Robert Scheer: All the WikiLeaks Fit to Print

[marmar]

from truthdig:




All the WikiLeaks Fit to Print

Posted on Apr 26, 2011
By Robert Scheer


There is a craven disconnect between the eagerness of leading editors to exploit the important news revealed by WikiLeaks and their efforts to distance themselves from both the courageous website and Bradley Manning, the alleged source of documents posted there. Alleged is required when referring to the Army private so as not to repeat the egregious error of a constitutional-law-professor-turned-president who has already presumed Manning guilty of crimes for which he is not even formally charged.

“He broke the law,” President Barack Obama said of Manning by way of countering his own supporters at a San Francisco fundraiser who dared question the conditions of Manning’s imprisonment. Conditions that Human Rights Watch challenged as “extremely restrictive and possibly punitive and degrading.” Manning was transferred last week to a Kansas prison from Quantico, Va., where for months he had been subjected to shackling, forced nudity, isolation and other harsh treatment—all of which was justified by the government as necessary to prevent him from committing suicide. Clearly the feds were trying to break the man.

Why indeed is Manning the one behind bars and not the government officials who kept hidden unpleasant truths about this nation’s policies that the public has a right to know? And why do leaders of our constitutionally protected free press now seek to distance themselves from news sources that have performed a great public service? A service documented by the fact, as tallied by The Atlantic magazine, that more than half of the issues of The New York Times this year have carried stories that relied on WikiLeaks’ disclosures.

That is the case with the latest batch of releases. A New York Times editorial on Tuesday titled “The Guantanamo Papers” states that the newly leaked documents are “a chilling reminder of the legal and moral disaster that President George W. Bush created” at the U.S. prison in Cuba but does not credit Manning or WikiLeaks as the source. Instead the editorial refers to a Sunday New York Times front-page news story headed “Classified Files Offer New Insights Into Detainees.” While conceding that WikiLeaks originally obtained the documents, the paper insists they were “provided to The Times by another source.” But shouldn’t we then conclude that WikiLeaks and its alleged source deserve immense credit for revelations about the Guantanamo operation that, as the Times news story put it, resulted in “laying bare the patchwork and contradictory evidence that in many cases would never have stood up in criminal court or a military tribunal”? ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/all_the_wikileaks_fit_to_print_20110426/

[MasonJar]

1. Why indeed? I think we all here at DU know the answer.