Private Manning sentenced to 35 years in prison

[TimothyC]

First of all, to me until there is a legal name change, It's Pvt. Bradley Manning. He decided that he would violate the oath that he took when he decided to serve, and for that he gets to be punished without hiding behind his 'condition'. Doing so only serves to denigrate those that are serving under similar circumstances without violating their oaths.

I would go even further. I would like Q to step in, and make all fighting with swords, axes, and other hand weapons, so you've actually got to look in the face of the person you're killing. I dread the ongoing trend of far-off video-game death, all nicely sanitised on a screen. But that's not likely to happen.

Yeah, like a limited number of firearms actually stops people from killing each other on a large scale. Personally, I'd rather have our military break things than kill people, but most of the time you can't do the former without some of the later. Modern technology lets us do the later without risking so many of our guys, and thus keeps the total number of dead lower.

[Thanas]

Well, Korto, I don't think it's unrealistic for an occupying army to say "use of gunship patrols in urban areas is too expensive, bloody, and deeply counterproductive to our mission of bringing an end to the insurgency."

I do think a reversion to swords and spears is unrealistic.

I think - and this may shock some - that gunships are just fine. What needs to be done is better training and better coordination aka "don't light everything up".

[Serafina]

First of all, to me until there is a legal name change, It's Pvt. Bradley Manning. He decided that he would violate the oath that he took when he decided to serve, and for that he gets to be punished without hiding behind his 'condition'. Doing so only serves to denigrate those that are serving under similar circumstances without violating their oaths.

How does she hide behind her condition? Why do you put 'condition' in quotation marks?

Oh, and fuck you for smokescreening this with a "legal name change" requirement. That's blatantly ignoring how hard those are to get, often linked to steep requirements or even impossible to get at all.
If you have any respect for trans-people at all - no Chelsea Manning, trans-people in general - you respect how important it is to be called by your actual, gender-appropriate name as soon as you come out.
But evidently, you think its a great courtesy to address a transwoman by her chosen name and with proper pronouns, something that you have to earn first and that Chelsea has forfeited. Hey, why not refer to black criminals as niggers, too?

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

I love the scare-quoting around "condition".

Trans people just love to fake it for sympathy because coming out as trans is always the easy way, right?

I mean how the hell does "hiding behind it" make any sense? Do you think that if enough people call Manning by her correct name and gender, she gets to go free?

[TimothyC]

How does she hide behind her condition? Why do you put 'condition' in quotation marks?

It was brought up by the defense at the trial as a mitigating circumstance. I put quotations around it because, as far as I have seen reported, Bradley has not been diagnosed by a medical professional.

Oh, and fuck you for smokescreening this with a "legal name change" requirement. That's blatantly ignoring how hard those are to get, often linked to steep requirements or even impossible to get at all.

Legal name changes are not easy, but they can and do happen on a regular basis, when two people get married for example. Changing one's sex legally is difficult, but a name change isn't as hard as you make it out to be.

If you have any respect for trans-people at all - no Chelsea Manning, trans-people in general - you respect how important it is to be called by your actual, gender-appropriate name as soon as you come out.
But evidently, you think its a great courtesy to address a transwoman by her chosen name and with proper pronouns, something that you have to earn first and that Chelsea has forfeited. Hey, why not refer to black criminals as niggers, too?

Has he been diagnosed by a professional or is all we have his word? In my mind he's a treasonous water bag who should live out the rest of his life in a deep dark hole eventually dying in obscurity - right next to Nidal Hasan's murdurous ass.

I also think that whomever approved his security clearance needs to be looked at, as does the individual who found him huddled in a corner with a knife at his feet that didn't do anything to get him out of a place where he shouldn't have been.

That said, he's the one who leaked classified material that he knew he shouldn't even be accessing.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Who gives a shit if she hasn't been diagnosed by a professional or hasn't had legal changes? Are you stuck in the 1980s or something?

You can hate Manning all you like and that's your prerogative. Bringing in cissexist bullshit and trying to justify it with a smokescreen about her being a TRAITOR OMG gives nothing to your case. Even if she murdered billions and was hated by everyone she'd still be a woman.

Do you really think she's lying about her gender? What possible motivation would she have? Have you seen the general reaction to this news? It's not in her favour at all. If people are going to lie about being trans or not for their own benefit it's going to be people being in the closet, not the other way around.

