Obama’s UN Address was a Rewriting of History

Assange Addresses UN Members, Lambasts Obama’s UN Address for Rewriting History
By: Kevin Gosztola – 26 September, 2012 – The Dissenter

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange addressed members of the United Nations at an event with Ecuador Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino and Center for Constitutional Rights legal director Baher Azmy. He spoke to members on the current status of his asylum case and how the United States currently is engaged in a wide investigation into members of WikiLeaks and others, who the US believes to be connected.

“Despite having been detained for 659 days without charge, I am free in the most basic and important sense,” Assange began. “I am free to speak my mind. This freedom exists because the nation of Ecuador has granted me political asylum and other nations have rallied to support its decision.”

Thanking Ecuador for providing him a platform to speak again at the UN, he noted the “circumstances” were “very different” in comparison to his participation in the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva in 2010, when he spoke about WikiLeaks’ work “uncovering the torture and killing of over 100,000 Iraqi citizens.”

Assange then told members, “Today I want to tell you an American story. I want to tell you the story of a young American soldier in Iraq.” He proceeded to share his thoughts on how the alleged source of WikiLeaks’ most high profile leaks to date had come to decide to provide documents to WikiLeaks.

The soldier showed early promise as a boy, winning top prizes at science fairs three years in a row. He believed in the truth and like all of us he hated hypocrisy. He believed in liberty and the right of all of us to pursue it and happiness. He believed in the values that founded an independent United States.

He believed in Madison. He believed in Jefferson. And he believed in Paine. Like many teenagers, he was unsure what to do with his life, but he knew he wanted to defend his country and he knew he wanted to learn about the world.

Manning entered the military, trained as an intelligence analyst, deployed to Iraq in late 2009 and in Iraq he saw a US military that “did not often follow the rule of law.” It “engaged in murder and supported political corruption.” Assange added, it was there in Baghdad that he allegedly gave to WikiLeaks and the world “details that exposed the torture of Iraqis, the murder of journalists and the detailed killings of over 120,000 killings of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Assange recounted how he had been imprisoned for nine months and abused in Quantico and suffered treatment that UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez had called torture.

Hillary Clinton’s spokesman resigned. Bradley Manning – science fair all-star, soldier and patriot – was degraded, abused and psychologically tortured by his own government. He was charged with a death penalty offense. These things happened to him as the US government tried to break him, to force him to testify against WikiLeaks and me.

Manning, he noted, had been imprisoned for over 850 days without trial. …more