Greg Palast: Bradley Manning, The Real WikiLeaks Champ

[babsbunny]

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12017

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Wed, 12/01/2010 - 1:38pm.

* Guest Commentary

GREG PALAST FOR BUZZFLASH/TRUTHOUT

I'm a "hero" and it makes me want to puke. This week I was voted a "Hero of the Media" in one of those fairly harmless polls that are little more than thermometers of face time on the idiot box, this one in the Nation.

But this Nation Magazine gong is shared with Julian Assange, impresario of WikiLeaks. Yuck.
A friend just compared hero Assange to Daniel Ellsberg. Oh, please!

Ellsberg let out the truth about the War in Vietnam with a noose around his neck. He was arrested and, he told me, he expected to spend the rest of his days in prison. (Lucky for Ellsberg, this was well before Bush and Obama repealed the Constitution.)

Question: Do you remember the reporter who put his byline on the story of Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers? Of course not; because the Times reporter didn't risk a thing. Julian Assange didn't risk a thing either - except excess TV exposure and an excess of blonde groupies. The hero of the Wikileaks/Guardian/Times/Spiegel exposure is Pvt. Bradley Manning.