Private Manning sentenced to 35 years in prison

[Broomstick]

If the US were so concerned about the atrocities of Saddam, why did they keep mum when those were happening in the 80's?

They weren't "mum", the massacre of Iraqi Kurds was reported in the 1980's, including evidence of poison gas being used. But no one gave a damn about them, and no one wanted to risk their own troops in chemical warfare.

[K. A. Pital]

If the US were so concerned about the atrocities of Saddam, why did they keep mum when those were happening in the 80's?

They weren't "mum", the massacre of Iraqi Kurds was reported in the 1980's, including evidence of poison gas being used. But no one gave a damn about them, and no one wanted to risk their own troops in chemical warfare.

What is really illuminating is that against Iran America sponsored the very same "regime", even selling it chemical and biological weapons. Also, Syria, Egypt and Turkey were not attacked and their government leaders were not hanged, despite Syria and Egypt being baathist or post-baathist junta dictatorships and Turkey slaughtering Kurds like chickens on a farm. Not to mention the regimes of Saudi Arabia and the like, which are the very same regimes that still had official slavery in the 60s and maintain it now under the rug, and women can be put to jail for being raped.

I guess different strokes for different folks - these guys have a "moral right" to exist because they are American buddies or at least neutral to American interests. Hussein was a problem for American interests, he was a possible Ba'athist rallying point, who sponsored anti-Israeli, pro-Panarabic and anti-American forces, which had commited several terrorist acts as well (just as Kaddafi and the House of Saud, anyway, but that's just icing on the cake).

If anyone pretends that Saddam was singled out because he was somehow worse than other governments in the Middle East, that person is either deeply misguided or simply lying for the government. Just look at all instances of ethnic cleansing and sometimes even ongoing (not past!) genocide which the US either ignored or actively aided and abetted, and you'll see that only American geopolitical (=imperialist) interests dictate its actions. Never ever pure humanitarian concern.

[Simon_Jester]

@Romulan Republic

It still amazes me that so many people don't get analogies. No, the two situations don't have to be completely similar, they just have to convey the same principle or point and the point here is that "I swore an oath" and "I have my orders" are not sufficient reason to excuse or justify blind loyalty. Also, are you saying that a regime has to be as bad as the Nazis before rebellion is permitted?
BTW, with rebellion I don't mean just huge popular uprisings, coup d'etats and civil war, I mean also things as small as disobeying orders and leaking information. You know, as Manning did.

The question you really need to focus on is:

When does a government lose the right, or the responsibility, to punish crimes committed against it by people who believe they are doing the right thing? Where do we draw the line there? I mean, it's not as if every person who has a grievance against their government is logical or even sane; I remember an example we talked about on this forum a few years ago

In which cases is an illegal act made retroactively justified, and immune to punishment, because the person who did it thought they were doing the right thing? There ought to be some kind of answer to that. We could easily come up with a whole spectrum of cases. Sometimes a person is justly punished for "striking back" against a government they saw as oppressive (Timothy McVeigh). Sometimes the punishment is an injustice, and we later look back and say the person who committed the act was right

An answer like "it happened to the US government, therefore it is right and no one should get punished for it" isn't going to get us very far.

@General_Mung_Beans

Look at the map of the US. Most of it used to belong to other people and those people are now rotting in squalid, poverty-ridden ghettos in the middle of nowhere. The US is clearly benefiting from the atrocities it committed in the past. It doesn't matter at all if the perpetrators are long dead or if their policies aren't in place anymore (which is wrong anyway re: rotting in squalid, poverty-ridden ghettos in the middle of nowhere), it's still affecting people negatively to this day.

Just out of curiosity, do you also berate Russians for the conquest of Siberia? There weren't as many pitched battles, because Siberia was never as heavily populated by natives as the American West, but it's not like there were no people living there before the Russians' cossacks and traders showed up.

They weren't "mum", the massacre of Iraqi Kurds was reported in the 1980's, including evidence of poison gas being used. But no one gave a damn about them, and no one wanted to risk their own troops in chemical warfare.

