Bradley Manning has been in jail for a full year, as of yesterday. He has not had a trial. He is accused of leaking a bunch of secret U.S. government documents. The only
Five foot two and 105, perhaps the bravest man alive
witness against him is a hacker type guy who was once hospitalized for mental issues, named Adrian Lamo (I swear I am not making that up – the guy’s name is actually Lamo), who says that Manning told him he sent the docs to Wikileaks.
Now, to be fair, the mental illness in question was Asperger’s, which basically means the guy is a supergeek. Also, Wikileaks did receive a whole bunch of documents from somebody, and Manning did have access to the documents he is accused of making public. So, yeah, there’s a chance that Manning’s guilty, but…he has been in jail for a year, and he hasn’t had a trial.
This thing of keeping somebody in jail forever without due process is bullshit. It doesn’t just violate the U.S. constitution, it violates the Magna Carta and all unwritten laws of human decency, fair play and common sense.
It casts doubt on the government’s case. If they could prove he did what they say he did, they’d have charged him by now. There’s no new evidence that’s going to come to light. There’s no ongoing investigation, no matter what they say.
I think it’s entirely possible that Manning may have copied the files and sent them off to Wikileaks – apparently he’s really good with computers. No matter. For the government to prove that he aided an enemy, they’ve got to name that enemy and prove that he aided them. Since congress gave up on ever declaring war on anybody after WWII, just abdicating to the president the right to bomb the fuck out of anybody any time he feels like it, we don’t “officially” have an enemy. Also, they haven’t actually proved that anybody has been harmed by release of the documents – in fact, there’s quite a bit of evidence to the contrary, that they’ve done a lot of good. O.K., maybe a few diplomats have been embarrassed, but if ever there was a class of people that deserved a heaping helping of embarrassment, it’s career diplomats. Sycophantic paper pushers, by definition. Also, you could say that those people who have been killed in the “Arab Spring” uprisings might still be alive if not for Wikileaks, but then again, dictator’s might still be in power in Tunisia and Egypt, and the people there are real happy that they are gone, so, a net plus.
There was a line in one of Robert Heinlein’s books, I forget which one because I haven’t read Heinlein since I was a kid, and I might be getting the phrasing wrong, but the idea was “the difference between a traitor and a hero is a generation.”
There is no doubt in my mind that 50 years from now, Bradley Manning will be viewed as a hero. He should be released immediately.
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