Partisanship and racial and gender military coup

Since his arrest, the media has focused on Manning’s mental problems, his poor relationships with family members, his sexual orientation, and the fact that he considered becoming a woman. Such a caricature, of an unstable youth rather than of a soldier with a conscience, has enabled the government and other detractors to maintain that Manning had no clear and legitimate motives when disclosing the information. Thomas Drake, a whistleblower who revealed fraud, waste and abuse within the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, was similarly cast as a seller of secrets—and at first a possFible child pornographer. “All those things that actually say who we are as individuals get turned and twisted,” Drake explains. “Instead of focusing on the message,” he explains, “…"[the focus] becomes the person.”