Bradley Manning may face death penalty

[Aaron]

I'm fully behind charging this dude but shouldn't the fact that he's been abused while being detained basically get him off the hook? What happens if the cops beat the shit out of a guy in custody?

I know Americans waive several civil rights upon enlistment (as do we) but I'm pretty sure your supposed to be treated properly in the stockade.

[Thanas]

^You'll quickly find out that nobody cares, especially not the current US administration. After all, this is the same administration that sent people to the big house when they only exposed corruption within the administration.

[Lonestar]

I'm fully behind charging this dude but shouldn't the fact that he's been abused while being detained basically get him off the hook? What happens if the cops beat the shit out of a guy in custody?

Fuck if I know. I believe that, if nothing else, anything he says while in their custody would be(should be) inadmissible for obvious reasons.

[Aaron]

Fuck if I know. I believe that, if nothing else, anything he says while in their custody would be(should be) inadmissible for obvious reasons.

Most certainly.

^You'll quickly find out that nobody cares, especially not the current US administration. After all, this is the same administration that sent people to the big house when they only exposed corruption within the administration.

Yeah I know. I still have a small glimmer of hope though.

[Eleas]

No, you just indicated that no Americna should try to get the support of a sympathetic elected official because Obama didn't turn out the way you wanted.

That wasn't my argument, though. My argument was that there's no reason that I can see why a sympathetic elected official would be (a) accessible and (b) actually willing to help. Meanwhile, going to one would certainly be a huge risk in itself. If I were him, I'd not bet on there being a second attempt.

No, that's not what we do. I went after FOX because for a long time, and previously established, they have lied in a consistent fashion. They have in fact refused the classification of being an actual news broadcast, meaning it's perfectly fine to attack them on said grounds. You, however, are hastily scrambling to build Manning up as someone not worth listening to, because you need his motives to be as low as you can get.

There's nothing "Hasty" about it, as soon as I heard he was an E3 4 years in, lo those many months ago, I knew he was a shitbird.

Possibly. Then you should have mentioned this in the thread, instead of acting as if it were a snap decision. Which you did.

Maybe he got into fights with his coworkers. Maybe he hated the army because he got shit details. Maybe he didn't like that he was going to get discharged with the "I'm fucking crazy" tag appended to the DD214. All of these paint a picture of someone with a Vendetta rather than someone who is out to be a good guy, a "lionized patriot" or a "hero of everyone".

And my point is, I'm not lionizing him. I'm fighting against the obvious reaction to the other side, which is to vilify him for the exact same reason rightwing fuckers would vilify Assange*: to paint him as someone not worth listening to.


(*note that once again, Assange too is by accounts a "shitbird". Didn't make his contribution one whit less important.)

Wrong again. This is me expressing frustration that so many board members are lionizing this broken individual.

Fair enough.

Firstly: did you serve that one year, or did you fact go over to Iraq to partake in that war of aggression? Yes, Manning is a war criminal as well, and his motives may be even more fucked. Starting to see the picture yet?

I never served in Iraq in uniform, Manning did. I might add that, unlike Manning, I joined up WELL BEFORE Iraq was invaded, or even sufficient stores and personnel were prestaged for the invasion.

You're still trying to make this about relative popularity. It isn't. What you may have done is not magically lessened by what Manning did. The issue was whether you chose to go help commit an atrocity, not whether you knew what the gang were planning before you joined it. What, exactly, does the qualifier "never served [..] in uniform" mean?

Secondly, it's Abu Ghraib. I would think the actual spelling of your country's secondmost famous torture pit would be worthy of enough attention to get right.

Fine, next time I get two characters in a word mixed up I'll flay myself with the Cat-o-nines.

It's not flaying. It's enhanced interrogation or "torture."

That's not a very convincing lie. I absolutely think he should take responsibility for his actions. I just don't think "responsibility" entails suffering torture at the hands of the powerhouse organization he accused of war crimes, which is apparently what is currently happening.

Believe it or not...I am not advocating torturing Manning, which you seem to be implying I am.

