Colonel Denise Lind, the judge presiding over Manning's trial, ruled that Manning's motives are not admissable as evidence in his trial. This removes the option for a whistle-blower defense, which is the only defense. Without the ability to demonstrate that he was exposing illegal operations this whole trial becomes a farce, a giant PR operation for the U.S. military that say, "We tell you what to think."
Removing the whistle-blower defense proves that Manning cannot and will not recieve a fair trial in the mil;itary courts. In the U.S. military, fair trials are already a joke. The jury of your peers is actually a jury of officers, not peers to any enlisted soldier, and in the military officers will support other officers regardless of what is right. It's an elite club in which enlisted soldiers are their servants, not to question anything.
There is only one way for this trial to be fair and focus on the real issues, take the case away from the United States DoD. In an international war crimes court, the information he alledgedly leaked would be on trial right there with him. It would expose the war crimes that Manning, himself, was attempting to expose and they could decide if that information should have been leaked or not.
Without a true neutrral party, the information is assumed to be secret for a good reason, something which is almost never the case. If Bradley Manning is denied his only defense then he is denied a fair trial. Yet another rights violation that the U.S.D.O.D. will most assuredly get away with as this whole case, already barely in the public eye, gets buried forever.
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