60 Pro-Bradley Manning Protestors Disrupt Obama's Oakland Headquarters

[struggle4progress]

11. I have no final opinion on his guilt or innocence: he's entitled to plead but hasn't yet

My impression, if the charges are correct, will be that he is a confused young man, who thought he could fit into hacker culture by coordinating a huge leak of information to which he had access in result of his military position

Nothing I know about the proceedings so far suggests that Manning will claim to have acted as a whistle-blower: I think his attorney will try to argue he was disturbed and that the military shouldn't have given him so much access, but that he really didn't do very much damage. IMO he'd have trouble arguing any whistle-blower-like necessity anyway, given the indiscriminate volume of his release: he simply couldn't have reviewed that volume of material and made conscientious choices about it

I'm an anti-militarist: US spending on "defense" is criminal in scale, and most US military actions that I can remember are inexcusable. Moreover, the restrictions on press coverage of US military actions, that first began to be imposed in the Reagan and Bush years, are inexcusable and still need to be fought

But Manning isn't a hero to me, I'm afraid. I hope he gets the help he needs.