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Manning Gets 35 Years
27 Answers
Just breaking on BBC.
Seems a bit excessive, 15 would have sufficed IMHO.
Seems a bit excessive, 15 would have sufficed IMHO.
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What did he do?
“While stationed in Iraq in 2010, he passed hundreds of thousands of battlefield reports and diplomatic cables to Wikileaks, the pro-transparency group headed by Julian Assange.”
The man is an absolute pillock and could have jeopardised the safety of hundreds of his colleagues. Handing the information to the odious Mr Assange should in itself have attracted an extra twenty years.
“Pte Manning said in a pre-trial hearing he leaked the secret files in the hopes of sparking a public debate about US foreign policy and the military.”
Mr Manning was a private in the US Army. He was in a privileged position having access to the information he divulged. His sentence is richly deserved.
“While stationed in Iraq in 2010, he passed hundreds of thousands of battlefield reports and diplomatic cables to Wikileaks, the pro-transparency group headed by Julian Assange.”
The man is an absolute pillock and could have jeopardised the safety of hundreds of his colleagues. Handing the information to the odious Mr Assange should in itself have attracted an extra twenty years.
“Pte Manning said in a pre-trial hearing he leaked the secret files in the hopes of sparking a public debate about US foreign policy and the military.”
Mr Manning was a private in the US Army. He was in a privileged position having access to the information he divulged. His sentence is richly deserved.
You (or he) could have no idea what damage the wholesale exposure of reams of information might do, chilli. In joining the US Army I assume he undertook to keep secret any information he comes by. He cannot choose what he keeps to himself and what he divulges or who he divulges it to in order to satisfy his conscience
He's only a pillock because he wasn't selective in what he released.
Those battlefield reports included:
+ the murder of civillians including the machinegunning of a bus and the machinegunning of civillians from a helicopter resulting in the death of 2 Reuters reporters - they also killed people attempting to help the wounded
+ The running of death squads to murder targets who accidently killed Afghan soldiers and other civillians
And several other cases of what are in anybody's book war crimes
Unfortunately he also released unimportant stuff allowing the US government to concentrate on that and distract attention from the attrocities created.
That made it easy for them to convince reactionary old fools that he was just some Liberal traitor who deserved all he got.
You'll notice Snowden has not repeated that mistake
Those battlefield reports included:
+ the murder of civillians including the machinegunning of a bus and the machinegunning of civillians from a helicopter resulting in the death of 2 Reuters reporters - they also killed people attempting to help the wounded
+ The running of death squads to murder targets who accidently killed Afghan soldiers and other civillians
And several other cases of what are in anybody's book war crimes
Unfortunately he also released unimportant stuff allowing the US government to concentrate on that and distract attention from the attrocities created.
That made it easy for them to convince reactionary old fools that he was just some Liberal traitor who deserved all he got.
You'll notice Snowden has not repeated that mistake
So NJ
Has you been sitting in the Neurenberg war crimes trials what would you have thought of Nazis whose defense was that they undertook an oath of obeience like Mannings
Aren't you being a tad hypocritical here?
You're suggesting Manning's oath obliged him to stay silent about war crimes - yet [presumably] you wouldn't accept that defence from Nazis with regard to say the machine gunning of allied prisoners of war
Or is it different when the victims are 'our people'
Has you been sitting in the Neurenberg war crimes trials what would you have thought of Nazis whose defense was that they undertook an oath of obeience like Mannings
Aren't you being a tad hypocritical here?
You're suggesting Manning's oath obliged him to stay silent about war crimes - yet [presumably] you wouldn't accept that defence from Nazis with regard to say the machine gunning of allied prisoners of war
Or is it different when the victims are 'our people'
Whether he has endangered lives or not is still a matter for debate.
