Manning isolated a key turning point in his regard for the military; he said it was when he was ordered to look the other way in the face of an injustice.
Manning had been tasked with evaluating the arrest of 15 Iraqis rounded up by the Iraqi Federal Police for printing “anti Iraq” literature. “The Iraqi federal police wouldn’t cooperate with U.S. forces, so I was instructed to investigate the matter, find out who the ‘bad guys’ were, and how significant this was for the FPs,” he wrote.
But when Manning had the literature translated, he discovered it was a scholarly critique of Iraq Prime Minister Al-Maliki titled Where Did the Money Go?, he wrote. The document was nothing more than a “benign political critique … following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet.
“I immediately took that information and ran to the [U.S. Army] officer to explain what was going on. He didn’t want to hear any of it. He told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding MORE detainees.”
He continued. “Everything started slipping after that. I saw things differently. I had always questioned the [way] things worked, and investigated to find the truth. But that was a point where I was a part of something. I was actively involved in something that I was completely against.”
The Defense Department declined to comment on anything Manning wrote in his chats.
This is the story of the man who leaked the the video of an US Apache strike in Baghdad in 2007 that ended in the murder of 2 Reuters employees and the unarmed civilian that tried to rescue the wounded (this man's children were in the car and witnessed the entire event and sustained serious injuries themselves).
Personally I can't help but respect the courage it took to speak out about this for the sake of justice in the midst of great injustice (knowing full well the risk of being found out).