[harry8]

'army' to highlight the the massive problems really wasn't all the army's doing. Elected politicians, unelected public servants, media informing the public spectacularly badly and so on really can't be laid at the door of the armed forces. Whatever the armed forces did wrong they should have to answer for individually and in terms of institutional reform (as we all should in all our walks of life) but not those wrongs they really had no power to put right. Can we please keep repeating that Manning was inspired to do what he believed to be the right thing by Elie Wiesel and specifically referenced this video: http://vimeo.com/5081720 in his irc discussions with Adrian Lamo that got him arrested and jailed. Manning was looking at people being rounded up for their scholarly political views. That's a fact, not conjecture. It has a wow factor. If you aren't willing to accept being a part of that as he wasn't and believe that the institution you love is in dire need of serious reform, what can you do? What will you do? Criticizing Manning or Snowden or Greenwald or Poitras or Drake or for that matter Assange but spending no energy at all on the required institutional reforms or being critical of the evil that does kill unjustly and unnecessarily doesn't seem like a particularly courageous answer. Reform is hard, PR much easier if you're in power and can get away with that. I don't think they can or will because now the dust settles people can be a bit more confident who had done the wrong thing. "We tortured some folk..." Gotta start somewhere.