By: Tonya

Being a veteran from the Navy, I have a few opinions about this topic. I am a lesbian and served in the military for almost eight years. My first duty station was a shore side billet (meaning I worked on a base rather than a ship). The type of job that I had required me to have a very high security clearance, on top of dealing with a lot of sensitive information on a constant basis. The time period that I served was the tail end of the Cold War, and also the start of Iraq-Kuwait War. During my two years at my first command I saw a lot of information that would have been ripe for sharing, if I had that mindset to do that. Like any job that you may have in your life, there are things that do not leave the work space. I realize that information back then could not be "leaked" as it can be now, still classified information is still classified information. No matter what information it is! I understand that what was on the video was not a very pretty picture of what's going on over there, never is. I'm not defending what was done, however no one but whomever was in the helicopter knew the whole story, or even part of the story. Now that Manning's defense lawyer is pulling the stress of living under DADT made him do it is crap. I feel that it's a cop out because they don't have any other defense. He was in a sensitive position, knew the rules of what he worked with and made a decision to violate those rules. What would you think of him if the information that was leaked led to a family member being killed? Would you think that he was a great hero then? This may all read like a rant, and partly is. Thing is, he broke the law and is now having to face that.