Bullshit. People become accustomed to taking oaths almost from birth. Oaths and pledges and promises.  Bradley Manning pledged allegiance to the united States of America ten thousand times before he pledged, as a still immature kid, to keep secret the lies and distortions of the truth  which have been facilitating death and destruction on an immense scale and helped push America into immense debt and establish it as a cruel and vicious country in the eyes of so many people of other countries. Allegiance to his country might well be expected to come before allegiance to an inbred military hierarchy.
He did not owe fidelity to the lying bastards that want to keep the abuses quiet. Condemning his actions in this particular case because he took an oath tempts me to get into the territory of Godwin's law. If an oath, that is the oath itself, over-rides honesty and ethics and morals and requires protecting murderous abuses, then those who made an oath to Hitler were correct in fighting for him, though not for their countries best interests, to the bitter end.

I think some of your horses a mite high.

If there's an illegal war, and illegal acts going on within that war, with thousands of real live people - guilty and innocent - being killed on the basis of lies and illegalities, then I think we at least have to ask, is it treason to reveal those facts?

And is there not a case that there have been higher-level betrayals in this game? So.... can one commit treason against traitors?

Finally, can we not get too frigging whooped up about the problems this causes for America's security? Seriously, take a look at these wars and the way they've been carried out, and then tell me all about how they have, actually and factually, boosted America's security? 

All of which is to say, I wish these guys had a bit more Martin Luther King in them, and would confront the charges head on, admit to what had happened, but make this case - of breaking a law to stop ongoing, larger breaking of the law - than to do it the way they have done. 

Shorter. In my books, people like Gates and Petraeus and Clinton (as well as Cheney, Bush, et al) have much more blood on their hands, have done more to damage the national security of the US, and actually stand a better match to having committed real-world betrayals of their nation than do this Wikileaks lot.

855,000 mericans hold security clearances.  Millions of classified documents are generated each year among the 160+ security organizations.  Top Secret documents weren't released.

You bring up 'heroes' as some determinant in your blog, Ramona.  I don't have to find Assange a hero to believe that much of what has been hidden from the American public and the world should not have been secret, and wasn't kept secret for any reasons relating to our soldiers' safety or to protect intelligence sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  They were kept secret so we wouldn't know what malevolent things were being done in our names.

American are being urged to yawn at them, as you do, when you mention the cover-ups and atrocities and civilian deaths unreported and, IMO, make light of them compared to your 'slippery slope of treason.'  It's a strange moral compass that would not see war crimes evidence as a greater offense than the leaking of these documents. 

Please remember My Lai, and the effects it had on ending the war in Viet Nam sooner, for instance.  These wars have been politicized for far too long, and the classification of far too many documents has become a political tool for endless war.  And now the top Generals are politicians, trying to keep American support for the wars.  It has to end.

Do you have a cite for your assertion Bradley Manning has been named as the provider of these documents?

That article you link (leaving aside the serious holes in Adrian Lamo's stroy) says he discussed State Department dispatches. Neither this release nor the Afghanistan war diary meet that description. He has been charged with releasing the "Collateral Murder" video and "more than 50" classified cables. The charging documents also indicate that he ACCESSED around 150,000 classified records the majority of which were not downloaded to his system.

The reason he had access is the same reason that thousands and thousands of other people have access to the exact same information. "Secret" isn't "Top Secret" nor is it "Compartmentalized Top Secret". In other words, field reports by definition don't hold any major disclosures beyond the routine conduct of the war. It is also important to note as a condition of releasing whatever he ultimately did, Manning in specific insisted Wikileaks redact any information that could possibly put soldiers at risk. And for their part Wikileaks has been seemingly meticulous in doing so. In fact, they have been far more thorough than the NYT. To me, it appears as if all players here have been completely responsible.

As you acknowledge, the leaks offer definitive proof there is a reason to distrust out government - that they have lied about many aspects of the conduct of the war. In a world where non-critical "secrets" are kept entirely for the purpose of preventing politicians from being held accountable for the decisions that they have made - to literally facilitate lying to the American public - national security becomes the tool by which informed Democracy is thwarted. That in itself makes the release of the information a true act of courage and a legitimately defensible act of whistle-blowing. In my mind, dedication to politically-held state secrets over an informed electorate and free press abandon the basic essence of Democracy. And I don't want to be the one to break it to you, generally speaking, Americans traditionally value free-speech and the other constitutional protections over ALL else and are willing to put their lives on the line for them.

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

And I can't help but wonder if you were an Iraqi who had been tortured and live under the constant fear that if you say anything that you will be recaptured and tortured again ... if maybe you might view this release of indisputable information as a first small step towards justice. But, never mind any of that! We must protect irrelevant state secrets - simply for the sake of them being called secret by the politicians who benefit from an uninformed electorate.

I'll leave the fact that the DoD says nothing in the last release put soldiers at risk nor compromised intelligence sources to stand for itself. but in the interest of fairness and accuracy, you should probably stop stating as a definitive that Manning is responsible for something when there is thus far not a shred of evidence to support the accusation. Wikileaks has many sources.