What is really illuminating is that against Iran America sponsored the very same "regime", even selling it chemical and biological weapons.

Iran had also, before and for that matter during the war, stormed the US government's embassy to Iran, held the embassy staff hostage, and was busily being taken over by many revolutionary groups at least loosely affiliated with the government who declared in many venues that America was their enemy (with justification).

Iraq then opportunistically invaded Iran, to exploit the chaos, got their butts kicked, and found Iran invading them right back (with truly excellent justification). The US started pouring money and arms in when the Iranians started to win, partly because it thought it faced the prospect of the Iranian Shi'ite fundamentalist regime expanding to absorb the Shi'ite population of Iraq.

Just out of curiosity, what would an appropriate series of actions have been? Suppose you are President of the United States in place of Reagan; in between your domestic actions, what would you have done regarding Iran and Iraq? Do you arm a brutal dictator to fight a stronger nation that has declared themselves your enemies, in response to your imperialist meddling? Or do you refuse, and risk watching the people who declared you their enemy get stronger and more dangerous?

Does the fact that it's imperialism to care what happens in such a war and take steps to affect the outcome actually mean you wouldn't do it?

Also, Syria, Egypt and Turkey were not attacked and their government leaders were not hanged, despite Syria and Egypt being baathist or post-baathist junta dictatorships and Turkey slaughtering Kurds like chickens on a farm. Not to mention the regimes of Saudi Arabia and the like, which are the very same regimes that still had official slavery in the 60s and maintain it now under the rug, and women can be put to jail for being raped.

All these things are perfectly true, and make a farce out of the proposition that Saddam was uniquely evil and in need of invasion and overthrow. He was not.

In 1991, the US led a coalition against Saddam Hussein not because Hussein had done something especially horrible, but because he had upset the nice, peaceful applecart the US had hoped to enjoy in the Middle East with the end of the Cold War and the 1980s-era decline of major military tensions around Israel. "Stability in the region" blah blah blah, plus I don't think anyone actually wanted to see Saddam Hussein seizing more ports to export his oil so that his rule as a military dictator and ability to wage war could become more secure.

Imperialism or not? You tell me.

The 2003 invasion was... just fucked all around, wrong on many levels, which I'm sure everyone else here can provide for me. But no, not justified by "Saddam was a bad man."
_________________________________

Purely as an attempt to analyze why we keep getting arguments about this, I'd like to point out that in the minds of a lot of Americans on the right and center, "Saddam was bad" was sufficient to justify invading him, regardless of whether or not anyone else got invaded for being as bad or worse.

To take an example that might bring it to you more personally, the subject of horrible over-moneyed capitalist fucks...

Stas, would you particularly decry a bunch of people attacking Bill Gates, just because the same group did not attack a bunch of hedge fund managers who are presumably even more repugnant to you, with reason? Or would you say "yeah, they're next," or be more interested in the fall of a person you despise than in the non-fall of people you despise more?

I guess different strokes for different folks - these guys have a "moral right" to exist because they are American buddies or at least neutral to American interests. Hussein was a problem for American interests, he was a possible Ba'athist rallying point, who sponsored anti-Israeli, pro-Panarabic and anti-American forces, which had commited several terrorist acts as well (just as Kaddafi and the House of Saud, anyway, but that's just icing on the cake).

Qaddafi got his house blown up, along with large amounts of his military hardware, and ultimately was overthrown by rebels who marched triumphally through his armies after they had been partially paralyzed by a (heavily American-supported) aerial bombardment. I don't think it's fair to say that the US treated him as a friend.

Criticisms about the US's relationship with the House of Saud are well founded and I am not going to dispute them.

[Metahive]

When does a government lose the right, or the responsibility, to punish crimes committed against it by people who believe they are doing the right thing?

When they grant protection to the actual criminals instead of those who reveal their crimes,. When they throw their lot behind the guilty and make a mockery out of justice. That's when. And that's the case with the US as the countless cases cited here and elsewhere have shown.

