Read Online The Passion of Bradley Manning by Chase Madar - Free Book Online

least bi.”
    (It should also be pointed out that some of the most bellicose politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are rumored to be gay. The South Carolina chapter of the Tea Party has delightedly outed again and again their über-hawkish but otherwise insufficiently conservative senator, Lindsey Graham, as a homosexual. Liam Fox, the recently resigned minister of defense in the Tory-Liberal Democrat government in the United Kingdom, is a neocon ultra who carried out his official duties abroad very frequently in the company of his “best friend,” a man seventeen years his junior without any governmental position but bankrolled as a “consultant” by various wealthy individuals close to Fox.)
    In the United States, mainstream LGBT activists have been more than happy to shun Manning; with the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy of prohibiting “out” gays and lesbians from the military finally and triumphantly repealed, why defend an accused traitor who just happens to be gay? In the United Kingdom, where the LGBT rights movement is less beholden to the military, the mood is different and leading gay rights and human rights activist Peter Tatchell has promoted solidarity with Manning (he of the Welsh mother) at every opportunity.
    Whistleblowers are always pathologized; their governments refuse on principle to comprehend their political motive, no matter how overt and obvious. In the United States, we are barely able to even comprehend a political motive, given that the whole category of the political has eroded so severely, fatally associated with the ghastly talking heads who appear on Sunday morning talk shows. Despite the clarity of Manning’s stated mens rea in the chatlogs, a political motive simply won’t do. His motive must be sexual, as we have seen. Or it must be emotional. (As if Bradley Manning, who was dumped by his boyfriend in January of 2010, is somehow different from the thousands of other soldiers and sailors similarly jilted every year.) It must be psychiatric. (That mental illness is rampant throughout the armed forces is rarely mentioned, nor the fact that the leading cause of death among active duty troops in 2009 and 2010 and likely 2011 is not enemy fire or IEDs but suicide.) It must be pharmacological. (According to the Washington Post , Dr. David Charney, a psychiatrist who has consulted on espionage cases, pointed out that Manning’s reported tendencies to zone out might be related to “petit mal epilepsy.”) So much concern, such eagerness to diagnose.
    The irony is that Manning himself in his IM chats with Lamo already dismissed the pathologization of every last personality trait.
    (01:51:59 AM ) bradass87: im probably suffering from depression
    (01:51:59 AM ) bradass87: ={
    (01:52:03 AM ) bradass87: ={
    (01:52:06 AM ) bradass87: =P
    (01:52:15 AM ) [email protected]: Who isn’t :(
    (01:52:20 AM ) bradass87: goddamn, i missed the “P” key twice
    (01:52:27 AM ) [email protected]: I’m supposedly bipolar.
    (01:52:38 AM ) bradass87: oh well, still not medicated
    (01:53:00 AM ) bradass87: i dont believe a third of the DSM-IV-TR
    (01:53:58 AM ) bradass87: so many Disorders that so many people fall into… it just seems like a method to categorize a person, medicate them, and make money from prescription medications
    […]
    (01:54:31 AM ) bradass87: i’d like to meet a single person that wouldn’t fall into a Disorder in the DSM-IV-TR
    And yet, most media accounts of Manning and his alleged deeds have made a meal of the private’s personal life and do not even go near his plainly stated motive. Commentator Joy Reid, a Harvard-educated blogger, commentator and Obama loyalist is typical in this regard, seeing Manning as “a guy seeking anarchy as a salve for his own personal, psychological torment.” Reid also says Manning’s “gender identity disorder” “kind of puts his subsequent terms