08/10/10 – Mike Gogulski – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Wharton.
Our next guest on the show today is Michael Ogoski from BradleyManning.org.
Welcome back to the show.
Hi, Scott.
Thanks for having me on.
Well, I'm really happy to have you on.
All right, so I learned somewhere from somebody who actually, now that I think about it, wasn't a wise person at all, but this was smart, and the advice was you got to remember when you're doing radio that there are people hearing you for the very first time every single day, and you have to assume these people don't know nothing about you and might not know what you're talking about.
So let's start with what we're talking about.
Who's Bradley Manning, and why do you want to save him, Mike?
Well, Bradley Manning is the 22-year-old military intelligence specialist who was arrested at the end of May in Iraq and has now been charged with a number of offenses that could bring him up to 52 years in prison if convicted.
These offenses are linked to the leaking of classified materials, including the infamous video called Collateral Murder, to whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
The media is also speculating that he is linked to the release of what has become known as the Afghan War Diary, this collection of 97,000 documents that WikiLeaks put out, I guess it was just the beginning of last week.
And so he was arrested, what, the very beginning of June, right, in Baghdad and then taken to Kuwait?
At the end of May, he was arrested in Baghdad, where he was stationed.
He was jailed for just about two months outside Kuwait City at Camp Arishan, and just about a week ago, he was moved to the brig at the Quantico Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia.
Now, when I talked to you on KPFK last week, you were saying that he was on suicide watch.
Is that because something's wrong with him, or just that's the standard operating procedure?
What have you found out about that?
My only guess is that that standard operating procedure, perhaps as part of the intake process.
We don't have any information that suggests that Bradley Manning is actually suicidal.
I certainly hope not.
We do know that he's alive, and he had the opportunity this past weekend to meet with his aunt and his father at the facility there, so it's been a good thing in that respect that he's been moved to the States.
Did that guy from CNN ever call you?
I gave him your number.
Oh, I don't know.
I've been talking to press from all over the place.
Well, that's sure good to know.
He asked me, is Michael Goski the guy that's giving out the phone number to the brig?
I was kind of maybe reading it into his tone of voice, and I said, yeah, but that's so that the kid knows that he has support, that he's not alone, because they say he's on suicide watch.
It's not about, to be clear here, Mr. CNN guy, it's not about harassing the people who run the brig.
It's about making sure the kid in his solitary confinement has a chance at least to get word that there are people out here that are concerned about him and whatever, because it's probably not a lot of fun to be held in isolation for months on end, waiting to figure out whether you're going to get a trial or what's going to happen to you, like he has been.
No, I can't imagine that prison is fun under any circumstances, but certainly two months in a dungeon in Kuwait is not good for the soul.
We did give out the numbers to the brig, which are publicly available anyway on the base website for just that reason, first, so people can call in and obtain information if they need it, and second, so that if they want to express their support that way, then Bradley Manning will either hear about it directly if somebody tells him, or just in chit-chat among the people who operate the brig.
Well, you know, I was just absolutely outraged about this New York Times piece that I read, which, you know, how many rants have started off with that?
But anyway, this lady, Ginger Thompson, if that is her real name, ran the most disgusting hit piece on Bradley Manning, where she literally, this is how low this woman crawled on the ground, she went and found elementary and junior high school classmates of Bradley Manning to say, oh yeah, he always was a quirky guy, or seemed kind of gay to me, or the most just baseless, ridiculous, pointless rumor-mongering about this kid in order to smear him, this is the best they can do, is say, well, he was just weak and a loser, and oh, and maybe he had delusions of grandeur, and whatever.
And yet, Mike, I know you've read the severely edited, though they appear to be, the at least supposed chat logs, as posted at wired.com and run in the Washington Post, and at least according to those logs, Bradley Manning said very specifically what his motivation was for doing this.
It wasn't because of what a loser he was, what a crybaby he was, or perhaps how gay he was.
It had nothing to do with that at all.
No, that's right.
I mean, I read that New York Times piece with considerable shock and dismay.
I mean, obviously, it's a species of journalism.
I think it's what used to be called yellow journalism, although that term's fallen out of favor.
The hit piece is exactly right.
You know, what's the point of delving into a guy's childhood looking for, you know, speculation on what might be his reasons for taking such a courageous act today?
