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Bradley Manning Supporters Rally At Kansas Prison
WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of supporters of Bradley Manning converged at Leavenworth, Kan., Saturday to rally for the Army private accused of leaking classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.
Gathered outside the prison where Manning is currently being held, protesters denounced Manning's treatment and called on the White House to drop all charges against him.
"PFC Bradley Manning is a fellow soldier," Brian Wolfe, a Kansas-based Army Veteran who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, said in an email statement. "If a fellow soldier is punished for taking his oath to defend the constitution seriously, what does that mean for our military and for our democracy?"
The event marked the first public rally in support of Manning since he was transferred to Fort Leavenworth in April after being imprisoned for nine months on the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia.
While detained at Quantico, Manning was forced to sleep naked in a military jail after a commander of the brig ordered his clothes be taken away for a full seven hours. He was also forced to stand naked outside his cell in front of the rest of the clothed inmates until he passed inspection and was given his clothes back.
"The information Bradley Manning is accused of releasing should have been in the public domain. Whoever revealed it is an American hero." said Jeff Paterson, a Steering Committee member of the Bradley Manning Support Network who also spoke at the rally, in a statement. "Our leaders in Washington need to return to American principles of transparent and accountable government. That starts with protecting -- not prosecuting -- whistle-blowers and dropping all charges against Bradley Manning."
Manning stands accused of revealing tens of thousands of classified U.S. military and State Department documents that some believe helped to catalyze democratic revolts across the Middle East this spring. His trial is slated to begin this summer.
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14 Comments so far
Show Allwhy have a trial?
0 says he broke the law.
good enough for me.
Manning is a victim of a military, oozing at every seam with sickening corruption.
These ''men'', are bully/lunatics, blinded to any molecule of truth......
Manning is the ''disgraced coward'' according to the latest crop of American
fascists....
He is the ''deviant'' red flag, twisting helplessly in the wind,
warning all soldiers with similar pangs of conscience, to back off and stand down......
....for if they are truly emboldened, by the hero-of-the-soul Manning
....the floodgates may be thrown open, and universal mutiny will become a logical possibility....
.and all of this unforgivable blood-shed, for oil, or imperial-hegemony, will be thrown onto the world stage for contemplation by all humanity..............who will realize the
inner motives of America's, politically-schizoid, state department.....
His crime is displaying a conscience, which is the most intimidating
force imaginable, if you happen to be a war-crime advocate, or perpetrator..........
We don't even know if he did pass on documents. Don't you think if the State had proof he would have court martialed and shot months ago?
Honestly no. They are using him to set an example to prevent more leaks and probably in an attempt to frame up Assange for something...anything. LOL.
He is very useful to them for this purpose. They will break him eventually...if they haven't already.
Private Manning is a true American Hero. He did not face bullets, instead he faced only the truth, and when realizing the "War on Terror" was full of illigal acts ,War Crimes, lies and cover-ups ,murder and rape,he told, he did what we all are supposed to do when we see something wrong, or a crime being committed. You call the Police, you try to get help .When this American Soldier tried to tell the truth he got Arrested by the very people that should have thanked him, so the atrocities could be stopped.
America nolonger posesses respect from anywhere in the World, and it will not see, or deserve that respect ever again, if we do not stop sitting around watching T.V. Talent shows, and ignoring what we are doing to the People, Animals, and the very Planet itself that we ALL live on.
Our Goverment in just the last 10 yrs. has committed so many Crimes against Humanity in places all over the world, including our own Country on a level not seen since we wiped out the Indians. We are out of control. This young man has more guts and Americanism in his pinky then 90% of the rest of the Military. With the exception of those that support his efforts, but I am sure it would not be popular to state that if you were still in active duty. You might end up naked in a jail cell too !
We had better get it together people and soon...the World is not going to wait for us to realize WE are the problem, our new way of Politics and Crime just isn't working out very well.
Good comment, and I agree with most of it. But not just the last 10 years part. Our government and our country has been corrupt since the beginning. We stole and murdered the Native Americans. Then came the Slaves, the Chinese................
The US has been on a murdering rampage for every.In '53 we took out Iran's President for the British Family and their oil company. The US has done so many coups and installed puppet, brutal dictators.
Look at what we are doing in Haiti right now.
We are the problems true, but we always have been.
The fact that there are only 4 comments on this subject is part of the problem. Mainstream media NEVER talks about it, almost everyone I tell had never heard anything about it. Some heard bits and peices, but they didn't know he was in Jail, and being mind screwed by his own fellow Soldiers.
Nobody knows ,very few people understand what's even going on around them. We are just how they want us, broke, sick,uneducated,unaware, basically stupid. While we sleep, our Goverment officials have robbed us of our Country, and I'm not saying we shouldn't have Goverment...just not these crooks that have been masterfully strip minning our Beloved America, for their own personal gain, which if you looked you would find that they have "Gained" Billions...not Millions, but Billions, and it's our money, but they took it, and now want us to leave our sick, and old Americans, to loose all their benefits, and end up on the streets, and dead, but there was plenty of money to go around, but they keep stealing it from us, and then saying we must take away the security programs we have had for decades, that worked just fine, until this group got their paws on it, and I mean hundreds of elected individuals from both parties for many years. It is as if the MOB has been running America for quite some time now.
One of the problems for few comments is that of password submission; CD's hasn't worked for me for a week--and I refuse to change it yet again.
Groups that plan such a demonstration ought to get the message out and invite the nation. After the fact is OK, but the prison is only 4 miles from KC's very nice airport. Some of us still have money enough for an airplane ticket and a sleeping bag (although telling your boss at Macdonald's what you're doing might get you fired). When you ain't got nothing to lose. . .
Bradley Manning and Julian Assange are my heroes, the most important men of the millennium.
The imprisonment of Manning is absolute proof that there is no Rule of Law in the USA.
Also, remember that it is the 'troops' who are enabling Manning's imprisonment/torture. Do you STILL believe that the troops are fighting for our freedom? Do you think that you would be spared, if the order was given to shoot US civilians? One of the first lessons taught in boot camp, is that civilians are expendable - it is only the mission that counts. Think about that as you watch the parades and fire works on the 4th.
There is rule by the powerful. He is a pawn for the empire. This will be his life from now on. His only hope is the empire collapsing.
dboylon... I agree. I wonder when the US citizens will realize that the military is their enemy, and will not support them. The Manning case is the perfect example of the military choosing to side with the government against the people.
The military are destroying the nation they profess to love and serve. When will senior military officers as well as non-coms and privates realize that they, their love of war, their budgets, their corruption of our courts and Constitution, all serve to destroy the US government, our political culture and our economy. I wonder why they cannot see that. Imagine a family man who professes to love his family so much that he spends 180% of the family income on security systems and is having fist-fits and court cases with three or four neighbors at a time, while beating his wife and kids. What kind of patriotism is that?