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Bradley Manning Pleads Guilty To 10 Charges
Entropy98 sends this quote from the LA Times:
"Army Pfc. Bradley Edward Manning pleaded guilty Thursday to 10 charges that he illegally acquired and transferred highly classified U.S. government secrets, agreeing to serve [up to] 20 years in prison for causing a worldwide uproar when WikiLeaks published documents describing the inner workings of U.S. military and diplomatic efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the globe. The 25-year-old soldier, however, pleaded not guilty to 12 more serious charges, including espionage for aiding the enemy, meaning that his criminal case will go forward at a general court-martial in June. If convicted at trial, he risks a sentence of life in prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan."
Only took them ~3 years to get around to scheduling the trial? Seems pretty lethargic even by military-bureaucracy standards.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The big revelation is that he also gave the documents over to US agencies first. Aiding the enemy my ass, he went to Wikileaks after the New York Times (which Daniel Ellsberg used for the Pentagon leak) and other news agencies that didn't follow through.
"agreeing to serve [up to] 20 years in prison for causing a worldwide uproar"
If anything, he agreed to serve that time for leaking information, certainly not for causing an uproar. The responsibility for that lies entirely elsewhere.
http://www.salon.com/2011/07/07/bradley_manning_american_hero/
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
We should have offered him immunity in exchange for testifying against Wikileaks.
Uh, what? What would he have 'testified' about?
"Wikileaks is a website"
But even if you did it, why would you plead guilty to 10 charges when they are still going to prosecute for the other 12? Wouldn't you negotiate a bargain where they'd drop 12 to get a guilty plea on 10? Otherwise, you have nothing to fear from a trial on the 10 you plead guilty to. The worst case is that they'd find you guilty of what you would plead guilty to in the first place.
Learn to love Alaska
The nature of the charges against him, alongside the way he has been treated while in custody, shame the US system of justice. He surely committed a crime in doing what he did, but the punishment needs to fit the crime. Does it?
Probably because the only way to fight the espionage charges would be to claim that you disobeyed standing orders for the greater good of the country, and things like the Geneva Convention for treatment of prisoners. If he wants to claim the high moral ground, he has to plead guilty to what he actually is guilty of.
PFC at 25?
He may have had other problems with the Army. At 25, he should at least be some kind of sergeant.
Official Pi Ambassador -- inquire for details!
Even though the oath when joining the US military is to Protect and Defend the Consititution of the United States.
Someone open a window; the stink of hipocracy is overwhelming.
Which is bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, and bullshit. Respectively. No top secret documents were leaked, nor names of spies.
Repeating Big Lies doesn't make them true. It just makes you a bigger liar.
Now, I won't defend the Army's treatment of Manning after his arrest. But he shouldn't have been surprised he was charged with the crimes he is accused of.
This is different from the Ellsburg case, in that Ellsberg did not have an active clearance at the time he acquired and distributed the Pentagon Papers. Bradley Manning was an active-duty serviceman, and as such was subject to the restrictions imposed on him by his security clearance. Every person with security clearance is required to sign a document stating that if you ever disclose classified material acquired in the course of your duties to anyone not entitled to have it, the government will prosecute you to the hilt. It's not an ambiguous or hard-to-understand document.
If he had selectively disclosed evidence of malfeasance, that would be one thing, and it would make him a whistle-blower. But he did a complete data dump of diplomatic cables, much of which was sensibly-classified material, the disclosure of which was indeed harmful to national interests, both to security and otherwise.
If you keep reading UCMJ 104:
Any person who--
(1) aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with arms, ammunition, supplies, money, or other things; or
(2) without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly;
shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct.
While I believe he has a strong argument that his actions were not an attempt to aid the enemy, and a pretty good argument that his actions did not significantly aid the enemy in fact, he is going to have a hard time arguing against section 2. He did knowingly and without authorization give intelligence indirectly to the enemy.
TL;DR: I don't think he actually aided the enemy, but I do think he is in violation of the letter of the law concerning aiding the enemy.
This government is no different from any other government past and present including those labeled communist, they are all run by the rich, the oligarchy or what we call the capitalist. The hypocrisy "All man are created equal" and yet our government oppressed and mistreated pretty much everybody in the u.s and overseas. Has anybody in our government ever been held responsible for the atrocities they have caused overseas for the past 60 years? NO!. What about the bullshit Iraq invasion which lead to hundreds of thousands dead, in poverty, sold into sex trade, etc... We were the aggressors, we had no right to invade. Do you really think u.s did it to liberate the people from saddam especially when this country did not give a shit about the 1990's iraq sanctions which left nearly 1 million Iraqi people dead mostly children. What happens if the whole world sanctioned us, no more imports? u.s threatens everybody with nukes? probably.
Look at the way the u.s treats it's citizens here, why was it so shocking to hear how the cia tortured the prisoners? cops can beat the crap out of you, shoot you if you run away even if you are not armed, prison is completely hell and it does not rehabilitate anyone, overzealous prosecutors. U.S is a failed ideology.
I think he's already suffered prompt and drastic punishment -- before trial. This, in violation of the UCMJ. He got the prompt punishment, just not the swift trial.
