Reply #140: I can see you feel passionately about this

[tavalon]

I disagree with you just as passionately. I worked at Wilford Hall in Tricare long enough to see how "the proper channels" were the silencers. Many situations in which people choose to whistleblow are the ones in which working through the proper channels has not or would not work. And every whistleblower knows that despite the rhetoric of safety for said whistleblower that if it is possible, the whistleblower will be hurt in some way. As a person who chose that path twice, each time I knew I would face consequences and I quit one job and was fired from the other. In both circumstances, I didn't take on whistleblowing lightly. I knew the high cost.

What Bradley Manning did was illegal but it was not, IMO, immoral. And I'm fairly sure he knew full well he would go to jail if caught. At least I hope he did. He is a hero to me. And I wish such a hero could actually receive protection for whistleblowing, but he won't and that is as it is.

That you would not see it as the right thing to do doesn't make you immoral. I know you're not. But I do think it's naive of you to believe that Bradley Manning would have gotten the information out to the public as it needed to be by following correct military channels. It never would have seen the light of day and it needed to.

Have you ever chosen the path of the whistleblower? Don't feel bad if you haven't. Few do.