Bradley Manning sentenced

I think the thing that is going to be held against her is that so much of the information stolen can't be claimed to be in the public interest. Diplomatic Cables should remain private, regardless of what's in them, because nations need to be able to talk to each other without fear of their dialogue being reported in the press.
 
I agree about snowden. Manning otoh was just doing something very stupid, and caused a lot of unnecessary hurt in the process. If he had just been a little bit more discriminating in what he released, he would have had all of the oomph, all of the moral high ground, and none of the collateral.
 
the diplomatic documents probably didn't need to be released, but the government was lying to us about casualty counts. civilians where being killed on a massive scale in iraq, and reports of abuse, rape, and murder where being ignored. thanks to manning, we now know that. if it weren't for her we would still be in the dark. the the government doesn't have the right to lie to me, i pay them to protect me. not themselves.

what he did needed to be done. I frankly don't care if he didn't use the proper channels, if those would have worked the military wouldn't have been hiding these things in the first place.
 
What "hurt" and "collateral" are you referring to?



What proper channels? Tell your superiors and be punished for it/ignored? I believe Manning had attempted that prior to leaking the documents.
 
The Diplomatic cables hurt the US and her allies unnecessarily.


He had no business going through the cables anyway. He was already outside of his remit at that point.
 
You can't be a whistle blower while you are in the military. Other people may die because of that, maybe lots of other people.

Once you are out and you want to drop the dime on stuff that happened more power to you.

Just my 2 cents.
 
I refer you to the entire scandal, but do you think US-Afghan Relations were helped when an accusation that the Afghan Vice-President was travelling to/from the UAE with $52m in cash without any obvious reason? Do you think the Saudi's were happy when it became public knowledge that they were encouraging the US to attack Iran? How do you imagine Sarkozy felt after he was called a 'naked emperor'?
 
I'm not saying it didn't strain diplomatic relations briefly. It did. I want to know about specific, quantifiable, lasting damage though. Manning got 35 years exposing soldiers who intentionally gunned down unarmed reporters. The soldiers he tattled on got 0 years. So temporarily strained diplomatic relationships = 35 years. War crimes = 0 years?
 
thats ridiculous. anybody who sees evidence of war crimes has a moral duty to report it. thats what manning did, to do otherwise is to be a coward.
 
i frankly don't care about the diplomatic cables. not at all. i can however show you examples of military cover ups, falsified casualty reports, and outright murder of civilians.

as for the diplomatic cables, thats a footnote at best. manning risked her life (and took the hit) to get information that the american public needs to have to us.
 
That's because you aren't thinking about the potential ramifications of those cables being released.


If that's what she did, why release the cables?

I'm not convinced that she did this out of some noble attempt to shine a light on war crimes. She could have done that without releasing all the other data. I'm not entirely convinced the war crime stuff was just a side effect of the leak, not the goal of it.
 
They have a duty to report it to their chain of coofftopicnd. If that chain of coofftopicnd does nothing with it they have a duty to report that chain of coofftopicnd to an even higher chain of coofftopicnd. With the way the military is I'm sure he could have found somebody who was willing to crush people over morality somewhere in the coofftopicnd. From what I've seen, the information reported is hardly so outrageous (as what I believe Snowdens leaks to be) that Manning needed to skip that process.
 
look into the information again, its amazing what was being hidden. i personally don't care if she used the chain of coofftopicnd, i care that we got the information. if the military cared to release it they would have done it already, this information was being deliberately hidden. i don't pay the military to lie to me.
 
she made a mistake and released things other that what was necessary. thats all, she's not a journalist. that hardly warrants a 35 year sentence when she rather literally exposed hideous war crimes. she's a heroine in my book.
 
Grass hopper, dude, you might want to wait a few more years before you start beating your chest about paying taxes. It really takes weight out of your words because it comes across as a feeling of entitlement when you clearly haven't put much of anything in the form of taxes into public services at the age of 18. I feel that way about people my age too. Disregard if you make millions of dollars at 18.

It's only amazing if you've never been exposed to anything like it. I think it's amazing you think it's amazing honestly, what did you think happens in warfare?
 
And I think you're missing that Manning was sentenced by military law, not civilian. The UCMJ is significantly harsher than the civilian world in some areas, lighter in others. It's a lot more significant when people in the military are doing this kind of thing. Remember also that punishment (especially in the military) is used as a deterrent, a deterrent by use of fear. You can say what you like about it all and how it's not fair but honestly I think that makes you look naive about the subject. A lot of people are though so please don't be offended by me saying that. 1 out of 20 people I could stop on the street probably wouldn't know what the UCMJ is and I live in DC.
 
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