Did Manning Help AVERT WAR In Iran?

[karynnj]

17. No - look at Obama's positions on Iran in the 2008 debates -- or even look back to Kerry's in 2004

The thrust was doing everything possible to avoid war - mostly by working with the EU and the rest of the world on trying to deal with this through sanctions or diplomacy. There are SFRC hearings in 2009 on Iran that are open - thus on the web site. The Obama position was clearly to seriously monitor Iran, not to start a war.

Before I would credit Manning with that, I would like to see something showing that BEFORE Manning's revelations the Obama position was more militant and that it changed AFTER Manning's revelations. (I would even take a major change on the part of SOS Clinton - again - I didn't see that. ) Even more, the country was already war weary and already knew of Abu Ghraib and other transgressions. Manning's releases were from April to November 2010. Looking at the polling, there were no huge shifts in US opinion on the Iraq war in that time period. More to the point, looking at pollingreport.com on Iran http://pollingreport.com/iran.htm - the only poll that asked the exact same question over a long time period (NBC/Wall Street Journal) - showed a very constant measurement on support for possible action.


I understand that people want to find some real purpose to Manning's sacrifice, but this is just unsupported. (I think that he was a whistle blower in putting out the Iraq tapes. I think he was misguided with his mega dump of unfiltered State Department wires - even though I found many of them fascinating.)