Bradley Manning in person

Alexis Madrigal just published an excellent and timely profile of Bradley Manning.

He was the conscience that sparked these international controversies. He was the human being who felt he had to speak out. And he was a very confused young man in an incredible amount of psychological pain. I want to flesh him out, to unghost him a little for you. If we, as a country, are going to imprison Manning for what he's done, we owe it to him to understand him. If we, as a country, are going to hold him in conditions that the United Nations wants to investigate, we owe it to him to try to figure out why he did what he did.

Bradley Manning, the Person: The Making of the World's Most Notorious Leaker

• [Wally Ballou]

  This turns out to have been a pretty short thread compared to some of the other Manning threads, and the ratio of pro to anti Manning posts seems distinctly lower.

  I don’t think the effort to portray Manning as culturally one with boingers is proving 100% successful. Perhaps we can find out if he plays the ukulele or likes steampunk??

• [dragonfrog]

  If we, as a country, are going to imprison Manning for what he’s done,

  Last I heard he hadn’t been convicted of a thing…

  • [Goblin]

    All the admissions, both his, and those on his behalf e.g.,”He was the human being who felt he had to speak out,” don’t bode well for his “innocence”. If people want a martyr for their cause that’s fine. You just can’t be a “martyr” and also be innocent vis-a-vis the laws of the state.

    In other words you have two crowds who support in different ways. Those who are willing to admit guilt and those who hold complete innocence. But either way I don’t think you can hold both positions, he is either “innocent” or a “martyr.”

    • [EH]

      As a way around your cognitive dissonance, imagine he was a banker. Then he could be guilty and worth letting off scot-free at the same time.

      • [Goblin]

        Don’t put words in my mouth.

        The suits on wall street deserve a much worse fate then they have been given from Washington. They deserve to do hard hard time, but that isn’t really is beside the point.

        For your consideration: via Wikipedia

        A martyr (Greek: μάρτυς, mártys, “witness”; stem μάρτυρ-, mártyr) is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce a belief or cause, usually religious.

        Innocence is a term used to indicate a general lack of guilt, with respect to any kind of crime, sin, or wrongdoing. In a legal context, innocence refers to the lack of legal guilt of an individual, with respect to a crime.

        As you see, you can’t both be commited to a cause (to the point of commiting a crime for a greater justice) and innocent of that commitment to that cause (and the actions/crimes you perform in support if that cause). Its logically impossible to be both.

    • [Jake0748]

      “All the admissions, both his, and those on his behalf e.g.,”He was the human being who felt he had to speak out,” don’t bode well for his “innocence”.”

      Perhaps. But presumption of innocence is written somewhere in the US Constitution or some other long-lost and forgotten document. And since Manning hasn’t been within shouting distance of a court or court-martial after being imprisoned for many months, IMHO we should all reserve judgement. Especially since he/she is being held incognito and under extreme conditions. I’d like to see some lawyers and judges involved. But it looks like that isn’t happening any time soon. Boo.

  • [BuzzCoastin]

    Au contraire mon frere, in the Homeland of the Free, (you know the most imprisoned country in the world) you are now guilty to proven innocent. Unless you are a member of the elite class you’re guilty of not being an elite.

    • [Anonymous]

      When people in this country are willing to storm the government’s “Bastille”, and cure the political atrocities that permit what’s happening here, then, and only the, will Americans deserve freedom. Until then, welcome to PrisonUSA, a private, corporate owned subsidiary.

• [Anonymous]

  “If we, as a country, are going to hold him in conditions that the United Nations wants to investigate, we owe it to him to try to figure out why he did what he did.”

  No. Again, he has not been convicted of anything. What is it with you people and the discarding of presumption of innocence, and the rule of law? This is bullshit.

  Should read:
  “We owe it to the world (and ourselves) to try to figure out how and why we lost our moral and legal way.”