And at the same time, well, heck, who didn't have a difficult childhood?
Manning's story is not a pretty one, if we're to believe the narrative given, but it's not all that different from millions and millions of other people.
Yeah, it's just, you know, the most cowardly thing to sit there, and this is, of course, the newspaper record.
It's not like, oh, well, just some reporter said something I don't like.
This is the agenda-setting newspaper, the king of all media in America is the New York Times, and they literally did an entire piece about what might this kid's motivations have been that completely painted him as some weak, cowardly whatever they, you know, whatever it is, and made no mention whatsoever of the direct quotes of him in print that he typed with his own fingers, we're led to believe, explaining exactly what his motive was.
What did he say, Mike?
I mean, fairness was not the objective here, and they also kind of twisted the statement of one of Bradley Manning's friends, quoting him in a context where it seemed that what he said supported, you know, this kind of troubled past narrative and so forth.
But what Manning said in the chat logs, allegedly, is that, you know, he saw things based on the access that he had that he determined were criminal, and that had to be shared with the world.
You can't separate yourself from the past, of course, so, you know, what might have gotten him to be in the situations he found himself is one thing, but, you know, if we're to believe the chat logs, then I think he explained his motivation pretty soundly.
Right.
And you know what?
On this one, all of a sudden, I'm B.F.
Skinner or something.
I'm just a behaviorist.
Never mind Bradley Manning's cognition.
What he did was the right thing, period.
No, I am into that, and I'm hopeful that, you know, we're getting more and more interest and more and more support now from people who are coming into the Bradley Manning support network.
Donations have risen just above $26,000 to the defense fund at last report.
We have this commitment from WikiLeaks for an additional 50.
Once there is a civilian attorney selected, a number of different civilian attorneys are kind of in the process of making overtures and getting in contact, so we're hopeful that a vigorous defense can be put together, and we're also starting to mobilize people out in the streets.
There was a rally in Quantico itself this past Sunday.
Around 100 people turned out as individuals and representing a number of different groups, such as Code Pink, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Family Speak Out, Friends Committee for National Legislation, and on and on.
There's another event coming up in Oklahoma City on Thursday.
We just put out the press release on behalf of the group that's organizing that, and it's a march to the Capitol in support of Manning.
So we're, you know, this is the beginning of what unfortunately is going to be a long struggle, I believe.
All right, Mike, hang on the phone there, we've got the bumper music playing.
Michael Goskey is the organizer of the Bradley Manning support network, one of them, and the website that you can look at to join in and help out if you so choose is BradleyManning.org, and we'll be back right after this.
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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
This is anti-war radio.
I'm talking with Michael Goskey from the Save Bradley Manning Support Network, or the, yeah, something like that.
All those things together.
BradleyManning.org.
They're organizing a campaign to raise money so that this kid gets legal representation.
You know, people talk about free Bradley Manning.
Barack Obama's not going to free Bradley Manning.
Barack Obama wants to give Bradley Manning 54 years, that is life, in prison.
And it's going to take, you know, Johnny Cochran-level legal defense to save this kid's life.
BradleyManning.org.
All right, Mike, so, jeez, I don't know, where were we?
Go ahead.
Say whatever you want.
Well, I was just mentioning that, you know, the network is up and running.
We kind of formed a steering committee this past week, and we're reaching out to a number of different groups to kind of build up the network in terms of publicity and fundraising and outreach.
So it's, you know, positive news in that respect.
Unfortunately, our ability to affect any change in Bradley's situation right now is close to zero, except for passing in the message that, yeah, there are people working on his behalf, and we've gotten word back via the military council that he is appreciative.
Yeah, well, and, you know, I hope that can serve as an example to other government employees that, you know, if they do the right thing and liberate documents to show the truth about our government's crimes to the American people, that, you know, the population won't turn their back on them.
You know, they might be risking prison time, but, you know, they won't be completely alone.
And you know, in fact, really, Mike, just as you said, you know, you've been doing all these media interviews and so forth, and just the fact that people want to help and care about it is a news story itself.
And it keeps it in the news, keeps this young man's alleged role in this leaking in the news, and I guess is just, you know, ultimately means more opportunities for people of means to help.
And so now tell us about Courage to Resist that you've partnered up with here in order to raise this money in a very above board and legitimate way that people can believe in here.