I do not imply that. You are advocating that a powerful organization, riddled with systematic abuses, should have the right to retain custody of a person who just revealed that information. Said organisation is currently torturing the man.

So let's back up a bit. I said you should take some goddamn responsibility. You claim that I'm being selective, that I don't think Manning should take his responsibility, as if you two are inextricably linked and if only you can prove that I'm somehow being unjust in his case, then I'm unjust in yours as well. However, the fact was that I said that Manning is held by an organization that hates him, engages in countless atrocities in an illegal war, and now tortures him, and this does not equate to him taking responsibility.

And it has nothing to do with your deeds, good or bad.

Which is ridiculous on the face of it. Sifting through all that shit would take an enormous amount of time. Once the information is safe and protected from destruction, then you have the leisure to go through it. Or are you saying he should have spent weeks at home with the incriminating material spread out across the living room?

Why not?

To follow those chat logs(that I was aware of), if we're to take them at face value, he was already in the process of getting a discharge, and it's hard to tell if he was gathering info before he was informed of the discharge, or after he was. Either way he had a lot of time, especially as he was literally just burning them to DVDs and mailing them home(IIRC all the breaches occurred while he was stationed in Iraq).

And are we to take them at face value? Link, please. Note that even if he is a "shitbird", he may well have been entirely correct in his assessment of the likelihood of the information getting out, as per my point about wikileaks that you simply brushed off as irrelevant.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Primarily, we're including people who, when ordered to go there, say "yes Sir" (or "Ja, Hauptmann").

Define we. The Nuremberg Trials were directed against prominent members and not those serving as mechanics for the Germany Army. Furthermore, war criminal is specifically defined as someone directly engaging in these acts or directly supporting these acts. Nothing says that simply being deployed in an illegal war makes you a war criminal.

Look, I'm not saying this is because I want it to be this way. This is not me gleefully shouting "you go to hell an' DIE" in the style of Mr Garrisson. This is simply the Nuremberg precedent applied: partake in a war of aggression, and you shoulder the blame just as the Wehrmacht did.

I do, however, feel a measure of contempt for the people who would claim extenuating circumstances because of "freedom," "we were fooled," and so on. If those people are present on this board/in this thread, then that would sadly not change matters. I, too, have been fooled, but I didn't nod my head to the suggestion to go bash someone's head in.

EDIT: ...and if I did, I would be guilty of that. I have been guilty of errors before. I've done stuff myself to people who have been hurt by my errors. Refusing to ever consider that angle is, I'd argue, to worsen it immeasurably.

No offense, Eleas. However, your standard seems unreasonable and I can't find it defined in such a manner. Furthermore, the entire German military was not tried as war criminals. So, where did you find this standard?

It's probably misunderstanding of this citation;
Whosoever shall aid, abet, counsel, or procure the commission of any indictable offence, whether the same be an offence at common law or by virtue of any Act passed or to be passed, shall be liable to be tried, indicted and punished as a principal offender.


Accessories and Abettors Act 1861

[Thanas]

No offense, Eleas. However, your standard seems unreasonable and I can't find it defined in such a manner. Furthermore, the entire German military was not tried as war criminals.

While not being tried, every German citizen was intended to be subjected to a commission ruling on whether he was a possible criminal or not, and every member of the Wehrmacht was. After these screenings proceedings were initiated or the person was cleared. It was far from perfect of course. So at least the assumption was that the entire German military might be war criminals.

And it did lead to over 5000 sentences in the western occupied zones, the soviets were a lot more eager.

[Metahive]

Sure, individual german soldiers were not tried, they were instead collectively send abroad for slave labor like clearing minefields. Doesn't exactly speak against Eleas' case.

[Eleas]

No offense, Eleas. However, your standard seems unreasonable

Metahive already answered the rest, but... while I don't take offense, why do my standards seem so unreasonable? The US assaulted two countries, one because it dared to respond to a demand about extradition of a person without proof with 'hey, wait a minute...', the other as a naked grab for resources and wealth. Partaking in the Afghanistan war is bad, but serving in Iraq is frankly beyond excuse.

Try as I might, I don't see why wishing that the people responsible pay the piper is so unreasonable.

