Assange indictment fails to mention video that exposed US 'war crimes' in Iraq
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
For those of us who have been paying attention to Julian for decades, the turning of public opinion against him has been a very fascinating lesson in Western hubris.
I think the most important conclusion of all of this is that a) the US government thinks it has what it takes to continue to commit war crimes and other crimes against humanity with impunity, and b) those who pick up the mantel from Julian's passing will have learned a lot from his case.
Most important of all, I believe that c) the leaks will continue. It is going to be a very rough time, given todays climate, for those who continue to slavishly support the US military industrial pharmaceutical complex' crimes against humanity. Julians' heinous treatment just means, when the leaks continue, it'll be with the gloves off. There won't be a loud, obvious flamboyant cult figurehead to depose - more than likely, the leaker strategy going forward from this point onwards, will be a lot more effective.
One can hope, anyway. Until the American people prosecute their war criminals and faces justice for the crimes against humanity committed in their name, and for which they are thus responsible, the American people will continue to suffer as well. A nation ruled by war criminals is a victim of its own cowardice.
Quiet leakers will surely FB dispensed with quietly and much less pleasantly than Assange.
Julians flamboyance and charisma are the reason the general public are complacent about his torturous treatment. His character was weaponised against him by those with immense resources to do so.
However, you can't dispense with leakers you don't see. And here is the weakness in the US Governments' strategy of disappearing Julian - Its not the leaker: its the leaks.
And since the West has committed war crimes at such stupendous scale, these leaks are not going away.
And the outrage over the crimes committed is so large that I am fairly confident, within a year, we will see the American public tearing those responsible into shreds. If, that is, America survives another year with its war criminals running free without tearing itself into shreds ...
The fact that the leaked information contained evidence of arguable war crimes is at most a moral (but not legal) justification. There is a good argument that the government should have exercised its prosecutorial discretion not to pursue this case in that basis. But an indictment does not need to include evidence that might be morally exculpatory. (It doesn’t even have to include legally relevant exculpatory evidence; the prosecutor is just required to disclose that to the defense attorney.) Assange will definitely raise this video and other evidence in his defense.
The Guardian article twists the narrative—alleging the government “failed to include” to evidence, as if it had a duty to do so—to artificially bolster its premise. You can say that the government should hold back in a prosecution because conduct, though technically illegal, was justified. But reasonable people may or may not agree with that. So instead, the author takes it a step further to try and make it look like the government “failed” to disclose information it was obligated to include (conduct that’s much harder to agree with.)
I'm not passing judgement here on Assange or the US's case against him. Just noting that the prosecution case seems to focus on the fact that US intelligence docs being released puts American lives at risk.
The prosecution's case doesn't seem to imply that this video is not evidence of war crimes but that its release doesn't absolve him of the crime of releasing other documents.
The linked article seems pretty light on details so it's difficult to make much out of it directly.
Failing to prosecute legitimate war crimes puts American lives at risk.
This is duplicity at its finest.
Assange is not really on trial here. The Wests' public opinion of American war criminals is, however.
Apart from climate change, a government incapable of addressing it's own crimes is our biggest threat. Note that I don't expect government to never commit crime, I just expect it to admit to it and take corrective action when it happens.
I agree with you, with one caveat: it is the people who must prosecute the governments crimes. Lets see if America today is brave enough to do so...
There's a reason "war crimes" has to be in scare quotes there.
Do you think the American public has the temerity to survive the shock of its own complicity in the murder of literally, millions of innocent people by their own armed forces?
I don't think it will be good for America unless their war criminals are prosecuted - and we all know that isn't going to happen. Trouble is, the evidence of those crimes is not going away ...
http://psr.org/blog/resource/body-count
“I believe the perception caused by civilian casualties is one of the most dangerous enemies we face.”
U.S. General Stanley A. McCrystal in his inaugural speech as ISAF Commander in June 2009.1
A bit like what happened to the WTC in 2001. I mean, what were they doing, navigating those buildings into the path of a couple of innocent planes, eh?
It's an understandable, though regrettable, mistake when you look past Assange's "collateral murder" editorializing.
Lied into a criminal war against Iraq, the American people are now complicit in the war crimes committed in their names. What is understandable, though indeed very regrettable, is the American public's general desire to not be held accountable for these crimes against humanity...
