[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Sleazeballs like Assange hardly fall into that category.

Look. I may have been harsh on Manning, and for that I apologize. My criticism more fairly rests on Assange and WikiLeaks for the terrible way in which they handled this whole mess. Manning was probably just naive, upset, and hapless. He should have leaked the information somewhere else, but damn it, Millenials trust the interweb like it was Gospel, so its no surprise he went with WikiLeaks. It seems in hind-sight that was a major mistake. When the Pentagon Papers were leaked, major newspapers used all their legal clout to protect the sources, and it had to go all the way to the Supreme Court. Assange and WikiLeaks offered no such sanctuary or safe harbor for Manning, or Snowden for that matter, so I think they are in the wrong here, and are guilty of exploiting these young mens' naivete..