Manning Faces Lifetime In Jail, While The Wrongdoers He Exposed Are Free

by Mike Masnick
Techdirt
Aug. 01, 2013

With Bradley Manning found guilty on numerous counts, some are pointing out that it seems odd that he exposed so much law breaking by representatives of the US... and none of those people are facing any jail time, whereas Manning is facing life in prison. Some have tried to argue that Manning's leaks didn't reveal any abuse, and thus he's not a whistleblower. This is false. Both Greg Mitchell and Peter Walker at the Guardian have published details of things that we learned via Manning's leaks, including some serious lawbreaking by the US. Just a snippet from the Guardian:

In October 2010 came a series of revelations about events in Iraq. Chief among these was that US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers. The reports of abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks.

Another Iraq-related revelation was that the US collated details of more than 100,000 people killed in Iraq following the invasion of the country, including more than 15,000 deaths that were previously unrecorded. The tally goes against previous protestations by the UK and US that there were any official statistics on the death toll connected to the war.

And another snippet from Mitchell's list

-Egyptian torturers trained by FBI—although allegedly to teach the human rights issues.

-State Dept memo: U.S.-backed 2009 coup in Honduras was 'illegal and unconstitutional.'”

-Cables on Tunisia appear to help spark revolt in that country. The country's ruling elite described as “The Family,” with Mafia-like skimming throughout the economy. The country's First Lady may have made massive profits off a private school.

Both lists are much longer with many more examples.

Yet, the people responsible for these things, and the other reprehensible behavior that came out entirely because of the Manning leaks, appear to have not been punished at all. Something doesn't seem at all right about that. The message is: break the law while representing the US government/military? No problem! But tell people about it? Why, you need to spend the rest of your life in jail.