This is circular. Your argument that this is "murder" cannot proceed from an assumption of the same.
> Your opinion... is utterly abhorrent to anyone who has watched that video...
I don't think personal attacks are productive. Additionally, there are wide arrays of views on this video. Your argument in support of your view appears to be based on an assumption that it is widely held and then an appeal to popularity, so it is doubly fallacious. Try making your point without assuming that everyone already agrees with you.
> can clearly see, for themselves, that these people were absolutely NO threat to US forces in the area
This isn't apparent from the footage; in fact the audio clearly indicates otherwise. They believed they had arms including an RPG. In any case, that isn't the legal test. Even unclassified ROE materials are clear that national self-defense is not the only lawful basis for the use of force in jus in bello.
"They could have had a rocket launcher" is an agitprop straw man intentionally proffered in order to minimise the magnitude of the crime committed. I wonder why it is so important for you, personally, to minimise this criminal act?
1) They were military-age males
Say you have the ability to rain death miles above at whim. Do you think "military-age male" is a robust separator of who lives and who dies? Would you fit in this category? There but for the grace of god go you.
The video doesn't show a mistake at all. It shows a very deliberate action, carried out with great success. That these people were "innocent" in that some westerners cared whether they lived or died is the only reason you're here now defending their murder.
2) they were in an group of armed men on a battlefield and were pointing the long barrel of a telephoto lens at American Humvees from behind cover.
Yes it has nothing to do with a patrol taking fire from that area and confusion over a camera one of the journalists was carrying on his shoulder. I agree it absolutely shouldn't have happened but to gloss over these facts if you have watched the video is revisionist in my opinion.
Also you failed to mention the real war crime which was firing at first responders some of who were children.
We can go on and on about what the real war crime was but for my money it's that this incident was not unusual. We talk about it a lot because some westerners cared about two people who were killed, but these things happened over and over and over and over and over. Maybe someone wants to go litigate those one by one. Or they can zoom out and see that this lax standard for killing people will inevitably lead to many of these incidents, and that going forward with the policy anyway is a war crime reminiscent of free-fire zones in Vietnam.
I'm genuinely sorry Namir died and it shouldn't have happened but he knew that he was putting his life at risk let's be honest. On the other hand the passers by in the van who tried to take the wounded to the hospital who also were obliterated were just good Samaritans and I really think you should at least acknowledge them when talking about what happened to Namir as a war crime.
Because it is evidence of a crime being committed - i.e. that Assange obtained secret military materials and then illegally published them.
Assange is being held for extradition to face charges in the USA of publishing military secrets. This is a military secret that he published.
The fact of its exclusion demonstrates that the US Government doesn't want its crimes further exposed to the world, and that it doesn't believe that Assange illegally published this material - or else, it would have to be admitted as evidence. This omission demonstrates that he is not being targeted for the reason of publishing military secrets, or else it would have been included in the case as evidence.
Julian Assange is being illegally detained and criminally prosecuted for publishing the fact of America's war crimes and embarrassing the War Coalition.
The USA has, with this omission, essentially admitted guilt for its own war crimes.
The Gunship Video itself.
This is not correct. They could believe this, and believe they have a strong enough case without this specific evidence that they need not include it.
I think the government is looking for an out, because it knows its case is hopeless, and it just gave Assange's team a clue. No doubt the defence is going to latch on the omission of this video, and it will prolong the proceedings - meaning they can keep Julian in limbo longer, and continue to subject him to the depravities of Belmarsh at their discretion.
It isn't a binary choice between everything published is either legal or illegal. He could have published some legally and some illegally. People can view this specific video as being published legally while other information was published illegally and therefore only the illegally published information is covered in the indictment.
The US Government, by omitting this video from evidence, is making a tacit admittance that he is a publisher.
(He is a journalist and this trial is a sham.)
This doesn't, at all, follow.
> Either he IS a journalist/publisher and thus protected from prosecution for revealing evidence of real crimes
Not if he himself committed crimes to get the evidence.
Why would you expect the prosecution to make the defense case?
The Pentagon Papers were 4,100 pages. Not every single one of them was individually proof of a war crime. Imagine the US government sued Daniel Ellsberg for the publication of all the parts of the papers that didn't explicitly prove war crimes, but skipped the bits that proved them - that's the equivalent of what is happening here.
