Regardless of your opinion on the matter, many people who are transgendered never have surgery done, or have only minimal changes surgically, due to cost and/or the often less-than-satisfactory results. You’re sounding rather backwards about a whole lot of people who’ve never even said boo to you.
That wasn’t a war crime. Last I checked, correct me if I’m wrong, no one was even brought up on charges for it being a war crime because it was just war. War is hell. Shit happens.
I voted that the sentence was too light. I’m fine with whistleblowers but someone who holds a clearance can’t indiscriminately release a bunch of files to an outside party. He deserves to serve the full thirty-five years.
Private Manning is a hero. He should be given a huge boost in rank and pay and statues should be erected in his honor. (Or her honor, I’m cool with calling Manning whatever she wants to be called.) Manning had the courage and the patriotism to expose the evil deeds our government has been up to in Afghanistan and Pakistan, especially with regard to those double tap drone strikes where the deliberately target first responders to the first drone strike, recognized as a war crime by other, more civilized nations. He also exposed our policy of striking funerals and weddings.
These are evil things our leaders were doing, and Manning quite properly and patriotically exposed them.
What has happened to Manning is a travesty of justice and exposes the evil thing our government has become. I admire and respect Manning.
I’m not really all that convinced we should be in so many places that put our people at risk. Of course its not their fault, and Manning did put them in danger, but was it significantly more danger than being in such a business in the first place?
Manning wasn’t aiding the enemy. He wasn’t making money. He leaked documents of government wrongdoing which is what moral people should do. What’s he’s gone through already is more punishment than he should have received. I wonder if Maj Hasan, who murdered his fellow soldiers, was ever abused and humiliated like Manning has been.
Certain US politicians that carried out illegal wars and overthrew foreign governments haven’t been convicted, let alone tried.
Of course not. Not only has he not been abused by the system, the government/ military have leaned over backwards to help him and even let him grow a beard in contravention of the rules, despite him still being paid.
What they have done, is abuse the victims by calling it a work place incident, thus denying survivors payment for a terrorism incident, of which it certainly was.
Manning was a hero for the small person, and hasan was a very bad man, but who has got the shaft?
Has any single person suffered more than embarassment from the leaks? I’m sure if they could prove that, it would have been all over the front pages ( which it hasn’t ).
Of course it was a war crime. If it wasn’t, they couldn’t have set up the war crimes tribunal in the Hague.
No one has been tried for it because the military high ups know that they would also be up on charges for allowing it, and many many other attrocities to happen. look at what happened after My Lai.
That still doesn’t excuse what Manning did (the whole “two wrongs don’t make a right thing?”).
I’m all for whistleblowing. Exposing war crimes is a good thing. Manning’s crime is HOW she chose to do it. Hello, you don’t just go on fucking WIKI LEAKS.
(Sorry I was mistaken on the treason thing. As for being transgender, I don’t give two shits about it.)
Under a just system, Breivik would have been shot down like a dog by a firing squad.
Anyhow, I think Private Manning’s sentence should be somewhat shorter but I think the 35 year term is necessary as a deterrent even if Manning will be released before that
So … HOW should Manning have exposed the war crimes the US government was engaging in, to avoid a 35 year prison sentence?
Perhaps you are asking the wrong person. PFC Manning told the court that things should have been done differently, as well as apologizing for the harm that the theft and espionage caused the country and other people.
I don’t think it would have made any difference to her sentence, but Manning probably should have bypassed Assange and gone straight to The Guardian or similar, who wouldn’t have leaked so indiscriminately (they had problems with Assange’s approach - cite) and may have protected some of the sources of this information.
I’ve got to admit I’m stumped by the ‘what should Manning have done instead’ part.
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Can we agree that nothing would have come of it if Manning had ‘gone through channels’ to let higher-ups know of the bad stuff s/he’d seen?
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So revealing the documents, videos, etc. to an outside source was Manning’s only option.
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That means the only questions up for grabs are: (a) should Manning have been more selective with the documents s/he chose to publicly reveal, and (b) should Manning have gone through a better intermediary than Wikileaks?
I’m missing the logic for locking Manning up for decades on account of making the wrong choices with respect to 3a and 3b - it seems to me that the difference between best and worst choices here might should be reflected in his sentence, but unless there was something in the documents he leaked that did demonstrable harm to legitimate U.S. government operations, the difference should be <5 years, not decades.
And OTOH, if one agrees with 1 and 2, then presumably one would have to conclude that making the right choices on 3a and 3b would mean that overall, he would deserve only enough of a sentence to keep every other PFC with access to important secrets from revealing them. Presumably a few years in prison, rather than a few decades, would suffice, since most people don’t want to go to prison at all.
RTFirefly,
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Sure. I’m still not sure what activities mentioned in the document dump were so hideous that the entire world needed to know about them, but let’s suppose there were. If Manning went to a higher up with her concerns, wouldn’t she have been chastised, officially reprimanded, and lost her clearance: all with the eventual effect of her career being ruined, nothing being revealed, and nothing changing?
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O.K. Since it’s one of the givens for your hypothetical.
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(a) Absolutely. It is my understanding that Manning did very little sifting through the mass of documents she stole. She certainly did not attempt to redact confidential sources or methods for handling same, which potentially put some confidential sources at risk of loss of life and property. No one’s come forth with a concrete, “Manning’s document got this guy killed,” story, by the way. Unlike the definite deaths we can attribute to the spying that, e.g., Aldrich Ames did.
(b) Yes. I’ve mentioned that Manning, like Ron Ridenhour, should have chosen a Member of Congress to make these revelations to. The Member has very wide powers under the Speech or Debate Clause to avoid prosecution for disseminating that information during debate or other legislative conduct. See, Gravel v. United States, 408 U.S. 606 (1972). Granted, the Pentagon Papers had already been leaked by the time Senator Gravel read parts of them into the Congressional Record. It’s an open question whether the Member could initiate disclosure under the Speech or Debate Clause. These two blog posts are fairly concise descriptions of the issues that would arise. I would personally love to see the Executive Branch try to arrest or restrain the Member for doing so. Perhaps doing so will motivate Congress into asserting some of its authority for reining in the Executive?
More importantly, disclosing to a Member actually stands a chance of getting something done about the acts that Manning found so objectionable.
Yes, we all know that Manning was tortured and threatened into saying some things she almost certainly did not believe. More shameful conduct by our government. Thanks for bringing it up!
I’m not sure that would have protected Manning at all, if it had been known that she was the source.
The existence of double tap drone strikes, and deliberate attacks on funerals and wedding, for two.