Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott.
Our next guest on the show is the great Kevin Zeese.
He's the director of ComeHomeAmerica.us and is on the steering committee of the Bradley Manning Support Network.
He's the executive director and co-founder of Voters for Peace as well.
Welcome back to the show, Kevin.
How are you?
Great, great.
Thanks for having me on again.
Thanks for calling.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
I'm also very happy that you're helping with Bradley Manning's support network.
Why don't you tell everybody about Bradley Manning and that support network before we get into the new news.
Well, Bradley Manning's support network has been around almost since the time Manning was arrested and we've been working very hard to put his side of the story out.
You can get involved at bradleymanning.org and we've been raising money for his legal defense as well as for advocacy work in support of Manning and we've been pretty successful getting a lot of people involved and we've been seeing it growing greatly in recent months.
Demonstrations are getting bigger.
There's more all around the country.
We're seeing demonstrations now developing in Kansas, outside of Fort Leavenworth.
Things are really happening and we're up against a very challenging situation because the Pentagon and the White House and the State Department see this guy as a traitor when in fact I think he's a patriot if he did what he was accused of.
He may not have been guilty, he's never acknowledged any guilt, but if he did what he was accused of, all he did was release documents to the American people that we know what our foreign policy is really about and it's not a pretty picture and that's why the Pentagon is treating him so badly.
Yeah, well, you know, there's so much to go over there.
Let's go and people ought to already know this, but maybe they don't.
Maybe they're brand spankin' new and they don't know.
But is it or is it not the case, true or false, yes or no, that at Wired.com where they printed, you know, posted what are said to be the transcripts of the chats between Bradley Manning, the alleged leaker, and Adrian Lamo, the rat, he explains in specific detail why he did it and therefore good, honest, whistleblower reasons.
These are unverified chat logs, we don't know the whole story, only partial chat logs, we don't have all the context, but what the chat logs indicate is that, in fact, Lamo, I like to call him Lamo, but Lamo, you know, he urged Bradley to, why don't you sell these documents, make lots of money, you know?
And Manning's response allegedly was that he thought this was in the public domain, he believed in transparency, and he thought that this would be something that could start discussions in the United States about our foreign policy.
He went to the military believing in the cause, he thought the U.S. military was a positive force in the world, and he got there and allegedly saw things that were war crimes and criminal behavior all the way up to Hillary Clinton ordering diplomats to become spies, including spying illegally on people at the U.N.
So, you know, the chat logs indicate this is not someone who's out for his own profit, he didn't sell these to Iran or an enemy, he gave, allegedly gave, he's accused of giving them to the media, and so that Americans would get the information.
And so I think that, to me, is more patriotic, because what he's trying to do is, if he did this, he's trying to create a more perfect union, which is in the preamble of our Constitution, that we strive to be a more perfect union, and information about what our government's really doing is critical to making that possible.
Right.
Well, you know, it's amazing to me, Kevin, honestly, how well they've been able to, you know, impugn this guy.
I mean, they really couldn't come up with any smear about him other than, oh, well, he was weak and he didn't really fit in with us tough guys in the Army, or something.
They really didn't have anything else bad to say about him other than that kind of thing, which doesn't seem like it would go very far.
And then, just like he said, you know, he not only was reading about war crimes and spying and illegal things, he was ordered to participate in them, and Iraq was, according to those chat logs, anyway, was what turned him in the first place and made him decide to do this.
And it just seems like pretty much anyone, even if you love the state and love the Pentagon and love the wars, would still, you know, believe in that basic American idea that we have to have the truth in order to decide what the right policy is, even if you're for the Afghan war.
How best do we fight it?
Do we leave it up to Barack Obama, or do we have a public discussion about how smart is it to back Hamid Karzai, or to keep cooperating with the Pakistanis in Pakistan who are working against us in Afghanistan, or whatever it is?
Exactly right.
I think information should be more open.
We tend to, you know, the United States tends to keep way too much secret, you know, millions and millions of documents a year kept secret.
I'm sure most of them don't need to be.
They tend to keep it in the dark.
And I'm not surprised that they, you know, the corporate media, which is so closely tied to the security state, has put out the Pentagon line.
What surprises me is how effective we've been in breaking through that.
Glenn Greenwald had a great column a couple days ago about the recent transfer of man into Fort Leavenworth, and he pointed out that we may have created a template for how to make change in this country.
And the template is independent movements working with independent media.
And that broke through the corporate media misinformation to get out the facts, the facts about Hamid Karzai's mistreatment, essentially his torture, being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, one hour being chained and allowed to go to another room to do figure eights as his exercise, you know, walking in figure eights as his exercise, you know, and much more mistreatment than that, but that gives you a little sketch of it for months and months and months, almost a year now, combined with Quantico in the Middle East before him being brought to trial, certainly not found guilty of anything.
He's been held in solitary confinement.
