Quote: Originally Posted by EagleSmack
Can you show me a link that says that? I've been looking.
This is his quote from today...
"I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible."
So what process was started exactly?
Read that years ago. When I have a chance I will look.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning
Deployment to Iraq, discussion with counselor
After four weeks at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) in Fort Polk, Louisiana, she was deployed to Forward Operating Base Hammer, near Baghdad, arriving in October 2009. From her workstation there, she had access to SIPRNet (the Secure Internet Protocol Router Network) and JWICS (the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System). Two of her superiors had discussed not taking her to Iraq – it was felt she was "a risk to himself and possibly others," according to a statement later issued by the army – but again the shortage of intelligence analysts held sway.[32]
A month later, in November 2009, she was promoted from Private First Class to Specialist. According to her chats with Adrian Lamo, she made her first contact with WikiLeaks that same month, shortly after it posted 570,000 pager messages from the 9/11 attacks, which it released on November 25.[33] Also in November, Manning wrote to a gender counselor in the United States, said she felt female, and discussed having sex reassignment surgery. The counselor told Steve Fishman of New York Magazine that it was clear Manning was in crisis, partly because of her gender concerns, but also because she was opposed to the kind of war in which she found herself involved.[34]
She was by all accounts unhappy and isolated. Because of the army's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy (known as DADT, which was repealed in September 2011), she was not allowed to be openly gay, though she apparently made no secret of it. When she told her roommate she was gay, the roommate responded by suggesting they not speak to each other. Her working conditions – 14–15 hour night shifts in a dimly lit secure room – did not help her emotional well being.[35] On December 20, 2009, after being told she would lose her one day off a week for persistent lateness, she overturned a table in a conference room, damaging a computer that was sitting on it, before other soldiers pinned her arms behind her back. Several witnesses to the incident believed her access to sensitive material ought to have been withdrawn at that point. The following month she began posting on Facebook that she felt alone and hopeless.[36]