To the editor:

I feel a need to chime in on “hypocrisy.”

A military private, Bradley Manning, is being held in solitary confinement at Quantico Marine base. He is being treated like an international terrorist. Pvt. Manning is the one who leaked the horrendous video of American soldiers in a Blackhawk helicopter slaughtering innocent civilians, including children and a reporter in Iraq.

Pvt. Manning is being treated like a criminal. Instead of treating Manning as a hero for outing this war crime/crime against humanity and prosecuting the perpetrators of this wanton murder of civilians, our government has decided that Manning is the criminal for standing up and blowing the whistle on this atrocity.

I would like to contrast this with a recent quote by our president during a visit to Chile, (a country with its own special relationship to America, Google Sept. 11, 1973) “Our military action is in support of an international mandate from the Security Council that specifically focuses on the humanitarian threat posed by Col. Gadhafi to his people. Not only was he carrying out murders of civilians, but he threatened more.”

It appears to me that we have a double standard in America. It’s OK for the American military to carry out war crimes, but not OK for Gadhafi to carry out similar slaughter on his own people.

Don’t get me wrong I think President Obama and America are better than this. I want him/us to actually act better than this, and exonerate Pvt. Manning and prosecute the real criminals in this case.

Dan Freeman

Clinton