I Am Bradley Manning

Why don't I hear from anybody about Bradley Manning? Why aren't we ALL writing about Bradley Manning?

He is a 23 year-old soldier. He spilled the beans concerning who all knew about--and ignored--U.S. torture in Guantanamo, and all sorts of other nasty stuff. He spent a year in punitive solitary confinement in the Marine Corps brig at Quantico--half of the time, he was confined naked: as torture. Now he is awaiting charges--finally. But what can they charge him with? Both U.S. civil law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice make hiding a crime a serious offense: in civil jurisdiction it's called being an "accessory before the fact"; under military law, it's called "misprision of a felony." So had Manning NOT made public what he knew, he would have been committing a serious crime.

Mr. Obama said--it's the lawyer in him speaking, the "you are not guilty until proven so" understanding at the base of all U.S. law--that "Bradley Manning has broken the law." Damn you, Mr. Dictator! You can't say that.

But we all sit quiet. Why? Are we stupid? Cowards? Closet vigilantes?

I have lived for seventy-five years, through World War II, and our Korean War; I even participated in our trying to start a war in 1958 by invading Lebanon. I have lived through Lyndon Johnson's lies and the Vietnam War, and the Nixon-Kissinger murders toward the end of that war; through George Bush's lies and his attack on Iraq; through Clinton's three belligerences--in Iraq, Somalia, and Kosovo--and though George W. Bush's stupid Second Iraq War and his war in Afghanistan, and his concentration camp at Guantanamo. And now Obama. He is as bad as Johnson, or Nixon and Kissinger, or the first Bush; worse than Clinton, and even worse than George W. Bush.

Obama is a liar, a coward, and a violent man. I don't doubt that he is an intelligent man; but he is spineless, irresponsible, and completely unprincipled. I find it hard to imagine a worse president--even though I was quite literally afraid of a President McCain.

Court-Martial Bradley Manning? No, let's have Bradley Manning for President.

Bradley Manning for President! I mean it.

Bert Hornback