And Another Thing.

Is that Frontline may have revived a story that had sunk from view, even for many of the WikiLeaks/Julian/Manning partisans.

When Manning was transferred to Ft. Leavenworth and his attorney said that his treatment would be far better than it had been at Quantico, almost all the steam went out of the "Free Bradley Manning" movement, much as running Julian to ground in Britain and putting him up at his supporter's country estate for the duration slowed the pace of and changed the focus of WikiLeaks leaks, and it had the effect of quieting the WikiLeaks/Julian partisans.

As many have noted, Julian's threats to leak the contents of a bank executive's hard drive, threats that seemed to have precipitated the all-out hunt for him and his subsequent surrender in London, never materialized.

Were deals made? Who knows?

The Frontline piece and its supporting materials online serves as an introduction to the story for those who haven't been following it closely, but it is far from complete -- something I think its producers will readily acknowledge -- and the followup, if there is any, could be quite extended. But the question is, why, when the story was on the verge of disappearing altogether, would Frontline choose to bring it up again and get the partisans all riled up over their "hatchet job?"

Are we witnessing those wheels within wheels again? Another false flag episode?

Designed to do what?

Can we put this into some kind of overall context?

Manning's father made an interesting comment in the post-show chat (in which both David House and Julian Assange claimed to participate.)

1:15


FRONTLINE:
Here's a question from Reddit user Clansky:
Do you think there is any hope Bradley will be released? Or do you think he'll be there forever? And to Brian, do you agree with what your son did?
1:16


Marcela Gaviria/Martin Smith:
Anything’s possible, but the prosecution’s case appears quite strong. Investigators say that that they have matched Manning’s computer to Lamo’s, verifying the authenticity of the chats. To be acquitted Manning’s lawyer would somehow have to prove that Manning had been framed and his computer had been tampered with.
1:17


Brian Manning:
I hope so as I do not think he was the leak.
1:17


Brian Manning:
I would not agree with anyone doing such acts.

"I do not think he was the leak."

Huh. The assumption is that Bradley Manning must be the leaker; he confessed in an online chat (via AOL!) with Adrian Lamo that he did the deed and was proud of it, and almost all his partisans (including the iconic Daniel Ellsberg) hail him a Hero for doing so. War crimes were revealed! Wars were brought to a screeching halt. HILLARY was embarrassed!!!!

Oh?

Actually no.

Not at all. If anything, there are more wars and more plans for more Imperial wars of aggression than before the releases from WikiLeaks. There have been no war crimes trials -- for Americans and their allies and mercenaries in the field -- and the extermination of the innocent continues apace, with or without bin Laden to justify it.

As for Hillary, so?

As I said at the time of its release, the "Collateral Murder" video that got the ball rolling on high-profiling the WikiLeaks/Manning matter was put into constant rotation on all the teevee news, to the point of saturation (much as the Mavi Marara video from the Israelis would be later), and the actions of the Death From Above helicopter squad that were shown over and over again were praised, not condemned, by the American people who saw the tapes -- actually they couldn't avoid them. Which I assumed was the point of showing the video in the first place: first, that they couldn't avoid it, and second that they would be filled with pride at the actions of their brave soldiers.

When I pointed out that the Pentagon had long been proudly releasing videos showing other similar exterminations so their "outrage" at the release of this one rang very hollow indeed, I was greeted with confusion to say the least. The Narrative was set by that time: WikiLeaks and Julian and whoever leaked the video were heroes documenting war crimes. Americans never would have known this was happening if it hadn't been for such heroes!

Well, except for the dozens of similar gun camera videos that the Pentagon had already released showing similar -- and in some cases even more gruesome -- slaughters of people on the ground -- I guess that's right. Except for that, the American People couldn't possibly have known this was going on.

For cripes sake, they knew -- and they loved it.

The "Collateral Murder" video had the same effect. But arguing that's the case when the Narrative says just the opposite -- that it revealed War Crimes most foul and the American People didn't know this was going on, and when they found out, they Turned Against the War(s)™ -- even though the empirical evidence says otherwise-- was generally met with either blank stares or active hostility and denunciation.

Because the implication was that the Pentagon was playing a game with the public here, and WikiLeaks wasn't what it purported to be. It might even be a false-flag/black op itself.

As more and more of the supposed Manning material was released -- the War Logs and then the State Department Cables -- it seemed more and more clear to me and some other observers that this whole thing was a highly engineered operation, by and for whom being the question.

In the aggregate, the War Logs didn't reveal much at all. They were too cryptic to be comprehended by civilians. They had to be selected and interpreted by The Media (which is a whole other issue) in order to be understood, and most of what they documented was routine, while many of the sensational events in the Logs had already been extensively reported, mostly in the same manner (though not in the same cryptic style) as they were reported to superiors in the Logs. The Logs made the Ragheads out to be far worse than had been previously reported. But are the Logs truthful? The problem with this kind of raw intelligence -- for that's what it is -- is that you don't know what's true and what's not, and it takes a very knowledgeable hand to sort through all the crap. There were and are very few such hands around.

The State Department Cables caused an international flap, to be sure, but it seems to have blown over nicely and Hillary is out there doing her job as if little or nothing had happened.

And they touched off the Arab Spring, and they got bin Laden, so what's the problem?

Actually, there isn't one -- at least not for our rulers. Is there?

This whole thing is very much Emmanuel Goldstein-esque -- which is why skeptics of many stripes refuse to take it at face value.

What is really going on is not something we can easily suss out.

The question, nevertheless, is what motivated Frontline to reopen the matter now? And who, ultimately, was behind it?

"I have QUESTIONS to ask!!!" Jiang Qing in "Madame Mao" by Thérèse Radic, 1986