Bradley Manning and scapegoats

I'm deeply saddened by the double standards and scapegoating that is being participated in with regards to Bradley Manning's court hearing.

My super short summary of the story:

A couple of years ago a soldier, however short sighted or careless, released classified information out of a strong conviction that US citizens need to know what exactly we are paying for in our wars in the middle east (with the assumption that we would not stand for it).

As soon as the story hits mainstream media (for me this is everything from MSNBC to FoxNews) a long campaign of doing everything one could do but actually engage with the info he leaked goes on for weeks/months. They talk about the damage the leaked information could do. They talked about how careless the method he chose for releasing the information was. They talked about how unAmerican Manning was. They talked about similar things in regards to WikiLeaks and its founder. With regards to WikiLeaks a massive campaign regarding the possible sexual misconduct of it's founder was launched. They call WikiLeaks unAmerican (...it's not American). Politicitians spent time condemning Manning, condemning (or even threatening assassination of) WikiLeaks founder.

What our politicians and mainstream media never did was actually engage with the info that was released. This is info that is incredibly embarrassing for the US; info that confirmed some of the worst that independent news outlets thought was happening; info that makes me feel ashamed for many of the things we have done in the middle east. The leaks revealed things that we should apologize for, things that people should be held accountable for, things that needed to be right (well, as much as the death of an innocent can be made right).

The US government and media corporations have led a successful TV, internet, and radio campaign to side step and distract us from the actual info that was released. It has been so successful that the final trial of Bradley Manning (after fairly harsh jail conditions for a couple of years), that may very well place him in jail for life, is hardly noticed by America. Hell, Most people I talk to don't even know who he is. I'm no conspiracy theorist, and I don't think there is some dark conspiracy behind this -- I think it has much more to do with group think, living in denial, and avoiding things that achieve a certain extreme level of disrupting a certain view we have of a generally 'moral' nation with generally 'moral' international actions.

Manning may go to jail for life (and this is not about whether or not he should), but no one else will go to jail... or even be held accountable... for the numerous atrocities, including the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents by our own doing, outlined in the information he leaked.

This whole thing just deeply saddens me.