<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div class="header-image" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; font-size: 18px; ">(Emphasis added. M.S.) </div><div class="header-image" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; text-align: left; "><br></div><div class="header-image" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; text-align: left; "><a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; "><img alt="" height="70" width="608" src="http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/blog/70x608/3637acd81588ec9aafbcd714821f89d3e740b408.png" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: none; "></a></div><div id="teaser" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; clear: both; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(126, 126, 126); font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; text-align: left; position: static; z-index: auto; "><div class="subcolumns" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 2159px; overflow: hidden; background-image: url(http://assets.rollingstone.com/images/fe/divider/headerBoardDivider.png); background-position: 642px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><div class="c65l" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: left; width: 1416px; "><div class="subcl" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 1em 0px 0px; "><h1 style="margin: 0px 0px 0em; padding: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 36px; "><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; "><font color="#b51a00">As Bradley Manning Trial Begins, </font></span></h1><h1 style="margin: 0px 0px 0em; padding: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 36px; "><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; "><font color="#b51a00">Press Predictably Misses the Point</font></span></h1></div></div></div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "><font color="#b51a00"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div class="byline" style="margin: 0px 0px 3px; padding: 0px; font-size: 19px; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; "><font color="#b51a00"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; ">By</em> <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/contributor/matt-taibbi" class="blogger-name" rel="author" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold !important; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 1px; ">MATT TAIBBI</a></font></div><font color="#b51a00">POSTED: <span class="post-date" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; ">June 6, 3:35 PM ET<div style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></span></font></div><div class="socialActionsTopWrapper " style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; text-align: left; "></div><div class="blog-post-content" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; text-align: left; "><div class="assetContainer imageStandard floatLt" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; padding: 0px; float: left; display: inline; "><div class="image-holder" style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px !important; border: 1px solid rgb(127, 127, 127); height: auto; position: static; z-index: auto; "><img alt="Bradley Manning" src="http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/blog_entry/1000x306/manning-306v-1370546883.jpg" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: none; display: block; height: auto; "></div><div class="imageCaption" style="margin: 0px; padding: 8px 6px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14px; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-right-width: 1px; border-right-style: solid; border-right-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); width: 304px; ">Bradley Manning</div><div class="imageCredit" style="margin: 0px; padding: 6px 6px 6px 20px; background-image: url(http://assets.rollingstone.com/images/fe/copyCamera.png); color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 10px; width: 290px; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-right-width: 1px; border-right-style: solid; border-right-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); background-position: 5px 6px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; ">Alex Wong/Getty Images</div></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">Well, the Bradley Manning trial has begun, and for the most part, the government couldn't have scripted the headlines any better.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">In the now-defunct <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; ">Starz </em>series <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; ">Boss</em>, there's a reporter character named "Sam Miller" played by actor Troy Garity who complains about lazy reporters who just blindly eat whatever storylines are fed to them by people in power. He called those sorts of stories <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; ">Chumpbait</em>. If the story is too easy, if you're doing a piece on a sensitive topic and factoids are not only reaching you freely, but publishing them is somehow not meeting much opposition from people up on high, then you're probably eating Chumpbait.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">There's an obvious Chumpbait angle in the Bradley Manning story, and most of the mainstream press reports went with it. You can usually tell if you're running a Chumpbait piece if you find yourself writing the same article as 10,000 other hacks.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; "><a class="inStoryLink" href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-trials-of-bradley-manning-20130314" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: none; ">The Trials of Bradley Manning</a></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">The <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/02/us/manning-court-martial/index.html" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: none; ">CNN headline</a> read as follows: "Hero or Traitor? Bradley Manning's Trial to Start Monday." NBC <a href="http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/03/18725324-contrasting-portraits-of-bradley-manning-as-court-martial-opens?lite" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: none; ">went with</a> "Contrasting Portraits of Bradley Manning as Court-Martial Opens." <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; ">Time </em>magazine's Denver Nicks <a href="http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/05/viewpoint-our-real-secrecy-problem/#ixzz2VNWKyjq8" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: none; ">took this original approach</a> in their "think" piece on Manning, "Bradley Manning and our Real Secrecy Problem":</p><blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 1.6em; padding: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-size: 17px; "><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Is he a traitor or a hero? This is the question surrounding Bradley Manning, the army private currently being court-martialed at Fort Meade for aiding the enemy by wrongfully causing defense information to published on the Internet.