An answer like "it happened to the US government, therefore it is right and no one should get punished for it" isn't going to get us very far.

That has never been my position so don't act as if it is. I said so in this very thread even.

If some guy did the same to the German or Korean government? I'd laud them too.
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 0#p3792785

Just out of curiosity, do you also berate Russians for the conquest of Siberia? There weren't as many pitched battles, because Siberia was never as heavily populated by natives as the American West, but it's not like there were no people living there before the Russians' cossacks and traders showed up.

You did note I said before that many nations have black spots in their history, right? In this very thread even? You did also note that I was arguing with Mung Beans who was actually the one who came up with the idea that past crimes somehow diminish a nation's right to exist, not me, right? You should ask him that question.

Heck, most larger nations have black spots somewhere in their history.
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 5#p3792911

[Simon_Jester]

When does a government lose the right, or the responsibility, to punish crimes committed against it by people who believe they are doing the right thing?

When they grant protection to the actual criminals instead of those who reveal their crimes,. When they throw their lot behind the guilty and make a mockery out of justice. That's when. And that's the case with the US as the countless cases cited here and elsewhere have shown.

Very well.

How does this interact with a private individual who is convinced that the government has wronged them, or a group of people like themself, that the legal system is acting to shelter their persecutors, and that the only appropriate action is to take violent revenge?

We routinely expect private citizens in certain professions to either do what their employer says, resign, or be fired for failing to do their job. A pharmacist who refuses to distribute contraceptives because they think it's murder comes to mind. We say that this person's convictions entitle them to resign rather than do the job in a way they disapprove of. But they don't entitle a person to take the job and then refuse to follow the rules and regulations associated with it.

Does this kind of thing even have a role in militaries and government bureaucracies? I can see reasons why it wouldn't.

An answer like "it happened to the US government, therefore it is right and no one should get punished for it" isn't going to get us very far.

That has never been my position so don't act as if it is. I said so in this very thread even.

If some guy did the same to the German or Korean government? I'd laud them too.
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 0#p3792785

Forgive me for perceiving a pattern that isn't there, then. Since so many threads wind up tightly focused on the crimes, dirty laundry, and whistleblowers of the US government, and since you are a regular in threads of this kind, I tend to forget that you would be equally active on the (less frequent) threads posted about abuses in countries that aren't the US.

You are, yes?

Very well. Even so, it can't be as simple as "it happened to a bad government, so it's well-deserved," for reasons similar to the ones that I now realize you were presenting in your argument with Mung Beans. All governments are seen as bad and oppressive by someone.

The question I'd like to ask is: how do we reconcile the desire to have individuals defect from an evil government and turn on it, with the desire to NOT have random crazy people defect from a totally normal society and turn on it? Even looking solely at the US, the list of Americans who thought they were striking a blow for freedom against a corrupt, oppressive, abusive government is fairly long. includes not only Snowden and Manning (who I/we think were right to think so)... but also Timothy McVeigh and Andrew Stack, (who were definitely wrong to think so).

We could simply draw the line at any violent opposition or attacks on the government, but I'm not sure that's the right place to draw it, exactly.
__________________

Much of the objection to the idea of letting Manning go free hinges on the question of how to draw this line. If we say "anyone can follow her conscience and decide to divulge millions of classified documents to reveal secret government crimes at any time," it becomes impossible for government to count on any kind of secrecy or confidentiality in anything. That includes things most people agree should remain secret, like the personal information of government workers, blueprints for weapons, privileged diplomatic correspondence,* and so on.

Maybe we should try to run governments that way, but I'm sure you see the practical problems with it. And that practical problem comes up with a vengeance when we say "anyone in government office whose political convictions tell them to break the rules, can and should break those rules." Which is effectively what we say when we leave it up to individuals to decide whether or not the government is oppressive and evil enough to justify sending masses of classified papers to the press.