However:
http://
An ongoing Pentagon review of the massive flood of secret documents made public by the WikiLeaks website has so far found no evidence that the disclosure harmed U.S. national security or endangered American troops in the field, a Pentagon official told NBC News on Monday…
David Lapan, deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations, told NBC News on Monday that a preliminary review by a Pentagon “assessment” team has so far not identified any documents whose release could damage national security. Moreover, he said, none of the documents reviewed so far carries a classification level above “secret” — the lowest category of intelligence material in terms of sensitivity…
While the team so far has not found any that would meet any of those criteria, Lapan noted that WikiLeaks has yet to publish all the documents it claims to have. Moreover, the Pentagon review has been stymied by the fact that, for at least part of the day Monday, the military team was unable to access WikiLeaks.org — apparently because of the heavy traffic it was receiving. In effect, the Pentagon analysts were unable to read classified government documents that had already been posted and read by the general public around the world.
Further:
Daniel Ellsberg, a former US military analyst, has described the disclosure of the Afghan war logs as on the scale of his leaking of the “Pentagon Papers” in 1971 revealing how the US public was misled about the Vietnam war.
“An outrageous escalation of the war is taking place,” he said. “Look at these cables and see if they give anybody the occasion to say the answer is ‘resources”. He added: “After $300bn and 10 years, the Taliban is stronger than they have ever been … We are recruiting for them.”
However, the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers on Afghanistan – top secret papers relating to policy – had yet to be leaked, he said.
However:
http://
An ongoing Pentagon review of the massive flood of secret documents made public by the WikiLeaks website has so far found no evidence that the disclosure harmed U.S. national security or endangered American troops in the field, a Pentagon official told NBC News on Monday…
David Lapan, deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations, told NBC News on Monday that a preliminary review by a Pentagon “assessment” team has so far not identified any documents whose release could damage national security. Moreover, he said, none of the documents reviewed so far carries a classification level above “secret” — the lowest category of intelligence material in terms of sensitivity…
While the team so far has not found any that would meet any of those criteria, Lapan noted that WikiLeaks has yet to publish all the documents it claims to have. Moreover, the Pentagon review has been stymied by the fact that, for at least part of the day Monday, the military team was unable to access WikiLeaks.org — apparently because of the heavy traffic it was receiving. In effect, the Pentagon analysts were unable to read classified government documents that had already been posted and read by the general public around the world.
Further:
Daniel Ellsberg, a former US military analyst, has described the disclosure of the Afghan war logs as on the scale of his leaking of the “Pentagon Papers” in 1971 revealing how the US public was misled about the Vietnam war.
“An outrageous escalation of the war is taking place,” he said. “Look at these cables and see if they give anybody the occasion to say the answer is ‘resources”. He added: “After $300bn and 10 years, the Taliban is stronger than they have ever been … We are recruiting for them.”
However, the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers on Afghanistan – top secret papers relating to policy – had yet to be leaked, he said.
But this one appears far more telling:
http://
The documents contained information regarding the death of civilians, and Taliban attacks, and contained evidence that Pakistan and Iran had assisted the air strikes. They also showed that North Korea sold weapons to Osama bin Laden.
The documents showed that the US military had been paying Afghanistan news outlets to run stories that favoured the US insurgents. It also showed that contractors working for the US Department of Defense had hired child prostitutes
Did Manning endanger informants?
In 2011, the Pentagon and President Barack Obama raised concerns that the documents exposed the names of Afghani informants, however the Pentagon then admitted to the Washington Post that it had yet to see any harm come to anyone "that we can directly tie to exposure in WikiLeaks documents". The American Associated Press concurred.
Read more: http://
As an ex Serviceman I don't condone what he did but a layman would in all probability conclude that Manning has received this sentence for the severe embarrassment he has caused the US Government and it's policies far more than he has endangered lives, if he has indeed at all.
http://
The documents contained information regarding the death of civilians, and Taliban attacks, and contained evidence that Pakistan and Iran had assisted the air strikes. They also showed that North Korea sold weapons to Osama bin Laden.
The documents showed that the US military had been paying Afghanistan news outlets to run stories that favoured the US insurgents. It also showed that contractors working for the US Department of Defense had hired child prostitutes
Did Manning endanger informants?
