Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has formally approved the request of Pvt. Bradley Manning, convicted for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks, to be temporarily transferred out of military custody in order to undergo expensive hormone therapy and surgery to become a woman.

Manning, whose taxpayer-funded request to change his name from Bradley to Chelsea was approved last month by a Kansas court, has been able to obtain repeated diagnoses from military doctors that he suffers from “gender dysphobia”; a condition of someone ‘discontented’ with the sex they were ‘assigned with’ at birth. It was first listed as a medical condition in 2007 by the authoritative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  

Two Pentagon officials quoted by WUSA-TV, the CBS News affiliate in Washington, D.C., claim the transfer orders were submitted because neither the Defense nor Veterans Department authorize such medical services, while the US Bureau of Prisons does. Pentagon Spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby denies the claim, saying no decision has been made to transfer Manning to a civilian facility.

As the medical needs of Manning, convicted in 2013 and sentenced to 35 years in prison for stealing 750,000 classified defense department documents in order to disseminate them to Wikileaks, were being assiduously attended to by America’s defense establishment, untold hundreds of American servicemen and women suffering from genuine life-threatening and acute medical conditions have allegedly been left to die on at least seven waiting lists managed by the US Veterans Administration.

At least 19 veterans “served” by VA facilities in South Carolina and Georgia died apparently avoidable deaths from colon and bowel cancers after they were put on phony waiting lists designed to prevent from obtaining the necessary diagnostic tests.

Phoenix VA doctor Dr. Sam Foote was the first to publicly expose the scandal when he claimed that up to 40 people in his jurisdiction alone had died preventable deaths while on VA waiting lists. 

Sex change treatments can last several years and, in Manning’s case, will cost taxpayers up to $40,000. The 2014 published Medicaid reimbursement for a colonoscopy is $479.39.