WikiLeaks: Bradley Manning's hour

So, Uncle Sam finally gets his day in a military court today calling down the full might of the ‘American People’ against the slight and 23 year old form of Corporal Bradley Manning.

To be sure Bradley Manning has a strong chance of being found guilty. But we don’t yet know much of his side of the case, nor what any defence might be.

In short, Manning is – it is alleged – the guy who took advantage of Uncle Sam’s own woefully insecure computer filing system to capture a couple of million files and 250,000 state Department ‘secret’ cables to tip them uncensored into the hands of somebody who somehow enabled them to end up on WikiLeaks.

By all accounts, Manning’s treatment at the hands of his military handlers – in solitary confinement and under endless questioning – has been little less than harrowing.

It has been most convenient to the US military to have Manning incommunicado. It has meant that they have been able to spin their own accounts of his behaviour and his ‘acts against the state’.

His case has enabled the US authorities to avoid the spotlight falling upon the absurd decisions that led to so much ‘secret’ material being left in computer data systems to which at least 900,000 had access. There is an argument than Manning did them a favour by effectively blowing the whistle on amateur and negligent storage of such ‘secret’ files. No heads have rolled. No heads will roll. No one in authority in any US department has been disciplined as a result of the data they effectively handed Manning for him to treat as he saw fit.

Net result – all attention is focused on the ‘little man’ in all this and not upon the big guys. Manning will probably not be executed, although the military judge can ignore the prosecution’s call for life imprisonment and go for death anyway.

We should be vigilant in watching what our closest ally decides to do to this young man. It has not been easy to track what they have been doing to him thus far.