A WORD ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH

The reason classified documents need to be made available to the public is that a government can term anything "Classified", whether it is in the interest of national security or not. In the case of Bradley Manning and Wiki Leaks, most of the information leaked was simply embarrassing to the government. The video of the murder of journalists and civilians must have been particularly so. If you're going to give a man a helicopter, a 50-caliber machine gun, and state-of-the-art weapons technology, you damn well better be sure he knows the difference between a camera lens and an RPG. Anybody who has ever watched a football game for more than fifteen minutes has seen a camera lens like the one the journalist was carrying. 

You will recall that when American military forces commenced the attack on Baghdad, the first two rockets fired were aimed directly at the Al Jezeera building. The first casualty in that war was an Al Jazeera camera man. Why was a news organization targeted? Why was it targeted first? Could it be that in order to win a war, it is necessary to control the information that reaches the public? To do that, you'd have to muzzle the journalists, wouldn't you? 

The reason behind the reason that classified documents need to be made public is that a government must be held accountable for its actions, even if the populace has been turned into a nation of Chicken Littles, with everybody looking over their shoulders for the boogeyman. In a free society, citizens must be allowed to strut and fret their hour upon the stage, even when the government doesn't like it.

The US Military tried to cover up the My Lai massacre. The US Government tried to cover up the Watergate break-in. For every exposed cover-up, there may be dozens, or hundreds, or even thousands that are not. How many cover-ups have gone undetected? Sorry, that's "classified."

Today, anyone with a cell phone can break a story at any moment. That means anyone, journalist or no, is a potential threat to a government whose interests ware inconsistent with its mandate. In times of desparation, as a recent Federal Appeals court decision has shown, those in power might even be willing to subvert the First Amendment in order to accomplish their goals. I don't recall anything in the Constitution or Amendments that gives the government license to do whatever it wants, no questions asked, with impunity. 

Classified documents need to be made available to the public because the people in this country own the government in this country. That's the way it works in America. We, the people, have the right to make or break the government as we see fit. How are we to do that if the government is allowed to govern in secret?

With the capability to track all phone calls, all texts, and all emails between private citizens, a government can intimidate any man woman or child it wants to, for whatever reason, or for no reason whatsoever. Citizens of Russia, China, North Korea, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Tunisia, Kenya, Nigeria, Bosnia, Chile, Egypt and other places might be willing to accept that, but I don't think it'll fly in America.

Prosecuting and convicting Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, and the like - and there will be more, many more - opens the Pandora's box known as "prior restraint." If America is to remain "a government of the people, by the people, for the people," we, the people, need to lock that box and nail it shut, before it's too late.