Are there any moves within a peace movement, civil libertarians, people against the war in Iraq, people for freedom of speech, people for freedom of information, people who think that the crimes exposed by the documents are embarrassing to the US government but threatens security only in the sense that it makes the citizenry aware of what the government is doing in its name..

Is there any sign that a significant number of people will come to his defense? Any demonstrations?

He faces 20 years in prison, and possibly, in the next round, the death penalty.

For the life of me, I do not understand why he and Coombs are doing this partial plea to the court without anything tangible to gain from it. What is the real theory here?

I have no idea how, in good conscience this is being done on "advice of counsel".  Combs has done a decent enough job to date fo Manning, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt I guess. But it is hard.

But my initial, and still, view is that this is just bad strategy. It does not overall mitigate the ultimate time Manning faces, it does not appear to take any particular set of evidence out of the prosecution's hands for the trial on the remaining charges, and it does not take any of the top counts of the charge sheet out of play.  It is simply dumfounding; what is the tactical gain now and how does it help in overall strategy?

And I have no idea in the world why any court, military or otherwise, would let a defendant stand in the dock and read a 35 page statement/manifesto at a simple plea allocution. A plea proceeding is not an opportunity for a defendant to make self serving declarations, it is strictly designed to insure that the essential elements of the charges being pled to have a factual basis on the record, well at least in normal courts anyway.  It is nothing more than insuring that the time, place and jurisdiction, and root elements of crime are met as a factual basis for the record. That Is It. Period. Why did Lind agree to allow him to do so over the prosecution's objection?

Might all this have some value as to PR posture, maybe. But this is a military court and the people in the public that may buy into the framing Manning made out in his "statement" are already very solidly on Manning's side. I simply do not see what is gained for the defense by having Manning make such an unnecessary statement; who is it designed to influence? Lind? Public? Why would the defense want to buttonhole itself into such an evidentiary corner before trial starts?

I dunno, but I have asked a lot of people, including some with significant UCMJ experience (far more than I), what the strategy was here ever since the defense first indicated they were contemplating doing it. I have never gotten a particularly compelling answer.