Retired diplomat and Army colonel Ann Wright: Don’t punish Bradley, honor him
Today, in a featured guest column for the independent U.S. military journal “Stars and Stripes” retired Army Colonel and Former U.S. diplomat Ann Wright writes,
“Instead of punishing and silencing alleged whistle-blowers like Manning for revealing uncomfortable truths, we should honor their courage to stand up for what’s right.”
Wright, who served nearly three decades as an officer in the US military before becoming a diplomat for the State Department, also calls into question the over-classification of documents that Bradley Manning is accused of leaking.
Pointing out that the entire system of classification is the result of successive executive orders, and not by any act of congress, Wright questions the legitimacy of classification policy used by the Obama administration, particularly “FRAGO 242” an official order not to report evidence of prisoner abuse by Iraqi security forces. “The ability to restrict information from the public,” according to Wright, “is essentially an unchecked assertion of executive power.”
But according to Obama’s policy for classification of government documents (Executive Order 13526), there are several situations under which government information must never be classified. The government cannot use classification procedures “to conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error; prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency … or prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.”
However, no actual harm has been proven as a result of the Wikileaks documents.
Read the full article at Stars and Stripes.
the image above is not really readable, the link for the article is http://www.stripes.com/instead-of-attacking-wikileaks-fix-what-it-exposed-1.155086
Congratulations to Ann Wright to have the courage to face up to all of this. She is a true soldier, no fear and not shirking duty or responsibility.
When I was a kid, my dad, who was a state”s (government)attorney,once saw a bumper sticker that read, “AMERICA: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT!” Being a Constitutional scholar, a World and American History expert,as well as a veteran and a patriot, my dad went out and bought a response bumper sticker that read, “AMERICA: LOVE IT AND TRY TO MAKE IT BETTER!”