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Bradley Manning's Court Date Finally Set
bs0d3 writes "Bradley Manning has finally been scheduled for a day in court. On December 16, he will have an Article 32 hearing (military pre-trial). Private Manning has been in jail for one and half years. The Article 32 hearing will begin at Fort Meade, Maryland. The primary purpose of the hearing is to evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of the government's case, as well as to provide the defense with an opportunity to obtain pretrial discovery. Further trial dates and locations are still unknown."
The primary purpose of the hearing is to instill fear into anyone else who might have access to sensitive information the public might want to know.
Give his hero ass a medal!
cause being held without due process is full of awesome in this country.
In the U.S a 1.5 year prison sentence is just part of a speedy trial.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
And when you get a clearance they make goddamn sure that you understand what happens if you misuse it.
Court martial is very much a criminal prosecution. They got away with avoiding the 6th amendment by not filing charges against him until they felt like it. he's been kept as a prisoner of war for 1.5 years so that they could circumvent the rest of the constitution and federal laws.
I know a lot of people here like to live in a fantasy land where the military doesn't need any secrets, but the fact is that some things are secret for good reason. Troop deployment schedules for instance, can allow the enemy to effectively target less experienced units and kill more Americans.
Manning had this all explained to him when he got his clearance, and assuming that he really is guilty, he deserves what is coming to him. Like it or not, loose lips really do sink ships.
I may have some sympathy if he knew of specific illegal acts and divulged the information about those acts in order to bring about justice.
But that's not what he did. He just released a huge amount of classified information, some of which could get people killed.
Yes it does. Laws are written around public opinion. Also, there's whistleblower protection. If you are uncovering corruption, rather than giving aid to the enemy, your actions are not criminal. That may well be the case here. The information released was not of a tactical nature. It didn't disclose troop strengths and numbers, positions, weaknesses, or anything like that. Rather, it exposed a bunch of dirty laundry. Information that shouldn't be classified.
Military laws are different than civilian laws. When you sign up for the military, you agree to be subjected to the Uniform Code of Military Justice when you are on duty or deployed. It is related to US civilian laws, but not the same. So if you want to sign up to be a solider, you need to be aware you are held to a different legal standard. A simple example would be that insubordination is against the law in the military.
Then there's the matter of revealing classified data. Military or not when you are given a security clearance, you agree to not reveal classified information. I don't mean they say "You agree to this," I mean you actually sign an agreement, an NDA. It is very much a full disclosure kind of situation in that you understand and agree not to reveal the things you'll be shown.
So you can certainly say he did the morally right thing leaking the information, if you believe that (though I would then ask you to show what information leaked you believe was so important for the public to know) but you can't argue it was legal or that he didn't know it was illegal. Since it was done in military service, that also makes it a military trial.
The defense generally wants as long as they can before trial for all kinds of reasons. As such you almost never see a speedy trial motion. The only time you'd be likely to see one is if an attorney was convinced his client was innocent and the state was dragging their feat. However that is fairly rare.
Generally in a case where the defense would file a speedy trial motion the prosecution will drop the case rather than go to court and lose. I'm not saying it is always that way, but 99.999% of the time.
In Manning's case his guilt seems to be pretty clear cut. Thus his lawyer is not going to be at all interested in pushing the trial quickly. He'll want as much time to pass as possible for a lot of reasons.
let's not forget these leaks were a catalyst for the Tunisian uprising, which lead to the revolts in Egypt and Libya
Since both countries are about to be taken over by hard-core Islamofascist groups (Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) are you advocating then for a worse punishment?
It's really a shame as I loved Egypt and the people there will great. They were poor but had a lot of freedom really, all of that gone soon...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well too bad for Manning then he uncovered NOTHING while in the meantime delivering the enemy all kinds of juicy intelligence
You've got your blinkers on there.
Let me guess, your a jingoist?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Some people would say that much of the information he released shouldn't have been classified in the first place. So, who is really the one misusing it?
Not even fucking close.
If he could have attached each one of those documents to a specific crime, he might have had some moral ground to stand on. But instead he released as many classified documents as he could get his hands on.
In spite of his self-righteous grandstanding, I think he was really just pissed that he was demoted and going to get kicked out for assaulting an officer and thought, and probably still thinks, that he'll get away with it in the long run.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Would you people please READ instead of using talking points?
