The Apache Attack Helicopter, a Boeing machine, was designed to engaged enemy forces on the ground with 30 mm guns among others, and Hellfire missiles. In this case, on this day, one of its two pilots declared to HQ that there were weapons being carried among the dozen or so individuals walking along a suburban Baghdad road, and they were more than eager to further note there was an RPG among the weapons spotted.

Then came the urgency to engage, the hunger to be permitted to fire on those walking non-chalantly along their neighbourhood road. “Come on, let us shoot.” or some such request as the strollers were in and out of building refuge protecting them from their innocent walk. And then finally it did arrive. Then nine and then five and then nine again, and then “Shoot again.” And then nine more, and then a final five and then an excitedly said “Look at the dust!

Was this a game or real life? And were those walking from here to there with the implements of their trade, humans, Iraqis, trying to ignore the Apache Gunship hovering near their vulnerable heads? Who were these pilots and radio men? How old were they? What did they know about what they were doing that was any different from bopping, and running up a fantastic score Chez Video Den any weekend night?

How did they get into such powerful, lethal seats? Who put them there? Bill and Bob, only a few years older than the Beastmaster pair, who lined up then managed a twenty second kill, their third this week? They were recruiters, very good at sending young men, not more than boys, into lofty seats such as an Apache provides, with nothing more than a handshake and a “Good luck.” and a fervent wish that the hunting be good.

The boys of Beastmaster went on that day to destroy a van and most of those in it, who had come to pick up the bodies and take them to the quick burial demanded by their Muslim faith. Two children were spared but not through compassion. That reached their ears when American infantry wandered in, circling wide the bodies just minced, and one of them picked up a wounded little girl. Then the gentility began to flow and the American goodness reached whomever hadn’t been jaundiced by what they were expected to do, by the urgency of the drive to shoot. It was surprising the shooters allowed the crawling, wounded man from the first sortie to escape. One of them kept yelling, “Pick up a weapon! Let me see it!” as the Beastmaster pilots could barely contain their eagerness to let fly with more lead.

Bradley Manning, private Manning, B., found a video of this, was shown this, the record isn’t clear, and he must have watched it many times, and must have worried many night away with who else should be privy to what it contained. For those walkers that day were murdered on evidence that wasn’t to be seen. And as a result HQ agreed to let them engage and shoot.

This couldn’t be what American troops were supposed to be doing. This wasn’t why they were in Iraq. And yet this Apache’s behaviour spoke of this ruthless bent, hollered that Cheney and Bush were right. Every Iraqi man who even looked as though he had a gun was marked for death by large bullets that would rip his torso in half.

What was Manning, B. to do with this footage, this record that marked two pilots and those at HQ as assassins. Shouldn’t the folks back home see some this and decide for themselves what should be done? Bradley M. was a private, an intelligence analyst, but his decision didn’t permit him more than a quick leak to the press. Who? Which one? And when he didn’t know. Perhaps a journalist friend might help him decide. Perhaps he would spare him the weight of the coming trouble.

So the world did get to see what’s barely alluded to, and the winds started their din. Bradley Manning has been in a military prison since spring of last year, and more recently in deep and limiting solitary confinement to the detriment of his sanity and health. All because one young man has revealed what two others had been sanctioned to do.

A fund-raising breakfast in San Francisco for President Obama. A group of protesters sang a song about Bradley M. in honour of Bradley M., after paying their $5000 a plate fee and admission.

“Dear Mr. President
we honour you today, sir

Each of us brought you $5000
it takes a lot of Benjamins
to run a campaign
We payed our dues
where’s our change?

We’ll vote for you in 2012
yes, that’s true
Look at the Republicans
what else can we do,
even though we don’t know
if we’ll retain our liberties
in what you seem to call
a free society.

Yes, it’s true that Terry Jones
is legally free
to burn a people’s Holy Book
in a shameful effigy
But at another location
in this country
alone
in a 6 x 12 cell
sits Bradley M., pfc.
twenty-three hours a night and day.

The 5th and 8th Amendments
say this isn’t right.

We payed our dues
where’s our [justifying] change?”

A voice hollow and subsumed among easily quoted rules and regulations and restraining laws began to drone:

“. . . did without proper authority knowingly give intelligence to the enemy, through indirect means.”
– Uniform Code of Military Justice (104b)

Someone who works in the White House and who is well known was heard to say, “He broke the law.” Recorded on a cellphone at this same fund-raising meal.

Much of the American political establishment has reacted to the WikiLeak revelations as a violation of its right to delude its public. In the meantime, Bradley You, Bradley Me sits in deep isolation denied what basics we should expect.


Two young men, the BeastMaster shooter and he who found his record and watched what he’d done. “Look at the dust!  Ah, sweet. Did it look good? There’s a lot of dust.”

Bradley M. did what he did based on the best of democratic, American intentions, for what was done, being done over and over in the video, what wasn’t sanctioned or remotely suspected by most of his country’s citizens.

In the light of this murderous suburban sortie, what harm had Bradley M.’s emails to WikiLeaks done? Whatever, if any, pales in comparison to the harm already done to American foreign policy and its military esprit de corps, by the ruthless engagement to kill based on suspicion, if not on an urgency and anticipated delight.

Since last spring Bradley M. has been deteriorating in various military brigs, first in Iraq and then in Virginia, U.S. and now apparently in Leavenworth prison just recently.

When asked about his condition and restriction, President Obama replied that they were “appropriate, and meeting our basic standards.” P.J. Crowley, a former White House spokesman for the State Department, resigned over the treatment given Bradley M. He said it was “ridiculous, counter-productive and stupid.” Daniel Ellsberg, whistle-blower for the Pentagon Papers and the illegality of what was being done vis a vis the Vietnam War, has decried what Bradley M. had suffered. His release was of Top Secret papers and his case was dismissed. Bradley M.’s are papers classified as merely diplomatic ones, much less, apparently, important. Yet he’s been in custody for almost a year and nothing’s been done.

Are the Powers-That-Be deliberately hoping that his isolation and constraint will weaken his will and somehow compel him to lie about his relationship with Julian Assange, and create a link between the two. The legalizing of torture by American executives, and now its perpetuation, seems to point to this scenario. Minimize his abuse but maximize his restraint without the use of manacles and strapes.

Two young men. The BeastMaster shooter and pfc. Bradley Manning, an intelligence analyst, two soldiers caught in the midst of their country’s imperial designs, part and parcel of that more than two centuries of jingoistic plight. One, who sees or thinks he sees something to warrant requests to engage and to shoot, and the other Bradley M., who also sees what BeastMaster claims he saw, but who’s revulsed by the dust they both clearly perceive.

Two young men, a shooter and an analyst, one asking how the killing had looked, and the other asking himself what should be done, who else should see and what maybe his vision had mistook.

WikiLeaks received the video and much more besides, and for this courageous release his government has deprived him of sleep, restricted his exercise, placed him under a suicide watch, removed his clothing, his glasses, took away his bed clothes, and compelled him to maintain what amounts to a self-imposed inertial fettering and chain. His more recent photo speaks to this abuse.

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