Treason's Poster Boy

Bradley Manning is no hero. He is a Judas

by: jayme evans | published: 08 02, 2010

After spending an entire week poring over a few thousand of the so-called "Afghan War Logs", more than 75,000 incident reports from the Afghanistan war allegedly leaked by a US soldier to left-leaning WikiLeaks, one thing is clear. While the disclosure of this information may not put American or coalition forces in (even more) imminent danger, it will result in even more innocents killed and it does further complicate our mission in Afghanistan in a number of ways.

My analysis of these documents is that many of them are in fact stale information; everything imaginable in a war; Afghan on Afghan disputes, assassinations, errant air strikes, propaganda, threats, enemy actions, weapons caches and IEDs. Incidents that were made public long ago that only serve the leaker's desire to inflame public opinion.

There are also a lot of mundane reports where no one was killed or wounded and dozens of reports of US soldiers acting to save the lives of innocent children and ordinary Afghans, many of whom were not victims of US aggression, but Afghan on Afghan violence.

Also confirmed by this leak were the American people's long-held suspicions that Iran is actively involved in the targeting and killing of US forces and that the integrity of Pakistan's ISI has long been compromised, inconvenient facts which have been repeatedly downplayed by successive administrations.

The real danger of this betrayal is what our enemy can glean from it. Through their conspiracy, US Army PFC Bradley Manning and Julian Assange have compromised the identities of Afghan informants and in the most egregious cases, the names of two complete American F-15 air crews and at least one British officer, as well as classified information, some of which was deemed Secret.

This is an intelligence bonanza for al Qaeda. It provides tremendous insight into what we know about our enemies and what they know about us. It also tells them what we don't know about them. It provides them a valuable intelligence tool which gives them insight into which units are the biggest threats, where these units operate, the result of PSYOPS missions and too many other pieces of information with military value to list.

The Pentagon is now holding Bradley Manning, who was previously charged with leaking gun camera footage from an Apache unit providing close air support on a mission in Iraq, which killed two Reuters stringers who got cozy with armed terrorists. While Manning is presumed innocent until proven guilty and leakee Assange dismisses the deaths of Afghans who helped us as collateral damage, information allegedly obtained from the computer Manning used allegedly ties him to the leak.

Bradley Manning is no hero. He is a Judas, a traitor. Like any US soldier, he had the right -and indeed the duty- to refuse orders he believed were illegal. He had the right to report other soldiers who he believed committed murder or other war crimes. But he did not have the right to try and sabotage an entire international war effort by leaking classified battlefield reports. He may believe in the righteousness of what he was doing, but so did Major Hasan.

The damage this leak has done and will do is immense. Although no one could have possibly sifted through this entire data dump yet, many share the belief that it gives the Obama Administration the political cover it needs to prematurely withdraw. But, we can't allow the actions of one single traitor to dictate the course of an entire war, particularly one in which we have recently become much deeper entrenched.

If ever there were a poster boy for the charge of Treason and the need for the military death penalty, Bradley Manning is it. Manning fancies himself some sort of ideological hero; a whistle blower extraordinaire. But, a conviction would put him in the dubious company of Benedict Arnold, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Jonathan Pollard and John Walker, who similarly betrayed their country. There does appear to be enough evidence to support a charge of Treason against Bradley Manning. The crimes he has allegedly committed do indeed carry the option of a death sentence upon conviction. He must be appropriately charged, tried and if found guilty, sentenced to death as the Uniform Code of Military Justice and US Constitution prescribe. The Taliban has already stated their intention to use the information to target Afghans who've cooperated with US forces. One death puts capital punishment firmly on the table.

And, if even one coalition or civilian death can be attributed to the publication of these documents, we must drag Julian Assange from the depths of whatever sewer he inhabits, classify him as an enemy combatant and try him at the hands of a military tribunal. His actions were morally repugnant. He is fully aware that he is endangering US forces and innocent Afghans, but he has arrogantly dismissed those concerns, promising to publish even more leaked documents. If found guilty of providing material support to our enemies, he too should face military execution.

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