Leaker Bradley Manning nominated for Nobel Prize by American group

by: jim kouri | published: 08 18, 2013

An international petition with well over 100,000 signatories urging the Norwegian Nobel Committee (NNC) to bestow the coveted Nobel Peace Prize to Pfc. Bradley Manning -- facing a prison related to his stealing classified documents -- was turned over to the NNC in Oslo, Norway, on Monday, a U.S.-based activist group announced.

Norman Solomon, the co-founder of RootsAction.org, is expected to deliver the petition to the office of the Nobel Committee and a committee member confirmed he will officially receive it, according to Roots Action.

A winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, who was honored in 1976, has formally nominated Manning for the honor.

"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," according to Solomon.

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.”

While the petition mentions the U.S. government, the military and the intelligence community, it fails to mention another Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Barack Obama, who has lambasted Manning and his supporters, said George Wentsworth, a former federal law enforcement official specializing in the analysis of intelligence.

"This group [Roots Action] is well received by the Nobel people because they all share the same left-wing, new-world-order philosophy," Wentsworth said. "The Nobel Prize has degenerated into a mere gimmick or prop for the radical socialists and one-world-government advocates.

There are also many who believe Manning's actions were motivated by anger not patriotism. For example, in an Examiner news story on Aug. 2, 2010, the reporter noted:

The suspect in the leaking of classified military files, Spc. Bradley Manning, voiced his disgust with US Army commanders and U.S. "society at large" on his Facebook page just prior to his alleged downloading of thousands of secret documents, according to the British news media.

According to one story appearing in Britain's The Telegraph, Manning, who served as a US Army intelligence analyst, became depressed after a break-up with his homosexual companion. He also wrote: "Bradley Manning is not a piece of equipment," and quoted a joke about "military intelligence" being an oxymoron.

Manning, who is openly homosexual, began his gloomy postings on Jan. 12, 2010, saying: "Bradley Manning didn't want this fight. Too much to lose, too fast."

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