Finally, the "Tea Party" (at least the ascendant neocon faction) is on the exact same page as YOU are with this one - they'd like to see Manning executed. That last line was some Lazy-ass-bullshit, why didn't you just go for it and assert that those who disagree with you, in fact, support Hitler?

What we don't know yet is why this young soldier was allowed access to such sensitive documents and given so much time alone.

That is exactly the sort of question that got my own train of thought moving.

he bragged about how easy it was to accomplish such an unbelievable breach.  (That's the rest of the story.  How could this happen when they're so security-conscious(?)

I simply thought that maybe somebody wanted this to happen and now I'm waiting to see who benefits from the situation, in order to know who it was.

There are no absolutes. (even this one??)

OK there are very few absolutes.. No matter what the level of your clearance and your sincerity in swearing to uphold it, soldier if you find there's a plot to execute the President I entreat you violate that oath.

Sorry, but like almost (no absolutes!) everything in life compliance with your oath depends. 

  On the facts.

We don't have the luxury of checking our brains at the door. So maybe the release was justified , maybe not . We'll have to make up our minds about that.

I vote no. This time.

But if I thought this release would mean that the American public would become so sickened of War that they would make it almost impossible for us to start another aggressive one,

......I'd change my vote.

You say you admire whistleblowers and their courage, etc... and then proceed to condemn the very same people for doing what is necessary to blow the whistle when it comes to our lying, deceiving, lawbreaking government and it's most secretive, dishonest and deceptive branches: the military and intelligence communities. 

 You write that "even the seemingly benign can be destructive.  Ask Valerie Plame."  Now you are either uninformed or you believe your readers are uninformed regarding the motive for the Plame leak as there was not anything at all benign in the deliberate lifting of Plame's cover as a covert agent for the CIA.  That was an act of real and tangible treason, that violated quite specifically a law that has no other purpose than to protect the lives of our covert operatives.   We know that "benign" leak has actually brought harm to our agents and our country and it was done for the absolutely inexcusable political reason of revenge and vindictiveness.  You owe an apology to Plame and your readers for making this profoundly wrong assertion that the Plame leak was "benign."  It was intended to destroy her career and harm her husband both professionally and personally.  Not only did the intended purpose get served but the President and Vice President of the United States (chiefly the Vice President) were the people who ordered this act of treason to be carried out.  Yet, according ot you, it is Mr. Manning that is a traitor and not the scumbag war criminals who not only didn't have any higher purpose but whose purposes for illegal actions were the worst, most indefensible reasons one could imagine?  There's something fundamentally flawed with that logic.

You go on to feign concern about the "cavalier" approach to the leaking of hundreds of thousands of classified documents by someone who has taken an oath to keep these secrets secret and that is your excuse for calling the whistle blowing activity you say you admire: "treason."  Sorry, but that's not only contradictory it's also simple minded pap and couldn't have been said better by any number of Pentagon pr flacks who self righteously denounce people like Manning and Wikileaks not because they endanger national security but because they threaten to expose the lies upon which the government has spent a trillion dollars and counting and upon which they have taken the lives of thousands of our soldiers, wounded and maimed tens of thousands of our soldiers, and killed, wounded and maimed hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The government flacks are insincere and despite your intention to come off as sincere you too are insincere.  You cannot hold both your claimed positions at once and really you only hold one of them and that is the one that supports the system of lies for the pharisaical reason that the rules must be observed at all costs. 

Pardon me but that's just flat out hooey!  You don't have the foggiest idea about whether Manning's providing classified documents was cavalier or deadly serious or something in between.  You don't have one scintilla of fact or evidence to back up this premise upon which you build your self righteous argument.  Furthermore, all public evidence indicates that your implication that Wikileaks is in any way being cavalier in releasing the documents is the opposite of the truth.  Yet, despite the known and widely reported evidence on this you cling 100% to the government's specious claims that this is the case.

Your melodramatic recital of the government's first and last false claim that we should not lose sight of the fact that "what we have here is a security breach of massive, unprecedented proportions, with unimaginable repercussions" is really just laughable.  I honestly respect the fact that you think you are discussing a grave matter of state in an oh so grown up way, but the truth is that you're just swallowing whole the government's lies about this hook, line and sinker.

There's simply no basis whatsoever for your parroting of the government's claim that such a document dump has "unimaginable repercussions."  Zero.  That's just using the boogey man of the possibility of some unknown problems to justify the unjustifiable secrecy and the lies the secret classification protects and that is all that it is.  We know for a fact that there was absolutely zero negative impact on any sources or methods from the Afghanistan document dump by Wikileaks earlier in the year because the Pentagon has admitted it repeatedly.  Thus the claim of "unimaginable repercussions" which was made about those couple of hundred thousand secret documents is just hooey and there's no reason at all to believe the 400,000 released on Iraq will turn out any differently despite the breathless, self righteous concern troll claims of the government and those who so obediently repeat their refrain.

