There's a pretty big difference in breaking the law to get hot goss vs breaking the law to expose corruption at the highest levels of government.
There's limits of course, but whistleblowers should be afforded a lot of leeway, particularly because quite often doing things the "right way" is engineered to accomplish nothing.
Sure, but that protection (that doesn't fully exist in practice but should) would still go to Manning rather than Assange.
Assange is to Manning as Glenn Greenwald is to Snowden. (Except for all the differences which make the legal issues in this case a thing in the first place).
