Hero Manning's 1,000th Day Of Imprisonment Nothing To Celebrate

Today, Saturday, February 23, 2013, marks the 1,000th day that Private Bradley Manning has been imprisoned by Uncle Sam for following his conscience and releasing intelligence reports to Wikileaks, detailing American war crimes in the Middle East. The biggest bombshell (publicity wise, that is) was the video "Collateral Murder" showing US helicopter gun ship pilots gleefully blasting Iraqi civilians. These reports also showed how our military underreported civilian casualties and enabled our local allies to practice torture on presumed bad guys. For his heroic and principled actions Manning was imprisoned in solitary confinement for the first 330 days of his stay at Club Fed, kept virtually naked and subjected to harassment that UN torture chief Juan Mendez, supported by 295 legal academics, concluded was....torture.

Was dear ol' Unc hoping Manning would kill himself or somehow windup dead so they wouldn't have to try him in open court which, in effect, puts Uncle Sam himself on trial for all the world to see what Manning was exposing to the sunshine of public scrutiny? Is that why virtually all the current pre-trial activity is largely being conducted in secret as will his actual trial scheduled to begin June 3, roughly 1,100 days after his arrest.

While lowly Private Manning's long march to a certain life sentence (prosecutors have ruled out a possible death sentence) drones on, the perpetrators of the war crimes Manning sought to expose, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Rice, have spent the last 1,000 days living large on the millions they've earned promoting the war party.

Life isn't always fair, is it?