Manning supporters marching at Ft. Meade

Saul Landau compares Bradley Manning with Scooter Libby. Landau, a California State professor and Vice Chair of the Institute for Policy Studies, draws sharp contrasts between Pfc. Manning and former Bush official Scooter Libby. Whereas Libby helped leak Valerie Plame’s name to the public, was given a short sentence which was later commuted, Pfc. Manning gets no such treatment. Libby exposed a CIA agent and revealed her secret contacts, while Bradley Manning is accused of making illegal activity public:

“Manning] had access to and allegedly released — to Julian Assange of Wikileaks — hundreds of thousands of secret documents. These documents exposed not secrets vital to our enemy, but lies, corruption and crimes by US officials and those of other countries. Manning’s defense team stresses that what Wikileaks published wasn’t or shouldn’t have been secret.

Landau also asks why Sgt. Wuterich wasn’t imprisoned for the Haditha massacre while Manning gets the book thrown at him without hurting a soul, a comparison many have been making since Wuterich’s trial ended with no jail time. (Read more…)

More writers call attention to Manning’s role in ending the occupation of Iraq. With presidential elections in full swing, many praise President Obama for finally withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. However, a closer look at the details of the withdrawal show Obama was forced to leave Iraq after a WikiLeaks-released cable, attributed to Pfc. Manning, revealed U.S. war crimes in Iraq that collapsed negotiations between the two governments. Many credited Manning with ending the occupation at the time, and more are taking notice – below are but two of many:

Chris Floyd writes:

If any one person can be said to have ended the direct involvement of the United States military in Iraq, it is not the man whose champions claim this deed as one of his glorious accomplishments: Barack Obama. As we all know (and 99 percent of us have forgotten), Obama fought doggedly to extend the murderous occupation of Iraq into the indefinite future.

No, if you had to choose one person whose actions were the most instrumental in ending the overt phase of the war, it would not the commander-in-chief of the most powerful war machine in world history, but a lowly foot-soldier — mocked, shackled, tortured, defenseless: Bradley Manning. (Read more…)

Troy Jurimas, discussing the 2006 summary executions by U.S. soldiers in Iraq of women, children, and infants, writes:

The US government covered this up by bombing the house in which the crime was committed, but before they could, the people of the village captured photos, and reported eye witnesses account to back up the cable provided by Bradley Manning. Which stated that an autoposy performed on the victims showed that they were handcuffed and shot in the head. The Iraqi government was furious about this and refuse to accept Obama’s plea to keep 20,000 combat troops in Iraq for the years to come. Now, Obama uses this as a big campaign message, that he fulfilled his promise to the end the War in Iraq, yet when the real hero is Bradley Manning. (Read more…)

Manning’s alleged role in the drawdown of troops in Iraq is one of several reasons he’s been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Daniel Ellsberg says the Bush administration, not Bradley Manning, should be on trial. As he’s done many times before, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg praised Bradley Manning’s courage:

He is a hero … The U.S. government will never see him other than as a rat, a snitch, a traitor, a bad guy … he’s been successfully defamed.”

Notably, Ellsberg says it is the Bush administration, responsible for a range of actions from “warrantless domestic wiretapping operations to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, both cases in which officials would eventually leak related classified intelligence,” which should be indicted for their crimes:

Here is a case where Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld were as worthy of going before the International Court of Justice — for the crime of aggression, not genocide — as any of the defendants at Tokyo or Nuremberg.

President Obama has declined to investigate or indict his predecessors, and yet has gone above and beyond previous administrations in prosecuting whistle-blowers. (Read more…)

My name is Ame and I from Minnesota. I support Bradley Manning because I believe the public deserves to know the truth about what our government is doing overseas and at home. Thank you, Bradley, for risking everything in pursuit of justice and truth. You are a true American hero.

Send us a photo at Iam.bradleymanning.org