It's a problem that I'm not sure even CAN be resolved with the role of government whistleblowers in modern times. Since I'd like to see at least more openness, if not total openness, I favor the whistleblowers. But I'm not going to pretend there isn't a problem, just because I think the best solution is for the government to clean up its act and limit what it renders secret, to the point where this kind of mass datadump stops happening every year or two like clockwork.

*When Nation A wants to ask Nation B about what they'd do if Nation C does XYZ... they may justly not want Nation C to know people are asking awkward questions about it behind its back.

Just out of curiosity, do you also berate Russians for the conquest of Siberia? There weren't as many pitched battles, because Siberia was never as heavily populated by natives as the American West, but it's not like there were no people living there before the Russians' cossacks and traders showed up.

You did note I said before that many nations have black spots in their history, right? In this very thread even? You did also note that I was arguing with Mung Beans who was actually the one who came up with the idea that past crimes somehow diminish a nation's right to exist, not me, right? You should ask him that question.

I beg your pardon; I got lost and turned around when it came to understanding this line of conversation.

[K. A. Pital]

But they don't entitle a person to take the job and then refuse to follow the rules and regulations associated with it.

If he refuses after taking the job, he will be fired. Not punished judicially.

We could simply draw the line at any violent opposition or attacks on the government, but I'm not sure that's the right place to draw it, exactly.

That is not a good idea, I agree, but the precedent here is clear. Manning did not violently arise against the government. It was the matter of criminal orders in a war that, as of now, can be only construed as a large huge war crime. So what did Manning have to do, please tell me?

[Simon_Jester]

But they don't entitle a person to take the job and then refuse to follow the rules and regulations associated with it.

If he refuses after taking the job, he will be fired. Not punished judicially.

In civilian jobs, he won't be punished judicially, because there is no harm done to society at large- only to the institution employing the person who refuses. In the worst case, there are grounds for a civil lawsuit if some other person is damaged (say, a doctor who refuses to prescribe a medication because he believes benzene rings are evil or whatever).

But we routinely hold civil servants and public appointees accountable for their actions and call it a criminal offense if they refuse to perform their duties, or fail to perform them properly. Bureaucrats can be charged with a crime for certain types of malfeasance (say, interfering with the mail). Soldiers are not allowed to desert their post, be absent from their unit without leave, and so on. There is plenty of precedent for the idea that someone could be criminally liable if they break the rules of their government job.

So when we say on the one hand "here are the rules by which you do your job, break them and go to jail" and on the other hand "follow your conscience, when you think the government is wrong, ignore the rules..." it creates a contradiction, and Manning is stuck by this contradiction. If what she did isn't punishable by law, and if we say in general that federal employees should ignore federal laws if they feel the government is unjust, it causes a problem. Then people who break such laws can easily argue that their conscience made them do it. That becomes a window for opportunists, and also for a partial breakdown of the civil service system if (when) people decide to stop doing their jobs as soon as the next election brings in a government they don't agree with.

We could simply draw the line at any violent opposition or attacks on the government, but I'm not sure that's the right place to draw it, exactly.

That is not a good idea, I agree, but the precedent here is clear. Manning did not violently arise against the government. It was the matter of criminal orders in a war that, as of now, can be only construed as a large huge war crime. So what did Manning have to do, please tell me?

In this case it's further complicated by the fact that Manning was not actually ordered to do anything criminal as far as I can tell, except in the most general sense of "be in this war zone that we invaded unjustly." This isn't simply a case of a soldier refusing to do something that is clearly and concretely wrong like machine-gun children. This is a case of a soldier independently looking at classified information they have no particular need to know, independently deciding that it's evidence of war crimes without reference to external factors, independently deciding that it needs to be aired, and on their own initiative throwing it out there without even reading some of it.

Which is why for me this raises the question of: when should a government employee (or for that matter anyone) NOT break their employer's rules purely because that employee thinks there's a moral principle at stake? To what extent can individuals be trusted to know when the rules shouldn't apply to them, and to what extent must the rules apply to everyone who commits a certain type of action, regardless of motives or consequences?