[Lonestar]

That wasn't my argument, though. My argument was that there's no reason that I can see why a sympathetic elected official would be (a) accessible and (b) actually willing to help. Meanwhile, going to one would certainly be a huge risk in itself. If I were him, I'd not bet on there being a second attempt.

Depends, there are ways to CYA. Crap, if one were so inclined one could draw up a list of sympathetic individuals/domestic media and literally drop USB drives in the mailboxes. My point is there are a lot of options before one reaches "hand over data en masse to foreigners."

Possibly. Then you should have mentioned this in the thread, instead of acting as if it were a snap decision. Which you did.


And my point is, I'm not lionizing him. I'm fighting against the obvious reaction to the other side, which is to vilify him for the exact same reason rightwing fuckers would vilify Assange*: to paint him as someone not worth listening to.

Me acting this way against Manning is mostly because of a tendency by some posters to make him out to be more than what he was, which, IMO, is a guy with a Vendetta. This isn't me talking out of my ass, there are people in this thread calling him "the hero of everyone" and that he'll be a "lionized patriot".

So just to make this clear, me thinking Manning is a shitbird does NOT mean I support the idea of gross mistreatment at the hands of the MPs in the Brig.

(*note that once again, Assange too is by accounts a "shitbird". Didn't make his contribution one whit less important.)

I am not the right Hon. Stuart Slade, who is so silly as to advocate putting a hit out on him.

You're still trying to make this about relative popularity. It isn't. What you may have done is not magically lessened by what Manning did. The issue was whether you chose to go help commit an atrocity, not whether you knew what the gang were planning before you joined it.

I did maritime interdiction operations in the Indian Ocean, and Tsunami relief during 04-05. In fact at the time I sent Shep a bunch of clear photos from the relief effort and he posted them in a thread in this very forum.

What, exactly, does the qualifier "never served [..] in uniform" mean?

It means I'm a pretty good fisherman.

I've never been in Iraq.

It's not flaying. It's enhanced interrogation or "torture."

I don't support that either.

I do not imply that. You are advocating that a powerful organization, riddled with systematic abuses, should have the right to retain custody of a person who just revealed that information. Said organisation is currently torturing the man.

Out of curiosity, (and this is not me being a smartass), would you be opposed to him being in a Navy Brig instead of a Army Stockade?

So let's back up a bit. I said you should take some goddamn responsibility. You claim that I'm being selective, that I don't think Manning should take his responsibility, as if you two are inextricably linked and if only you can prove that I'm somehow being unjust in his case, then I'm unjust in yours as well. However, the fact was that I said that Manning is held by an organization that hates him, engages in countless atrocities in an illegal war, and now tortures him, and this does not equate to him taking responsibility.

And it has nothing to do with your deeds, good or bad.

I hate to tell you this, but when you're in uniform and you commit a crime...that means you have to deal with the military courts, not the civil system. In fact if you commit a crime in a civilian capacity(drunk driving, sneaking illegals across the border, etc) the civilian police will often insist that you be tried under the UCMJ because they know the DoD has the cash and facilities to put you away for the maximum extent. That all of his crimes occurred in a military capacity means, well....he's fucked.

And are we to take them at face value? Link, please. Note that even if he is a "shitbird", he may well have been entirely correct in his assessment of the likelihood of the information getting out, as per my point about wikileaks that you simply brushed off as irrelevant.

Soitently:

The WaPo

"I'm an army intelligence analyst, deployed to eastern baghdad, pending discharge for 'adjustment disorder,' " Manning said by way of introducing himself to Lamo, who had recently been profiled on the Web site of Wired magazine.

"If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months, what would you do?" he wrote.

In the days that followed -- the two exchanged messages for no more than a week -- Manning seemed intent on impressing Lamo with what he could access from his post in Iraq. He wrote of a "database of half a million events during the iraq war . . . from 2004 to 2009 . . . with reports, date time groups, lat-lon locations, casualty figures," as well as 260,000 diplomatic cables "explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective."

But much of the exchanges focused on Manning's unhappiness.

