Alexander Chancellor

Alexander Chancellor: Why was Bradley Manning ever allowed to join the army?

Credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images 
issue 31 August 2013

I have been puzzling about why the United States authorities ever thought that Bradley Manning, who was jailed last week for 35 years for leaking military secrets on an unprecedented scale, was a suitable person to join the army. His size alone might seem to be an impediment to effective military service, for he is only five feet, two inches tall and weights 105lbs (7.5 stone). But his stature, though tiny, nevertheless comes within the army’s prescribed limits. He would have had to be two inches shorter and a stone lighter to have been rejected on grounds of size or weight. (If he had weighed over ten stone, he would have been rejected as obese.)

But being the wrong size is only one in an absurdly long and detailed list of official reasons for an applicant’s rejection by the army. This list consists mainly of physical ailments or conditions, all of which Manning must have passed.

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