Wikileaks Whistleblower is Arrested

The NYTimes is report­ing that a mil­i­tary ana­lyst who leaked the “Col­lat­er­al Mur­der” videos to Wik­ileaks has been arrested. 

atwar-wikileaks-blogSpanIf you missed the leaks at the time, you can watch them at Col​lat​eral​Mur​der​.com. They are videos tak­en from the gun-sights of US heli­copters, com­plete with the com­men­tary from mil­i­tary per­son­nel fir­ing down into the Iraqi neigh­bor­hoods below them. The videos cap­ture the killing of civil­ians, includ­ing two Reuters jour­nal­ists. They show just how imper­son­al mur­der has become. This is a video game war and there’s no real con­se­quence to shoot­ing the wrong tar­get from thou­sands of feet away.

The arrest­ed sol­dier is Spe­cial­ist Bradley Man­ning, 22, of Potomac, Md. Motives for leak­ing the videos are unre­port­ed at this time, but one would sus­pect they include a moral revul­sion to what the Amer­i­can war has become. The war has large­ly been fought out of sight. Man­ning has helped give us a glimpse of what’s hap­pen­ing. It’s hor­rif­ic in its banal­i­ty but so is the war in Iraq.

3 thoughts on “Wikileaks Whistleblower is Arrested

  1. Jere­my says, Thank you Mar­tin, we really
    must keep these things in mind, and try
    to act upon them.
    Please send me your postal address so
    I can send a lit­tle check for QuakerQuaker.
    Please don’t pub­lish the e‑mail address.

  2. As the rev­e­la­tion Jesus’ life, death and res­ur­rec­tion brought works like yeast in the world war becomes more and more con­fus­ing. We can’t live with it yet we can’t live with the con­se­quences of not hav­ing it. Jesus said that his com­ing would bring a sword not peace. As more and more peo­ple with­draw from wag­ing war the more vio­lent the world becomes. Ter­ror­ism is vio­lence tak­en to a new extreme.

    The snip­pet of war in “Col­lat­er­al Mur­der” hard­ly tells the whole sto­ry nor does the trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ence of the sol­dier who pulled the chil­dren from a truck that was hit.

    What was it that Jesus revealed? What does it mean to have a table set for us in the midst of our ene­my? What was the joy set before Jesus as he went to the cross?

    Diane

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