"Ive been isolated so long . . . i just wanted to figure out ways to survive . . . smart enough to know whats going on, but helpless to do anything . . . no-one took any notice of me," he wrote at one point. Another time, he wrote: "im a wreck."

In one particularly poignant message, Manning wrote: "my family is non-supportive . . . im losing my job . . . losing my career options . . . i dont have much more except for this laptop, some books, and a hell of a story."

If you read his Rap sheet here You'll see that the security breaches occurred whilst deployed in Iraq. Either he just kept a gradually increasing pile of CDs and DVDs marked "Lady Gaga" in his hooch, or he mailed them home or directly to wikileaks. Unfortunately that chat logs do not make clear as to whether or not he started to pull information before or after he was informed he was going to get discharged for being fucking crazy having an adjustment disorder, but since the DoD wasn't even aware of the leak until Lamo informed them of the cunningly titled nom de guerre "Bradass86" there is a certain implication that, yes, he had ample time to shift through and pull out the gems.

[Lonestar]

Out of curiosity, (and this is not me being a smartass), would you be opposed to him being in a Navy Brig instead of a Army Stockade?

Whoops, I see that he *IS* in a brig rather than a stockade. As I was.

[Eleas]

Depends, there are ways to CYA. Crap, if one were so inclined one could draw up a list of sympathetic individuals/domestic media and literally drop USB drives in the mailboxes. My point is there are a lot of options before one reaches "hand over data en masse to foreigners."

Allright.

This isn't me talking out of my ass, there are people in this thread calling him "the hero of everyone" and that he'll be a "lionized patriot".

So just to make this clear, me thinking Manning is a shitbird does NOT mean I support the idea of gross mistreatment at the hands of the MPs in the Brig.

Yeah, agreed, and I understand where you're coming from.

I am not the right Hon. Stuart Slade, who is so silly as to advocate putting a hit out on him.

And thank fuck for that.

I did maritime interdiction operations in the Indian Ocean, and Tsunami relief during 04-05. In fact at the time I sent Shep a bunch of clear photos from the relief effort and he posted them in a thread in this very forum.

Your word would have sufficed. While my approval probably isn't your goal, I still have to say it's good to hear. Particularly the Tsunami relief, which is bloody admirable.

It means I'm a pretty good fisherman.

In light of what you said about Tsunami relief, that takes on a new and unsettling meaning. I hope I'm wrong, though.

I've never been in Iraq.

It's not flaying. It's enhanced interrogation or "torture."

I don't support that either.

Then I shouldn't have come so close to hinting you were part of that shitfest. I apologize.

Out of curiosity, (and this is not me being a smartass), would you be opposed to him being in a Navy Brig instead of a Army Stockade?

I think I definitely would, assuming that meant the organization didn't have a similar vested interest in what he had to say not coming out. I know very little about the US Navy's structure, and I don't know how this would reflect on the Marines serving in Iraq (if any), for instance.

I hate to tell you this, but when you're in uniform and you commit a crime...that means you have to deal with the military courts, not the civil system. In fact if you commit a crime in a civilian capacity(drunk driving, sneaking illegals across the border, etc) the civilian police will often insist that you be tried under the UCMJ because they know the DoD has the cash and facilities to put you away for the maximum extent. That all of his crimes occurred in a military capacity means, well....he's fucked.

Yeah, I understand that. It makes sense that unless the corruption is systemic, that system is the preferred one. I think it's gone beyond that now, though.

Soitently:

<snip>

[..]but since the DoD wasn't even aware of the leak until Lamo informed them of the cunningly titled nom de guerre "Bradass86" there is a certain implication that, yes, he had ample time to shift through and pull out the gems.

Thank you. Yeah, he does sound like a shithead. I misread your perspective from the get-go, and I understand now that you're really objecting to just tossing everything out to be published on international airwaves. Fine, I get that. He seems a bit of a dickhead, and his pen name is certainly cringeworthy, and what he did was a serious crime that happened to reveal another, more widespread crime.

Does that work a bit better?

[Anguirus]

So question for all you poor suffering Martyrs out there, if the "aiding the enemy" charge was removed and you only had the other 20 or so charges that included the phrase "with reason to believe such information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation" would you still be wringing you hands in anger?