• [Anonymous]

  Having read the full Wired transcript today I’m really saddened by the coverage that Manning gets. There was a mention of being most afraid of being all over the media as a man and it really struck a nerve with me. That same thought was one of the few that kept me from suicide when dealing with the idea of transition. I can’t speak for Manning, but I know more than some profile piece I’d want people to just stop using those male pronouns and masculine pictures.

  I’m not complaining about the BB posts, as they’ve been largely respectful and careful to avoid any pronouns, but I get a little twinge of rage every time I see a pronoun that probably wouldn’t sit well with Manning (judging by transcripts).

  Also I’m a little weirded out by the captcha including “Tran”.

• [Anonymous]

  Yet another attempt to sentimentalize an act of political conscience, just as we sentimentalize war, economic realities, etc etc etc. Turn it into a soap opera, and you don’t have to deal with reality, including the reality of your own life and your own choices.

• [mn_camera]

  I don’t give a damn about Bradley (Baby Jesus) Manning.

  I hold him in the same league as Jonathan Pollard.

  If people like Greenwald really cared about civil liberties, they’d go find the non-headline-generating cases of people sitting in holding cells because they can’t afford counsel.

  The problem with that, for Greenwald at least, is that first, he’d have to spend more time in the US that he likes to criticize from the distance of Brazil, and second, there are no headlines attached to it.

  • [Talia]

    So because Manning is generating headlines, he/she doesn’t deserve civil liberties? OK then.

  • [Victor Drath]

    There’s a reason why Greenwald spends s lot of time in Brazil, countless people do the same thing and deal with the same issues when in a relationship with someone from a different country. And also as an American he has the right to go whatever the hell wants. If ya don’t like what he has to say, if ya don’t think it’s the truth, then go ahead and start your own little blog showing exactly how he’s wrong. He gets his facts pretty straight, so best of luck with that.

  • [Victor Drath]

    There’s a reason why Greenwald spends s lot of time in Brazil, countless people do the same thing and deal with the same issues when in a relationship with someone from a different country. And also as an American he has the right to go whatever the hell wants. If ya don’t like what he has to say, if ya don’t think it’s the truth, then go ahead and start your own little blog showing exactly how he’s wrong. He gets his facts pretty straight, so best of luck with that.

• [ocschwar]

  I’m sorry, Mr. Madrigal. I’m sure you’re a great journalist, and your other articles are well worth reading. But please ask yourself if this is even remotely an appropriate way to write about someone who is facing a court martial with prospect of it ending with a firing squad.

  Yes, if he acted as alleged, there are nevertheless good reasons to empathize with his motivations. There are also good reasons to empathize with the people who wrote the provisions in the uniform code of military justice making such actions a capital offense.

  There are also good reasons to feel that empathy is not what is called for here, but more detached, issue based reporting. Remember that thanks to well meaning journalists like you, and the post-9/11 frenzy y’all engaged in, our government loosened restrictions on access to classified information to the point that Bradley Manning had easy access to information that in no way pertained to his duties.

  You recall the media outcry about compartmentalized information that could have been brought together to prevent 9/11? All that drumbeating helped de-compartmentalize so much of it, that now Manning’s liable to die.

  • [Jake0748]

    As many problems as I have with your post, the most distressing to me right now is your use of the written term, “y’all”. As in, “the post-9/11 frenzy y’all engaged in”. What does it even mean?

    Don’t get me wrong. I’ve lived in the southeastern US most of my live and I’m used to hearing the spoken word “y’all”, and it passes right over my head, I don’t mind it. But when I see it written I just have to wonder what the writer means. Frankly, I find it to be a bit condescending. Like one is saying “you and your kind”.

    • [Lexica]

      As many problems as I have with your post, the most distressing to me right now is your use of the written term, “y’all”. As in, “the post-9/11 frenzy y’all engaged in”. What does it even mean?

      Since what ocschwar wrote was “Remember that thanks to well meaning journalists like you, and the post-9/11 frenzy y’all engaged in”, “y’all” would seem to mean “you and well-meaning journalists like you”.

      ocschwar is not saying “Alexis Madrigal, specifically and individually, engaged in a post-9/11 frenzy”, ocschwar is saying “Alexis Madrigal and well-meaning journalists like him engaged in a post-9/11 frenzy”.

