The persecution (and vigorous prosecution) of Manning illustrates a crazed devotion to “national security on the part of the Obama administration. Change we can believe in indeed.

Greenwald points out the absurdity of defending the Pentagon Papers leak but condemning Manning:

To the extent one wants to distinguish the two leaks, Ellsberg’s was the far more serious breach of secrecy. The U.S. Government’s own pre-leak assessment of the sensitivities of these documents proves that. How can someone — in the name of government secrecy and national security — praise the release of thousands of pages of Top Secret documents while vehemently condemning the release of documents bearing a much lower secrecy classification?

Source: Salon.com