In 2011, the Pentagon and President Barack Obama raised concerns that the documents exposed the names of Afghani informants, however the Pentagon then admitted to the Washington Post that it had yet to see any harm come to anyone "that we can directly tie to exposure in WikiLeaks documents". The American Associated Press concurred.
Read more: http://
As an ex Serviceman I don't condone what he did but a layman would in all probability conclude that Manning has received this sentence for the severe embarrassment he has caused the US Government and it's policies far more than he has endangered lives, if he has indeed at all.
Your comparison is disingenuous, Jake, as I’m sure you know.
Those on trial in Nuremburg had committed war crimes. Mr Manning had not. Those in Nuremburg were not on trial for divulging privileged and secret information. Mr Manning was. Those on trial in Nuremburg were not there because they had broken their oath of allegiance. They were there for torture and murder. In short they were not there because they stayed silent about the wrongdoing of others. They were there because they were wrongdoers themselves. A completely different situation.
Whether or not others were put in danger as a result of Mr Manning’s actions is completely beside the point. He had no way of knowing whether, among the wholesale quantities of information he divulged, what was there and what was not. It is simply a matter of luck that no damaging information was leaked. I have had access to a considerable amount of privileged information during my lifetime. I would not divulge any of it because it was not mine to divulge.
Those on trial in Nuremburg had committed war crimes. Mr Manning had not. Those in Nuremburg were not on trial for divulging privileged and secret information. Mr Manning was. Those on trial in Nuremburg were not there because they had broken their oath of allegiance. They were there for torture and murder. In short they were not there because they stayed silent about the wrongdoing of others. They were there because they were wrongdoers themselves. A completely different situation.
Whether or not others were put in danger as a result of Mr Manning’s actions is completely beside the point. He had no way of knowing whether, among the wholesale quantities of information he divulged, what was there and what was not. It is simply a matter of luck that no damaging information was leaked. I have had access to a considerable amount of privileged information during my lifetime. I would not divulge any of it because it was not mine to divulge.
NJ, one of the matters revealed was that American servicemen in a helicopter gunship knowingly machine- gunned perfectly ordinary Iraqi civilians, including a mother and child. The tape and soundtrack was revealed, showing all that. No action was ever taken against the men involved. At the time it would have been very embarrassing for anything to be done; American would be horrified and turn against the war, the world would be horrified and turn against America, the local people would have great propaganda.
Now, would you have a man prosecuted for revealing murder or suggesting that people in charge were in dereliction of their duty?
Manning's problem is that was his best revelation. But there were some 750,000 documents, as to which he had no way of knowing what they were, what their relevance was, or what genuine harm they would do to the interests of his country
Now, would you have a man prosecuted for revealing murder or suggesting that people in charge were in dereliction of their duty?
Manning's problem is that was his best revelation. But there were some 750,000 documents, as to which he had no way of knowing what they were, what their relevance was, or what genuine harm they would do to the interests of his country
@New Judge,
I think you misunderstood jake's point.
The Nuremburg trials where where we first encountered the (in)famous phrase "but I was just obeying orders".
We can, with hindsight, undwerstand that if - give or take the lack of technology at that time - a prison guard had "done a Manning", they'd have been shot or sent away to be gassed without much further ado.
Come to think of it, what newspaper could any of them have sent a letter to which wasn't either part of - and sympathetic to - the Axis powers or would have constituted communicating with the Allies, a.k.a. espionage?
I think you misunderstood jake's point.
The Nuremburg trials where where we first encountered the (in)famous phrase "but I was just obeying orders".
We can, with hindsight, undwerstand that if - give or take the lack of technology at that time - a prison guard had "done a Manning", they'd have been shot or sent away to be gassed without much further ado.
Come to think of it, what newspaper could any of them have sent a letter to which wasn't either part of - and sympathetic to - the Axis powers or would have constituted communicating with the Allies, a.k.a. espionage?
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