Assange defenders seem to often point to his good deeds as an excuse to ignore his misdeeds. The law doesn't and shouldn't work like that.
That is your opinion but its not the truth. Wikileaks own manifesto states:
WikiLeaks is a multi-national media organization and associated library. It was founded by its publisher Julian Assange in 2006.
WikiLeaks specializes in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption. It has so far published more than 10 million documents and associated analyses.
War, spying and corruption.
And, that is precisely what it has done: exposed war, spying and corruption.
But those aren't the only things governments want kept secret.
It is also worth noting that revealing war crimes, spying, and corruption is possible with a more targeted approach rather than Wikileaks approach of publishing large batches of semi-related documents. This shotgun approach seems to be done in service of overall transparency rather than revealing the specific wrongdoings that Wikileaks claims it is against. Hence my comment that they seem to care more about revealing secrets in general than specifically war crimes.
Wikileaks is not a judiciary body. It never had any intention other than to provide an ill-informed public (remember, the Iraq war was predicated on a lie) with enough data to make its own conclusion. Your authoritarian stance that only the government can decide its own secrets is fundamentally corrupt to the idea of a free, open society.
Also you are reading a lot into my comments. I have never said anything approaching "only the government can decide its own secrets". My belief is simply that secrets are not inherently bad. Revealing a state secret should only be done when the person publishing that information can point to a public good that will result from that information being revealed. How does knowing lunch orders from random DNC employees help reveal war crimes, corruption, or spying?
>How does knowing lunch orders from random DNC employees help reveal war crimes, corruption, or spying?
Right, corruption never happens during lunchtime.
The famous case that got decided on its merits around the Pentagon Papers was the case against the New York Times and Washington Post, and even that only really narrowly deals with prior restraint and not the actual right to publish the documents (so it left the door open to just prosecuting them after the fact).
Popular opinion is in Ellsberg's corner but the law itself is much trickier. It's another of those things that are often being revealed nowadays as things people believe are bedrock principles of American law that are really more of "conventions," things that just aren't done, until they are.
Assange is an even more interesting case, since his position really puts him more in the position of the Times or Post as a publisher. My recollection is that to a significant extent the case hinges upon characterizing his actions as being more of an active participant in the leaking to try to sidestep the freedom of the press issue to some extent.
Right. I was trying emphasize the "all the parts of the papers that didn't explicitly prove war crimes, but skipped the bits that proved them" part. In other words, once you remove the known-bad bits then what is left seems innocuous and so it's much harder to prove that a specific leak was a "good" thing.
The intent here seems clear: the US wants to ensure Wikileaks isn't allowed to talk about the actual evidence of warcrimes at the trial. They will claim that because Wikileaks isn't being charged with leaking THOSE documents, they are not relevant.
The video is but one of those secret military materials. No need to include it in the indictment and risk debates or scrutiny on it, it's much more efficient to select bulletproof documents that show beyond doubt that he acted improperly.. of which there are already thousands.
Are there? Got a reference to some of these bulletproof documents?
EDIT: crickets ..
There IS evidence that a LOT of American lives were put in danger by the war crimes and other crimes against humanity committed in their name.
Basically, every single American alive today is in danger as a result of the war crimes for which they are responsible as citizens of the USA. Invading Iraq put every single American in much more dire danger than Wikileaks ever could.
There are several venues for trying “war crime” cases, this is not one of them. I think if anybody really cared about the journalists who died you’d see lawfare leveraging UCMJ, but I’ve yet to see that. Seems the outrage is rather performative.
This is why publishers are important and should be protected. The Wests' citizens have been utterly scammed into complicity with these crimes against humanity - the imperative to mis-inform, and thus divert the outrage potential, is very, very high in this case.
Whether that is an apt analogy and whether this "failure to mention" represents a deficiency in an indictment is perhaps best left to the reader.
The prosecutors are absolutely right to prosecute the thief, but upon discovering that I had the handgun used in a crime they really should look into that too.
Sure, the prosecutors can and should refer the case of the smoking gun to their colleagues from a crime unit.
But the thief still goes to prison for stealing cash, jewellery and electronics.