And we will break through that, and a story that, you know, even eight years ago the corporate media would have been able to hide under the rug and Manning would become a forgotten soldier.
But the combination of our independent movement, people like Glenn Greenwald doing independent reporting, people like The Guardian reporting on it, people like working on their Facebook pages and on blogs and websites, Antiwar Radio reporting on it, Antiwar.com reporting on it, all this stuff adds up to getting information out beyond the corporate media and creating enough of a base of people who are aware that we can take action and do something.
And as we did that, it broadened the base of the U.S. Reportier, the U.S. investigator on torture.
You know, Tritus C. Manning, an official visit, was denied.
Dennis Kucinich, Tritus C. Manning, was denied.
Amnesty International, Tritus C. Manning, they were denied.
We had 250 academics writing a public letter chiding President Obama for his treatment of Manning.
We made the point constantly, we had the refrain that Obama could change this with one phone call.
We put the pressure on Obama.
I think finally Obama reacted, and this came down from the top.
This transfer didn't happen because Quantico wanted to get rid of him.
They were enjoying their torture, it would seem like.
And so this is a victory for all of us, and it's a sign that we can have an impact.
Now, we don't think that the deed is done yet.
You know, we still need to monitor what happens in the new prison in Fort Leavenworth, but it's a much better appropriate prison for him.
It's an Army prison rather than a Marine prison.
It's a prison designed for pretrial detainees.
There was talk about him being able to, you know, have lunch with the other prisoners and being part of the population there, not being kept alone, getting three hours a day of outside air and exercise.
He hasn't seen the sun, you know, since he's been incarcerated in Quantico.
So these are major potential victories, and we need to keep on them to make sure it happens that way.
But we are being effective, and that's what people should know.
And if they want to be part of this movement to support Manning, it's the United States versus one guy, Bradley Manning.
Get involved.
Bradleymanning.org.
Bradleymanning.org.
Get involved and sign up so you can be part of future events, and you can help support Manning to raise money for his defense and for his advocacy, because we are up against the corporate media and the corporate government and the Defense Department and the White House who all want to see Manning punished aggressively, even though I think most of us who look at this see what he's accused of doing as really being heroic.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, you're absolutely right that, well, for example, Glenn Greenwald really broke the story.
Instead of a blog, it was really, you know, his own original news reporting there about the treatment of Manning that got this whole thing going.
And then, you know, yeah, it doesn't matter to the talking heads on TV, but it matters to so many of us in the alternative media.
We, you know, I guess together are powerful enough to, you know, really help carry the movement forward, as you say.
And the proof is in the pudding.
Last night, the emperor was humiliated when pro-Manning supporters interrupted and heckled his speech in San Francisco.
So, you know, it's hard work, but we're making progress, as George Bush used to like to say, I think.
Yeah.
Well, I think we're having an interesting time in American history in that we're seeing the corporate media, which is at the lowest level of its credibility ever.
Every poll consistently shows there's a lack of trust in the corporate media.
They don't think they're getting the full...
People are not getting the full story, and there are so many examples of that happening where we're giving misinformation rather than real information.
And I don't care whether it's MSNBC, the Democratic Party station, or whether it's Fox News, the Republican Party station, or CNN that stays in the middle, but they all, you know, will minimize the truth on some key issues.
And at the same time, we're seeing that the shrinking and the lack of credibility of the corporate media, we're seeing the growth of the new democratized media, where people have more ability to provide information about activities of big corporations, about government anonymously, through various techniques on the web, whether it's WikiLeaks or LocalLeaks or other outlets.
And then that information gets published on independent media outlets, and all of us become media channels, whether it's doing podcasts or using our Facebook as a publication where we can, you know, publish articles that we want people to see that they may not have seen.
We can have discussions with people about these and what they need, or we can tweet things on Twitter, you know, blogs and websites.
I mean, the democratized media is growing, where we all can become media outlets and reporters and commentators.
And as that grows, and I think WikiLeaks is at the forefront of this, by the way.
I think that the model of WikiLeaks that Julian Assange has developed is at the forefront of this, and it leads to more transparency in government, which democratizes our government in ways that hasn't happened in a long time.
What Badly Manning is accused of is putting out information that the corporate media would not have.
For example, that collateral murder video that he was first accused of leaking, the Washington Post had that for a year and didn't share it, and he wouldn't have shared it.
And so the fact that this information got to WikiLeaks in whatever way it did and was published, you know, showed people the reality of what U.S. war is about, which, you know, wantonly killing civilians.
And I was at an event last night with Ethan McCord, who was one of the first soldiers on the scene after that collateral murder video occurred, and he was there to clean up the mess they made.
And he said this kind of stuff was routine.
This happened all the time.
This is not one rotten apple, it's a rotten barrel.
And the whole system needs to be changed.