      It would be clearer if English differentiated between singular “you” and plural “you”.

      • [quicksand]

        It would be clearer if English differentiated between singular “you” and plural “you”.

        It does. “y’all” is second person plural (although a couple of linguists played mischief a few years back by claiming otherwise), and in other regions “youse.”

        However both of these have been deemed too course and vernacular to be considered proper English, so we’re stuck with the lame, pathetic, “you guys.”

        “Hey, you guys!” bleh. Apart from anything else it’s a step back in time as it nominally refers to males. All similar terms (chairman, policeman, etc) were banished about 30 years ago, even though their defenders complained that a man or woman could be a ‘policeman’ etc. So ‘you guys’ is not only lame-sounding, it’s retrograde.

        • [Antinous / Moderator]

          Y’all is singular; all y’all is plural.

        • [quicksand]

          uh, no… I have relatives in the South.

          “all y’all” is maximally inclusive, encompassing everyone who could possibly be included in the category. (in computer speak “all y’all” is a greedy algorithm).
          Thus, if referring to all journalists, all employees of Fox news, or everyone in a room at a particular time, you might use “all y’all”.

        • [Teller]

          I’m not sure I agree with you.
          “Y’all can go fuck yourselves.” and “All y’all can go fuck yourselves.” appears, at least to me, to be a matter of emphasis rather than grammatical number. Of course, I could just take my own advice.

    • [Anonymous]

      In the event you haven’t considered our language’s second person pronouns recently, let me remind you that “you” is both the singular and plural form. This can be problematic when one wishes to explicitly make a plural statement using the second person pronoun. Happily, our southern cousins did the fine job of developing a word that solves this vexing lack of capacity in English. Ya’ll have fun with that.

• [Anonymous]

  What the U.S. is doing to Manning is the same thing they tried to do to Daniel Ellsberg after he released the Pentagon papers: discredit the whistleblower as either insane or unpatriotic. Kill the messenger as it were, and suppress the content of the message.

  I’m somewhat surprised BoingBoing missed this excellent article in Salon:
  http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/11/manning/index.html
  most of it being written by an active duty soldier who was involved in the “collateral murder” video. A must read.

• [Wally Ballou]

  Anon @ 19: “What is it with you people and the discarding of presumption of innocence”

  The legal system is quite properly constrained to presume innocence. Individual citizens are not so constrained and may opine as they please.

  Besides, I didn’t see anyone on this thread suggesting that Manning is guilty in the sense that he’s been convicted. I did see a couple of posts that say “he did it”, which unless you are postulating a Second Leaker on the grassy knoll seems a reasonable thing to say.

• [charugan]

  “If we, as a country, are going to imprison Manning, for what he’s done, we owe it to him to understand him.”

  What. The. Hell. That makes no sense. If we are going to imprison him for committing TREASON, we owe him nothing. That’s not the way the justice system works. Call it conscience, but the man broke the law in a BIG way. Just because you think he did the right thing does NOT mean he didn’t explicitly break some huge laws. If a person embezzles $50 grand from his company, we don’t owe it to him to understand him. We owe it to him to figure out whether or not he did it – that’s all. And if he did it, he goes to JAIL.

  • [Wally Ballou]

    What I’d like to “understand” is why he failed to follow any of the established paths which provide legal protection to military whistleblowers, and instead threw 250K documents (probably 99% of which have no relevance to accusations of atrocity) onto the Web.

    I don’t expect to see an article about that on BB any time soon, do you?

    • [llamaspit]

      After the fine way Manning has been treated by the military to this point, how can you actually suggest that their protection would have been any better in the “legitimate” whistleblower process?
      Institutions always deny and punish first, and ask questions later. They deny all challenges to their authority until they are forced to acknowledge wrongdoing. And, as we have seen, the people at the top always escape punishment, while those at the bottom are made to suffer for it.