I don't know if you're including me in this category, but of course I expect (and probably he expected) that he would be tried under the UCMJ. That's the risk you take.

There are legitimate complaints about the abuse he has suffered in custody (which have been discussed already).

This thread only exists because of the ludicrous "aiding the enemy" charge, which could be used to set a troublesome precedent.

...and that's all, gotta book it to school.

[TheHammer]

Manning essentially downloaded material and indiscriminantly handed it over to wikileaks. Even if you dismiss anything he leaked that could be constituted as "whistle blowing", there are still gobs of other material, sensitive in nature, that did not uncover inproper actions but would none the less be useful to the enemy.

And lets be real here, anyone with a brain should know that if you give information to someone to be distributed on the internet, its going to get into the hands of your "enemy" regardless of who that enemy is. Therefore anyone who did so willingly provided information to the enemy.

When evidence is presented for the charge, we'll have a better idea of what specifically we're talking about. And FYI, I highly doubt he'll get the death penalty since, as noted the prosecution is NOT going to recommend that punishment. But there its highly likely he'll spend a good chunk of his life in prison, and likely deservedly so.

[Simon_Jester]

And lets be real here, anyone with a brain should know that if you give information to someone to be distributed on the internet, its going to get into the hands of your "enemy" regardless of who that enemy is. Therefore anyone who did so willingly provided information to the enemy.

So, anyone who releases secret documents to the media is releasing them to the enemy?

Because that's exactly the problem: by setting that precedent, you make it officially illegal (indeed, equivalent to treason) for anyone to ever reveal anything the government does under a cloak of secrecy- period.

That is not consistent with the values of a democratic society, or with civilian control of the military. Because in a system that has those things, sooner or later the public should be able to find out what "their" armed forces and espionage services have been up to.

[Gil Hamilton]

You're putting alot of weight on evidence that you consider him to be a shitbird rather than the actual details of the situation, Lonestar. This is bordering on a classic ad homenim. It doesn't have anything to do with whether or not he actually did the crimes that he's being accused of or the legality of how he's being treated as a prisoner by the military (even if the UMCJ strips you of some civil rights, you know full well that the military STILL legally can't do whatever the hell it wants to him or to his legal staff).

The fact is that the military doesn't seem to be content to accusing him of what he actually did (which, given what he did, you'd think would be enough), but accuse him of everything else as well and going beyond normal treatment for a prisoner. It makes the military and government look butthurt that alot of their dirty laundry got out and they aren't going for justice, but vengence. That makes this legal process extremely dubious. They already have decided that he's going to be guilty of everything, even charges as completely nebulous as "aid and comfort to the enemy", which he's almost certainly NOT guilty of unless you define "aid" and "enemy" so vaguely it could do a good impression of an interstellar gas cloud. They'd probably find him guilty of buggering an orangutan too, if someone decided to charge him of that, complete with five compelling witnesses who swear up and down they saw him leave the bar with a hairy orange something that night.

That makes this whole thing a farce. Given the way he's being treated a prisoner and the charges that are being levied against him, there is absolutely no way he'll get a fair trial for the ACTUAL wrong he committed. Believe me, I think he's guilty as hell for what he did, but I think they also should give him a fair trial based on what he actually did, rather than "He's a shitbird, fuck 'em and try him for that too."

[Lonestar]

You're putting alot of weight on evidence that you consider him to be a shitbird rather than the actual details of the situation, Lonestar. This is bordering on a classic ad homenim. It doesn't have anything to do with whether or not he actually did the crimes that he's being accused of or the legality of how he's being treated as a prisoner by the military (even if the UMCJ strips you of some civil rights, you know full well that the military STILL legally can't do whatever the hell it wants to him or to his legal staff).