</p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">The Nicks thesis turned out to be one chosen by a lot of editorialists at the Manning trial, who have decided that the "real story" in the Manning case is what this incident showed about our lax security procedures, our lack of good due diligence in vetting the folks we put in charge of our vital information.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">"With so many poorly protected secrets accessible to so many people, it was only a matter of time," Nicks wrote. "We can be grateful that Bradley Manning rather than someone less charitably inclined perpetrated this leak."</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">Dr. Tim Stanley of the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; ">Telegraph </em>took a similar approach, only he was even <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100220149/bradley-manning-traitor-whistleblower-victim-of-obamas-bullying-and-a-terrible-gay-icon/" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: none; ">less generous</a> than Nicks, calling Manning the "weirdo [who] tried to bring down the government," a man who was "guilty as hell" and "deserves to do time."</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">"Private Manning was a self-absorbed geek who should never have enjoyed the level of access that he did," Stanley wrote. He went on to argue that Manning's obvious personality defects should have disqualified him for sensitive duty, and the fact that he was even hired in the first place is the real scandal of this trial:</p><blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 1.6em; padding: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-size: 17px; "><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11874276" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: none; ">His personality breakdown was there for all to see</a> – criticising US policy on Facebook, telling friends, "Bradley Manning is not a piece of equipment", and even entertaining "a very internal private struggle with his gender". He told hacker Adrian Lamo that he "listened and lip-synced to Lady Gaga's Telephone while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history." You go, girl.</p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; "><b>All of this shit is disgraceful. It's Chumpbait.</b></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">If I was working for the Pentagon's PR department as a hired press Svengali, with my salary eating up some of the nearly <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; ">five billion</em> <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; ">dollars</em> the armed services <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/05/pentagon-spending-billions-pr-sway-world-opinion/" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: none; ">spends annually</a> on advertising and public relations, I would be telling my team to pump reporters over and over again with the same angle.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">I would beat it into the head of every hack on this beat that the court-martial is about a troubled young man with gender identity problems, that the key issue of law here rests inside the mind of young PFC Manning, that the only important issue of fact for both a jury and the American people to decide is exactly the question in these headlines.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">Is Manning a hero, or a traitor? Did he give thousands of files to Wikileaks out of a sense of justice and moral horror, or did he do it because he had interpersonal problems, because he couldn't keep his job, because he was a woman trapped in a man's body, because he was a fame-seeker, because he was lonely?</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">You get the press and the rest of America following that bouncing ball, and the game's over. Almost no matter what the outcome of the trial is, if you can convince the American people that this case is about mental state of a single troubled kid from Crescent, Oklahoma, then the propaganda war has been won already.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">Because in reality, this case does not have anything to do with who Bradley Manning is, or even, really, what his motives were. This case is entirely about the "classified" materials Manning had access to, and whether or not they contained widespread evidence of war crimes.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; "><b>This whole thing, this trial, it all comes down to one simple equation. If you can be punished for making public a crime, then the government doing the punishing is itself criminal.</b></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; "><b>Manning, by whatever means, stumbled into a massive archive of evidence of state-sponsored murder and torture, and for whatever reason, he released it. The debate we should be having is over whether as a people we approve of the acts he uncovered that were being done in our names.</b></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; "><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; ">Slate </em>was one of the few outlets to approach the Manning trial in a way that made sense. Their story took the opportunity of the court-martial to remind all of us of the list of horrors Manning discovered, <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/06/04/bradley_manning_trial_10_revelations_from_wikileaks_documents_on_iraq_afghanistan.html" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: none; ">including</a> (just to name a very few):</p><blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 1.6em; padding: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: italic; font-size: 17px; "><ul style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; list-style-type: disc; "><font color="#9a244f">During the Iraq War, U.S. authorities <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/iraq-war-logs-military-leaks" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; ">failed to investigate</a> hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape, and murder by Iraqi police and soldiers, according to thousands of field reports…</font></li><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; list-style-type: disc; "><font color="#9a244f"><br></font></li><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; list-style-type: disc; "><font color="#9a244f">There were <u>109,032</u> "violent deaths" <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/true-civilian-body-count-iraq" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; ">recorded</a> in Iraq between 2004 and 2009, including 66,081 civilians. Leaked records from the Afghan War separately revealed coalition