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Bradley Manning Offers Partial Guilty Plea To Military Court
concealment writes "During a pre-trial hearing in military court today, [alleged Wikileaks source Bradley] Manning's attorney, David Coombs, proposed a partial guilty plea covering a subset of the slew of criminal charges that the U.S. Army has lodged against him. "Manning is attempting to accept responsibility for offenses that are encapsulated within, or are a subset of, the charged offenses," Coombs wrote on his blog this evening. "The court will consider whether this is a permissible plea.""
> You know, the ones who approved of the illegal activities by the military personal who Manning *PROPERLY* released information about?
Releasing classified documents to an uncleared foreign national is NOT "properly released", it's illegal and punishable by imprisonment and in some cases death. The illegality of his actions and the resulting punishment were VERY well known to him, as it is to every single soldier that holds his clearance level. There were proper ways for him to handle himself, which he was retrained on every single year, but he made very specific decisions to break serious laws. He knew what he was getting into.
On the other hand, corruption, incompetence and sheer lawlessness due to lack of oversight also severely undermine the necessary order and discipline an effective military needs. It is certainly not the business of the military to withhold information of that nature from their political masters.
We don't know what government does and a lot of it we'd rather not know.
Speak for yourself.
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It is the business of every soldier to protect this nation from threats foreign and domestic. It is in the oath of enlistment.
How would congress even know about this? Do you think they would report such actions? Do you think congress knows about the renditions being performed? Do they know what secret prisons are used for torture?
It is certainly not the business of a private to determine what type of classified information should or should not be distributed.
Not sure what the word is in the military, but no matter what they say, it is everyone's responsibility to follow their own morals regardless of what their orders are. If Manning felt that this was something the public must know, then it was absolutely his business to decide that, ethically speaking.
Obviously that's not a valid reason to suspend his punishment, you're right that discipline must be upheld in the military. Just pointing out that discipline and personal morals have a balance that must be considered. If you don't want a private to leak information that he feels the public should be aware of, either don't give it to the private or don't do things he's likely to consider immoral.
And congress failed in its duty.
It is the business of a true patriot to expose the corruption within the system when the system fails to deal with it.
Having worked as a civilian employee of the US military right after graduating college I can assure everyone that there is no way Manning could have failed to realize his actions were at best illegal and at worse treasonous.
Having been a member of the US armed forces (SSgt USAFRES) I can assure everyone that Manning may well have believed that he had a duty to disclose information he thought the military was illegally concealing from the public, and there are circumstances in which he'd have been absolutely right. Every member of the armed forces is taught that they have a duty to disobey illegal orders. However, I think his decision to give it to Wikileaks rather than to take it to some element of the government who would play a watchdog role (e.g. a congressman opposed to the war) does cast doubt on the purity of his intentions -- or at least on his judgment.
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I said it's not the business of a private to determine when and when not to disseminate classified information.
If I'm not mistaken, it is the business of anyone in the military to refuse to follow illegal orders, report those orders to superior officers, and go around superior officers to report the misconduct to another authority (e.g. the Inspector General) if the superior officers refuse to do something about it. Not everything Manning released falls under this, but a lot of it was classified not because it would compromise national security (which is supposed to be the standard) but because it is embarrassing and/or incriminating to those who decided to classify it. Which means it was illegally classified. Which means that a private is not supposed to respect that classification.
And yes, by this argument, there's probably huge amounts of material that are routinely illegally classified within the US military and intelligence agencies. A lot of the US military (particularly officers) firmly believe that the only reason the US lost in Vietnam is that the public got wind of what was going on over there and "stabbed them in the back". Their solution to this problem is attempting to hide almost everything US troops are doing from the US public, only sending back clips that make good PR, and helpfully guiding reporters around so they see only what they're supposed to see.
I am officially gone from
If by "diplomatic consequences" you mean being forced to withdraw from Iraq, and starting riots in Egypt and Tunisia (Arab Spring happen that long ago we've already forgotten?), then yes it had some effect.
If it weren't for Manning's revelations, we'd still have troops in Iraq, and the Arab Spring might have been a lot smaller than it turned out to be. If that isn't significant, I don't know what is.