The fact is that the military doesn't seem to be content to accusing him of what he actually did (which, given what he did, you'd think would be enough), but accuse him of everything else as well and going beyond normal treatment for a prisoner. It makes the military and government look butthurt that alot of their dirty laundry got out and they aren't going for justice, but vengence. That makes this legal process extremely dubious. They already have decided that he's going to be guilty of everything, even charges as completely nebulous as "aid and comfort to the enemy", which he's almost certainly NOT guilty of unless you define "aid" and "enemy" so vaguely it could do a good impression of an interstellar gas cloud. They'd probably find him guilty of buggering an orangutan too, if someone decided to charge him of that, complete with five compelling witnesses who swear up and down they saw him leave the bar with a hairy orange something that night.

That makes this whole thing a farce. Given the way he's being treated a prisoner and the charges that are being levied against him, there is absolutely no way he'll get a fair trial for the ACTUAL wrong he committed. Believe me, I think he's guilty as hell for what he did, but I think they also should give him a fair trial based on what he actually did, rather than "He's a shitbird, fuck 'em and try him for that too."

Gil, go back and read my posts and tell me:

(1)Where I waved my hands and went "all is forgiven" on the behalf of mistreatment at the hands of MPs in the brig.

(2)Where I flat out stated that he should be tried on the basis of him being a shitbird, rather than me stating that I am venting frustration at how some of the posters here are making him out to be something that he isn't(a "Hero of Everyone", "Lionized Patriot" etc).

Thanks.

[TheHammer]

And lets be real here, anyone with a brain should know that if you give information to someone to be distributed on the internet, its going to get into the hands of your "enemy" regardless of who that enemy is. Therefore anyone who did so willingly provided information to the enemy.

So, anyone who releases secret documents to the media is releasing them to the enemy?

Because that's exactly the problem: by setting that precedent, you make it officially illegal (indeed, equivalent to treason) for anyone to ever reveal anything the government does under a cloak of secrecy- period.

That is not consistent with the values of a democratic society, or with civilian control of the military. Because in a system that has those things, sooner or later the public should be able to find out what "their" armed forces and espionage services have been up to.

I think you have to draw a line between true "whistle blowing" and simply releasing a bunch of classified material indiscriminantly as Manning did, without regard to the entire contents. There are proper channels for "whistle blowing", and protections when you following this channels: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/10/1034.html. And generally you do so with a scalpel, not a broadsword. Had he gone through proper channels to report misconduct, and been stone walled perhaps I'd be more sympathetic to him going to outside media. But he did not.

[Lagmonster]

So, anyone who releases secret documents to the media is releasing them to the enemy?

Because that's exactly the problem: by setting that precedent, you make it officially illegal (indeed, equivalent to treason) for anyone to ever reveal anything the government does under a cloak of secrecy- period.

That is not consistent with the values of a democratic society, or with civilian control of the military. Because in a system that has those things, sooner or later the public should be able to find out what "their" armed forces and espionage services have been up to.

Problem: How do you reconcile "public must know what its government is doing" with "government needs to keep secrets in order to carry out certain functions of its mandate"?

The rest of this thread is a head-scratcher. I'm beginning to think it honestly hasn't occurred to several people that this guy could be a loser and a douchebag whose motives and priorities were wrong, but who ended up doing something positive for society purely by unintended consequence. Sort of like a robber who breaks into a house to steal jewlery but who ends up uncovering a gun running ring. It's good that he blows the lid off the gun running, but that in itself won't get him off the burglary charge.

[Simon_Jester]

Problem: How do you reconcile "public must know what its government is doing" with "government needs to keep secrets in order to carry out certain functions of its mandate"?

Yeah, it's a problem.

Essentially, the problem is that the US government keeps so much of what it does (especially in terms of foreign policy) secret that the public has effectively no ability to oversee its actions. That would be understandable if we really were engaged in a desperate struggle for survival, in which we needed to make lots of secret plans for military operations and make quiet, covert threats to third parties to keep them from intervening in the desperate struggle. If we were World War Two Britain, a great deal of secrecy about our plans and intentions with respect to other nations would be justified.

But we're not. The US is a global superpower, with fingers in every pie and bases in every corner of the globe. We are not credibly threatened by any serious, powerful enemy. We have a few rivals who could theoretically wreck us but have no intention of doing so, we have a bunch of pipsqueaks who want to cause harm to our localized, regional interests in areas remote from our own heartland, and that's it.

