Bradley Manning, the soldier who provided fodder for WikiLeaks creator Julian Assange, is being held in “maximum custody” at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, Virginia, and is expected to face a pre-trial hearing in May to determine whether he should be court-martialed. He faces punishment for releasing classified government documents and said he’s been digging through private records for more than a year now.
Manning is an intelligence analyst from the UK and a homosexual. After dealing with DADT, he realized that he had been working with plenty of material he did not agree with, and which he believed should be issued to the public. He leaked a compilation of 77,000 events from 2004 to 2009. This included a classified six-year history of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, which is highly confidential for the safety of Americans.
He even released an Army PowerPoint presentation and Sarah Palin’s 2008 Yahoo! Mail Inbox. How can this possibly be “OK” in the slightest? I’m sorry you just went through a breakup with your boyfriend and that you were demoted a rank in the Army after striking a soldier. This doesn’t justify your actions of leaking the government’s foreign policy.
In his defense he said, “If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months, what would you do?” Well Bradley, I wouldn’t jeopardize my country or the people living in it, that’s for sure.
People from the UK are in alliance with the United States. Campaigning lawyer Clive Stafford Smith said, “I don’t care whether he’s British or not, human beings have rights wherever they are. (But) the fact that he is a British national does give the government standing to be involved.”
Even liberals agree with me on this one. Hillary Clinton said, “It puts people’s lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.” This demotes America’s values as a democratic country.
WikiLeaks is a pretty scary subject matter. A website with no sources, it is clear these criminals know they are in the wrong. There is no headquarters, employees or even a post office. The site has about 30 additions added to it every day; politicians’ private e-mails, secret CIA reports, corporate memos and surveillance videos have all been “fair-game”.
Manning is not innocent or unintelligent, which is confirmed by the way he obtained the information. He created imposter Lady Gaga CDs and then inserted them in computers at the Pentagon. While lip-synching, he was secretly downloading thousands of government’s files. In his own defense, he said he was just being a devoted “little monster.”
Manning’s solitary confinement is not as bad as lefty Glenn Greenwald puts it: “inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions.” Yes, he is away from other prisoners, but he is allowed to watch television several hours during the week. He gets an hour a day to exercise, as well. Doesn’t seem too horrible.
We need to realize the government cannot confess every inch of itself. Just as I keep harmless secrets from my mother, so do they. This man is a criminal, and this is an issue of morality.
