Bradley Manning. Traitor.

This will be my first debate so here's hoping to a good one. The first thing that I would like to bring up is that the law is the law. Whether you agree with said law or not it does not change that fact. Bradley Manning is a member of the Armed Forces of these United States and as such is subject both by law and by oath to obey the laws and regulations of the Armed Forces set forth by the Military and the Federal Government. With that said, Bradley Manning did intentionally and premeditatedly choose of his own free will to break the laws of the Armed Forces and Federal Government by releasing classified Government documents and information. Said information held secrets that had the potential and very well may have caused direct harm to national security, the war efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the lives of both fellow service members and allies alike. By this sole reason alone Bradley Manning is a traitor to his country, the Armed forces of the United States, and his fellow service men and women. Regardless of whether or not you feel what he did was right or no, regardless of his reasons for why he did it. You can not change the fact that he broke the law and thus deserves to be punished according to said law. Example. If a man raps and kills a little girl is captured by a police officer but rather then take him into custody as required the officer chooses to shoot and kill the sick freak, is the officer not then going to also be punished for breaking the law? The second thing I would like to point out is what it was exactly that Manning released. Bradley Manning is credited for releasing the following but not necessarily limited to; the video commonly known as "collateral murder", information on the Granai Air strike, and the large amount of data referred to as the "Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Logs". I would like to point out that the legitimacy of each of these items are arguable and rate their own separate debate all together. Had these items been the only things Bradley had released, I myself might see his case such as you do, though he would still be guilty of breaking the law. However. This is not the case. He also released hundreds of thousands of government cables and documents ranging from Embassy emails to troop movements and enemy assessments and Intel to the names of Afghani and Iraqi informants and the locations of safe houses. If he was trying to "lift the veil off of the blind American people to the horrors that our nation has done to the poor people of the Mid East" why did he also release these hundreds of thousands of cables that in no way were malicious or cause for starting a "debate amongst Americans on the legitimacy of the US foreign policy"? Why did he not filter out these documents from the ones that could hurt the US Governments image from those that could hurt the US? Instead of doing that he simply garbed this huge pile of classified information and dumped it into the public lab. Including the laps of our enemy's. There is no excuse whatsoever for the leaking of this information and is one of the primary reasons for the just argument that he is in fact, a traitor. My third and final argument for this round is about who he released this information to. Bradley Manning is an American soldier. He supposedly released this American information to awaken the American people for the benefit of the American people. Why then did he release this information to a foreign entity? An entity that is known to have an Anti-American agenda and is known to bend the truth in order to aid their agenda. He gave these hundreds of thousands of cables of information to a foreign entity who then indiscriminately released said information to the entire world regardless of who it might harm, so long as it harmed America. Had Bradley gave this information to an American group like Info Wars or Truth. org I assure you I would not be as critical on him as I am and the charges against him would not be as severe. The mere fact that he gave the Intel to a foreign entity is my second primary reason he is indisputably a traitor. If you could explain to me how that isn't treason I would love to hear it. This concludes my opening arguments in the first round of this debate. I humbly await my opponents opening argument and once again wish her the best of luck. . http://en.wikipedia.org... . http://en.wikipedia.org... . http://en.wikipedia.org... . http://en.wikipedia.org...