[Metahive]

Why's Manning a traitor? She revealed lots of unsavory dirty laundry and numerous war crimes. And yes, war crimes, why else do you think the Obama Maladminstration is seeking amnesty for Bush and co.? She should be praised and lauded for that because she wasn't complacent and hid behind "just following orders" and "I've sworn an oath", like the mostly cowardous german officer corps of WW2 did and was subsequently punished for. You cannot call her a traitor because it was your own nation that insisted on these new paradigms. Why fault her for taking the lesson of Nuremberg to heart?

[Serafina]

What, you mean access to those medical professionals the army doesn't provide access to?
Oh, and a persons medical history is private - and professional opinion is moving away from trans being a diagnosis that needs tons of professionals. That's why all that really matters is a persons statement regarding gender identity, and that persons wishes regarding name and pronoun-usage. That's enough to tell us how that person should be referred to.

Not to mention that her public outing was after the trial was over - if she was doing it solely for defense-purposes, as you claim, then that doesn't make any sense.

So yes, you referring to her with male pronouns and the wrong name deliberately is as offensive as throwing racist slurs at her if she were part of a racial minority would be. But sure, go ahead and continue doing so, proving that to you, a trans-person has to meet your approval first before being acknowledged as trans.

[Korto]

You know, Simon, I completely fucking agree with you. Helicopter gunships shouldn't be used to patrol cities. They can't communicate properly, they can't take people into custody, they are probably less able to discriminate between civilians and combatants, and their weaponry is too heavy to use in built-up areas. All they can do is kill. It should be armoured ground vehicles and infantry, perhaps with a helicopter or two ready to scramble in case of real attack, but otherwise not to be used in cities.

I would go even further. I would like Q to step in, and make all fighting with swords, axes, and other hand weapons, so you've actually got to look in the face of the person you're killing. I dread the ongoing trend of far-off video-game death, all nicely sanitised on a screen. But that's not likely to happen.

Well, Korto, I don't think it's unrealistic for an occupying army to say "use of gunship patrols in urban areas is too expensive, bloody, and deeply counterproductive to our mission of bringing an end to the insurgency."

I do think a reversion to swords and spears is unrealistic.

Firstly, I really need to work on making two only tangentially related but really entirely separate thoughts, obviously separate when written down. Because the first paragraph was me entirely agreeing with you that gunships are less than ideal in urban, built-up areas (this says nothing about their use in other areas). The second paragraph was me idly dreaming a daydream I often have when I see some military show masturbating over their new computerised push-button kill-o-matic. I never meant to infer that I thought the chance of not using gunships in urban areas was comparable to us going back to swords and spears, but that is a reasonable interpretation. Oh well.

Secondly, TimothyC, I don't remember saying that ancient weapons would reduce the number of deaths (I have no opinion either way). I said that I didn't like sanitised death. I feel that if you kill someone, you should fully understand what you're doing. It shouldn't be something done between coffee breaks.

[TimothyC]

Not to mention that her public outing was after the trial was over - if she was doing it solely for defense-purposes, as you claim, then that doesn't make any sense.

You're an ignorant person when it comes to this case, or the "I'm really a woman so you should send me home" was so cliche that there was a character based around it in the 1970's TV show M*A*S*H*

Defense attorneys for Army Pvt. First Class Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of illegally obtaining and leaking thousands of classified military and government files to the anti-secrecy group Wikileaks, have raised questions about whether his confusion over his gender identity affected his behavior and decision making at the time of his alleged acts.

Also, You can stop shoving words in my mouth. I never said it was soley for defense-purposes, only that we first heard about it in terms of his legal defense.

And perish forbid I use the correct legal status and name, for that is Transphobic!

[Serafina]

And perish forbid I use the correct legal status and name, for that is Transphobic!

If you do it deliberately, despite better knowledge about that persons identity, just to slight that person?
Yes it is!

[Ace Pace]

Why's Manning a traitor? She revealed lots of unsavory dirty laundry and numerous war crimes. And yes, war crimes, why else do you think the Obama Maladminstration is seeking amnesty for Bush and co.? She should be praised and lauded for that because she wasn't complacent and hid behind "just following orders" and "I've sworn an oath", like the mostly cowardous german officer corps of WW2 did and was subsequently punished for. You cannot call her a traitor because it was your own nation that insisted on these new paradigms. Why fault her for taking the lesson of Nuremberg to heart?

Because Manning did not just reveal dirty laundry. Manning also revealed hundreds of classified documents that had nothing to do with any war crime, such as foreign assesments, details on war fighting efforts.

You may think what the U.S. does in Iraq is wrong, but the way to change those things is not to simply leak everything the government does.