Under those conditions, the government does not need to keep very many secrets to carry out the functions of its mandate. There are specific exceptions- weapons blueprints, the names of spies, the placement of nuclear weapons, and so on. But those are exceptions precisely because having this information become known has specific consequences that present serious threats.

More general information on the US's strategic goals and the things it is willing to do to achieve those goals is another story. That information should be known to the American public. Otherwise, it's impossible for us to evaluate whether our policymakers are doing their jobs. Politicians are supposed to work for the citizenry, not the other way round; how do you run a system in which the workers are allowed to keep secret from their boss any information regarding the workers' performance? How do you ensure that the work is still being done properly, and that the right work is being done?

This is why the common example of the Pentagon Papers is so important. In the Vietnam War, we had a situation where our elected officials were actively lying to the American people about their intentions and hopes of winning in Vietnam. At the same time that President Johnson promised on the campaign trail to de-escalate the war, he actively planned to escalate it.

If there were educated professionals assessing the situation in Vietnam and saying "we can't win this," or even "we can only win this by killing X million North Vietnamese in bombing campaigns"... if there were experts saying that the real reason to fight in Vietnam was to avoid embarrassment for the US, not to make the country safe for democracy... we needed to know that. Because that information was critical to the American people's ability to decide whether it was worth fighting a war in Vietnam at all, which is a political decision and not a military one. The question of whether the war is worth fighting cannot be subject to military censorship in a democracy, nor can the basic facts that we need in order to answer the question. Not when there is no imminent mortal threat to the nation which justifies keeping those facts secret even at the expense of the democratic process.

We have as many problems with this today as we did in the Vietnam era, if not more. And I'd argue that the US is in far more danger of losing its political and economic strength because our government has adopted a 'closed society' model in which the public interest is locked out of policymaking than of being overthrown by outside enemies. We're in a situation where the security/military/foreign policy establishment is trying, with considerable success, to create a total information vacuum on what they're up to, concealing everything except for the undeniable effects of their policy (like bombs falling on certain countries). And in that kind of information blackout, it is impossible to have meaningful political speech about what our policies ought to be.

So I would prefer to err on the side of openness here; we can afford a bit of glasnost.
_________

The rest of this thread is a head-scratcher. I'm beginning to think it honestly hasn't occurred to several people that this guy could be a loser and a douchebag whose motives and priorities were wrong, but who ended up doing something positive for society purely by unintended consequence. Sort of like a robber who breaks into a house to steal jewlery but who ends up uncovering a gun running ring. It's good that he blows the lid off the gun running, but that in itself won't get him off the burglary charge.

Fine.

But I consider the charge of "aiding the enemy" to be dubious in the extreme. For one, that matches the constitutional definition of treason in the US, which sets exactly the kind of precedent I'm concerned about. If we can apply this to Manning today, where will we draw the line?

[wautd]

So, anyone who releases secret documents to the media is releasing them to the enemy?

Because that's exactly the problem: by setting that precedent, you make it officially illegal (indeed, equivalent to treason) for anyone to ever reveal anything the government does under a cloak of secrecy- period.

That is not consistent with the values of a democratic society, or with civilian control of the military. Because in a system that has those things, sooner or later the public should be able to find out what "their" armed forces and espionage services have been up to.

The rest of this thread is a head-scratcher. I'm beginning to think it honestly hasn't occurred to several people that this guy could be a loser and a douchebag whose motives and priorities were wrong, but who ended up doing something positive for society purely by unintended consequence. Sort of like a robber who breaks into a house to steal jewlery but who ends up uncovering a gun running ring. It's good that he blows the lid off the gun running, but that in itself won't get him off the burglary charge.

Even so, he doesn't deserves the conditions he's being held in. If the US wants to act like a democracy you would think they'd treat their suspects a bit better than in some dictatorships

[White Haven]

My personal take on the whole 'what secrets are okay to reveal' bit comes down to collective bargaining. Essentially it's the public telling the government 'You want everything secret, so we're going to make everything public until and unless you sit the fuck down and start classifying reasonably and sparingly.' Do I believe the government needs to be able to keep secrets? Sure. But I accept a total obliteration of their ability to keep secrets in the short term as the price of forcing a sane policy down the road.

