Bradley Manning hearing set for Dec. 16

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Army intelligence analyst suspected of illegally passing government secrets to the WikiLeaks website will have a military hearing next month to determine whether he will stand trial.

Civilian defence attorney David E. Coombs wrote in a blog post that Pfc. Bradley Manning's Article 32 hearing will begin Dec. 16 near Baltimore. Shaunteh Kelly, a spokeswoman for Army, confirmed the hearing Monday.

An Article 32 hearing is the military equivalent of a preliminary hearing. A presiding officer will evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the government's case and make a recommendation on which charges should be forwarded to a general court-martial.

Army soldier formally charged with espionage

Manning is suspected of obtaining hundreds of thousands of classified and sensitive documents while serving in Iraq and providing them to the anti-secrecy website.

[mitch0927]

The Pfc was under an obligation to do whatever he was told to do. He should be prosecuted. He signed an oath and he went back on that oath....

[MaryPresumptuous]

Manning did not merely not act in accordance with his oath. Instead, he appears to have actively planned, then deliberated committed a both military and civilian law. As such, a higher moral purpose, however noble one might think that might be, should provide no safe harbor for him. Were he merely a conscious objector, the limit of justification for his act or failure to act would be removing himself from active participation in the line of presumably unbearable immorality. The moment he set out to accumulate proof of one thing or another, he became a common criminal stealing property that was neither his nor his to decide over its disposition.

While it may be easiest to prove a viloation of his oath, Mitch0927 understates the depth of error in Manning's ways. There is precedent and the court should act in context of both law and prior cases.

[expatriate2]

When your nation subscribes to atrocities, endorses torture, ignores the inherent rights of other nations and deceives its own people, then the only thing left for them to do is prosecute the person who had the courage to oppose it.