news report of a political rally, and the feeling of actually being there.

These field reports are no different. The military needs a system that better captures the entirety of the Afghan campaign. The rest of us should be careful about putting too much stock in the WikiLeaks documents.
 
milnews.ca said:
One soldier who was at the scene wrote on a military blog about how he was almost killed during the Taliban ambush and treated Shane Stachnik — an engineer sargeant who died — and others in a vehicle that had been hit by Taliban fire. The bomb was a dud, causing the commander to redeploy his troops, he wrote.

I wonder if the military blog they are reffering to is this one. Another reminder about watching what we say I guess. This thread seems to be a prime example of self control even when we just want to rant. Thank you to those that set the record straight on the subject, and here's to hoping the tin hat brigage has enough sense to listen for once.
 
aegishjalmar said:
The publication of the documents is legal because the Wikileaks\Julian Assange did not solicit the documents. Julian Assange never asked anyone to get him the secrets so he could publish them, as they were provided to him anonymously. The person who provided the leaked documents can be charged, but Julian Assange hasn't done anything which he could be charged for.

I don't think you understand the gravity of what he has done, nor the laws that he has broken.  Your conception that someone else passed him "Secret" documents absolves him of any responsibility and charges under the Law, are totally out to lunch.  It doesn't matter who has possession of these documents, if they are not properly protected it is a chargable offence.

Let's try something with your statement, by changing a few words:

aegishjalmar said:
The possession and sale of the items is legal because the Wikileaks\Julian Assange did not solicit the items. Julian Assange never asked anyone to get him the items so he could sell them, as they were provided to him anonymously. The person who stole the items can be charged, but Julian Assange hasn't done anything which he could be charged for.

It doesn't pass the litmus test.  Julian Assange was knowingly in possession of stolen items.  He is as guilty as the person who stole them and gave them to him.  That is the Law.
 
Chap

The Military Blog is this one, those were my comments and I stand by them as everything I said was already a matter of public record as detailed in the Legion magazine in an interview I was ordered to give by my CoC at the time. I stand by those comments then and now.

Any questions?
 
Absolutely no questions whatsoever. I thought that with how this thread has progressed, this was a great example of how we govern ourselves when there is a media pressence observing our interactions. Again, I thank and commend you for sticking to them as they are the truth. It is unfortunate that this whole issue has had to come up again as I'm sure it is bringing back many memories that some may or may not wish to bring back. What you and the rest of Charlie Company did that day will always have a place in history, and it drives me insane when some tin hatter tries to muddy that.

I will be the first to say I was not there, so I can not relate to how those that were feel. However I'm sure my disgust is well overshodowed by those more in the know.

On a side note,  I saw a report on the news last night that showed the American PFC that smuggled the documents out of the secure areas and released them to Wikileaks. Apparently he was already in military detention as of the time that story hit the air, so there is some good news there. They did not mention what charges he was faces, but I'm hoping they throw several volumes of the book at him.
 
George Wallace said:
I don't think you understand the gravity of what he has done, nor the laws that he has broken.  Your conception that someone else passed him "Secret" documents absolves him of any responsibility and charges under the Law, are totally out to lunch.  It doesn't matter who has possession of these documents, if they are not properly protected it is a chargable offence.

Let's try something with your statement, by changing a few words:

It doesn't pass the litmus test.  Julian Assange was knowingly in possession of stolen items.  He is as guilty as the person who stole them and gave them to him.  That is the Law.

I seemed to have missed the part in all of this where Mr. Assange sold these stories for profit. I didn't realize that Wikileaks was in the business of selling secrets to the highest bidders.

All joking aside, please do enlighten me. Name me the specific laws he has broken and provide me evidence that can stick to a conviction. Mr. Assange and his organization has been publishing leaked documents from other whistleblowers since 2006, so if he were guilty of anything, they would have slammed him by now. I don't even agree with what he has done, but legally, he appears to be almost untouchable. They WILL find the original source of the leak, there is no doubt about that, and that person will be brought to trial. Mr. Assange will remain as free as a bird and will keep doing what he is doing for a very long time.
 
aegishjalmar said:
All joking aside, please do enlighten me. Name me the specific laws he has broken and provide me evidence that can stick to a conviction.