What should Manning have done? I don't think Manning had a positive duty to disclose all the documents. You could make a case for specific pieces like the footage of the helicopter attack, where a specific, concrete war crime covered up by US officials was involved. But the broader, indiscriminate release... not so much. That doesn't make the action immoral, just not required.

I would need to think about this more.

[Thanas]

But if you require people to sift through everything then there won't be a chance for leaking data which requires a lot of resources to shift through. Under your example, if I were to find evidence of war crimes in a batch of files I would not be able to leak the rest even though the suspicion is quite strong that there is more to find. And btw, this is exactly what happened.

[Gaidin]

Has dumping everything "just in case" been an accepted method of whistleblowing for any other case that we could feel like referencing in the last century? Or has it been required that you actually know what you're handing the authorities? I honestly don't know here.

[Thanas]

The Pentagon papers involved a data leak, which was even worse because most of the stuff leaked there carried higher security clearances. In both cases it was left to the journalists to sift through the data.

[Gaidin]

Really? The Pentagon Papers was a paper written about a researched topic over that war. It wasn't god knows how many cables over god knows how many subjects from god knows how many places from god knows how many people that he chose to leak anyway "just in case". Am I supposed to accept those two leaks as one and the same when one is a single paper and the other are a god knows how many different things?

[Thanas]

Really? The Pentagon Papers was a paper written about a researched topic over that war. It wasn't god knows how many cables over god knows how many subjects from god knows how many places from god knows how many people that he chose to leak anyway "just in case". Am I supposed to accept those two leaks as one and the same when one is a single paper and the other are a god knows how many different things?

No, what one calls the pentagon papers are actually several volumes of material. Ellsberg leaked 43 of them alone.

And Ellsberg leaked to far more people than Mannning. Manning worked with one organization and one newspaper. Ellsberg leaked indiscriminately to 19 different news agencies and newspapers.

[Gaidin]

And I can find out what the research topic generally of the Pentagon Papers were just by going to wikipedia, and from there if I want to know more they've got references. There's a general guideline here. The diplomatic cables that got leaked don't have this. They're so damn broad he couldn't possibly have a damn clue what he was doing just because there's no possible way the diplomatic cables would have a summary or contents like the Papers would be bound to have for anybody that would need to have access to them. The cables would be so damn random that he'd be clueless and he wouldn't have time to analyze more than a relative few of them.

[Simon_Jester]

The fact that no one person could possibly analyze all the cables cuts both ways- on the one hand, if we consider them to be evidence of criminal activities, obviously we need to release them to someone to get more eyes reviewing them. On the other hand, it makes it harder to be sure that the cables really are, on the whole, that kind of evidence. And easier to miss classified information that might do more harm than good if released.

But if you require people to sift through everything then there won't be a chance for leaking data which requires a lot of resources to shift through. Under your example, if I were to find evidence of war crimes in a batch of files I would not be able to leak the rest even though the suspicion is quite strong that there is more to find. And btw, this is exactly what happened.

No, I said you would not have a positive duty to disclose files which you think might contain evidence of war crimes*, but which might also contain all sorts of information that really should never see the light of day.**

Does that make it wrong to disclose the files? I think that's a question difficult to answer without at least sampling the set of files in question and trying to get a sense for their contents in statistical terms.

*With good reason
**The example that's bounced around here a few times would be, say, the files of the NSA's payroll system; being a bunch of damn spies doesn't mean their social security numbers should be on the Internet.

[Thanas]

And I can find out what the research topic generally of the Pentagon Papers were just by going to wikipedia, and from there if I want to know more they've got references. There's a general guideline here. The diplomatic cables that got leaked don't have this. They're so damn broad he couldn't possibly have a damn clue what he was doing just because there's no possible way the diplomatic cables would have a summary or contents like the Papers would be bound to have for anybody that would need to have access to them. The cables would be so damn random that he'd be clueless and he wouldn't have time to analyze more than a relative few of them.

