Update 3/20/13: Rolling Stone magazine features major Bradley Manning story

Issue 1178 (Billie Joe cover), page 48. March 14, 2013

Issue 1178 (Billie Joe cover), page 48. March 14, 2013

The current issue of Rolling Stone magazine (March 14, 2013) features the ten-page article, “The Trials of Bradley Manning,” by Janet Reitman. Though not mentioned on the front cover (which Billie Joe Armstrong fills), it’s the longest piece in the issue, and it details Manning’s Army tenure, his decision to release documents, and most prominently, the horrors he suffered at the Quantico Marine brig and the subsequent hearing seeking accountability for that torture.

While the full piece is currently only available in print, you can read an excerpt here, introducing readers to Manning’s months of pretrial abuse:

Thus began Manning’s journey through the exceedingly murky realm of military pretrial detention, a nearly three-year ordeal punctuated by months of legalized torture, not unlike what enemy detainees­ endured at Guantánamo Bay. Though not the standard treatment for U.S. soldiers, even those accused of war crimes, Obama administration officials deemed it “appropriate” for Manning, who, in many regards, “ceased to be a ‘soldier’ from the moment he crossed the line and revealed the secrets of the war,” observes Kristine Huskey, the director of the Anti-Torture Program at Physicians for Human Rights. “In doing that, he became, in effect, the ‘enemy.’ And once you’re the enemy, you can be subject to treatment that is not for people on our side.”

Rolling Stone subscribers can access the entire piece online.

Furthermore, Reitman, who’s previously covered Jeremy Hammond, the young activist on trial for hacking the emails of private intelligence firm Stratfor that WikiLeaks published, is continuing to write about Manning online.

In Bradley Manning Explains His Motives, she details Manning’s statement taking responsibility for releasing documents to WikiLeaks, setting the narrative about him straight along the way:

Manning has often been cast as a naïve young man who was manipulated by Assange, Berg or others into giving them the information. In accepting his guilt, he made it clear that no one pressured him into doing it. “The decision to send was my own,” he said. “And I take full responsibility.”

In another article, Did the Mainstream Media Fail Bradley Manning?, Reitman explores Manning’s revelation that he’d attempted to discuss the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs with the Washington Post and the New York Times before turning to WikiLeaks:

If nothing else, this chapter of the Manning case should spark some hard questions about the value of the press as a check on governmental power, and the extent to which the mainstream press has ceded ground to organizations like Wikileaks.

Also, Bradley Manning is featured first in Rolling Stone’s new installment, The New Political Prisoners: Leakers, Hackers and Activists.

You can read Michael Hasting’s Rolling Stone interview with Julian Assange here.

4 thoughts on “Update 3/20/13: Rolling Stone magazine features major Bradley Manning story

  1. http://www.polymathpoet.com/wikileaks_heroes

    WikiLeaks Heroes

    WikiLeaks
    we don’t blame you
    only for wanting
    all that is true

    Crushes the soul
    to see the bloodshed
    Damage control
    You’re a watershed

    And little boy Bradley
    who just came along
    only to see
    Death play its song

    Imagine the shame
    of the men who did send
    these immature brains
    off to war to expend

    First age 20
    then 30
    and now even 40
    say the docs that our brains can’t mature
    lordie lordie

    Yes, they know
    and yet still
    they send them to war
    these our little kids killed
    or home gored and ignored

    but the fact still remains
    they charged a young man
    when it’s proven his brain
    could not form a plan

    oh these men
    and war games
    on the lives of our youth
    have no care
    and no love
    for humanity truth

    Julian, Bradley and Jeremy
    You’re our truth heroes
    for eternity

    All you did was wish us
    to know all that was wrong
    and for that
    you’ve been tortured
    far, far too long

    Bible says in the Psalms
    evil soon be destroyed
    all of them and their bombs
    and all their convoys

    but as for you
    and your trouble
    it is not for not
    for the hope of the future
    is for what you have fought

    and the advances you’ve gained
    in life, love and truth
    are already attained
    in eternal virtue

    so hold on
    dear brothers
    for this too shall pass
    and your freedoms
    be handed to you
    yes, alas

  2. I have the highest regard for Pvt. Manning and all that he has been subjected to.

    It is so hypocritical for the US to disparage other great leaders, like Hugo Chavez, and then do the very same thing they are accusing others of.

    You can fool some of the people some of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

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