Messages from alleged leaker Bradley Manning portray him as despondent soldier

[unhappycamper]

http://www.stripes.com/polopoly_fs/1.106157.1276153541!/image/1383991574.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_400/1383991574.jpg


Messages from alleged leaker Bradley Manning portray him as despondent soldier
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 10, 2010

Bradley Manning, 22, had just gone through a breakup. He had been demoted a rank in the Army after striking a fellow soldier. He felt he had no future, and yet he thought that by sharing classified information about his government's foreign policy, he might "actually change something."

A series of instant messages from Manning to a stranger open a window into the anguished state of the former Army intelligence analyst, who was detained late last month for allegedly leaking classified video and documents to Wikileaks.org.

The military has not detailed the allegations against Manning, who is being held in Kuwait pending an investigation, and his attorney could not be reached. His aunt, Debra van Alstyne, reached by phone, declined to comment on the allegations but allowed that the family was "shocked and surprised" by them.

"We love him, and we'll stand by him through this process," she said.

The logs of messages between Manning and Adrian Lamo, provided to The Washington Post by Lamo, reveal a young man who was at once privy to government material of the highest sensitivity and confronting a personal crisis of the highest order. While stationed in Iraq, he decided to turn to Lamo, a former hacker whom he did not know but who would ultimately report him to authorities out of concern that lives could be at risk.

[Hannah Bell]

1. yeah, he's probably a dysfunctional loner too. i mean, isn't everyone who strikes a blow

against the PTB?

Got to be crazy if you think anything in *this* set-up needs to be changed.

now go eat your fruit loops & watch some tv.