[K. A. Pital]

Has he been diagnosed by a professional or is all we have his word? In my mind he's a treasonous water bag who should live out the rest of his life in a deep dark hole eventually dying in obscurity - right next to Nidal Hasan's murdurous ass. I also think that whomever approved his security clearance needs to be looked at, as does the individual who found him huddled in a corner with a knife at his feet that didn't do anything to get him out of a place where he shouldn't have been. That said, he's the one who leaked classified material that he knew he shouldn't even be accessing.

Nice to know that we have, well, people who'd do good as defence of the Nazis at Nuremberg on the board - it is not criminal orders or war crimes and breaches of the laws of war which matter. Those who talk or leak information must be punished and put in a deep dark hole "right next to X's murderous ass".

What next? If someone shows classified footage of American soldiers raping and slaugthering civilians, he must also be put in another dark hole, right?

Yes, you're tough, you're brutal, we got that. Brutal internet rage machine, just like those who said Snowden must be assassinated. Here's your government ten bucks for this piece of propaganda.

You may think what the U.S. does in Iraq is wrong, but the way to change those things is not to simply leak everything the government does.

If you think the orders in a conflict are criminal or the conflict itself is criminal, you can and should leak everything the government does. You should become a "treasonous dog" to the Nazi Reich American Empire so that it may fail in all its endeavours and in the end be humiliated. Every soldier's duty if he is a part of a criminal war is to betray his own government, because his government is a pack of murderous criminals.

And here's some more info. Nuremberg had such accusation points as conspiring to initiate a war of aggression. Iraq clearly falls into this category based on the info which has now come to light (and which Manning if not living under a rock was also exposed to).

[Metahive]

What Stas said. Additionally, if Stauffenberg's attempt on Hitler's life had succeeded, would you have complained that he blew up a bunch of non-Nazis too? I certainly wouldn't. The US political system is rotten to the core, exposing as much of the rot as possible is a positive thing in my book. If some guy did the same to the German or Korean government? I'd laud them too.
Also, do I need to remind the people here again that Obama's DoJ is preemptively seeking amnesty for the war crimes of the Bush regime? Washing dirty laundry gets you torture and 35 years in prison. Lying to the American public, sending US servicemen to unnecessary deaths and being responsible for fucking up foreign nations and countless foreign dead out of greed, racism and thirst for glory has the government cover for you.
I ask you, how does that make those look who express "righteous anger" about Manning?

[Serafina]

To quote from the Nuremberg Trials:

It is tragic to have to realize that the best I had to give as a soldier, obedience, and loyalty, was exploited for purposes which could not be recognized at the time, and that I did not see that there is a limit set even for a soldier's performance to his duty. That is my fate.

Chelsea Manning realized what was going on. Duty doesn't include being willfully blind, and she wasn't. Nor is it a soldiers duty to be silent on everything, and she wasn't.
Apparently, you're either incapable of learning from history, or unwilling to apply those lessons to your own country. At best, that puts you into the same category as the man quoted above - someone who, in the right position, would aid the worst crimes imaginable because he puts his oath above all else.

[Broomstick]

Oh, and fuck you for smokescreening this with a "legal name change" requirement. That's blatantly ignoring how hard those are to get, often linked to steep requirements or even impossible to get at all.

Serafina, I note you are in Germany and may not be aware that in the US it is considerably easier to change your legal name than in most European countries. In the US, as with so many things, the exact requirements vary by state but no one I know who has gone through it has found it particularly arduous. Annoying, yes, where there are requirements to publicly announce the change for a period of time prior to the actual legal change, and there is a court fee outside of changes related to marriage, but it's usually not that big a deal. A transperson might run into a judge that has a problem with transpeople, and that could get sticky, but assuming one is a free citizen one can relocate to a different venue with more sympathetic judges.

What is more difficult in the US (and any transpeople in the US can correct me on this if necessary) is changing gender on official documents.

The difficulty for Pvt Manning in this situation is being already in custody. I'm not sure what the legal difficulties are for an inmate desiring to change his or her name. I do know it occurs in the civilian prison system, but Manning is in the military system which has different rules in some areas.

How does she hide behind her condition? Why do you put 'condition' in quotation marks?

It was brought up by the defense at the trial as a mitigating circumstance. I put quotations around it because, as far as I have seen reported, Bradley has not been diagnosed by a medical professional.

It is now being reported that Manning was seeing a therapist for gender identity issues prior to enlisting in the military. Unfortunately, it is also being reported that Manning joined up in hopes it would “cure” the condition. I don't know if that was Manning's idea or the therapist's but it doesn't work.

