Army Was Warned Not to Send Manning to Iraq

Bradley Manning’s supervisors at Fort Drum warned Army commanders that he was too much of a troublemaker to send to Iraq, but the commanders went ahead and sent him there anyway because they were short on intelligence analysts, investigators tell the McClatchy. Supervisors say Manning had thrown chairs at colleagues and shouted at higher-ranking soldiers during the year he was stationed at Fort Drum in New York.

The commanders assumed they could handle Manning’s disciplinary problems, but instead wound up with a “comedy of errors,” according to investigators, in which each commander assumed another was dealing with the problem. The investigators are trying to determine whether disciplinary action should be taken against any of Manning’s superiors. Their probe could also lead to changes on how commanders deal with discipline problems and deployment decisions. (More Bradley Manning stories.)