The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking; Purveyors of Killing Today Go On, As a Hero Faces Life Imprisonment

Liberated Concentration Camp
From left to right, the generals are George S. Patton (Third Army),
Omar Bradley 12th Army Group (Patton's immediate commander),
Troy Middleton (VIII Corps, Third Army),
Walton H. "Bulldog" Walker (XX Corps, Third Army),
Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander.
Wisconsin's Al Liethen, of U.S. military intelligence and
chief interpreter is next to Ike, pointing with his left hand.
On the far right is Jules Grad, correspondent for the
military's independent daily newspaper Stars and Stripes.
This iconic photo is on display at the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Eric Lichtblau, a reporter for The New York Times in Washington and a visiting fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, has a piece on the Holocaust that should be read by American youth in public schools.

American society does not engender a sense of history, nor for that matter a capacity to think.

Lichtblau reports the NAZI concentration camp system, examination of documents reveal, was wider and even more pervasive than previously believed.

Someone close to me, who worked as a museum curator on the East Coast, had an opportunity some years ago to work at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

She turned it down and came back to Madison. One's psyche has limits.

Still, as sentient human beings, the Holocaust remains a discussion in our home.

Most literary treatments do not focus on resistance because there was not very much resistance at least until later; as Norman Cohn writes, just "passive compliance."

But a certain type of person remains committed to the idea that when forces in their countries lie to kill millions, speaking up is the least one can do.

Bradley Manning is one such person.

The Guardian: Bradley Manning blows whistle on American
atrocities. Prosecution to call full witness list despite guilty plea.

Had Manning lived in NAZI-occupied territory, he would have been in the resistance.

Manning leaked documents revealing the idiocies and deceit of American wars, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, and "the breadth of the corruption, deceit, brutality and criminality." In May 2010, the 25-year-old Manning was arrested and held for years in a small cell by miserable men.

Now, he faces the prosecution, a group better-suited for fascist states.

As Glenn Greenwald writes today: "Manning is absolutely right when he said today that the documents he leaked 'are some of the most significant documents of our time'. They revealed a multitude of previously secret crimes and acts of deceit and corruption by the world's most powerful factions."

So, Manning must endure persecution, perhaps lifetime imprisonment.

I read Greenwald's piece in The Guardian early morning [first published Thursday], and there was 1,000s of Facebook 'Shares.' One hopes his words reach millions.

Today, we have a military that pisses on Vietnam War veterans; cheers the destruction, the near genocide of Muslims, and champions permanent war and the military-industrial complex in the name of Jesus Christ, an obscenity fought by a few like Mikey Weinstein.

The Manning persecution is President Obama's shame.

Bradley Manning is a hero. Manning spoke up against wars that have killed, wounded, displaced and traumatized millions of human beings.

President Obama and the U.S. military prosecution team are a disgrace.

President Obama can redeem himself by commuting Manning's coming sentence.