As far as Manning himself goes, yes, what he did was illegal, yes, he's going to get hammered for it, no, it wasn't 'aiding the enemy,' because in this case the enemy is the United States Government's classification policies. We don't have any rivals meaningful enough and hostile enough at the same time to warrant the term. Perhaps 'aiding the regional irritant' would be a more appropriate charge. 'Aiding the enemy' as a separate crime only really makes sense in the context of major, potentially-existential threats, not (from the US perspective) brushfires.

[Cecelia5578]

So, anyone who releases secret documents to the media is releasing them to the enemy?

Because that's exactly the problem: by setting that precedent, you make it officially illegal (indeed, equivalent to treason) for anyone to ever reveal anything the government does under a cloak of secrecy- period.

That is not consistent with the values of a democratic society, or with civilian control of the military. Because in a system that has those things, sooner or later the public should be able to find out what "their" armed forces and espionage services have been up to.

Problem: How do you reconcile "public must know what its government is doing" with "government needs to keep secrets in order to carry out certain functions of its mandate"?

The rest of this thread is a head-scratcher. I'm beginning to think it honestly hasn't occurred to several people that this guy could be a loser and a douchebag whose motives and priorities were wrong, but who ended up doing something positive for society purely by unintended consequence. Sort of like a robber who breaks into a house to steal jewlery but who ends up uncovering a gun running ring. It's good that he blows the lid off the gun running, but that in itself won't get him off the burglary charge.

I tend to agree with you-I tend to think what he did (in the overall picture) was laudable, but even if you don't think giving information to Wikileaks is aiding the enemy, he still grossly mishandled classified information, and he obviously knew from day 1 at AIT that that is a big no no.

Maybe it was because I was a lot older than Manning when I joined, but fuck, even at 18 I knew when to shut-up and play along. I sympathise if it turned out that a lot of his anger was because people were harassing him for being gay (though not so much of a rarity in MI). But I always knew that regardless of how much I thought certain aspects of the military were horseshit, in the end you always play along cause you don't want anything less than an honorable discharge.

He may have been idealistic, but he was young and dumb and sorta naive in the ways of the world.

[Aaron]

I think we're all aware that he accomplished some good here. Regardless of motive. Unfortunatly he choose the route guarenteed to fuck himself right up the ass. The prosecution will certainly argue that Wikileaks isn't covered by the current protections and while Manning may be willing to do his time, he should been more careful.

He probably should have gone to the Padre for advice, because they are not allowed by law to run over to the CO going "OMG LEAK!" They could only break confidentiality under a court summons.

[Cecelia5578]

Here's the deal, PFC Manning had 4 options when faced with these documents. For the sake of argument let's say he is doing this out of the goodness of his heart, and not because he is a dysfunctional fuckup:

(1)Go either through the chain of command or to a/many Chaplains(preferably a Catholic one rather than a protestant one).

(2)Go to a sympathetic congresscritter, such as Peter DeFazio.

(3)Go to a domestic news organization, such as Mother Jones.

(4)Go directly to a foreign organization that has elected foreign officials in it's leadership, that at the time was posting stuff on the internets willy-nilly.

Of those 4 choices Manning chose the absolute worse for him.

(5)He was deployed in Baghdad, most likely working at a SCIF, when this happened. Another thing he could've done is wait till he got back stateside, in order to more fully vet what he downloaded, and think a bit more carefully and clearheaded about his actions. After all, didn't he put everything on burned CDs labed as Lady Gaga? Even if he was on the fast track to getting discharged, he could've done all of this after he got kicked out, and he would'nt (maybe?) have had to deal with the military justice system.

Again-I agree with the big picture people with what he did, and I'm certainly no fan of...well, a lot of stuff. However, he personally seems to have gone about this in totally the wrong way. He's an emotionally immature, naive young person who, well, simply went about this the wrong way.

And, of course I'll eat my words if it turns out he really did try to do all those other options