Petition:
We Stand With Pfc. Bradley Manning
We stand with accused whistle-blower U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning.
A 23-year-old Army intelligence analyst, Pfc. Manning faces decades in prison for allegedly leaking a video of a U.S. helicopter attack that killed at least eleven Iraqi civilians to the website Wikileaks. Among the dead were two working Reuters reporters. Two children were also severely wounded in the attack.
In addition to this “Collateral Murder” video, Pfc. Manning is suspected of leaking the “Afghan War Diaries”—tens-of-thousands of battlefield reports that explicitly describe civilian deaths and cover-ups, corrupt officials, collusion with warlords, and a failing U.S./NATO war effort.
“We only know these crimes took place because insiders blew the whistle at great personal risk ... Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal,” noted Barack Obama while on the campaign trail in 2008. While the President was referring to the Bush Administration’s use of phone companies to illegally spy on Americans, Pfc. Manning’s alleged actions are just as noteworthy. If the military charges against him are accurate, they show that he had a reasonable belief that war crimes were being covered up, and that he took action based on a crisis of conscience.
After nearly a decade of war and occupation waged in our name, it is odd that it apparently fell on a young Army private to provide critical answers to the questions, “What have we purchased with well over a trillion tax dollars and the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan?” However, history is replete with unlikely heroes.
If Bradley Manning is indeed the source of these materials, the nation owes him our gratitude. We ask Secretary of the Army, the Honorable John M. McHugh, and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, General George W. Casey, Jr., to release Pfc. Manning from pre-trial confinement and drop the charges against him.
Sincerely,
Bradley Manning Support Network Advisory Board members:
• Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink: Women for Peace; Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, board member for the National Whistleblower Center; Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle blower; Kathleen Gilberd, co-chair of the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild; Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and activist; Michael Moore, documentary filmmaker; Jose Vasquez, executive director of Iraq Veterans against the War; U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright (ret.), former U.S. State Department official.
Bradley Manning Support Network Steering Committee members:
• Gerry Condon, national co-chair of the Veterans for Peace GI Resistance Working Group; Mike Gogulski, founder of bradleymanning.org; Bob Meola, member of War Resisters League National Committee; Jeff Paterson, project director of Courage to Resist; Loraine Reitman, privacy advocate; Kevin Zeese, co-founder and executive director, Voters for Peace.
Sign the petition
There are over 8,265 signers to this petition as of February 7, 2011. Add your name at: http://standwithbrad.org/
Rally for Bradley! Quantico VA. Sunday, March 20
Rally at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia to support accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Army Pfc. Bradley Manning on March 20th! Supporters will gather for a 2:00 P.M. rally at the town of Triangle (intersection of Main St. and Route 1), then march to the gates of Quantico. Bradley has been held at the Quantico brig in solitary-like conditions for six months. We stand for truth, government transparency, and an end to our occupation wars… we stand with Bradley! Event endorsed by the Bradley Manning Support Network, Veterans for Peace, Courage to Resist, CodePink, and many others. The day before, on Saturday, March 19th, in Washington DC, we will be joining the noon rally at Lafayette Park and march on the White House to “Resist the War Machine!”
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