Bradley Manning’s Army of One

[Ambassador KLOK KAOS]

It's a well documented fact that all sailors are manly, have tattoos and are gay.  DADT did not change that.

-Army

possibly nsfw http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_5wkMFMMQMAc/TJl0cPj2JII/AAAAAAAACfQ/r44etU8Kkdo/s1600/French_Navy.jpg

[Cain]

Greenwald has a response to this article

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/salon/greenwald/~3/qQ9S1OQ_WuA/manning

In New York Magazine, Steven Fishman has a lengthy profile of Bradley Manning that purports to shed new light on the accused WikiLeaks leaker.  The only aspect of Fishman's article that's meaningfully new is a series of chat logs and other online communications Manning purportedly conducted with Zachary Antolak, a 19-year-old gay web designer whom Manning befriended.  Though the article focuses on a variety of Manning's emotional struggles in a way that -- as is typical for whistleblowers or anyone who engages in acts of meaningful dissent -- is supposed to make you believe his alleged actions were the by-product of psychological afflictions, it actually achieves the opposite.

The emotional problems of loneliness and alienation Manning confronted are hardly atypical for a perceptive 20-year-old, particularly one with a long-estranged father dealing with issues of sexual orientation and gender identity who, after being raised in a tiny evangelical community in Oklahoma, finds himself deployed to Baghdad as part of the U.S. Army's brutal war in Iraq (the one who ends up looking truly psychologically unstable in this article -- and, as usual, deeply dishonest -- is government informant Adrian Lamo; see below).  What Fishman's article actually does is bolster the previous view of Manning's alleged leaks as motivated by noble and understandable horror at what the U.S. was doing in Iraq specifically and that region generally, and a resulting desire to take action to shed light on what he was seeing and to do what he could to stop it.

The highly edited chat logs purportedly between Manning and Lamo and previously published by long-time Lamo associate Kevin Poulsen of Wired already made clear why Manning -- if the chat logs are to be believed -- leaked these videos and documents.  In those chat logs, Manning described his growing realization of the evil of the the war in Iraq of which he was a part; he specifically recounted that his discovery that Iraqi "insurgents" rounded up and arrested by U.S. forces were actually guilty of nothing was explicitly ignored; and he explained that the documents he is alleged to have leaked revealed systematic deceit, illegality and exploitation on the part of the U.S. Government and its allied governments, and that only disclosure and transparency could trigger urgently needed reforms.  As Manning put it in those purported chats with Lamo when asked what he hoped to achieve:

hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms - if not, than [sic] we're doomed - as a species - i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens - the reaction to the [Collateral Murder] video gave me immense hope; CNN's iReport was overwhelmed; Twitter exploded - people who saw, knew there was something wrong . . . Washington Post sat on the video... David Finkel acquired a copy while embedded out here. . . . - i want people to see the truth... regardless of who they are... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.

The objectives Manning described there have, in a very short time, already been vindicated: the Baghdad video was viewed by tens of millions of people around the world, and even the anti-WikiLeaks Executive Editor of the New York Times, Bill Keller, has credited the release of the diplomatic cables allegedly leaked by Manning as playing a substantial role in triggering the revolts across the Middle East against mostly U.S.-supported despots.  Beyond that, so much of what we have learned about the world's most powerful factions over the last year has come from these leaks.  Those results, by themselves, mean Manning -- if he is the alleged leaker -- has done at least as much, if not more, to advance the causes of transparency, accountability, and freedom across the world than any single living individual.

[Kai]

ZJ says her piece on the article here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hmm9mupTgU

[BabylonHoruv]

ZJ talks really weird, her face doesn't move.

[Kai]

ZJ talks really weird, her face doesn't move.

I think she rehearses and then reads what she wrote up as the script from the computer screen. It's also part of her persona as the stoic-looking op-ed with a slight knowing smirk at the end.

[Cain]

Or, botox.

Lots and lots of botox.