35 years in a cage. That’s the reward Bradley Manning received for revealing war crimes to the world:
The US soldier convicted of handing a trove of secret government documents to anti-secrecy website Wikileaks has been sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Historical whistleblowers, such as Daniel Ellsberg, have been targeted for informing the public of ongoing misdeeds but none were caged for several decades. When Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers the state had the decency to at least publicly admit it did something incorrectly and leave it at that. Yes, he was run through the ringer needlessly but remained free afterwards.
Bradley Manning, who did the same thing as Ellsberg, wasn’t so lucky. He decided to blow the whistle a few decades too late. America is no longer that land of the free and the government no longer pretends to have any decency left in it. This country is a police state and any dissidence is ruthlessly crushed under its heel.
Every person involved in the prosecution of Manning should be brought up on charges of aiding and abetting war criminals. Adrian Lamo, the traitorous bastard who reported Manning to the state, deserves a special place in Hell. Manning confided in him, thinking his history of being a hacker would make in somewhat sympathetic, and he threw him to the wolves. Had Lamo not done that there is a good chance that Manning wouldn’t have suffered three years of torture while he awaited a sham trial.
This entire trial has been a mockery of justice. The only reason it was called was so the state could cover up the real crimes that were revealed by Manning.