troops' <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7909742/Afghanistan-war-logs-90000-classified-documents-revealed-by-Wikileaks.html" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; ">alleged role</a> in killing at least 195 civilians in unreported incidents, one reportedly involving U.S. service members machine-gunning a bus, wounding or killing 15 passengers…</font></li><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; list-style-type: disc; "><font color="#9a244f">In Baghdad in 2007, a U.S. Army helicopter <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/04/06/us-iraq-usa-journalists-idUSTRE6344FW20100406" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; ">gunned down</a> a group of civilians, including two Reuters news staff…</font></li></ul></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; "><b>This last incident was the notorious video in which our helicopter pilots lit up a group of civilians, among other things wounding two children in a van, to which the pilots blithely <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/04/06/us-iraq-usa-journalists-idUSTRE6344FW20100406" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: none; ">commented</a>, "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle."</b></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; "><b>Except that there had been no battle, none of the people on the street were armed, it was an attack from space for all these people knew – and oh, by the way, we were in <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; ">their </em>country, thanks to a war that history has revealed to have been a grotesque policy error.</b></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; "><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; ">It</em>'<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; ">s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle</em>. It's lines like this, truly horrific stuff that's evidence of a kind of sociopathic breakdown of our society, that this trial should be about. Not Manning's personal life.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">Unfortunately, the American people would rather make it about Manning, because they know they were complicit in those and other murders, because they loudly brayed for war in Iraq for years, no matter how often and how loudly it was explained to them that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were not the same person.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">Hacks like Stanley reassure the public that they have the right to have the results of their own moral decisions kept well hidden from them. His kind of propaganda soothes people into believing that Manning was just a freak and a weirdo, a one-off kink in the machinery, who hopefully will be thrown in the hole forever or at least for a very long time, so that we don't have to hear about any of this awful stuff again. At the very least, according to Stanley, we shouldn't have to listen to anyone call Manning a hero:</p><blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 1.6em; padding: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-size: 17px; "><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "> At the centre of the storm is a person who one suspects should never have been in uniform, let along enjoying access to military intelligence, who has blundered into the history books by way of a personality crisis. Incredibly, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/27/bradley-manning-sf-gay-pride" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: none; ">some people actually want to celebrate him as a gay icon</a>. Who next, the Kray twins?</p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; "><b>Wow. We're the ones machine-gunning children, and yet Manning is the one being compared to the murdering Kray twins? And Jesus, isn't being charged with the Espionage Act enough? Is Manning also being accused of not representing gay America skillfully enough on the dock?</b></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">Here's my question to Johnson: What would be the correct kind of person to have access to videos of civilian massacres? Who's the right kind of person to be let in the know about the fact that we systematically turned academics and other "suspects" over to the Iraqi military to be tortured? We want people who will, what, sit on this stuff? Apparently the idea is to hire the kind of person who will cheerfully help us keep this sort of thing hidden from ourselves.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">The thing is, when it comes to things like the infamous "Collateral Murder" video, whether it's Bradley Manning or anyone else, any decent human being would have had an obligation to come forward.<b> Presented with that material, you either become part of a campaign of torture and murder by saying nothing, or you have to make it public. Morally, there's no option.</b></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; ">Yes, Manning went beyond even that. One can definitely quibble about the volume of the material he released and the manner in which he released it. And I get that military secrets should, in a properly functioning society, be kept secret.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; "><b>But when military secrets cross the line into atrocities, the act of keeping these secrets secret ceases to have much meaning.</b></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 17px; "><b>The issues to be debated at this trial are massive in scope. They're about the character of the society we've all created, not the state of mind of one troubled Army private.</b> If anyone tries to tell you anything else, he's selling you something.</p></div><div class="related-content" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-family: georgia; text-align: left; font-size: 17px; "><h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 0em; padding: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-weight: normal; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-size: 23px; "></h3></div><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-family: georgia; text-align: left; font-size: 17px; "><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; "><br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; ">Read more: <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/as-bradley-manning-trial-begins-press-predictably-misses-the-point-20130605#ixzz2VkZy3juP" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); text-decoration: none; ">http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/as-bradley-manning-trial-begins-press-predictably-misses-the-point-20130605#ixzz2VkZy3juP</a> <br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; ">Follow us: <a href="http://ec.tynt.com/b/rw?id=bbJxak64Kr4kEzacwqm_6l&u=rollingstone" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: none; ">@rollingstone on Twitter</a> | <a href="http://ec.tynt.com/b/rf?id=bbJxak64Kr4kEzacwqm_6l&u=RollingStone" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: none; ">RollingStone on Facebook</a></span></body></html>