Are you at all familiar with the concept of possession of stolen property?  ::)
 
aegishjalmar said:
I seemed to have missed the part in all of this where Mr. Assange sold these stories for profit. I didn't realize that Wikileaks was in the business of selling secrets to the highest bidders.

There is no need to sell for a profit, only to be in possession of stolen property. 

aegishjalmar said:
All joking aside, please do enlighten me. Name me the specific laws he has broken and provide me evidence that can stick to a conviction. Mr. Assange and his organization has been publishing leaked documents from other whistleblowers since 2006, so if he were guilty of anything, they would have slammed him by now. I don't even agree with what he has done, but legally, he appears to be almost untouchable. They WILL find the original source of the leak, there is no doubt about that, and that person will be brought to trial. Mr. Assange will remain as free as a bird and will keep doing what he is doing for a very long time.

He may have been skating on thin ice before, with whistle blowing using documents from other Government Agencies, but now he is dealing with documents that fall under National Defence and National Security.  As was mentioned in the article:


LINK
"The fact that it is so controversial and the fact that so many people talk about it tells me that WikiLeaks touches on a very, very important point," said Schneider.  "And I think that this discussion between what should be private and what should be public touches a lot of peoples nerves, and I think it is important that we talk about it."

But former intelligence analyst Bob Ayers is not convinced WikiLeaks is a force for good.

"The fact that we have a bunch of liberal amateurs trying to do intelligence assessments of material does not give me a strong feeling of confidence," said Ayers.

Ayers cites WikiLeaks most recent revelations, the release of more than 75,000 U.S. military documents relating to Afghanistan.

"The information that was released is not a threat to the United States per se," said Ayers.  "It has the potential to be a threat to combatants that are fighting in the area, it has the potential to destabilize the trilateral relationships between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the U.S.  And it has the potential to place the intelligence community at some level of risk if their sources are being compromised publicly."

WikiLeaks founder Assange says his organization has a harm-minimization process to identify, redact or withhold anything that might hurt a source or anyone involved in the documents.  Assange says for that reason, they did not release more than 15,000 Afghanistan-related documents, and he says because what they did make public was seven months old, he believed it contained no information that could harm NATO troops. 

Ayers disagrees.  "The fact it is seven months old is immaterial.  It is irrelevant.  They are not going to change their patrolling patterns in seven months, they are still going to patrol the same way.  So now what you have done is you have informed the enemy of information that can assist them in planning how to attack NATO forces in Afghanistan when they are on patrol," said Ayers.

Ayers believes the American government will have to do something about WikiLeaks.  Under U.S. law it is illegal to disclose classified information. 

"There is a real dilemma here as to how to deal with a site like WikiLeaks," said Ayers.  "Are they acting in the public good?  Are they acting sensationally? Are they endangering the public good?  Are they endangering lives by their actions?  And those are things that I think we will still see addressed and sorted out over the next six months or so."

To thwart censorship, WikiLeaks released the leaked documents in three jurisdictions, the United States, Germany and Great Britain.
 
aegishjalmar said:
All joking aside, please do enlighten me. Name me the specific laws he has broken and provide me evidence that can stick to a conviction. Mr. Assange and his organization has been publishing leaked documents from other whistleblowers since 2006, so if he were guilty of anything, they would have slammed him by now. I don't even agree with what he has done, but legally, he appears to be almost untouchable. They WILL find the original source of the leak, there is no doubt about that, and that person will be brought to trial. Mr. Assange will remain as free as a bird and will keep doing what he is doing for a very long time.

You give the source of this leak way too much credit by lumping them in with "whistleblowers".

The fact is, someone who had access to all these secure documents would know about security classifications, the control of such, and ramifications of releasing these documents.

