Bradley Manning is a traitor, cut and dried.

Allen, that may be so, but it doesn't speak well of our military or our country as a whole that we can't give him due process--a concept that this country was actually founded on. In the film "Stalag 17," Otto Preminger is actually torturing a prisoner with similar sleep deprivation tactics to what Manning is going through now, before his actual conviction. Let Manning be punished after he's been found guilty, not before.

Yeah....actually, he is getting due process. He signed up for the military and agreed to be subject to it's laws and legal system. It was great when you get the signing bonus and we are not really at war.
Manning made a choice to violate the secrets he was entrusted with and now wants to cy is way out of it.
I am sorry, but the claims of sleep deprivation and torture, etc...are simply lies.
People are lynig because they do not really understand what he did.

I don't think the Manning case is cut and dried by any means. Glenn Greenwald from Salon has written reams of articles that depict Manning in a highly sympathetic light and they were quite convincing to me. In any case, it seems relatively obvious that much of his treatment amounts to torture, and, as pointed out, he hasn't even been found officially guilty of anything yet.

Thank you for posting this.

@allen marples: How do you know that they are lies? Have you witnessed his prison conditions?

Also, please do not presume to tell me or anyone else what we understand, or don't understand.

Bob,
Sure it is... The article s( and yourself) portray him and think of him sympathetically, it is because everyone wants to justify his agenda. Bradley Manning was disturbed by what he saw the government was doing and decided to try to right a injustice, he did this by betraying his position, becoming a spy and a traitor.
Everybody concedes what he did, he broke the law and the oath he took and relayed secret intelligence to wikileaks.
That is not in dispute.
People are just trying to moralize and justify his actions.
Ema,
As a matter of fact, any cursory look into the matter will show that ALL claims of torture and abuse on the part of Private Mannning are lies.
Outside his immediate supporters and sympathizers, NO claims of torture have been made, Not by Amnesty International, Not by the ACLU..
And when you make the argument you do, what you understand becomes obvious.
If you try, and work on it, you might be able to improve your critical thinking.

@allen, "Prevention of Injury (POI)" actually doesn't deal with the crimes that the detainee (the stand-in for Manning) but the other crime of the harshness of his detention while awaiting his trial. The bitter irony, both in the film's fictionalized account and the detention of the real Manning, is that the military jailers are using procedures designed to prevent suicide as a means of torture not much different that methods used by Otto Preminger's camp commandant in "Stalag 17," in the scene where he makes a US serviceman suspected of blowing up a train stand up for hours on end. In "Stalag 17" the treatment of this prisoner is denounced by a visitor from the Swiss Red Cross. In Manning's case, his treatment has been denounced by Amnesty International. Although it's doubtful this will sway you one way or the other, here is a link to the Amnesty International memo on the Manning case: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/fresh-call-end-harsh-detention-wikileaks-soldier-2011-03-24

Whether or not Manning is a traitor does not justify the tactics used by his captors. Two wrongs, not making a right and all that. You remember that don't you?