Bradley Manning Finally Gets a Hearing

Next week, as the country’s Christmastime frenzy is in full swing, a 24-year-old American Army private will be on trial for his very life. - His supporters say “we are all Bradley Manning,” and perhaps they are right. His first hearing since he was arrested in May 2010 and put in military custody takes place on the heels of a Senate vote last week that would give the military the ability to detain anyone on domestic soil suspected of loosely defined connections to terror — even American citizens — without hearing or trial. Though the president has promised to veto the measure, if it stands, Americans could find themselves sitting in a cell one day on the military’s timetable, their constitutional rights in question. The difference here is that Manning is a soldier in the U.S. Army and his case is being tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He faces 22 charges for accessing a database of more than 250,000 classified U.S. government documents from a military computer and passing them on to WikiLeaks, which has been publishing the documents for over a year through mainstream media outlets. The most damning and embarrassing documents include the “Collateral Murder” video, the Afghanistan war logs, the Iraq war logs, and the Guantanamo files.

BBC: Julian Assange wins right to pursue extradition fight