Bradley Manning Verdict: Not Guilty of Aiding the Enemy

Bradley Manning was found guilty of violating the Espionage Act by a military judge but was acquitted of the separate and far more serious charge of “aiding the enemy.”  Manning now “faces a possible maximum sentence of more than 130 years in military jail when his sentence is handed down.  Personally, I hope Manning receives a light sentence.  I believe that he was a whistle blower who provided an invaluable service in exposing some of the war crimes committed by American troops in the fool's errands launched by the feckless Chimperator Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney.  What I find most disturbing is that while Barack Obama has feign horror at the war crimes authorized by the Bush/Cheney regime, his administration has spent more time and effort prosecuting those who have exposed the crimes rather than prosecuting those who committed or authorized the crimes in the first place.   The end conclusion?  First, that Barack Obama is morally bankrupt and is not much better than Bush/Cheney in this regard.  Second, that a harsh sentence for Manning will be one more step towards totalitarianism which will intimidate the press.   A piece in The Guardian looks at Obama's unrelenting war on whistle blowers and, by extension, the press.  Here are highlights:

The American journalism trade is breathing a collective – but premature and, in many cases, grossly hypocritical – sigh of relief today. A military judge has found Bradley Manning guilty of many crimes, but "aiding the enemy" isn't one of them.

Had the judge found Manning guilty of aiding the enemy, she would have set a terrible precedent. For the first time, an American court – albeit a military court – would have said it was a potentially capital crime simply to give information to a news organization, because in the internet era an enemy would ultimately have been able to read what was leaked.

However, if journalism dodged one figurative bullet, it faces many more in this era. The ever-more-essential field of national security journalism was already endangered. It remains so. The Obama administration's war on leaks and, by extension, the work of investigative reporters who dare to challenge the most secretive government in our lifetimes, has been unrelenting.

The Manning verdict had plenty of bad news for the press. By finding Manning guilty of five counts of espionage, the judge endorsed the government's other radical theories, and left the journalism organization that initially passed along the leaks to the public, Wikileaks, no less vulnerable than it had been before the case started. Anyone who thinks Julian Assange isn't still a target of the US Government hasn't been paying attention; if the US can pry him loose from Ecuador's embassy in London and extradite him, you can be certain that he'll face charges, too, and the Manning verdict will be vital to that case.

The military tried its best to make life difficult for journalists covering the Manning trial, but activists – not traditional journalists – were the ones who fought restrictions most successfully.

National security journalist Jeremy Scahill summed it up after the verdict when he told Democracy Now: "We're in a moment when journalism is being criminalized."

For those who want to tell the public what the government is doing with our money and in our name, there are new imperatives. Governmental secrecy, surveillance and the systematic silencing of whistleblowers require updated methods for journalists and journalism organizations of all kinds. Americans pursuing this craft have to understand the risks and find countermeasures.

That is not enough. The public needs to awaken to the threat to its own freedoms from the Obama crackdown on leaks and, by extension, journalism and free speech itself. We are, more and more, a society where unaccountable people can commit unspeakable acts with impunity. They are creating a surveillance state that makes not just dissent, but knowledge itself, more and more dangerous. What we know about this is entirely due to leakers and their outlets. Ignorance is only bliss for the unaccountable.

Yes, I supported Obama over Romney, but in politics, often one has to pick the lesser of the evils.  Obama's persecution of whistle blowers and his refusal to sign and ENDA like executive order speak volumes and none of it good.   This portion of a piece in the Virginian Pilot on the verdict continues to haunt me:

Manning acknowledged giving WikiLeaks more than 700,000 battlefield reports and diplomatic cables, and video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack that killed civilians in Iraq, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver.

The video released by Manning showed the American military members involved exulting in the deaths of totally innocent civilians.  It makes me very ashamed to be an American.