At Huffpo, law professor Marjorie Cohn adds up the horrendous damage incurred by the soldiers and citizens of the United States and by citizens of Iraq, as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. It is good that she sums up these costs, because President Obama and other politicians are mightily spinning Iraq as a just war honestly began and the results as somehow worthwhile.

When he announced that the last U.S. troops would leave Iraq by year's end, President Barack Obama declared the nine-year war a "success" and "an extraordinary achievement." He failed to mention why he opposed the Iraq war from the beginning. He didn't say that it was built on lies about mushroom clouds and non-existent ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Obama didn't cite the Bush administration's "Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq," drawn up months before 9/11, about which Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported that actual plans "were already being discussed to take over Iraq and occupy it - complete with disposition of oil fields, peacekeeping forces, and war crimes tribunals - carrying forward an unspoken doctrine of preemptive war."

The U.S. government considers Manning one of America's most dangerous traitors. Months ago, Obama spoke of Manning as if he had been proved guilty, saying, "he broke the law." But Manning has not been tried, and is presumed innocent in the eyes of the law. If Manning had committed war crimes instead of exposing them, he would be a free man today. If he had murdered civilians and skinned them alive, he would not be facing the death penalty. Besides helping to end the Iraq war, the leaked cables helped spark the Arab Spring. When people in Tunisia read cables revealing corruption by the ruling family there, they took to the streets. If Manning did what he is accused of doing, he should not be tried as a criminal. He should be hailed as a national hero, much like Daniel Ellsberg, whose release of the Pentagon Papers helped to expose the government's lies and end the Vietnam War.