US troops committed summary execution of Iraqi women and children, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence.
DynCorp pimped young boys to Afghani police recruits ("bacha bazi").
If that's a "big bowl of nothing", then I'd like a helping of "bullshit" to go with it.
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People in Obama's administration have leaked classified info (bin Laden raid, anyone?)
That info was actually TOP SECRET, and not just SECRET. So someone in Obama's administration is leaking more serious info than Manning did.
Don't hold your breath waiting for that investigation, though.
:(){
The war was a lie. The President and Cheney declared that Iraq had attacked us. We went there and slaughtered 60K+ people outright, destroyed their electrical generator plants, water systems, gas lines, highways and outright stole their only national resource, the oil under their feet. We did it against the advice of almost every country on earth. We've led to the deaths and torture of almost two million people. We've emptied the country of its people as they fled a 120+ degree hell that now has no jobs, no air conditioning, barely food, and has a government consisting of the son of a bitch, Chalabi, who told Bush and Cheney anything they wanted to hear. He is now in charge of the oil fields and is essentially the secret service. We have installed another bunch of thieves, and you want to "bring our boys home", like they just fought Adolph. That country could not, would not, did not want to attack us. but it had lovely oil, and we stole it.
1) Manning DID NOT release the documents, as you keep asserting. He transmitted them to Wikileaks, a trusted organization that kept secret whistleblowers secret.
2) Wikileaks DID NOT RELEASE a blessed thing; the New York Times, the Guardian of London, and two other papers were given the block of documents, and they and they *alone* released what they thought safe to release after careful review, in which Wikileaks did not participate. If you have a problem, take it up with the newspapers, not Manning, not Wikileaks.
3) The full documents got out after a reporter from the Guardian, I believe, idiotically published the password in an article. Go hang him.
4) Manning and Wikileaks exercise due diligence and made sure that they released nothing harmful to the troops by giving control of the release to responsible reporters who were supposed to know what they are doing. That is precisely how responsible leakers have always done it.
5) The reporters let us see that our troops had committed a savage murder, on camera, and the chain of command had refused to investigate.
6) Large number of stories are now known to us about immoral and illegal acts committed by our government and others. One of those reports triggered the uprising called the Arab Spring. Perhaps you've heard of it.
7) The US government in the past ten years has extended secret classifications to even mundane domestic reports. We even have secret laws that we cannot see, and no-fly lists that cannot be seen or contested. We have a country run in secret down to our police departments. A country that does not know, CANnot know, by law, what is actually happening in their name cannot possess the knowledge to govern themselves, making democracy itself impossible, even illegal. To become informed is to break the law. To break this blockade on truth is to spend 18 months in solitary without charge while they try to get you to falsely implicate others. To try to keep your country free and murderers tried for their crimes, they will lock you up for years without charges and then give you two weeks to get ready for trial after your mind is half gone and you haven't talked to a sane human for so long you can't construct sentences, let alone argue, against the full might of a national secrecy state that likes power and ain't about to give any up to lippy men with notions of right and wrong.
This is not about oaths and laws. This is about what is right, and what is wrong. And knowing enough to understand the different.
What makes this case so interesting is that he clearly broke the military rules and also clearly helped humanity through his actions and he never gained anything by doing it. He wasn't paid for doing it and he knew people would hate him and that he would be punished hard but he followed his ideals rather than doing what gains him the most personally. He believed in the right of the public to know what their country is actually doing and where their tax money goes.
I see that some of you are angry with him and want him punished but when asked what he actually did wrong you can't argue further than him "breaking the rules" and "acting irresponsible". That he caused or will cause deaths is pure speculation. Maybe you are angry with him because deep inside you know you would never have the balls to pull this off by yourself? Because you know that you are that kind of person that curls into a ball when the authority beats you with a stick and tells you what to do and think. Because being told what to do and think follows naturally when you argue that the government has the right to censor and keep information secret from the public it serves.
What makes this case so interesting is the reactions from people. It tells you a lot of what kind of person you are deep inside.
Oil prices remaining high doesn't mean we didn't do it for "our" sake. It just means that you are not one of the "our."