If he/she wanted to raise concern about wrondoings that occured (the definition of a whistleblower) there are many internal investigative and IG departments they could have gone too. They chose to go to an organization who's editor-in-chief self-admittedly does not care about "national-security".

I don't know what will happen to Assange, but whomever leaked the documents should, in my personal opinion, have certain parts of their anatomy put into a cross-cut shredder.
 
ModlrMike said:
Are you at all familiar with the concept of possession of stolen property?  ::)

Alright, well if you are talking US law here, are you at all familiar with the concept of the First Amendment? Particularly the First Amendment’s free-press protection shields which legally protect those who publish classified documents obtained by others?

You can thank the US Supreme Court for setting that precedent after the leak of the "Pentagon Papers".

Look, I am not getting into a war of words with anyone here, I am merely stating that Julian Assange will never see prison time over this leak. He may not want to come to the US anytime soon, though, because I bet some people would want to question him regarding his role in obtaining the information (spoiler alert: There was none), but jail time? Nope.
 
Warning – Reading the following will be bad for your blood pressure!

NDP wants proof Taliban killed Canadians
Last Updated: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 | 4:22 PM NT

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2010/07/28/nl-harris-wikileaks-728.html?ref=rss

The federal NDP is calling on the Canadian government to prove that four Canadian soldiers who died in Afghanistan in 2006 were killed by enemy fire rather than a U.S. bomb.
NDP defence critic Jack Harris reacted Tuesday to leaked U.S. military documents suggesting the Canadians were killed by friendly fire.
He said the Canadian military must produce evidence to prove its assertion to Canadians that the soldiers were shot by insurgents
"They deserve the truth. They deserve to know what actually happened and if there's any doubt cast by this and I think there is some doubt because those two stories cannot live together," said Harris, a member of Parliament who represents the riding of St. John's East.
One of the thousands of U.S. military documents that were posted on a website called WikiLeaks is raising questions about how a soldier from eastern Newfoundland was killed.

Warrant Officer Richard Nolan,39, died in Afghanistan in 2006. He was born in Mount Pearl, a city near St. John's
Days after his death, Canadian military officials said Nolan was one of four soldiers killed by the Taliban.
The military's Maple Leaf newsletter also said on Sept. 13, 2006, that "four soldiers were killed Sept. 3 during Operation MEDUSA, a significant combined effort between the Afghan National Security Forces, Canada and other NATO partners in the International Security Assistance Force as they fought to drive Taliban fighters from a region west of Kandahar city."
Warrant Officer Frank Mellish of P.E.I. and Nova Scotia, Sgt. Shane Stachnik of Alberta and Pte. William Cushley of Ontario were the other three soldiers who died that day.
Despite what the leaked U.S. documents say, the Canadian military is standing by its assertion that insurgents killed the four Canadian soldiers in 2006.
"There has to be further verification, not just assurances that have been made already that what we said before was in fact the truth," Harris said Tuesday.
 
WTF?

Let's see, we have eyewitness accounts, and we have journalists who've spoken to eyewitnesses.  I guess the eyewitnesses and the journalists a fascist cabal of some sort covering up some crime of the U.S., right? ::)  Yet another member of the "opposition only for the sake of opposition" club 

Contact co-ordinates for MP Jack Harris (remember, snail mail to MPs in Ottawa doesn't need a stamp) if you want to share your thoughts:

Contact
Constituency Office
342 Freshwater Road
St. John’s , NL A1B 1C2
Telephone: 709-772-7171

Parliament Hill Office
House of Commons
Ottawa ON K1A 0A6
Telephone:613-996-7269
Harris.J@parl.gc.ca


and for his boss Jack Layton:

Parliament Hill:
634-C Centre Block, House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
Tel: (613) 947-0867
Fax: (613) 947-0868
laytoj@parl.gc.ca

Constituency:
221 Broadview Avenue, Suite 100
Toronto, ON M4M 2G3
Tel: (416) 405-8914
Fax: (416) 405-8918
info@jacklayton.ca


- edited for grammar fix -
 
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