FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Elliott Adams (518) 441-2697
OBAMA DECLARES MANNING GUILTY BEFORE TRIAL
CAN MILITARY OFFICERS JUDGE HIM IMPARTIALLY AND CONTRADICT THEIR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF?
President Barack Obama said on April 21 that PFC Bradley Manning "broke the law." This statement casts serious doubt on whether Manning can receive a fair trial from officers subordinate to Obama, their Commander-in-Chief.
"Members of the military are trained to follow orders. President Obama is the commander of all armed forces," said Elliott Adams, president of Veterans For Peace. "Any officer who wants to advance in his military career would be wise not to contradict their commander-in-chief, especially after the military's brutal treatment of Manning this past year. The President seems to have forgotten what he taught his constitutional law classes about being innocent until proven guilty."
The government has already violated Bradley Manning's due process rights by keeping him in pretrial solitary confinement for nearly a year and the President bears ultimate responsibility for the abusive treatment Manning has endured since July 2010 at Quantico Marine Base, and possibly before that in Kuwait. He has been confined to a 6-by-12-foot cell for 23 hours a day, prevented from sleeping during the day, denied exercise, woken up constantly, given limited access to books and writing materials, stripped at night and forced to endure inspection naked, and deprived of his eyeglasses. Many mental health professionals characterize this as psychological torture. President Obama could have stopped this mistreatment at any time with one phone call.
The President made another critical misstatement in his comments. He claimed that Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, was less culpable because the documents he leaked were "not classified in the same way." In fact, the Pentagon Papers were classified at the highest level of secrecy while the WikiLeaks documents were at the lowest level.
"It's time to free Bradley Manning and pin a medal on the man. He has already been punished beyond constitutional limits and now President Obama has made a fair trial impossible," said Leah Bolger, vice-president of Veterans For Peace. "If indeed he's the one who released those documents, he is a hero for blowing the whistle on war crimes and other misbehavior by U.S. officials."
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