Which is the whole point of why he needed to leak them to people with the resources.

[Gaidin]

So yes. After a bit of a dance, we've confirmed it. You think shotgun leaks are acceptable. And the majority of the State Department's acceptable, if not good, behavior be damned. Good to know.

[Thanas]

So yes. After a bit of a dance, we've confirmed it. You think shotgun leaks are acceptable. And the majority of the State Department's acceptable, if not good, behavior be damned. Good to know.

Oh get lost. It is not as if he shotgun leaked it to the whole wide world. What he did was turn them over to trustworthy people who then sifted through the files before putting the evidence of wrongdoing online. The only thing that got published was evidence of wrongdoing.

EDIT: As for the state department, the cables that got released showed anything but good deeds.

[General Mung Beans]

This isn't comparable, since as I indicated above, 1) any US government official involved in Indian massacres are long dead (unlike Saddam Hussein who was alive in 2003)

Irrelevant. The government is continous.

2) not only are the policies of mass murder no longer in effect, they also have no chance of being brought back (whereas the Iraqi government still engaged in repressive policies and would have engaged in campaigns against Kurds were it not hemmed in by foreign air power).

I already asked on last page but you did not care to answer, how was Saddam's Iraq different from America's long-time allies like Saudi Arabia or the Egyptian Sadat-Mubarak regime?

"Regime" implies that there's the same ideological orientation even if not the same people in government and its absurd to think that is the case between the United States of 1890 and that of 2013.

Actually, US in 1899 and 2003 are very much similar in some regards. The US invaded the Philippines and commited acts of genocide, breaches of the laws of war and the recently signed Hague convention, killing of children, women and complete eradication of villages. US in 2003 invaded Iraq in a war of agression - itself a crime - and proceeded with war crimes, among which were massacres, torture and murder of prisoners.

Of course I'm just making these parallels for the sake of the argument. But it is also true that changing ideological orientation after a genocide has been completed does not, in any way, remedy the fact that the victims are dead.

Moreover, Saddam Hussein's Iraq was not actively pursuing ethnic cleansing in 2003. So I am asking you again - why Iraq? Why not Saudi Arabia? Egypt?

Sorry I did not address this earlier. The fact is, I am completely opposed to American aid and its alliance to the reactionary Saudi monarchy and were I President would move to immediately cut off all aid to them while imposing sanctions on Saudi Arabia. Same goes for any other murderous regime the United States supported in the past.

[Gaidin]

So yes. After a bit of a dance, we've confirmed it. You think shotgun leaks are acceptable. And the majority of the State Department's acceptable, if not good, behavior be damned. Good to know.

Oh get lost. It is not as if he shotgun leaked it to the whole wide world. What he did was turn them over to trustworthy people who then sifted through the files before putting the evidence of wrongdoing online. The only thing that got published was evidence of wrongdoing.

EDIT: As for the state department, the cables that got released showed anything but good deeds.

If I don't like the NSA tapping people that don't need to be tapped as a part of some 'tap everybody' warrant why should I like a leak that functionally drops everything including things that don't need to be leaked just because he doesn't have enough time to analyze everything? I'm not going to have different standards just because one side happens to be the government and get lost yourself if you think I should. If the NSA shouldn't tap everyone just in case there's someone out there or whatever the hell their damn logic is for that, then Manning shouldn't have leaked all those cables just because he didn't have time to analyze them all.

[Simon_Jester]

Put it this way, Gaidin.

Does Manning need to go over all the documents alone before releasing any of them? Bear in mind that we're talking about one person here. Manning may not know which documents imply a war crime even after reading it, for want of knowledge about another area. Likewise, Manning might not know that a certain diplomatic cable was damaging and should not be released at all, because no one could figure that out without doing secondary research into what it's talking about, or without being an expert on certain fields no normal person knows much about. Maybe a cable is embarrassing to another country, because their leader says X, and the cable says not-X... but no one could evaluate that without being familiar with the words and actions of that nation's leader. Manning probably wouldn't be that familiar with such things.

