Our government has, as have the governments of many other countries, been developing policies that have been kept secret from the public. This, in spite of the fact that our country was based on the principles laid down in our Constitution and ably simplified by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address — that our government is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

However, the system that all too many in Washington follow is “of the small committees, by the small committees, and for the small committees.”

The work of Bradley Manning and a few others was to bring to the attention of the American people just what these “small committees” were and are doing and to ensure that the efforts made in Philadelphia in 1787 and what Lincoln so eloquently made plain lives on here in the U.S. of A. Congress and the American public must be kept aware of what these committees are doing.

Secret government policies in the past that have cost the lives of millions of our young people and billions of our tax dollars certainly must be recognized and this insufferable modus operandi must stop.