    • [Victor Drath]

      “What I’d like to “understand” is why he failed to follow any of the established paths which provide legal protection to military whistleblowers, and instead threw 250K documents (probably 99% of which have no relevance to accusations of atrocity) onto the Web.”

      Maybe 99% no relevance to you and to the US media, but have you heard about the goings on in Egypt and other countries? These documents played a part in that.

      Why didn’t he follow established paths? Well gee, maybe they don’t work? Maybe the people in charge don’t care? When crime happens, you usually don’t go to the perpetrator and ask them to police and punish themselves.

      • [Mister44]

        re: “but have you heard about the goings on in Egypt and other countries? These documents played a part in that.”

        A small part. This has been years in the making, and it finally reached a tipping part. I caution the US or wikileaks or whoever from taking too much credit from the true ‘revolutionaries’.

  • [Victor Drath]

    Sometimes I wish I could think this simplistically, everything would be so easy. Just black & white.

• [quicksand]

  I feel like I’m being manipulated to sympathize and feel sorry for Manning because of his/her gender identity issues.

  • [Anonymous]

    And not because he’s been imprisoned indefinitely, stripped naked, denied visitors, etc…. you don’t feel sorry for Manning because of those things?

    • [quicksand]

      not because he’s been imprisoned indefinitely, stripped naked, denied visitors, etc…. you don’t feel sorry for Manning because of those things?

      Yes I do. And not just ‘sorry for him’, this is wrong. It’s a violation of all kinds of rights and processes.
      But even so, his gender identity doesn’t seem relevant to any of that.

• [RioRico]

  As noted, Manning is accused, imprisoned, tortured, and has not even been tried. Yet he has been convicted by the president and the press. SHAME ON YOU, Barrack Obama. SHAME ON YOU, TheAtlantic, and the rest of the mainstream media. (Of course the propaganda media have no shame.) And all those referring to Manning as guilty: SHAME ON YOU. You disgust me.

• [unit_1421]

  The alleged treatment of Pvt. Manning speaks a lot about the type of people who are “volunteering” to be in the military. Our military has become a vocational and diploma mill for poor white trash and a citizenship mill for indentured immigrants, the former foaming at the mouth to “go get some” by killing “sand n*****s” and the latter being so desperate for a better life they’ll acquiesce to that blood lust. These aren’t just the grunts, this mix of bigotry and desperation for economic ladder climbing permeates all the way up the chain of command, with atrocity after atrocity washed clean from the minds of all under the banner of “orders.”

  That most of the “secrets” involved stuff like “what hand such and so likes to jack off with” and not things like troop movements or weapons blueprints is why Pvt. Manning is not dead already, but given this culture within the military I’m honestly surprised Pvt. Manning isn’t missing an eye or a limb.

  Pvt. Manning will most likely die if convicted, and I’m sure Pvt. Manning knew that going in. Treason is treason, even if it ultimately serves the greater good. My question, dear reader, is what are you going to do with your life to either set Pvt. Manning free or at least be worthy of Pvt. Manning’s sacrifice and those who fight for our right to be without taking pot shots at civilians from the back of a Humvee while high on meth?

  • [Mister44]

    This has to be one of the more insulting descriptions I have read about soldiers in awhile. Stay classy.

  • [Wally Ballou]

    foaming at the mouth to “go get some” by killing “sand n*****s”

    Are those direct quotes, or are they instead what you imagine to be the typical attitude of American soldiers?

• [betatron]

  insert Chris Cocker poster here.

• [Purplecat]

  Yes, certain people are going to be angry at this article. It’s an uncomfortable reminder that the abstracted incident that they can get nice and righteously angry about, actually involves a real person.

• [Anonymous]

  “…reminder that the abstracted incident that they can get nice and righteously angry about, actually involves a real person.”

  Funny how this casual statement renders the the talking heads, that would paint this black and white, fairly inane.