Courage in America is fading rapidly. PFC Manning should be nurtured and celebrated as one of the last bastions of courage and inegrity remaing among America’s treasures. He sacrificed his personnel freedom and probably potions of his future, not here discernable.  His actions allow those innocent Iraqi’s murdered by US Army helicopter crewman to have a voice in the public domain. The Iraqis were murdered without cause. 

When and where did the crime of ‘capital murder’ become an object that could be cloaked and protected by the aegis of National Security?  Our strategic forces’ missile launch codes, attack codes for manned aircraft, and submarine-launched missles need protection to insure their integrity and authenticity.. I understand the need there. Murder, or the suspicion of murder,  is a matter for a grand jury or a court.

Crime or the suspicion of a crime does not enjoy the shield of National Security? A crime or a suspicion thereof must investigated. That is the weight of law and guilt we placed on the Germans at Nuremberg. In Vietnam the efforts of a journalist and an Army combat photographer pointed to the possibilty a war crime had occurred. Once public, the actions of those soldiers directly involved with murdering unarmed civilians as well as those actions by personnel in the US Army chain of command for attempting to coverup those selfsame murders were investigated as well. The rest is history.

Wheresoever I shall live, PFC Manning will find “shelter from the storm.”

Semper Fidelis,
sartorthegrey

I will say right now that you are far more likely to spot a stray dog leaving a better excuse for honest justice on the lawn out front of that court house than you will ever see being meted out therewithin throughout the entire sordid length of this pseudojudicial elephant-and-pony routine.

I would flatly dare anyone in this country’s squalid system of JU$T U$ to hold me in contempt for what I have just now said—