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Army private offers guilty plea in WikiLeaks case

FORT MEADE, Md. - The U.S. Army private charged with sending reams of government secrets to WikiLeaks is offering to plead guilty to some offenses.

Pfc. Bradley Manning's civilian defense attorney, David Coombs, revealed the offer Wednesday during a pretrial hearing at Fort Meade. The hearing continues Thursday.

Coombs says Manning isn't pleading guilty to the offenses charged by the government. Rather, he's offering to take responsibility for less serious offenses that are encapsulated within the charged crimes.

Even if the court accepts the offer, military prosecutors could still try to prove Manning guilty of the more serious charges. They include aiding the enemy, punishable by life imprisonment.

Coombs also says Manning has elected to be tried by a military judge, not a jury, at his trial in February.

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Three U.S. servicemen who had tried to halt the My Lai massacre and protect the wounded were initially denounced by several U.S. Congressmen as traitors in an attempt to cover up the massacre. They received hate mail and death threats and found mutilated animals on their doorsteps. The three were later widely praised and decorated by the army for their heroic actions.

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Tom Glen, a 21-year-old soldier of the 11th Light Infantry Brigade, wrote a letter to General Creighton Abrams, the new overall commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, accusing the Americal Division (and other units of the U.S. military) of routine and pervasive brutality against Vietnamese civilians. The letter was detailed and its contents echoed complaints received from other soldiers.

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Independently of Glen, Ronald Ridenhour, a former member of the 11th Infantry Brigade, sent a letter in March 1969 to thirty members of Congress imploring them to investigate the circumstances surrounding the "Pinkville" incident. Ridenhour had learned about the events at M? Lai secondhand from talking to members of Charlie Company over a period of months beginning in April 1968. He became convinced that something "rather dark and bloody did indeed occur" at M? Lai, and was so disturbed by the tales he heard that within three months of being discharged from the Army he penned his concerns to Congress. Most recipients of Ridenhour's letter ignored it, with the exception of Congressman Mo Udall and Senators Barry Goldwater and Edward Brooke. Udall urged the House Armed Services Committee to call on Pentagon officials to conduct an investigation.

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Has something happened to our country and our military where suddenly a majority swings more towards calling traitor when someone exposes a military coverup of warcrimes, instead of a minority? I have to say, the comparison of the mindsets is very troubling. It's almost as though we now condone war crimes as a means to justify the ends, and anyone who questions it is deemed a menace.

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