US Soldier accused of esiponage for bringing light to cilivian killings in iraq

Apache helicopter in Iraq

      In 2007 a video of an American Apache helicopter gunning down 12 civilians including 1 journalist and 2 children was leaked to the public via wikileaks. Recently US army specialist Bradley Manning has recently been charged and accused of releasing the video.



Under the espionage act, he could face up to 50 - 70 years in a federal prison. He has already spent 2 months in a prison in Baghdad, two months after the video's publication.

It would be ridiculous for the US government to send this soldier to jail for releasing this video. What is shown in the video is despicable. Even I could tell that these civilians were not carrying weapons. If I was Manning I would have done the same thing and released the video. There are 12 innocent dead men killed for no reason other than one of them was carrying a camera. The real criminals are the helicopter gunners who took the shots that killed these men. If the US government wants justice, they should charge the gunners with 12 counts of manslaughter. For the sake of the families that are affected by the shooting I hope the case against Mannings does not stand up in court.