Oh, and fuck you for smokescreening this with a "legal name change" requirement. That's blatantly ignoring how hard those are to get, often linked to steep requirements or even impossible to get at all.

Legal name changes are not easy, but they can and do happen on a regular basis, when two people get married for example. Changing one's sex legally is difficult, but a name change isn't as hard as you make it out to be.

Timothy, what you say is true in the United States. In many other countries it is much, much more difficult to change one's name for any reason.

Why's Manning a traitor? She revealed lots of unsavory dirty laundry and numerous war crimes.

There are people who regard doing such a thing as treason. You may not agree with that stance, but it does exist.

Back to the trans issue – there is some question if Manning will get needed treatment. In the civilian prison system, at least on the state level, an inmate that is formally diagnosed as transgender who has already started treatment at the time of incarceration will usually have that continued in the sense that any prescribed medications (such as hormones) will be continued but not initiated. (My source for that is a doctor who works in the Wisconsin state prison system) So a pre-op individual will be able to continue hormone treatment but will not be able to obtain surgery while in the system. If the person hasn't started treatment yet it will not be initiated. The military, however, apparently does not provide this sort of treatment at all, and Manning is in the military system.

Additionally, the prison you are sent to is largely dependent on the crotch configuration one arrives with at the door. A transperson with male genitals goes to a male prison. Now, the system isn't so foolish as to simply throw a pre-op transwomen into the male general population, such inmates are housed separately, usually in a wing for effeminate male prisoners (whether homosexual, trans, or straight but effeminate), the elderly, the disabled, and other inmates who are physically vulnerable. That's assuming the population at the prison is large enough to have a significant number of such prisoners – small facilities might well house them in solitary, although typically with more access to others and fewer restrictions than punitive solitary.

So Manning is going to go to a military prison for men. There is absolutely NO “advantage” to declaring Manning as transgender (other than potentially protecting her from physical assaults from other inmates) and if anything it will work against her. It is highly unlikely she will ever get any treatment for her transgender condition beyond counseling although the lawyers are working on that. The notion that she did this for some sort of advantage is stupid beyond words.

[Metahive]

There are people who regard doing such a thing as treason. You may not agree with that stance, but it does exist.

Well, d*uh! They're in this very thread and I was replying to them. Not agreeing with their stance is the whole point of my posts!

[Serafina]

It is now being reported that Manning was seeing a therapist for gender identity issues prior to enlisting in the military. Unfortunately, it is also being reported that Manning joined up in hopes it would “cure” the condition. I don't know if that was Manning's idea or the therapist's but it doesn't work.

It's a common thing amonst transwomen, basically amounting to overcompensating - society puts pressure on them to be male and masculine, so they take the jobs that fit that criteria the most.
It happens less often as society becomes more open. But the more barriers there are, the more likely trans-people are to seek a way to change themselves (as you said, it doesn't work). People like TimothyC are part of those barriers.

[General Mung Beans]

[quote="Stas Bush"
If you think the orders in a conflict are criminal or the conflict itself is criminal, you can and should leak everything the government does. You should become a "treasonous dog" to the Nazi Reich American Empire so that it may fail in all its endeavours and in the end be humiliated. Every soldier's duty if he is a part of a criminal war is to betray his own government, because his government is a pack of murderous criminals.

And here's some more info. Nuremberg had such accusation points as conspiring to initiate a war of aggression. Iraq clearly falls into this category based on the info which has now come to light (and which Manning if not living under a rock was also exposed to).[/quote]

This presumes that the United States is morally equivalent to the Third Reich.

While I believe the Iraq War was a gross error based on misleading intelligence and a disaster for the United States and for Iraq, I do not believe the war was criminal in and of itself because the nature of Saddam Hussein's regime made it such that it had no moral right to existence and could be toppled for virtually any excuse unless the invading power had eviller purposes than Hussein itself (ie Nazi Germany invading Stalin's USSR).

[Metahive]

While I believe the Iraq War was a gross error based on misleading intelligence and a disaster for the United States and for Iraq, I do not believe the war was criminal in and of itself because the nature of Saddam Hussein's regime made it such that it had no moral right to existence and could be toppled for virtually any excuse unless the invading power had eviller purposes than Hussein itself (ie Nazi Germany invading Stalin's USSR).