So what you're saying, or at least implying, is that the best way to handle leaking of massed documentation is to have ONE person, preferably a person very vulnerable to being arrested for possession of classified data at any time, review ALL the documents in person, regardless of whether that takes twenty years, or whether the one person is qualified to understand what the hell is going on in the documents.

And this should happen before ANYONE else is allowed to see the document- even the kind of people like the press who are arguably more qualified to assess it than the original whistleblower was.

That's a pretty intense statement. I limited myself to saying that you can't possibly have a duty to disclose this big mass of unknown information, and should try to at least take a statistical sample of it before deciding whether or not it's leak-worthy.

[Grumman]

If I don't like the NSA tapping people that don't need to be tapped as a part of some 'tap everybody' warrant why should I like a leak that functionally drops everything including things that don't need to be leaked just because he doesn't have enough time to analyze everything? I'm not going to have different standards just because one side happens to be the government and get lost yourself if you think I should. If the NSA shouldn't tap everyone just in case there's someone out there or whatever the hell their damn logic is for that, then Manning shouldn't have leaked all those cables just because he didn't have time to analyze them all.

The leaks don't functionally drop everything. None of these leaks reveal private information like government employees' phone calls to loved ones. The only things being leaked are the details of their work. They do not have any inherent right to keep this from the general public, because the general public is their boss.

[Gaidin]

That's a pretty intense statement. I limited myself to saying that you can't possibly have a duty to disclose this big mass of unknown information, and should try to at least take a statistical sample of it before deciding whether or not it's leak-worthy.

That's why I asked in my original post about original whistleblower cases if we have let whistleblowers bring out every piece of data on the company or agency they work for or if they as opposed to data they couldn't even check and in the end wouldn't even need. That's the context of my part of this discussion.

[Elfdart]

How is Manning deserving of a Peace Prize? Exactly what did he do that encouraged peaceful relations between nations?

The fact the Prize has previously gone to jokes does not mean you need to continue proposing to do so.

Because Manning is the one who put the final nail in the coffin of the US occupation of Iraq. The Bush junta had already negotiated a piece-by-piece withdrawal in 2007, to take place over the following 3-4 years. The Obama regime, once again wiping its ass with every principle it ran on in 2008, tried to renege on the withdrawal by pressuring the puppet regime in Iraq into not only allowing one or more brigades of US combat troops to stay behind, but giving them a free hand to do as they pleased under a Status of Forces agreement whereby the US troops answered only to themselves no matter what crimes they might commit. When Wikileaks released Collateral Murder, that plan was scuttled since even the US-imposed quislings in Baghdad couldn't be seen to condone a little boy being shot through the stomach by the forces of America-Fuck Yeah!, who then chortled about it.

Bradley/Chelsea Manning deserves the Medal of Honor for what he (or she) did.

You people are all missing one point: It is completely unreasonable to assume that people are insurgents in Iraq just because they were funny clothes and are armed. EVERYBODY there is armed. There is no difference between a peaceful group of people celebrating or just meeting up (who put their weapons in the air as a sign that they are happy) or a group of insurgents who have not started shooting yet.

In those circumstances it is completely unreasonable to just think of every Person as a military insurgent just because he carries a weapon.

I guess that's why America-Fuck Yeah has to spend so much on "defense". Should any invader or occupier ever take over the land of the not so free and the home of the not so brave, they might be tempted to apply the same standard on native gun fetishists.

Why are people so eager to concoct scenarios where's it's OK to kill helpless troops and civilians? Can anyone tell me? Because I find this incredibly disturbing.

We went through this kind of horseshit pettifoggery over torture:

"But what if Teh Mooslimz have a bomb hidden in Disneyland and the only way to stop them is to fist Achmed the Cabbie..."