You then go on to wonder how a young man like Manning got access to such documents and you begin to question the system that made it so easy to access them.  Good questions all, but give this a little thought.  On one hand, if you don't lie about what you're doing to the public then you don't need to hide these disreputable practices from the American public and make no mistake that is who the government is hiding the truth from.  It isn't the insurgents or Al Qaeda or the Taliban they don't want finding this stuff out.  Hell, those guys already know all of this stuff about US forces being complicit and turning a blind eye to Iraqi forces torturing and killing people.  It's the American public they need to keep in the dark because if the citizens of this country understood what our government is doing over there they might logically be expected to object to it and demand that the troops come home and the big party for the contractors and the generals and the politicians will be brought to a close.

You wind up your pledge of blind allgieance to leaders who lie and break the law with this maudlin gem:

"Whatever the answers, I won't be celebrating the release of those documents.  It sets up a whole new dangerous phase for us--where the ideals of free speech and transparency trump the security of our country.  When the wholesale theft of mountains of classified documents becomes a heroic deed, it sends a signal that anarchy is now the favored act of rebellion."

Wow!  With this marvelously self righteous declaration you demonstrate perfectly that you honestly don't understand at all that it has always been the priority of this nation and at the heart of our values to expose lies and to have honesty trump lies regardless of what kind of cover is given to them by the government.  With this almost embarrassing display of your own fealty to security over honesty and lawful conduct you demonstrate quite conclusively my first point which is that your claim to respect and admire whistleblowers is just not honest. 

Your sanctimonious worshiping at the idol of "national security" as displayed by that paragraph is exactly what Nixon and his thugs said about Daniel Ellsberg who is, as a matter of fact, a national and international hero for the very reason you so plainly abhor: transparency over false claims of the need to protect national security.

None of the information thus far released by Wikileaks does anything other than put the truth before the public and expose the fact that our government has been lying to us, the taxpayers, repeatedly about some of the most important issues with respect to our unwise and in some cases quite illegal activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

It is precisely under these circumstances that the nation needs people like Manning and organizations like Wikileaks to bring the truth to light.  And we must admire their courage all the more because they then have to put up with the smears and lies of the liars who try to discredit them by innuendo and manufactured "scandal".  Oh and they also have to put up with and endure the condemnation of people like yourself who fail to acknowledge that the issue here is not whether national security has been compromised because it hasn't been.  The issue is whether we will tolerate a government that is supposed to be answerable to the citizens routinely lying about its motives and actions in the most grave of circumstances and whether we want lies and lawlessness to be the order of the day. 

We have spent over a trillion dollars on two imperial war efforts both of which have failed.  There is no end in sight.  The government lied to initially gain public support for these wars and then to maintain it.  The government continues to lie about the role it has played in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of civilians and it has also lied repeatedly about the strategy being used to wage these wars and the prospects for victory (there are none).  The continuation of the wars only serves to destabilize the regions where we have wrongfully attempted to assert imperial control and still the government continues to lie to the public maintaining that if we leave things will get worse when, in fact, it is our very presence that is making everything over there worse.  The anti-war advocates have been right since the very beginning on everything having to do with these two wars and the advocates of endless war have been dead wrong.  These documents prove many of the claims that have been made about the lies our government has been telling us.  The idea that national security has been compromised or that the safety of our military personnel has been in any way jeopardized is not supported by one iota of evidence or fact.  And, as mentioned above, the Pentagon itself has acknowledged that none of the documents released thus far has brought harm to our troops, those who collaborate with us or our methods.  This is precisely how it went down with the Pentagon Papers too.  The dynamics really haven't changed one bit.

Many learned lessons from the Viet Nam era generally and the Pentagon Papers issue specifically.  Yet many in the public remain just as gullible and willingly so to pledge fealty to the liars and criminals at the helm of our government.  I suppose it's just too difficult to admit that our leaders routinely lie and break the law under cover of national security and secrecy but it's the truth.

The liars inside the government know that as long as there is no evidence that lies and lawlessness are their policy they cannot be effectively challenged.  The wall of state secrecy protects them from real scrutiny, but most importantly it protects them from taking responsibility or suffering the consequences of their illegal and immoral actions.  Only by releasing these documents can citizens fight and refute those lies.  Almost none (if any) of the released documents actually merits classification as secret except for the purpose of keeping the truth from the US public just as there was no real reason to keep the Pentagon Papers secret other than to make sure the truth was hidden from the taxpayers and from the public whose sons and daughters fight these wars for no good reason and who are the ones who, loyally following their orders, are the ones who turn over civilians for torture and execution, who turn a blind eye to war crimes, etc...

I accept you intend well.  But really, this was just way too sanctimonious and blind, unquestioning following of the people who have been responsible for all the lies, pointless death and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan from day one.  There is far too much contradiction for your argument to hold together and the arguments themselves are largely based upon demonstrably untrue assumptions.

Oh, and one last thing.  No one, whether military or civilian takes an oath to protect illegal activity and even if they did they are under no moral obligation to honor immoral/illegal oaths or orders.  All our military personnel are duty bound to refuse illegal orders and to report war crimes.  Nuremburg made clear that civilians and soldiers alike have a moral responsibility to report or otherwise refuse to cooperate with war crimes and other illegal activities.  There is no oath to national security that binds anyone morally or legally to protect lies and crimes committed on behalf of any government or any nation's military forces.

Excellent, thought-provoking post and comments.