Petition with 100,000 Signers Urging Nobel Peace Prize for Bradley Manning Scheduled for Presentation to Nobel Committee Office in Oslo on August 12

A petition with 100,000 signers urging a Nobel Peace Prize for whistleblower Bradley Manning will be presented to the Norwegian Nobel Committee office in Oslo on August 12, a U.S.-based activist group announced today.

Norman Solomon, co-founder of RootsAction.org, will bring the petition to the office of the Nobel Committee, where a representative of the committee is scheduled to receive it. Solomon wrote the article "Manning Deserves Nobel Peace Prize," which appeared in USA Today last week.

A former winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, has formally nominated Manning for the honor, saying "I can think of no one more deserving." She wrote last month that disclosures from Manning "helped end the Iraq War, and may have helped prevent further conflicts elsewhere."

The petition -- urging the Nobel Committee to award the Peace Prize to Manning -- has been signed by Americans in every state. While the vast majority of signers are U.S. citizens, the petition has also been signed by people in scores of other countries. It includes tens of thousands of individual comments from signers, all of which will be presented to the Nobel Committee as part of the petition.

"We'll be asking the Nobel Committee to read those comments because they embody cogent and heartfelt support for Bradley Manning from all over the world," Solomon said. (The comments are online as part of the petition at ManningNobel.org.)

En route to Oslo with the petition, Solomon is scheduled to speak at a public meeting in London the evening of August 9.

"Consent of the governed is meaningful only to the extent that it is informed consent," Solomon wrote in USA Today. "Bradley Manning let Americans, and many others around the world, know what their governments were really doing. The disclosures caused problems for leaders in many nations who much preferred to operate behind an opaque curtain. ... Only a knowledgeable citizenry can come to grips with actual policies that perpetuate war when shielded from public scrutiny."

Solomon added: "It's easy to insist that Bradley Manning must face the consequences of his actions. But we badly need whistleblowers like Manning because U.S. government leaders do not face the consequences of their actions, including perpetual warfare abroad and assaults on civil liberties at home. No government should have the power to keep waging war while using secrecy to cloak policies that cannot stand the light of day."

Solomon will be in London on August 9 and 10, and in Oslo on August 11 and 12.