It's like a pedophilia apologist making up weird scenarios under which someone gets absolution for screwing a minor. My answer to all of the above is "Get the fuck outta here with that shit!"

I just wish I could do a Brooklyn accent when I said it.

Could Manning's lawyer argue using the same justification that the US uses for when innocent people get killed by American (or allied) forces, by saying the innocent people affected are just collateral damage?

No. First of all, laws in this country are like cobwebs: Only the tiny and powerless are affected by them. Then there's the fact that even in the kangaroo court proceedings against Manning the government didn't have any luck showing how the leaks caused anyone any real harm.

If the US were so concerned about the atrocities of Saddam, why did they keep mum when those were happening in the 80's?

They weren't "mum", the massacre of Iraqi Kurds was reported in the 1980's, including evidence of poison gas being used. But no one gave a damn about them, and no one wanted to risk their own troops in chemical warfare.

America-Fuck Yeah's official position was pro-Saddam. So much so that when an Iraqi jet blasted the USS Stark, the Von Reagan regime issued a very toughly-worded condemnation -of IRAN. In other words, business as usual. Never mind a bunch of charred sailors. Move along.

So yes. After a bit of a dance, we've confirmed it. You think shotgun leaks are acceptable. And the majority of the State Department's acceptable, if not good, behavior be damned. Good to know.

Oh get lost. It is not as if he shotgun leaked it to the whole wide world. What he did was turn them over to trustworthy people who then sifted through the files before putting the evidence of wrongdoing online. The only thing that got published was evidence of wrongdoing.

EDIT: As for the state department, the cables that got released showed anything but good deeds.

One of them showed how the State Dept. was twisting the arm of the Haitian government, trying to get them to kill a bill to raise the minimum wage. Because Haitians have too high a standard of living and all.

[Metahive]

Simon, I think you're approaching this whole issue from the wrong angle. The most important question shouldn't be "how much protection does the state need from its citizens" because the state is always the one with the bigger stick who can squash any individual opposition if he's only ruthless enough to do it. The strong shouldn't be able to ask for protection from the weak because they already have the strength to protect themselves. Think of the victims, not of the perpetrators!

We routinely expect private citizens in certain professions to either do what their employer says, resign, or be fired for failing to do their job. A pharmacist who refuses to distribute contraceptives because they think it's murder comes to mind. We say that this person's convictions entitle them to resign rather than do the job in a way they disapprove of. But they don't entitle a person to take the job and then refuse to follow the rules and regulations associated with it.

Does this kind of thing even have a role in militaries and government bureaucracies? I can see reasons why it wouldn't.

We are talking about an employer that murders people in violation of its own rules and the treaties he signed. I'm aghast that you think it's comparable to trivial things like that. You are a school teacher, right? If you found out your principal was a serial killer and a good portion of the staff supported him, would you think just quitting your job was appropriate?

Forgive me for perceiving a pattern that isn't there, then. Since so many threads wind up tightly focused on the crimes, dirty laundry, and whistleblowers of the US government, and since you are a regular in threads of this kind, I tend to forget that you would be equally active on the (less frequent) threads posted about abuses in countries that aren't the US.

You are, yes?

That's a rather unsubtle attempt to poison the well and you know it. How much other countries does one need to condemn before one gets your approval to critizise the US? What's the magic threshold for being "fair and balanced"?

[Patroklos]

So yes. After a bit of a dance, we've confirmed it. You think shotgun leaks are acceptable. And the majority of the State Department's acceptable, if not good, behavior be damned. Good to know.

Oh get lost. It is not as if he shotgun leaked it to the whole wide world. What he did was turn them over to trustworthy people who then sifted through the files before putting the evidence of wrongdoing online. The only thing that got published was evidence of wrongdoing.

EDIT: As for the state department, the cables that got released showed anything but good deeds.

1.) How are they trusted?
2.) They put EVERYTHING online.
3.) What wrongdoing did the state department cables show, and what percentage of the whole did the represent? Was the wrong doing exposed worth the damage exposing the non wrongdoing did?