' [Bradley] Manning’s guilty pleas could mean twenty years in prison, on top of the 1,000 days he has languished in pretrial detention (including more than nine months in solitary confinement, often under horribly abusive conditions). But the worst is yet to come: the Obama administration will now prosecute Manning for the most serious charges he faces, including “aiding and abetting the enemy.” It’s a scorched earth move, designed “to terrorize future national security whistleblowers” and journalists alike, in the words of Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler. It’s also a story that merits deeper concern from the Washington press—the kind of story that in another age might have interested Bob Woodward.'
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