Sssshh...It's a secret!
I was 18 when I filled out a 4-page 11x17 form  with every detail of my life so far, including siblings...and while I hadn’t lived that much at 18, I did have a large family.

Then there is my husband, who was applying for his clearance, 10 years older and an even larger family.
His application was thoroughly reviewed and references contacted.

Two different approaches to a SECRET clearance being granted in two different circumstances.

It took more than 6 mos, before my clearance was issued and at least as long before my husband’s was granted.

Both signed releases where we swore not to divulge anything classified to anyone who did not have a need to know.

It was then we received our badges with large letters identifying our clearance and a photo ID.

Badges had to be displayed to the security guard before entering the building every day..
 
How did Manning wind up with access to classified documents and national-security secrets?

Surely not on his own!

Manning had his reasons for enlisting.

He may have sought money, or an escape, an adventure, a way to serve his country, or a way to prove something to someone by joining the army and going to war.

For whatever reason, once he got to basic training, he stuck out miserably.

By some accounts, the trouble started early for Pfc. Manning.

A fellow basic trainee described him as not being a real soldier—in fact, there wasn’t anything about him that was a soldier.

He had this idea that he would be pushing papers.

He had something else in mind...to be some super-smart computer guy who was important, someone who mattered.

But once there, Manning realized that it was he who didn’t matter.

Nothing was going to turn out the way he imagined!

Meanwhile, Manning’s drill sergeant had deemed him unfit for duty.

Under authority of his unit commander, he was removed from his regular training platoon.

Manning waited in the discharge unit for a resolution to his case.

Rumors circulated that he was gay.

It’s true he was barely 5 feet—he was a runt.

He was picked on and accused of being crazy—or that he was a faggot!

Although he tried, Manning took it from every side.

He couldn’t please anyone.

All he wanted was approval, and he knew he was never going to get that approval from the Army.

He was disqualified from being a soldier

He couldn’t meet basic training requirements.

His demeanor or sexual preference was clearly not his only obstacle to fitting in.

Countless gay soldiers have served with distinction.

Waiting in the discharge unit, Manning’s fate was changed when a  commander overturned the earlier decision to remove him from the Army.

Instead, he was allowed to continue with his training.

There is something about Manning’s situation that is so much like Pfc. Lyndie England, the woman convicted for her role in abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Both are essentially pathetic figures.

Julian Assange became Manning’s facilitator. For Lynndie England, it was Charles Graner, the older soldier who appeared with her in many of the now-infamous photos.

Graner argued at his court martial that the repugnant pictures documented legitimate uses of force that had been okayed by higher authorities.

And in a way, he was right.

Memos signed by the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, authorized stress positions, nudity, hoods, dogs, and other forms of humiliation shown in the photos.

Oh, christ! Those fux again?

What Graner added were the brutal flourishes on a theme created by Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Bastards!

Unlike Lynndie England, there is no torture memo that Bradley Manning can point to and use as his defense.

He cannot claim that he was simply following orders.

He can, however, claim that other people should have known—that they did know he did not belong in the Army.

That he certainly should not have been entrusted with access to hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents.

Those drill sergeants at Fort Leonard Wood knew.

Manning’s supervisor, to whom he sent a photo of himself dressed in drag, must have known.

Why? He was dressed for a costume party, right?

Not that Manning was queer—duh—but that he was reckless and inappropriate.

Even Manning’s only friend in the discharge unit believed “the runt” was not cut out to be a soldier.

Ya think?

Yet, in spite of it all, Manning was deployed to Iraq.

That is why, like Lynndie England, Bradley Manning is symptomatic of a larger problem.

The issue is supply and demand.

The military needed warm bodies to keep the wars going, especially when Manning went through basic training in 2007 during the height of the surge in Iraq.

A year later, USA Today reported that more than 43,000 U.S. troops who had been listed as medically unfit for combat—according to the Pentagon’s own records—had nevertheless been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

In some quarters Manning is being treated like a martyr.

He might be one, but not a martyr to truth and justice.

He has instead laid himself on the altar of the vast security state.

It collects a growing quantity of intelligence, much of which goes forgotten and unattended.

It then proliferates this material—whose misuse can ruin or end lives—among poorly vetted employees.

In the story of Bradley Manning, we see the confluence of two troubling, growing trends: the meeting of the over-classified and the unqualified.