GO TO JAIL FOR TELLING THE TRUTH

Go to jail for telling the truth.

The Bush government violated everything this country supposedly stood for. We all knew much of what they were doing, but we didn't have hard evidence. Like most criminals, the Bush government tried to keep their worst criminal acts secret. And they tried to keep the criminal acts of others secret. But the truth kept leaking out. Their crimes were so gross that they couldn't stay secret. Some of them--like attacking Iraq and the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay--weren't secret at all; they were arrogant acts of illegal, unconstitutional, immoral violence. They tried to keep their world-wide kidnapping and torture program secret, but we found out. about it.

Now, thanks to a young man named Bradley Manning, we know a lot more. Thanks to Bradley Manning's patriotism and his heroism, we have a great deal of evidence. It is in the public domain.

Knowing what he knew--having the evidence that he possed--Private First Class Bradley Manning had two choices. He could keep his mouth shut, and join all the others involved in the cover-up. Had he done so, he would have committed a crime underArticke 78 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In both civilian and military jurisdictions, this crime is called "accessory after the fact." His other choice was to make known what he had discovered.

Remarkably, Bradley Manning is now being held in prison, in solitary confinement, for obeying the law. By whom? Not by the Bush administration, but by the Obama administration.

Why is President Obama holding Bradley Manning? Because he told the truth? Because he made public the evidence for some of our crimes of violence? Of murder, of torture?

Now you and I have two choices. We can demand Bradley Manning's release from prison. Or we can keep quiet, and ourselves become guilty of being accessories after the fact. We can join the conspirators, and by our cowardice become criminals.

At present you and I can't be charged with crimes for supporting Bradley Manning and demanding his release. But if we keep quiet we might as well be living under such a threat--and maybe soon we will be. "Keep quiet," the tyrant says.

Unless President Obama wants to be the same kind of criminal join George Bush and his cronies were and are, he must release Bradley Manning immediately. The rule of law demands it. And without the rule of law, we are indeed what many in the world accuse us of being: a rogue state.

Bert Hornback

Source: http://hornbacksitsayshere.blogspot.com/2010/08/go-to-jail-for-telling-truth.html