Don’t be distracted by the “he took an oath” crowd. The fact is, soldiers are told if they see an illegal act, they’re supposed to report it. (Manning tried.) And they’re still taught about the Geneva Conventions.
If he’d successfully leaked to the New York Times, he’d be hailed as a hero. The fact is, Bradley Manning is a hero. We should be grateful for what he did to help end this Iraq war.
And the liars, crooks and profiteers who got rich and furthered their careers at the expense of the war dead? Why, you can see them every Sunday morning on the talk shows. And the allegedly anti-war constitutional law professor looks on in approval.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice states that one must follow “lawful orders” only. Which means that anybody can disobey an unlawful order. Manning’s conscience told him that what the military chain-of-command was telling him ‘not’ to do (report war crimes) was, in his mind, an unlawful order. His lawyer must know all about The Uniform Code of Military Justice and lawful orders.
the argument that he only has to follow “lawful orders” only really holds water when it comes to the military logs he leaked about iraq and afghanistan. i don’t see how that argument would work with regard to the 250k diplomatic cables. those cables were clearly secret. they don’t reveal any war crimes. while they do reveal stuff that is embarrassing to the american diplomatic community, it wasn’t really a whistleblowing situation in any sense.