If found guilty, he will face further punishment. However, there's at least one rule he broke that should be able to get him life in prison: he used military intel for political gain and bypassed the systems already in place for highlighting these issues first to his superiors and then to the government systems in place outside the military set up to watch it. Since the contents weren't really of immediate military value (but were of a sensitive political nature), there could be some leniency, but he left absolutely no trail of CYA or indications that he first attempted to do the right thing through legal and accepted channels (before leaking to US papers; the whole WikiLeaks issue is really overblown, as it's not so much about HIS actions as it is about Wikileaks actually doing something with the data). In short, he took informatin gained in a military setting, while employed by the military, and treated it as if he were still a civilian.
That's no excuse for the response he got; he SHOULD have had a speedy court martial -- but because he got international politics involved, those same people who are supposed to keep tabs on the military are the ones who he really attacked with his actions.
Summary: he goofed, has admitted it, and will face the consequences. Meanwhile, those whose failings he exposed are out for blood (or at least shutting him up permanently as an example), and so he gets to suffer through extended incarceration and a trial for more severe charges that may stick, legitimate or not.
I think that about sums it all up.
... plus c'est la meme chose.
...
Wasn't there a case something like this one back in the 19th century? Spurious accusations, suppression of evidence, unjust convictions. Some guy named Dreyfus, I think
I wonder if our collective social conscience is as responsive as it was back then, so long ago.
licet differant, aequabitur
It's true that countries with armies have not generally renounced killing people in war, on an active battlefield. However, many of them have renounced executions, even military executions. Most European countries no longer countenance execution of either: 1) enemies caught in a non-battlefield situation, such as captured spies; or 2) their own soldiers found guilty of treason. In either case, in such countries, the maximum punishment is lifetime imprisonment.
The UK does retain the option to execute traitors or spies, but limited only to periods in which the country is in an officially declared war. Therefore the UK could not execute a British soldier who acted similarly to Manning, since the "War on Terror" is not a declared war.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Is English not your first language? You do realise "to try him" means to bring him to trial. And that the "immediate steps" part also relates to that.
The guy is apparently rather unstable, but he made better use of his deployment in Iraq than any of the other soldiers who brutalized random people and often came back homeless, crippled, or dead for following the rules.
It seems people are confusing civilian laws with military rules. He is under military oath to protect confidential materials. He knowingly broke that oath and under military law is being prosecuted accordingly.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
He deliberately aided and abetted an enemy.
His trial and execution should have been a done deal 2.5 years ago.
What enemy? Execution? Manning didn't take the names of sources to Iran and even then it probably wouldn't have got him executed when Robert Hanssen did something similar to that and he's not getting executed and Aldrich Ames did something exactly like that and he isn't being executed. Those guys were high level while Manning was a low level officer if that. He doesn't have the same level of responsibility and a lot of this is the result of giving him more classified access than he reasonably needed to have for his service. I can't figure out why he had access to so much.
Bradley Manning is the victim of scapegoating and political posturing. I should think that one of the highest forms of patriotism and love for one's own country is to blow the whistle when bad things are happening. Manning cared so much for his country and was obviously so troubled by what it was doing that he felt the need to speak out. Manning is one brave soldier because he fought the enemy within.
I'm a Technical Sergeant(E-6) in the USAF. I'm a 'non-commissioned officer', or NCO. I did not accept a commission, I enlisted. At a very vague level, commissioned officers are all approved/commissioned by congress(it's a massive list buried somewhere). My rank is not dependent upon that.
Article 133 is completely irrelevant to me. My boss, a 1st Lt. (O-2), can be court-martialed under that clause, I cannot be. Articles 92&134 are generally the catchall of choice for enlisted personnel.
I don't read AC A human right
The Constitution may not be perfect, but it's better than what we have now.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Ahem. As a former officer, permit me to say that if you don't know, trust and have control over all your team, then you do not deserve to be one. Now I'm a manager; funny, same thing still applies...
It's difficult not to be ambivalent about some figures when it won't likely be possible to know all the facts for some time (if ever). In the Wikileaks realm , you might ask: What were Manning's motives? Does that matter? Has Manning caused harm? Has anyone demonstrated that? And Julian Assange. Nice guy or egotistical jerk? Does that matter? Is he a rapist or has he been set up? That matters, and I'd put the odds at 60-to-40 on the latter (an orchestrated extradition), but it is hard to hero worship when the odds are so poorly grounded in current-day fact.
That being said I want to thank Bradley Manning and Julian Assange.
I think my country (the USA) has been, for quite some time, suffering from what I would call "Band-of-Brothers Syndrome" or maybe "Private Ryan Disorder" where many folks have become content with the notion of American exceptionalism and the belief that our motives are pure. A few rough spots aside, we are the Spielbergian Good Guys.
To me, one antidote to "BBS" or "PRD" would be to have a required reading and viewing list for those so afflicted. It would certainly include Bilton and Sim's Four Hours in My Lai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Hours_in_My_Lai) and now the very recent Kill Anything That Moves (http://killanythingthatmoves.tumblr.com/). But to be up to date it would most certainly need to include Wikileaks' Collateral Murder as required viewing. Based on my informal polling, an astonishing number of Americans, many of them suffering from BBS, have not seen this crucially important film. And they'd never have a chance of viewing this corrective if not for Bradley Manning.
So I want to thank Private Manning. Leavenworth is not a fun place and I suspect that you will be made to pay a very high price, regardless of your motives. I don't know that I admire you. But you have made a key contribution to an improved understanding of what our country can often be about. Thanks for that.