And so that's why, if Badly Manning leaked all those documents, he provided the context for Americans to see the whole picture of how our foreign policy operates, whether it's the military or State Department, and what we're really doing with oligarchs and dictators and royalists around the world, and what our military does regarding torture and killing of civilians.
Well, you know, it seems to me that now that I think about it, actually, it just occurred to me, Kevin, that really the stuff that Manning leaked was the perfect cache of stuff, right?
It was confidential and secret level stuff.
I mean, we'd all like to have the most top secret, right?
But then that would, obviously, you know, the war party would have much more ammunition to talk about sources and methods and individuals compromised and really be able to call him a traitor.
What we have instead is this huge cache of documents, the Iraq and Afghan war logs, the State Department cables.
This is assuming the accusations are correct and that this kid is my hero.
And what this stuff does is it paints a perfect picture of American foreign policy in a way that doesn't compromise a bunch of sources and methods and get a bunch of people killed.
It just tells us the truth that, yes, Bush did force the Ethiopians to invade Somalia for us in 2006.
Hey, look, everybody, Ahmadinejad wanted to deal more than anyone else.
And the fact that Obama wouldn't negotiate honestly with him is what undermined his position and thwarted a nuclear deal.
Hey, look over here at support for the military in Honduras.
Hey, look over here at, you know, reports between State Department people about the torture state in Egypt and on and on.
It's the perfect stuff.
It's exactly what we needed to know without being, you know, going so far that they could really get away with hanging him.
It was actually like kind of almost a grassroots leak because it showed the raw material from low-level secret documents, the daily occurrences of diplomacy and military activity.
And so we got to see a real glimpse of what goes on without the filter of the analysts at the higher level.
Now, I'm sure that would be very interesting to see the top secret stuff.
You know, I've been wondering lately, for example, has Obama seen the report on oil that Cheney kept secret?
I wonder, you know, because, you know, the policies Obama's pursuing are, you know, they could easily be, you know, defined as corporate oil policies.
But you could also say maybe he saw some report that Cheney had that showed that oil is really running out, that the economy is in serious trouble because of it, and we need to get all oil we can, all gas we can from anywhere in the world.
And maybe that explains why the militarism is going on.
But we, you know.
So, you know, it would be interesting to get those kind of documents, too, but the raw intelligence, the low-level intelligence, almost like grassroots intelligence, so we get a real clear glimpse of U.S. foreign policy from the State Department and the military perspective.
So I find it to be, it's going to be stuff that is going to have a long life of analysts, academics, human rights lawyers, human rights activists, anti-military people, foreign policy experts, all analyzing this stuff over the years is going to present some very interesting pictures of what U.S. foreign policy really is.
All right.
Now, listen, we're almost out of time, so tell us about, very quickly, the brutality being meted out against Bradley Manning as he awaits trial and about how people can get involved.
Well, BradleyManning.org is how to get involved, and that's the most important thing I'm going to say.
So I hope people go to that site.
We provide on that site all the information on what's going on, so I'll give you a little bit of it here, but it's really all there.
And you know, we had a major victory this week, and that Manning was removed from Quantico, which was a torture chamber for him, and they were going to keep torturing him no matter what happened.
So getting him out of there is a great step.
He's been moved to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, into a new facility that was just opened end of last year that has a pretrial detention section that's more appropriate for him.
Of course, he really shouldn't be incarcerated at all.
He shouldn't be prosecuted at all, but if he's going to be incarcerated, this is a more appropriate place.
It's army rather than lean.
It's a pretrial-focused place rather than, you know, more of an ongoing brig, and it's a new facility, and he'll be able to hopefully be with the population.
Now, we're organizing in Kansas and Missouri.
There's a Facebook page on Kansas and Missouri for Bradley Manning.
People should look for that on their Facebook and sign up because we need to have a local presence.
We need to have a local presence in Fort Leavenworth, and Kansas City is just like 20 minutes from Fort Leavenworth.
That's a good organizing spot to begin with, but there are a number of areas around that would be good places to come from.
So an event is being organized in June.
You can see that on the Facebook page.
We'll be announcing it more on the Bradley Manning Support Network, and there are events happening all over the country, so please go to bradleymanning.org, sign up, and get involved.
We need everyone to help on this, to help raise money for it, to put their time and energy into it because this is one kid against the biggest empire in world history.
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
Well, I'm very happy to hear you say that you have sort of an optimistic view on his being transferred.
I saw where there was maybe some concern that he was going to be transferred.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm a big fan of him.
All right.
All right.
Well, thank you very much for all your efforts.
You know, I'm a big fan, Kevin.
Well, thanks a lot for having me on.
I appreciate it.
All right, everybody.
That is the great Kevin Zies.
He directs comehomeamerica.us, is on the Steering Committee of the Bradley Manning Support Network.
That's bradleymanning.org, and he's the executive director and co-founder of Voters for Peace as well.
