Bradley Manning: "Guardian Exclusive" - Who Knew?

Saturday's Guardian has gone big with an "Exclusive";
'WikiLeaks accused Bradley Manning 'should never have been sent to Iraq''
'Guardian exclusive: Soldier held over US intelligence leak was known to be mentally fragile and unsuited to army life'
This is accompanied by a 20 minute "investigative film" on the Guardian website;
'The Madness Of Bradley Manning?'
Ann Clwyd MP writes in response to the above;
'The British government has a duty to Bradley Manning and his family'
And there's a profile: 'Bradley Manning: the bullied outsider who knew US military's inner secrets'
'Exclusive: Having been on the brink of discharge from the US army, Bradley Manning was posted to a desolate Iraq base where secret intelligence was the TV entertainment.'
Much too late here to properly digest all this now - will comment in the morning.
Hope it's good...

• A few brief thoughts. I guess a lot of people will pick up on the summary The Guardian give in the headline on the frontpage; 'Bradley Manning 'was mentally unfit' to serve in Iraq' and say "Well, the guy's nuts - told ya so" and leave it at that.
The headline online - US military knew Bradley Manning 'was mentally unfit' to serve in Iraq - explains the point of the piece.
"Bradley Manning, who was detained a year ago on Sunday in connection with the biggest security leak in US military history, was a "mess of a child" who should never have been put through a tour of duty in Iraq, according to an [anonymous] officer from the Fort Leonard Wood military base in Missouri, where Manning trained in 2007.
"The officer's words reinforce a leaked confidential military report that reveals that other senior officers thought he was unfit to go to Iraq..."

What's not really explained - and what is more important - is what may have pushed Bradley Manning over the edge; life in the US military and then US foreign policy.

One sign of Mannning being "mental fragile" mentioned several times is allegedly "he wet himself."
It's only in the longer profile of "the bullied outsider" that the reader learns he did this when some other soldiers were bullying him ("There were three guys that had him cornered...")
The profile shows that Manning's discharge (and subsequent leak) was preceded - by several months - by his break-up with his boyfriend Tyler Watkins *.
Fagburn thinks this is worth noting, but homophobes will almost certainly overplay it - as if Bradley's (alleged!) whistleblowing to Wikileaks was no more than some heartbroken drama queen on the rebound, as opposed to an heroic moral act.
Even just mentioning the fact that Bradley is gay - something The Guardian shied away from doing for six months - is fraught.
But same as it ever was, same as it ever was...
Bradley Manning Support Network tweeted today; "Will the press be able to get past childhood stories and focus on the real issues behind Bradley's detainment? Remains to be seen."
But what does this mean?
It's not worth mentioning that an out and proud gay man is gay when you're writing a 2000 word profile about him?
I'd guesstimate the gay stuff is around 5% of what The Guardian published today. Get over yourself!

The Guardian's other "exclusive" is that security at Manning's station in Iraq "was so lax that many of the 300 soldiers on the base had access to the computer room where Manning worked, and passwords to access the intelligence computers were stuck on "sticky notes" on the laptop screens...
"For entertainment, soldiers would download porn to workstations or access footage from Apache attack helicopters showing civilians being shot at, often through SIPRNet, the classified intelligence network used by the state department and department of defence."
Hundreds of soldiers appear to have enjoyed watching this "war porn", as it was called.
Bradley Manning's supposed crime is passing this evidence of US war crimes onto Wikileaks.
As Ann Clwyd MP asks in The Guardian today; "Why are Bradley's military bosses not on trial? Why instead is a vulnerable young man being made an example of?"

* This was known before, but The Guardian backs it up with new quotes from personal messages on Manning's Facebook account - various other parts of this have been made public this week.