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Bradley Manning Charged With Aiding the Enemy
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The Washington Post reports that the army has brought twenty-two new charges — including the Article 104 offence of 'aiding the enemy' that carries a potential death sentence — against Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, a former intelligence analyst accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents to the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks. The new charges, filed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, include wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet, knowing that it will be accessed by the enemy, that US officials have asserted could put soldiers and civilians at risk. However the prosecution has notified Manning's attorneys that it will not recommend the death penalty and the charge sheet, like the original set of accusations, contains no mention by name of the enemy to which the US military is referring. Manning's supporters reacted to the new charges with dismay. 'I'm shocked that the military opted to charge Pfc. Bradley Manning today with the capital offense of 'aiding the enemy,' says Jeff Paterson, project director of Courage to Resist, which has raised money for Manning's defense. 'It's beyond ironic that leaked US State Department cables have contributed to revolution and revolt in the Middle East, yet an American may be executed, or at best face life in prison, for being the primary whistleblower.'"
Rules are made for a reason. He knew the rules. He did the crime, and he's going to do the time.
And I don't believe for a second that 1) he was doing this for some higher cause, more like blatent teen narcissism; or that 2) disagreeing with a law morally entitles somebody to break it.
I hope he gets his arse kicked.
Whistleblowers fit this basic description:
1) They see a specific act of crime or a whole culture of crime.
2) They see what their options are for working within the legal system to address it.
3) They gather the evidence needed to prove their case.
4) They release it to outside sources if they can't work within the system.
What Manning did:
1) Couldn't deal with Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
2) Got very angry at having to be a closet homosexual, even though the military is generally not interested in punishing people who are "discrete homosexuals."
3) Grabbed 250k pages of documentation from a classified network.
4) Dumped it on the public.
His supporters are being emotional nutjobs about this. He did what he did as an act of revenge against a policy he disliked. There was no "crime" for him to reveal, no unethical behavior, and he certainly did not try to either work within the system first or limit the amount of damage his leak would cause. It was indiscriminate in a "you screwed with me, so I'll screw you right back" way.
All he did was make it that much easier to tarnish legitimate whistleblowers and make their supporters look like unpatriotic people.