This is what Chelsea Manning Leaked

pn62

Government has granted Chelsea Manning permission to apply for a visa to enter NZ for a talking tour.

This extract from Gordon Campbell's flagship website Werewolf* lists the offences for which she was jailed. 

It is a pity most journalists who reported National's objection to her entry failed to mention the nature of those secrets, for without this knowledge it is difficult to judge whether she was a traitor or a hero, and to whom.

"Manning leaked 700,000 documents that exposed the means via which the US government secretly practiced violence against vulnerable minorities around the world. For doing so, she was sentenced to 35 years in jail and served nearly seven of them, before having the rest of her sentence commuted by US President Barack Obama.

"The lengthy sentence [had] long been criticized by her advocates and supporters who have said that Manning’s leak was a public service that exposed human rights abuses. On Wednesday, during his last press conference as president, Obama said Manning’s sentence was “very disproportionate relative to what other leakers have received”.

"Here’s a list of ten things that Manning’s leaked cables revealed. The revelations included chapter and verse on these sort of activities:

• During the Iraq War, U.S. authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape, and murder by Iraqi police and soldiers, according to thousands of field reports.

• There were 109,032 “violent deaths” recorded in Iraq between 2004 and 2009, including 66,081 civilians. Leaked records from the Afghan War separately revealed coalition troops’ alleged role in killing at least 195 civilians in unreported incidents, one reportedly involving U.S. service members machine-gunning a bus, wounding or killing 15 passengers.

• The U.S. Embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any European Union country that opposed genetically modified crops, with U.S. diplomats effectively working directly for GM companies such as Monsanto.

• British and American officials colluded in a plan to mislead the British Parliament over a proposed ban on cluster bombs.

• In Baghdad in 2007, a U.S. Army helicopter gunned down a group of civilians, including two Reuters news staff."

Personally, I think our government should be thanking Manning for these and other revelations, and for the sacrifices she made as a consequence of bringing them to light".  -- Gordon Campbell.

And from across the ditch:

"In 2010, as a US soldier stationed in Iraq, she decided to blow the whistle on her own army. She smuggled classified files off her base on a CD labelled ‘Lady Gaga’ and passed them on to Wikileaks. The video files showed horrifying and morally questionable airstrikes. 

"A journalist she thought she could trust squealed on her and she was arrested for treason. This could have earned her the death penalty but she got away with 35 years jail, later commuted to seven.

"She’s been out of jail for over a year but still walking into trouble everywhere she goes. 

"Harvard University honored her with a fellowship, motivating a former CIA man to resign from his post at the university. A traitor shouldn’t be honored, he said."
 -- www.thinkinc.org.au

Opinions are divided. Write what you think in  Comments below. 
____________________________

* I highly recommend Gordon's Werewolf for its often contrarian articles on politics, art and culture. Here's one journalist who does not dissemble. http://werewolf.co.nz