Us Investigators can find no link between Manning and Assange. What excuse will the US manufacture next to get?

[peetr]

It's amazing the amount of misinformation that's out there regarding the wikileaks disclosures, that could be easily answered by reading wikileaks own mission statement or by reading the documents yourself. The major news outlets are either not doing a good job on these stories,or are participating in the coverup, by misstating the facts and misrepresenting their significance. Unfortunately the US public is confused by the coverup, and unaware that the US government is actively trying to undo our freedoms, such as the freedom of speech and the right to expect journalists to have access to sensitive stories, and report on them accurately. The majority of the leaks show massive deception on the part of the politicians, military and diplomats, sometimes at a level that should be prosecuted as fraud or treason.

Regardless of whether one views manning as a spy today, in a few years hopefully he will be applauded for bringing facts to the conjecture we've all had about lying by politicians and diplomats.

As far as the attempt to criminalize what wikileaks does, again, it's pretty clear that they have been helping whistleblowers around the world for a few years, and this is only different because of the shear amount of documents leaked. Wikileaks is only doing what journalists have forgotten to do, or are too hampered by their ties to the organizations they are supposed to be reporting on.

As for Tunisia, it's widely reported that the revolution there was not just helped by the wikileaks disclosure, but that Twitter and Facebook were instrumental in helping the Tunisians become aware of the atrocities that were being committed in their country. Facebook even had to reroute their servers to avoid a concerted effort by the government of Tunisia to hack into Tunisians facebook accounts to delete references to the murders of citizens, and to collect the names and addresses of those who were posting criticisms of the regime. Communicating by Facebook was almost entirely responsible for the people living in the Tunisian cities to find out about the murders, and to begin to topple their fascist/dictatorial government.

The article referenced by another poster here, actually does say that wikileaks disclosures may have helped the revolt, although the reporter downplays the significance, he doesn't refute it. And it's only his editorial opinion that it wasn't significant, while his source for the info obviously thinks that it was a factor. Clearly a bias showing.

I just heard an interview with Facebook, where they described the scope of the hacking, it was country wide, and was going on nearly 24 hours a day, in a way they had never seen done before. As a result of the news about the hacking, Tunisians were signing up for Facebook in record numbers even as the government was trying to stifle their free speech and hide the crimes. .

This type of behavior is typical of fascist governments, and unfortunately is also typical of the US government response to wikileaks. To try to remove the leaker, instead of addressing the frauds and deceptions disclosed.

Manning unfortunately made a big mistake, and contacted a hacker who was an FBI informant (as a way to avoid prosecution for hacking) who then turned him in. Wikileaks did not abandon him, he just f'd up and got himself caught because even though he'd been warned not to, he couldn't help but talk about what he did. Wikileaks couldn't help him once that happened, and they have a fund to help with his defense, whenever that happens. This whole thing would have gone much differently had he not opened his mouth to a snitch.