12 people who should be in prison instead of Bradley Manning

On July 30, a judge in a military court found Bradley Manning guilty of 19 of the 21 charges brought against him. Although he was acquitted of “aiding the enemy,” the most serious he faced, Manning could still face a sentence of well over 100 years’ imprisonment.

It is absurd that the U.S. government would prosecute Manning, a whistleblower who exposed crimes and secrets that were being covered up by the Pentagon and State Department. It is equally absurd that the so-called justice system allows the real criminals in society—Wall Street drug launderers, CEOs responsible for willful and deadly negligence, racist murderers, killer cops and war criminals—to walk free. Below is a list of a dozen people, in no particular order, who should rightfully be sitting in prison cells instead of Bradley Manning.

	1. George Zimmerman Racist vigilante George Zimmerman murdered 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, 2012, in Sanford, Fla., as Martin walked home from a convenience store. Although Zimmerman got out of his car with a handgun and stalked the totally unarmed Trayvon, while muttering racist insults about “punks” who “always get away,” he was found not guilty by an overwhelmingly white jury. Zimmerman has shown no remorse and expressed “no regrets” for his cold-blooded crime, going so far as to ask the Black community to apologize to him following his outrageous acquittal.
	2. Don Blankenship Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is responsible for the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine explosion that killed 29 coal miners in Raleigh County, W. Va. His insatiable drive for greater and greater profit led him to blatantly ignore safety regulations—the mine was cited for 57 infractions the month of the disaster, including two the very day of the explosion.
	3. George W. Bush President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 despite losing the popular vote in the dubious 2000 election, George W. Bush is a war criminal notorious for the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In addition to the deaths of well over 1 million civilians who were killed as a result of these wars, Bush supported the failed 2002 coup in Venezuela, the 2004 coup and subsequent occupation of Haiti, and the criminally negligent response to Hurricane Katrina, in which hundreds of mostly Black residents of New Orleans died after being totally abandoned by government “relief” agencies.
	4. Johannes Mehserle Bay Area Rapid Transit cop Johannes Mehserle murdered Oscar Grant, a Black man who had a 4-year-old daughter, on a train in Oakland, Calif., on New Year’s Day, 2009. Mehserle attacked Grant, who was trying to break up a fight, threw him on the ground and, while Grant was restrained and lying face down, fatally shot him in the back. Although Mehserle’s shocking crime was caught on video, he served less than eight months in prison and walks free today.
	5. Joe Arpaio Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is a symbol of racism and anti-immigrant hate, who has waged a campaign of terror against undocumented workers and all oppressed people since taking office in 1993. He regularly subjects prisoners to cruel and unusual punishment, was an outspoken backer of the SB1070 “show me your papers” law and has taken his department’s policy of racial profiling to such extremes that even the Department of Justice filed suit against him last year.
	6. Ken Thompson Money launderer of choice for a range of drug cartels, Ken Thompson served as CEO of Wachovia Corporation from 2000 until 2008—the sixth largest bank in the country until the financial crash led to its taxpayer-funded acquisition by Wells Fargo. He helped brutal narcotics trafficking syndicates embezzle an estimated $378 billion between 2004 and 2007, but unlike most victims of the racist war on drugs, his organization was able to settle out of court. They paid just a fraction of a percent of what they earned from their drug dealings.
	7. Henry Kissinger National security adviser from 1969-1975 and secretary of state from 1973 to 1977, Henry Kissinger played a key role in the genocidal Vietnam War and orchestrated the 1973 coup in Chile that led to 17 years of blood-soaked military dictatorship. For his distinguished service to world imperialism, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
	8. Richard Haste On Feb. 2, 2012, Officer Richard Haste kicked down the door into 18-year-old Ramarley Graham’s home in the oppressed South Bronx neighborhood of New York City, and then ran upstairs and fatally shot Graham in his bathroom based on the suspicion that he was in possession of a bag of marijuana. Graham was completely unarmed.
	9. Dick Cheney A key figure in the notorious Bush administration, former Vice-President Dick Cheney played a central role in the murderous invasion of Iraq and the adoption of torture as an official government policy. The CEO of energy conglomerate Halliburton immediately prior to taking office, he used the brutal occupation of Iraq as an opportunity to reward his business connections.
	10. Luis Posada Carriles International terrorist Luis Posada Carriles began his career as a torturer for Venezuela’s now-defunct DISIP secret police, but soon became a central figure in the CIA-backed campaign of counter-revolutionary terrorism against Cuba. Along with his accomplice Orlando Bosch, he carried out the bombing of Cubana Airlines flight 455 in 1976, killing all 73 people on board. He now lives in Miami.
	11. Oliver North Current TV personality and author, Ret. Col. Oliver North was in charge of the Iran-Contra scheme in which he illegally funneled money to the “Contra” death squads attempting to undo the historic 1979 Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. Working closely with cocaine traffickers, this arrangement was an important component of a broader reign of terror imposed by the U.S. government aimed at repressing revolutionary movements throughout Central America in the 1980s that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
	12. Lamar McKay As president of BP America, Lamar McKay is responsible for the 2010 BP oil spill following an explosion on the inadequately constructed Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 workers. Hundreds of millions of gallons of oil filled the Gulf of Mexico over the course of nearly three months, destroying the environment and devastating communities along the Gulf Coast. Currently, McKay is head of BP’s Upstream unit, which is tasked with oil and natural gas exploration.