Bradley Manning: the face of heroism

[struggle4progress]

25. I might indeed have been persuadable of that claim, had there been a small identifiable cluster

of malfeasance issues, that could made sense of the release as principled whistleblowing

But in fact, it is easy to see that there is no such cluster:

(1) The sheer number of cables -- over a quarter million -- indicates there is no such cluster;
(2) The fact that Manning said, prior to the release, that his release would provide a searchable database of diplomatic communications, rather than offering an identifiable cluster of exposes, also indicates there is no such cluster;
(3) The fact that the transfer to Wikileaks -- which portrays itself as an editing and publishing organization -- did not lead to any systematic exposes, but rather led to incoherent batch releases and a search utility, further indicates there is no such cluster;
(4) The fact that Manning, in his statement today, did not point out any small identifiable cluster of malfeasance issues, governing his selection of cables to release, again indicates there is no such cluster; and
(5) The fact that, to date, no has identified a small identifiable cluster of malfeasance issues, that could have motivated Manning, has emerged from the cables

Indeed, how could a quarter million cables, in some cases dating back to the 1960s, from US embassies around the globe, possibly represent an attempt to expose any particular malfeasance? Unfortunately for Manning, all evidence points in a different direction. The only credible interpretation is that Manning performed a massive random dump of diplomatic communications to Wikileaks; that he gave Wikileaks no useful pointers about what the dump contained; and that Wikileaks -- having no definite notion of how to tell a small number of coherent tales of malfeasance based on the cables -- was therefore constrained to offer the cables (i) to mainstream press, in order to mine them for whatever information they might contain and (ii) to the general public, with a search utility, in hopes that the general public might also mine them for whatever information they might contain