He released tens of thousands of secret documents that highlighted the fact the USA knew it was breaking the Law of War.
One of the first releases and the one that got him arrested was the video showing a US Apache helicopter gunning down and killing unarmed civilians which is again a breach of the Law of War:
Would you kindly point out precisely which part of the various directives and agreements the actions depicted in the first three-quarters of the Collateral Murder video violate?
(You have seen the uncut video, right? It's forty minutes long. If not, I strongly recommend that you watch it. It gives a slightly different impression of what happened.)
Anyway, I understand the need to be angry about heinous acts. However, I've discovered that when one plays the "What laws or regulations does this heinous act violate?" game, one somewhat frequently finds that the act in question does not violate the letter of the relevant laws or regulations. Similarly, when one examines footage that has not been edited for emotional punch, one often reaches a different conclusion about the events pictured.
Now, I’m no expert in the Law of War, so I will leave that to the lawyers.
But to me that looks like an attack on a civilian population. Considering the fact two children were also nearly killed in the attack, that adds more weight to that point of view.
> I strongly recommend that you watch it. It gives a slightly different impression of what happened.
If you think there is compelling, evidence somewhere on that 40 minute video feel free to present it.
> I strongly recommend that you watch it.
To be honest, just watching those two minutes makes me sick to the stomach. All I’m seeing is an act of barbarism.
However, this is not so much about a video and trying to determine who is right and who is wrong.
This is about a much a bigger question.
Is it right and proper for governments to suppression the truth from its people?
Reuters lost two reporters in that engagement, so naturally they asked the US Military for details as to what actually happened.
The US Military came back with the standard reply, something along the lines of:
We reviewed video of the incident and from that it’s clear the reporters were caught up in an armed conflict between the US Army and a hostile enemy.
Reuters then asked to see the video but the US Military declined the request.
If the video of the engagement (all 40 minutes of it if you like) is so compelling, why did they outright refuse to release it?
What right did the US Military have to suppress the release of the video?
Fortunately for us, Manning did release the video, so the truth did come out.
Unfortunately, for the US government and the US military, the truth is sometimes ugly and it is that ugly truth they were trying so desperately hard to suppress.
This last decade has seen the US government (not unlike most other governments) get into the bad habit of hiding the truth.
Look at how they desperately try to make examples of people like Manning, Snowden and Assange, it the hope that it will somehow deter others from letting the truth be know.
You based your reply to me on a quote that was deliberately taken out of context. Because of that, I'm not going to engage with you extensively. I see that your answer to the question that I actually asked is "I don't know what Rules of War they violated, if any, but I really like saying that Rules Were Violated, as it lends an air of authority and gravitas to my opinions.".
I feel that war is heinous, and a tool of last resort (right after "We've tried every other reasonable option, let's just do nothing and see how that turns out." is seriously considered and maybe tried for a while).
You seem to be unable to rationally think about situations that involve the killing of other humans. In order to analyze such situations, you have to temporarily suppress your visceral disgust for the situation and think about the facts of the particular situation.
In this particular situation you had one or two guys carrying what appeared to be RPGs, travelling with other men armed with RPGs and rifles near the area where US troops recently reported coming under RPG fire. Those folks were killed by people employed to kill (when deemed necessary), in order to prevent the injury or death of US troops. The van that arrived was removing enemy wounded or dead. If the occupants of that van had been successful, the folks who seemed to be involved in rocket attacks on US soldiers would be taken away and nursed back to health in an environment that would allow them to get back to firing RPGs at US soldiers. So, the van, and its occupants was destroyed.
It's a pity that there were children in the van. I can understand that calculus that lead to the caretakers of those children endangering them in the way that they did. I cannot say that those caretakers made the wrong call.
The Reuters reporters were operating in an active war zone, and travelling with armed members of enemy forces. It's a pity that they died, but that is a risk that they probably would have readily acknowledged that they were taking.
Reuters was likely denied access to the gunsight video in part because it corroborates the Pentagon's assessment of the situation, and in part because the Army isn't in the habit of handing out gunsight footage to interested non-military parties.
So, seriously. Suppress your visceral disgust for the situation, take forty minutes out of your life and watch the full-length gunsight video. It paints the situation in a different light. Whenever you feel yourself saying "What! How could they do that? That's clearly unreasonable!", pause the video, think carefully and critically about the situation revealed thus far, and maybe go back and review the last twenty or so seconds to ensure that what you thought you saw couldn't reasonably be seen in another way.
Also, stop misquoting people. I don't know why you think that that's a reasonable thing to do, but it reflects very poorly on everything that you have to say.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_war
From the prespecitve of the treatment of POWs Gitmo breaks most of those:
http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/powerpoint/Military_Ju...
From the prepective of civilians in war zones, some of the tactics used in Iraq broke those:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/721819/law-of-war/...