Taking it only a small step further than the usual us mass-media epic fail, the wall street journal has a manning prosecutor ghostwrite an editorial on manning. Pravda-esque
My favorite part is that HayesStreet called Iraq's political situation "self-determined"!! Hahahahahaha
"Aiding the enemy" supposedly would've had larger implications beyond this case. If the publication of classified material would fall under that umbrella, the implications for journalism would be huge.
Hopefully he finds a nice girlfriend in Leavenworth. His pretty little a$$ will make some big, strapping former infantryman a happy man indeed. POS will rot and get what he deserves. I have ZERO sympathy for traitors.
Manning initially followed procedure and reported the misdeeds he saw. The higher ups did nothing. Manning provided information showing U.S. troops shooting at first responders, using the same double tap methods used by terrorists. The people who did that got no prison time at all. Manning who exposed that, gets basically the rest of his life. It's too bad when the people who commit these horrible crimes get nothing but the guy who reports them ends up imprisoned. Sadly some of the stuff Manning leaked put peoples lives in danger. They were under cover and had to flee or they would have been killed. But Manning still got screwed especially in comparison to what the murders and war criminals he reported on got for punishment.
There's a process that you must go through to report anything like you claimed, FB. You go through your CoC first, and if that fails then you have many other avenues to take. You can always send it it a member of Congress. He never really bothered with any of it. This douchebag went straight to Wikileaks. As testified by several witnesses at his trial he had professed many times that he held no loyalty to this nation and hated it in many ways. He stole files that he knew could be used against this country in a time of war and decided it would be a good idea to throw it all over the internet. I am not going to shed a freaking tear for this traitor. He put a great many peoples' lives at risk by his actions. He has tried to play the gay/discrimination angle, the "Army are all criminals" angle, it's a load of BS. He gets ZERO hero points from me.
Overwhelmingly, what we see is a persecution of those who reveal crimes, and nearly nothing done for those who commit them. As per double-tap drone strikes, systematic torture, de facto suspension of haebas corpus, a secret court acknowledging 4th amendment violations, 8th amendment violations ironically in the case of Manning's detention, and surreal use of the Espionage Act---nothing is or will be done, though those are treasonous and unamerican at their core. Thankfully we know about these things, and they are clarified by people like Manning and Snowdon either through their actions, or the persecutions visited upon them, but the Obama Administration has a very strange set of priorities when it comes to this. of course, I suppose they, like every other government, wants to use the veil of classification to shovel their bulls**t around. do wonder what's in those top secret ones. For me, it's probably become a treasure trove of things the Administration and previous Administrations REALLY want to hide. Probably documents that would make everybody question a whole bunch of things... Well, here's to revealing corruption in the Middle East, at least that went somewhere. And I wonder what people will say about Snowden---who took all the proper channels before, and continues to publish only relevant documents. guess who is still being persecuted? The procedures are broken, legitimate whistleblowers languish (see the raft of those from the NSA, for example, Binney/Drake etc.). and Congress is being lied to with impunity (why has Clapper not been charged with perjury?). In this context, it is easy to see why Manning and Snowden did what they did, even though with Manning's case it is definitely more unclear as to the legal defense of his methods.
Post 29: I support anyone who peels back the secrecy that has shrouded our government from any objective and informed criticism. b**** and moan all you want about "proper methods" or whatever painfully naive construct you want to pretend exists but the fact of the matter is that after the leaks occurred, there was still no change in the direction of our foreign policy or accountability for misdeeds. In fact, the hypocrisy has intensified. We're making insane threats to have Snowden extradited, while refusing to extradite a CIA kidnapper to Italy.
The laws exist. They're broken, and being ill-used against Manning, but I won't say they don't exist. Myself, I don't much care to condemn Manning's methods, but from a purely legal point of view, he could be stuck. for me though, that's personally a call to arms to start moving on changing those laws
note: Manning has now been threatened with more jail time than all of the Wall Street officials combined who caused 2008/manipulated markets/laundered drug and terrorist money, CIA officials who tortured detainees to death, and Clapper who lied to Congress under oath.