Well, Courage to Resist is a project of a foundation called the International Humanities Center, and it is led by Jeff Patterson, who was a, he was a resistor back at the time of the first Gulf War, when he refused to deploy and was brought up on charges.
And he was working with folks in various types of situations, AWOL, desertion, refusal to deploy and so forth, for a number of years until he put the organization together.
So they've been operating now for about five years out of the Bay Area in California.
And we've been very blessed by Jeff stepping up early, wanting to get involved, and taking on a great burden in supporting this campaign, because, boy, I tell you, I've been doing media interviews, he's been doing a mountain of media interviews.
So he's been very, very busy.
He flew up to Quantico, Virginia, this past weekend, also to speak and appear at the rally there in support of Roger Manning.
We've got now t-shirts and posters that can be ordered through the Courage to Resist website, which is just courage to resist.org.
And it's been great having having Jeff around, absolutely, he's a big part of making this happen.
Right on.
And now, you know, back to the smear campaign here, because I just want to try to fight back against it as much as I can.
It's just, it's absolutely amazing to me still.
I have a disorder where I guess I just can't get desensitized to it.
But you could not train a better set of Mino birds than the American media.
If you just Google the term Manning in Google News right now, four out of five of these articles are about what a loser he is and how gay he is and his delusions of grandeur.
And he just wanted to be famous.
And no mention in any of these about all that's already been reported about how he was ordered to never mind the fact that these people are innocent.
Go help the Iraqi police round up more innocent people.
No mention of him saying they just exclude completely the alternative narrative whatsoever of him saying this is criminal activity going on or near criminal activity.
The first world versus the third.
And the people have got to know, he says, is so clear about it.
And yet the entire media is just going to pick up on this.
In fact, it says related Google News related homosexuality, right?
Because that's what the Bradley Manning story is about.
It's not about the war.
What happens, I guess, is, you know, the a lot of the media folks, not to their credit, take a lack of new news and fill it up with whatever rubbish they can put together.
And I think that's very unfortunate.
I mean, the the New York Times hit piece, you know, for example, wanted to make a thing about how much Dr. Pepper, the guy drank, you know, what's what's what's it's about.
I mean, I could be in really deep trouble on that one, man.
I'll tell you what.
Yeah, I mean, you would you would think that journalism in this case would be turning its attention to the content of the material that's been revealed and what it documents as having been going on in Afghanistan and also the the collateral murder video.
And some of that's happening to some degree.
But meanwhile, yeah, we see this this kind of yellow trash journalism, shoot the messenger, attack the man and ignore the message.
The other thing I wanted to mention was, you know, we kind of stand at the at the cusp of something that I think is very significant.
WikiLeaks is not the only organization in the world with the capability to do this kind of thing and to intermediate for whistleblowers.
So I think as as Julian Assange has said, courage breeds more courage.
And we're going to see more more folks coming out, waking up to the fact that their consciences are telling them the right thing.
And so I put together just the other day and inspired by something I saw on Michael Moore's front page.
He's been very gracious to link to us a kind of joke bumper sticker army leak all that you can.
Yeah, I like it.
So she's I'm wondering if maybe it's the polyethylene glycol in the Dr. Pepper that motivates, you know, affects a certain part of the brain where you just want people to know the truth about the worst things in the world.
Yeah.
I mean, is it just the Dr. Pepper?
Am I the captain of my own soul or have I been, you know, chemically brainwashed into wanting to fight for justice all the time?
Well, you know, this kind of stuff, I guess it runs well alongside, you know, the latest news on Lindsay Lohan.
So should we be surprised?
Right.
Yeah.
Fits right in there.
Yeah.
I mean, I think, you know, what you just said about the the competition now inspired the the new people are going to say, wow, you know, Julian Assange can do it.
I bet you me and my friends could set up a hell of a thing.
You know, everybody knows a couple of people who are level 10 computer geniuses.
Right.
And those guys know people who are even crazier, smarter than them.
There's going to be a hundred WikiLeaks in a year.
Watch.
Amen.
All right.
Well, man, thank you so much for your efforts.
This kid deserves your efforts and and it's the right thing to do.
And so thank you.
And I mean that on behalf of a lot of other people who want to thank you to Bradley Manning dot org for Michael Goski.
Thanks again.
Thank you.
And we'll be back.