Biased BBC contributor Alan observes;
“Mark Mardell joins the chorus of BBC voices vouching for the integrity of Bradley Manning, accused of leaking (should that be stealing ?) massive amounts of US intelligence material.
It seemed yesterday on the Today programme that as with the UK ‘residents’ who were enjoying a stay at a Cuban detention centre the BBC were determined to get British political figures involved in the defence of Manning…..he had a Welsh mother, went to school in Wales for a bit…..Cameron must do something!
Mardell tells us of his trial that:
‘I doubt whether the defence lawyer really has high hopes of getting a more favourable investigating officer, one who will dismiss the case, deeming it not worthy of a court-martial. Instead, it seems he is making his case to the world that this is not a fair trial.’
So not worthy of a court martial…and even if it was it won’t be a fair trial.
It is strange that Mardell shows so much interest in the US judicial system and yet he missed this story from a couple of days back (and I don’t think the BBC covered it at all in fact) about the Blessed and Best Beloved Obama locking up Americans without trial in Guantanamo:
‘Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay. Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing.
The law, contained in the defence authorisation bill that funds the US military, effectively extends the battlefield in the “war on terror” to the US and applies the established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention. The law’s critics describe it as a draconian piece of legislation that extends the reach of detention without trial to include US citizens arrested in their own country.
“It’s something so radical that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration,” said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch”‘
Perhaps there’s an election coming up?