A back story I heard today about Brad Manning from Dan Ellsberg

in an excellent DemocracyNow! segment. I thought it might be worth passing on:

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Clearly what’s possible to 22 year old Manning who was, by the way, several years younger I think, probably 20 or so when he actually started this process. What is available to him is probably available to five or six hundred thousand people- available to SIPRNet- and notice that the thing that first struck him was his realization that he was involved in the arrest process of people who he later discovered were doing nothing other than writing what he calls, "scholarly critiques of the current administration" for which they were being tortured by the Iraqis to whom we were turning them over with the knowledge of Americans. All of this being blatantly illegal, both for the Iraqis and for the Americans who turned them over to torture. When he reported this to his superior, his superior told him to forget it and get back to work arresting people. The effect that had on Bradley Manning was that he was being asked to participate in a blatantly illegal process and he chose to say no to it, to expose it, to resist it, to do what he actually should have done. One person out of hundreds of thousands who did that.

Much, much more today:

Guests
Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower.

Carne Ross, a British diplomat for 15 years who resigned before the Iraq war. He is the founder and head of a non-profit diplomatic advisory group, Independent Diplomat

Greg Mitchell, writes the Media Fix blog for The Nation. He was the longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine and is the author of 10 books including The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics.

As'ad Abu Khalil, professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus and visiting professor at UC, Berkeley. He’s the author of "The Battle for Saudi Arabia" and runs the Angry Arab News Service blog.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/29/us_facing_global_diplomatic_crisis_following

could have been interviewed alone and said more!

Also, if you want more from Dan, there are several good segments with him searchable on Amy's site.

Reading it now...