within the Nuremberg guidelines fostered by the U.S.

That's why war crimes aren't prosecuted by the governments that commit them. They must collapse completely and be remade by those with a vested interest in their destruction. The Koch brothers and others are working hard on it right now. Their method is defunding and default. As well as demagoging and arming millions.

Those wanting to maintain a government for any reason, benign or any otherwise, would be swept aside by force of arms or brutal economics. At that time the citizenery will surrender their liberty, property and culture to the occupier's template, not from a democratically created group.

JMHO.

do not apply to Mr Manning's prosecution, as he is not accused of war crimes; and the so-called Nuremberg Code does not apply either in his case, as he is not accused of experimenting on human subjects

You're free, of course, to fantasize whatever exonerating motives you want to imagine for him, if doing so makes you feel good

I'd prefer to stick closer to facts I can verify. Knowing history accurately, and knowing what actual people actually did in various actual circumstances, may not enhance self-satisfaction and one's sense of righteous much, and (in fact) it can be downright depressing at times, but I'm hoping that improves my limited chances of acting somewhat intelligently and with a wee bit of insight the next time the shit inevitably hits the fan

Manning did what he did and admitted to it. He has paid and will pay a price for it.

Others should be paying a far greater price - i.e., Bush et al.

from one post to another, effective diplomacy involves allowing people to save face

i'll agree that's not on the same scale as the human damage that the bush administration caused with its thoughtless war-mongering. and i'm happy to say yet again (as I have said repeatedly before here at du) thaty i am very interested if anyone has any realistic ideas for bringing the bush gang to justice: but, sadly, based on a number of historical examples, i have concluded that the time frame necessary to initiate a prosecution of some of the bush gang will stretch into decades -- IMO they had the political organization and clout to pull off a coup in 2000, and i honestly can't imagine the political landscape changing quickly enough to begin prosecutions any time soon

in a sense, it's apples and oranges, comparing bush to manning. i think bush is a vicious sob, who did enormous damage, and i think manning is still a confused kid who can't think straight and needs help. i will be very sorry if manning gets anything like an effective life sentence, because there's good reason to think he would be capable of making a contribution. cleaning up the mess bush made will take an enormous amount of time

but i don't see how manning making another big mess is excused by the fact that i'm appalled by bush. diplomacy is our alternative to war: it is conducted between groups that are suspicious of each other and that have different interests; its object is to get folk to smile at each other, even if the smiles are forced, and then to sit and talk, even if the talk is not always completely sincere, in the hopes they will work some things out. in this country, civilians control the government and the military. i don't care whether it is a general or a private who wants our international relations handled differently than they are handled: the general or the private is entitled to vote the same as the rest of us, and both the general and the private are entitled to at least minimal free speech rights, though in consequence of their uniforms and their military obligations, the general and the private are subject to certain speech restrictions not imposed on civilians. but neither the general nor the private has any right to take unfair advantage of their peculiar position to interfere in the policies of the civilian government -- and that, unfortunately, is exactly one of the several things manning has done

The Bush bastards made it entirely clear to the world, almost ten years ago now, that they intended to bring techniques from Reagan's Central American wars to Iraq: folk that paid attention already knew about the brutal torture and the death squads in Central America in the Reagan era

It was widely reported over a long period of time. It was discussed extensively here at DU, again and again. Yes, we knew about that. It's one reason lots of us busted our butts to get the Republicans out of the White House

Last Updated: Thursday, 27 January, 2005, 11:31 GMT
'Salvador Option' mooted for Iraq
Tom Gibb
BBC, South America

Published on Sunday, January 9, 2005 by Newsweek
'The Salvador Option'
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0109-06.htm
The Pentagon May Put Special-Forces-led Assassination or Kidnapping Teams in Iraq
by Michael Hirsh and John Barry

The Salvador Option
By Scott Ritter
Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Monday, Jan 10, 2005 10:42 AM EST
http://www.salon.com/2005/01/10/death_squads/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jan/10/iraq.davidteather
The “Salvador option”
The U.S. considers forming assassination squads like those once used by the Reagan administration to crush the insurgency in Iraq.
By David Teather

Salvador option

Salvador Option Surfaces Again
By Elizabeth DiNovella, March 15, 2007

Monday, Mar 12, 2007 11:28 AM EDT
For Iraq, the El Salvador option — again
Plan B sounds awfully familiar, and not just because we've lived through it before.
By Tim Grieve

- "classified US military logs on WikiLeaks that detailed hundreds of incidents where US soldiers came across tortured detainees in a network of detention centres" which would lead to an investigation by The Guardian/BBC Arabic.

Your depth of knowledge is even more remarkable, given that

Only a few days after 9/11, the Bushbots began to get constant press coverage pushing for torture. People who were paying attention knew what it meant when Bush had Otto Reich, or Elliott Abrams, or John Negroponte in his administration. By 2005, before Manning got out of high school, Cambridge University Press had published a book containing 1200 pages of documents on the Bush administration's torture policy.

We have your sons: CIA

when you accused me of being a Republican troll because I recommended the Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement by John Kerry to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations and posted a link:

in the sort of thing I was actually saying about Kerry in 2004 back then should read my posts from that era:

Kerry's Vietnam Senate Testimony

I do remember arguing with you in those days about a piece that you reposted from the website of libertarian wacko Justin Raimondo, written by rightwing conspiracy theorist James Gordon Prather (a contributer to many such nutjob sites, including World Nut Daily and Lew Rockwell). I objected that the intent of Prather's piece was "to persuade the public that will be no significant foreign policy difference between Bush and Kerry." Libertarians have been playing that tired old game for years and years now, hoping to suck voters away from the Dems in hopes some might actually vote for libertarian party

I'm done with Manning arguments, but I will say I don't trust a word Lamo has said to anyone.

It's kind of amazing we are not much worse. I have to give it to us, as a nation that is the only superpower, we are pretty much pussycats overall.