The Bradley Manning espionage case is headed for trial. It actually started yesterday with Manning refusing to enter a plea, if that doesn’t give you an indication of how this trial will go. He also declined to choose the type of trial (panel or judge) he would get.<\/p>\n
The Military Times\/Associated Press<\/a> gives us a run down of the defense strategy which looks like a Chinese menu…pick one from column A, one from column B;<\/p>\n Defense lawyers say Manning was troubled and shouldn\u2019t have had access to classified material.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Manning\u2019s lawyers countered that others had access to Manning\u2019s workplace computers in Iraq. They say he was in emotional turmoil, partly because he was a gay soldier while U.S. armed forces still barred gays from serving openly. The defense also claims Manning\u2019s apparent disregard for security rules during stateside training and his increasingly violent outbursts after deployment were red flags that should have prevented him from having access to classified material. They also contend that the material WikiLeaks published did little or no harm to national security.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So to boil it down to it’s essence; He didn’t do it, someone else did, the Army shouldn’t have let him near classified information, so he couldn’t do it, Manning’s attitude, because he was gay in the military, caused him to [not] do it, and so what if he did do it?<\/p>\n That’s brilliant. It should be entertaining to watch the defense team twist themselves into pretzels. The Washington Post<\/a> wrote that the trial might not begin until August;<\/p>\n Manning\u2019s defense attorney, David E. Coombs, sought Thursday to set a trial date for the court martial in June, arguing that his client has spent 635 days in pretrial detention. The prosecution said that although it would be ready for trial by April, a reasonable trial calendar would have the proceedings begin on Aug. 3. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, if the defense team hadn’t been delaying the open-and-shut case, the little turd would already be serving his sentence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"