Yeah, I figure some other presidential candidate will eventually come crawling out of the woodwork, take a anti-Obama’ish stance and either pardon Manning or perhaps even praise him as a hero and give him some sort of medal. At the very least the guy will probably make some good money from all this.
Unless there is a huge political change in the US, that won't happen. Most people still see him as a traitor, and his case has become iconic. No president wants to be the one who pardoned the 'Traitor to the US patriotic army'. Democrat or republican doesn't matter. Just because he got sentenced under a democrat president does not mean Republican voters will forgive a republican candidate for pardoning Manning. The handful of Republicans I know think he got off too easy.
I think over time, the disparity between his crime and the crimes he uncovered by leaking the documents will become larger until eventually it becomes (even more) ridiculous that he is the one being punished.
I think he got off fairly lightly given the political hoo-ha surrounding him and what he did and how the american people must feel about him. But still, I would question if he'd even be out in 11 years as the bbc article suggested, even with appeals and good behaviour.
I don't know, the US justice system often seems to sweep its overly harsh and capricious punishments under the rug. I'd guess that, unfortunately, he pretty much gets forgotten about until he gets paroled.
I'm having a hard time feeling any sympathy for this kid. You don't do something like that in the military at that rank and age when you probably have no clue what you're getting into or what kind of documents you're reading. This screams blue falcon and lack of awareness to me more than whistle blower. He leaked thousands of documents which for me describes his level of overview and appropriate selection (being 0). Given the mental profile write up of him I think the people who screened him for his clearances to have access to sensitive material should be fired, unless that part of his profile is just an attempt to make him contemptible.
You don't think there is a difference from active duty military personal leaking information vs. something like Snowden leaking information in this particular situation?
Even though I am very liberal I don't think the military and civilian rules for communicating truth to the amercian people should be the same.
In the military you could be putting your fellow soldiers as risk. That goes way beyond embarrassing some politician and exposing his lies. Just my opinion.
It's not about communicating truth, it's about stealing and distributing classified material. You can't let that go unpunished for any reason without making the nation's secrets less secure.
Snowden isn't really any different because although he isn't military, he was employed in a position of trust within the intelligence community.