Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Taibbi: MSM misses the point of Bradley Manning trial

Matt Taibbi argues that the MSM is missing the point of Bradley Manning's public release of classified documents. The U.S. media has made it all about HIM, and whether he's a hero or a traitor:

[T]his case does not have anything to do with who Bradley Manning is, or even, really, what his motives were. This case is entirely about the "classified" materials Manning had access to, and whether or not they contained widespread evidence of war crimes.

This whole thing, this trial, it all comes down to one simple equation. If you can be punished for making public a crime, then the government doing the punishing is itself criminal.

Manning, by whatever means, stumbled into a massive archive of evidence of state-sponsored murder and torture, and for whatever reason, he released it. The debate we should be having is over whether as a people we approve of the acts he uncovered that were being done in our names.


By Matt Taibbi
June 6, 2013 | Rolling Stone

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