Ah, good ol' White Man's Burden. Yeah, when those savages don't live up to our standards, we should just invade their country and wreck shit until they do. Hey, considering the US are a nation build upon ethnic cleansing and slavery, how much "moral right to existence" do they have on a scale from 1 to 10 and when can we expect them to get WhiteManBurdened?

[Serafina]

Even assuming the Iraq War was legal (which is debatable), that doesn't change the fact that the USA committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity during its course. Exposing or preventing those is just as much a duty as with a illegal war of aggression.

[General Mung Beans]

While I believe the Iraq War was a gross error based on misleading intelligence and a disaster for the United States and for Iraq, I do not believe the war was criminal in and of itself because the nature of Saddam Hussein's regime made it such that it had no moral right to existence and could be toppled for virtually any excuse unless the invading power had eviller purposes than Hussein itself (ie Nazi Germany invading Stalin's USSR).

Ah, good ol' White Man's Burden. Yeah, when those savages don't live up to our standards, we should just invade their country and wreck shit until they do. Hey, considering the US are a nation build upon ethnic cleansing and slavery, how much "moral right to existence" do they have on a scale from 1 to 10 and when can we expect them to get WhiteManBurdened?

Considering I don't advocate invading regimes simply because we dislike it and I would not have supported invading Iraq, I don't believe in any sort of "White Man's Burden". I just don't think that the regime of Saddam Hussein had a moral right to exist and hence waging a war to overthrow Hussein was not a criminal war.

[General Mung Beans]

Even assuming the Iraq War was legal (which is debatable), that doesn't change the fact that the USA committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity during its course. Exposing or preventing those is just as much a duty as with a illegal war of aggression.

I absolutely agree with that. Regardless of how justified a war is, as much as possible all war crimes committed by either side should be exposed, investigated, and prosecuted as much as possible.

[K. A. Pital]

This presumes that the United States is morally equivalent to the Third Reich.

Actually not. It presumes that if a nation wages a war of agression, soldiers have no longer any obligation to stay loyal. Instances of such agression include Italy's attack on Abyssinia, Russian attack on Finland, furthermore, Indonesian attack on East Timor. In such cases the soldier may renounce his duties because his nation is clearly in the wrong. It does not matter if his nation is "morally equivalent to the Third Reich" in all aspects, because conspiracy to launch a war of agression can apply to nations which are not the Third Reich just as much.

While I believe the Iraq War was a gross error based on misleading intelligence and a disaster for the United States and for Iraq, I do not believe the war was criminal in and of itself because the nature of Saddam Hussein's regime made it such that it had no moral right to existence and could be toppled for virtually any excuse unless the invading power had eviller purposes than Hussein itself (ie Nazi Germany invading Stalin's USSR).

The nature of the attacked nation is absolutely irrelevant. Soviet Russia was not democratic, but Hitler's attack was a war of agression. Abyssinia was a monarchy but Italy's attack was a war of agression.

It is perhaps understandable today that there are humanitarian cases where peacekeeper intervention is sanctioned by the UN. This was not a peacekeeping mission. The UNSC did not authorize it, even though the UNSC is a joke body consisting of large nuclear industrialized powers that can kick the asses of smaller nations if they so desire.

So contrary to what you say, the nature of someone's regime does not give you the right to wage a war of agression. Imminent or ongoing genocide or ethnic cleansing can justify an intervention, but to my knowledge in 2003 neither was occuring in Iraq. UN and its smaller body UNSC did not authorize a humanitarian intervention.

I just don't think that the regime of Saddam Hussein had a moral right to exist

In what ways was it different from America's long-time ally, the Sadat-Mubarak regime in Egypt? From Syria's Assad dynasty? From Saudi Arabia (actually, maybe it was better than Saudi Arabia in some ways)? How do you determine a "moral right to exist"?

[Terralthra]

Because Manning did not just reveal dirty laundry. Manning also revealed hundreds of classified documents that had nothing to do with any war crime, such as foreign assesments, details on war fighting efforts.

Her stated position was that she didn't know which documents she uncovered and leaked were meaningful and which weren't (and which were safe to leak and which weren't), which is (imo) reasonable for an enlisted specialist to think. She thought she'd uncovered evidence of war crimes and breaches of international law (she had), but wasn't sure what could be safely published, or how to prioritize it. She discreetly tried to find assistance in sorting through the documents and leak the appropriate ones in a safe manner, which WikiLeaks was doing, until The Guardian's David Leigh and Luke Harding published the passphrase to the encrypted, unredacted files, and a link to the encrypted documents was made available (indirectly) by Der Freitag.