Manning's Leaks Led To Change For Better - SFGate [View all]

[WillyT]

Manning's leaks led to change for better
James Temple - SFGate
Updated 6:10 pm, Thursday, August 22, 2013

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(08-22) 18:08 PDT San Francisco -- On July 12, 2007, two U.S. Apache helicopters hovered above a district of Baghdad and rained down 30mm rounds on a group of men standing on the street.

Two worked for the Reuters news service: Saeed Chmagh, a 40-year-old driver, camera assistant and father of four, and Namir Noor-Eldeen, a talented 22-year-old photojournalist. Both were killed, as were at least 10 others that day. Two children were also seriously wounded as the soldiers opened fire on a minivan attempting to pick up the wounded.

The onboard communications suggested the men took pleasure in their work: "Light 'em all up." "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards." "Nice." "Oh yeah, look at that right through the windshield." "Haha!" "Well, it's their fault bringing their kids to a battle."

We know about this "delightful bloodlust" because of Pfc. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst who provided encrypted video of the events to WikiLeaks. On Wednesday, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for passing that and hundreds of thousands of other classified military documents to the organization. (On Thursday, Manning announced that she will live as a woman going forward, go by the name Chelsea and hopes to begin hormone therapy soon.)

None of the soldiers who killed innocent civilians that day were so much as reprimanded.

I'm no longer outraged by this, it's been clear for too long that this is how things would end. I'm saddened by this. It says something awful about the skew of our national priorities and the tilt of our moral compass.

I won't argue that Manning didn't break the law. I'll only argue that a sentence of 35 years is an incredibly harsh punishment for a troubled young adult whose every utterance and action makes clear that her motivation was to draw attention to the slipping principles of this nation. Her job required reading secret military reports each day that underscored how the terror of 9/11 allowed our military to rationalize unprovoked attacks, humiliation and torture, and steep collateral damage.

In her request for a pardon, Manning said: "Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability. In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture," she continued. "We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror."

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More: http://www.sfgate.com/technology/dotcommentary/article/Manning-s-leaks-led-to-change-for-better-4754135.php