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Bradley Manning Offers Partial Guilty Plea To Military Court

Posted by timothy on from the ok-but-you-had-it-coming dept.

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.""

1 of 380 comments (clear)

  1. Good: he's guilty and so is Assange by concealment · · Score: 0, Troll

    Did Bradley Manning steal a whole bunch of military and government secrets and leak them? Yes: he's guilty.

    Did Julian Assange then publish these secrets, knowing that he has zero way of predicting the consequences? Yes: he's guilty.

    I know these are unpopular views.

    However, for a society to work, we need to have rules. Just like it's bad logic to say, "I'm bigger than you, therefore I'm going to take your stuff," it's bad logic to say, "I know how to steal and publish these secrets, so I will."

    I don't see any of Julian Assange's defenders stepping up to dox themselves on the internet, and reveal some of the stuff they've had on their hard drives over the years.

    Hmm... what's in this folder labeled 'Windows CABs'? Looks like a bunch of pictures. Click. Wait a second... is that a goat?

    Justifying this leak because we think all governments are bad is a foolish way of thinking. We don't know what government does and a lot of it we'd rather not know. Just get good people into office, make sure there are others in the system who can observe what they do, and we'll get the best results.

    Trying to monitor our whole government by making it 'transparent' is going to result in a government that will be totally adversarial to us and will hide a lot of secrets. Those will be in places without any oversight. Think about this one.

    I don't think Wikileaks solved a single problem, or advanced us at all. Most likely, it got some people killed for doing what they believed was right. It's time for Assange and Manning to face the consequences of their actions.