[ExI] Manning and Assange

Keith Henson hkeithhenson at gmail.com
Fri Aug 24 03:45:44 UTC 2012


On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 5:42 PM,  "spike" <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>
> On 22 August 2012 19:04, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>.It's not that clear cut.  The oath (undertaking) for military service
> requires you to obey *lawful* orders.  If a military superior ordered
> you to keep quiet about a murder is that a lawful order?
>
> No!  Not even close.
>
> I have a colleague who related the story of something that happened when he
> was in the navy.

> My colleague who was a 19 yr old Seaman 3rd, was near panic, seeing a Seaman
> First arguing with a First Lieutenant, which can be interpreted as mutiny.
> He didn't know what to do, so he opened a comm line to the bridge, so the
> Old Man was up there listening to all this, with the Lieutenant angrily
> telling the tech to shut up.

snip, (an inspired solution!)
>
> So the point of all this is that a soldier or sailor must recognize the
> difference between legal orders and illegal ones.  To witness a war crime
> and not report it is a war crime.
>
"Collateral Murder" should be easy to find.  If you can't, I know
people who can get you a pointer to it.  The description was so awful
that I never watched the whole thing, so I don't have complete first
hand knowledge about it.   Manning saw it, rated it as a war crime and
knew it was being covered up by authorities much higher than he could
reach, so he got someone to make it public, a possibly inspired
solution, at least it got a lot of attention, somewhat like opening
the intercomm line to the bridge.

Because of what Manning did, you can watch it yourself and decide if
the gunship engaged in a war crime and make the judgment if Manning
was obligated to make it public since people far up the chain were
trying to keep what he thought of as a war crime under wraps.

Keith



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