Your Weekly Reading Homework . . . . Courtesy of The Frolicking Gadfly . . . .

Here are two articles that The Gadfly would highly recommend to anyone wishing to gain a broader factual insight into the Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden cases, without the taint of typical beltway media spin and obfuscation (aka government/corporate propaganda).

First - Andrew Bacevich, former West Point graduate, Vietnam War veteran and a man who's own son was killed during the Iraq war conflict, wonders sincerely, if based on the continuing drip of revelations that the NSA has been snooping on Americans a hell of a lot more than they have admitted to so far, whether there may be some validation in the claims that Snowden, and by virtue of the same activities, Bradly Manning, will both go down in history as American heroes and patriots of the highest order.  And believe The Gadfly when he tells you that Col. Bacevich is not, in a million light years, your typical, run-of-the-mill, dirty fucking hippie type, which makes his observations all the more fascinating:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/are-manning-and-snowden-patriots-that-depends-on-what-we-do-next/2013/08/16/2ee445e4-0376-11e3-88d6-d5795fab4637_story.html

Second - Charlie Savage at the NYT postulates a theory - one that we hippies were talking about years ago - namely that the persecution/prosecution and ceremonial stuffing in a locked dungeon and throwing away of the key of Bradley Manning may have a hell of lot more to do with the fact that the files which Manning gave to Wikileaks exposed a wide gamut of U.S. wrongdoing in Iraq, including the abuse of detainees by Iraqi officers under the watch of American forces and the systemic covering up of data which showed that civilian deaths during the Iraq war were most likely significantly higher than official estimates.:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/us/manning-sentenced-for-leaking-government-secrets.html?_r=1&

Basically -- if you are going to consume any information on the Snowden and Manning cases, make it these two stories, and save the network & cable news viewing for the missing white girl story of the week or the obligatory daily Lindsay Lohan update - because honestly, that is pretty much all they are fucking good for any more.


----TFG