Why is the focus always on what these people did, and not on the crimes that they exposed?

Why are you saying "if they had done it differently they would be treated better" instead of "I am ashamed of the evil and illegal acts that my country has done and want to change the system to make this impossible"?

Why do you care what either of them did more than you care about what the government did?

Which crimes had Manning exposed? There has to be a list somewhere.

Two of my former colleagues (both Reuters journalists) were murdered by U.S. soldiers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=zYTxuW2vmzk

Then all the civilians that took care of their bodies were also killed, including children.

Then the Department of Defense then denied existing video coverage of the event (personal comm., Tom Glocer, J.D., former CEO and attorney, Reuters).

-> So homicide, mult. war crimes and lying.

I'll be eternally grateful to Manning and Assange for letting the truth come to light, and to all whistleblowers driven by their conscience and idealism.

But the most disturbing thing about this all is the dirty laughter of that helicopter crew. Seeing that video makes one ashamed to belong to the human species.

That was not a part of the cables released by Manning.

The "Collateral Murder" video of the unlawful killing of journalists was part of the archive that Wikileaks published that's been attributed to Chelsea Manning. All available evidence supports this was part of the material. Chelsea's leak was the contents of the shared drive, not just diplomatic cables.

The release of the diplomatic cables themselves gravely harmed U.S. interests and is alleged to have led to the deaths of CIA collaborators.

Again, Snowden leaked a single extant program that was potentially illegal. All he had to do was blow the whistle on that program and the other possibly program that had already been shut down, and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Instead, he told China what systems the US had compromised and additionally claimed the US was doing a bunch of illegal things that his documents did not support, causing hysteria and helping Trumpism.

The thing that makes illegal programs almost impossible to hide are the reforms after the Church Committee, including SSCI oversight and whistleblower procedures and protections.

Your transphobia hardly makes you look unbiased, shill

It was an honest mistake, and I apologize for it to Chelsea if she is reading this. In my mind, I remembered her gender at the time she leaked the documents, which had nothing to do with whether she should be considered a whistleblower. She herself has said she should not be considered one.

I will admit to shilling for literacy and common sense. You got me there.