Manning's Convictions

Just a warning to y'all:

I've been out of blog-land for over a month, but a lot of news has been building up. I'll be firing out a few more of these in rapid succession over the next 48 hours.

So let's start out this post with the hottest First Amendment story of the hour: Bradley Manning's conviction. Manning was found guilty on 20 out of 22 counts. The mainstream media are reporting the fact that he was found not guilty of aiding the enemy as though it is some miracle when in reality it was a horrendously inept charge for prosecutors to level in the first place. The only reason for including the charge I can imagine is that the military wanted to send a strong signal to other soldiers that they would be charged similarly in their cases.

Believe me, I understand the need for internal security in the military. But what I don't understand is why an 18-year-old private was given access to classified national military secrets. I also don't understand why he had access to State Department information. It seems to me that our foreign affairs should not be part of even the DIA, but then again the DIA has grown far beyond its initial mandate and resists attempts to rein in its activities legally. I digress....

Back on why a young service member ranking at private would be allowed access to any of this stuff. It is a pressing issue of national law and fundamental chaos in our military bureaucracy when young, inexperienced personnel are handling information that should not even be within reach. In our effort to innovate and share information more quickly, the United States has wired its nation with an intelligence network that can function like a bomb with billions of independent parts. Bradley Manning just went off when he wasn't supposed to.

How much easier then for a civilian subcontrator - say Edward Snowden? - to use his position to steal the entire structure of the NSA. Bottom line: No more unaccountable personnel working in intelligence, period.

We don't need contractors or subcontractors gaining access, we don't need novices gaining access, we don't need one inept government branch sharing information it shouldn't with another inept branch, and we don't need any civilians except our appointed officials to be looking at sensivitve information. When information does need to be shared, it can be; however, the twin responses "We put it all up on the internet but it's password protected" and "the Federal government invented and owns the internet" should not be the excuse behind every lapse.

The American public are obviously victims of both Bradley Manning's inexperience and the Department of Defense's atrocious handling of intelligence for our national security, but while Manning today stands convicted of 20 counts for his part in the problem, the various officials above him in his chain of command will ever bear no responsibility for the bureaucratic mess they sustain around themselves, and many of the elected officials who wrote the poor legislation that enabled these abuses are lying six feet below amongst nettles and stones. Nobody is going to jail for allowing an 18-year-old to gain access to classified documents.

Manning is the scapegoat, but the American public must suffer with him, knowing that Bradley Manning could just as easily have stolen those dirty pictures of you doing the thing you shouldn't have in the place you shouldn't have been and leaked them to the media, in which case he wouldn't have been pursued by military investigators and maybe you'd be the one losing your job and answering to 22 counts in a court of law. Sadly, it's more common than you think.

If this is the future of our society, count me among the Amish.