JULIAN ASSANGE, the WikiLeaks founder, was arrested yesterday inside Ecuador’s Embassy in London, where he had lived since 2012 under diplomatic protection. Assange was arrested not just for breach of bail conditions in the United Kingdom, but also in relation to an American extradition request. The warrant was for allegedly conspiring with Chelsea Manning to leak documents in 2010.
It was 9 years ago, on April 5, 2010, that Wikileaks released a video with transcripts and other documents that showed laughing American troops machine-gunning civilians (including two journalists) from helicopters. Three months later, on July 6, 2010, US Army Private Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, a 22 year old intelligence analyst with the United States Army in Baghdad, was charged with providing that video to Wikileaks.
The significance of the Wikileaks release has always been that the U.S. military attempted to hide the incident, to keep it secret, and they lied about it. The official statement initially listed all adult victims as insurgents and claimed the US military did not know how they were killed. Lies.
The attack on civilians occurred three years before WikiLeaks released the "Collateral Murder" video. Three years in which no one in the mainstream media showed any interest at all in collecting and disclosing information about those murders. In three years, the US military focused solely on covering up the act.
No one in the US military leadership or in the US mainstream media – no one – would ever have stood up and acted honorably. No one. You can take that to the bank. They all failed to do their jobs. It was necessary for someone else to do their jobs for them. Pure and simple: We owe Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning.
The reputation of Americans depends, today, on a wide acceptance of lies, and contempt for the truth ... what does that say about the nation? It says everything.
