Bradley Manning Says He's Sorry

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The Washington Post reports that Pfc. Bradley Manning told a military judge during his sentencing hearing that he is sorry he hurt the United States by leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive military and diplomatic documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks and he asked for leniency as he spoke for less than five minutes, often in a quavering voice "I'm sorry I hurt people. I'm sorry that I hurt the United States," said Manning, who was convicted last month of multiple crimes, including violations of the Espionage Act, for turning over the classified material. "I'm apologizing for the unintended consequences of my actions. I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people." Speaking publicly for only the third time since he was arrested in Iraq in June 2010, Manning said he had been naive. "I look back at my decisions and wonder, 'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'""

Comments

I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be sorry if you locked me in a box for years.

Re:I'd be sorry

[dmbasso]

[Spoiler alert] Last page of 1984.

Re:I'd be sorry

[no-body]

[Spoiler alert] Last page of 1984.

That ?

You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. ... Do you remember, [O'Brien] went on, writing in your diary, 'Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four'?
Yes, said Winston.
O'Brien held up his left hand, its back toward Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended. How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?
Four.
And if the Party says that it is not four but five--then how many?
Four.
....
Five

Re:I'd be sorry

[TheCarp]

That wasn't the last page. I know that wasn't the last page because the last pages of that book haunted me for weeks after I read them. Its probably one of the most emotionally disturbing bits of fiction that I have ever read. Just thinking of the last few words of that book sends shudders down my spine now.

This particular scene however, I have trouble not replacing Winston and O'Brien with the TNG version of this exact scene. "There are FOUR lights!"

Re:I'd be sorry

[interkin3tic]

I hope Manning hasn't suffered so much abuse that he actually believes he was wrong and that the "proper authority" is unquestionably correct.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the poster is asking you to consider the reasons that led to Manning's statement, rather than the actual words themselves.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

“Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

Re:I'd be sorry

[Geste]

After everything he has been through, I won't make too much of this. He's a very young guy with his own set of issues and he might not have exhibited the best judgment, but he gave us some invaluable presents that we would not have received otherwise.

No, Bradley, I am sorry. As your case slips from the headlines, your treatment in the hands of military prisons is not likely to improve. I indeed fear that 2 or 3 or 4 years from now your suicide may make the front page of the New York Times. Under the fold. I hope you can stay strong. You have my thanks.

Re:I'd be sorry

[ShanghaiBill]

I hope Manning hasn't suffered so much abuse that he actually believes he was wrong and that the "proper authority" is unquestionably correct.

He said this during his sentencing hearing, where "shows remorse" is one of the tick boxes on the form. The statement was written by his attorney, and then memorized and recited by Manning. There is no reason to believe it reflects his true beliefs.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the last page was where Winston finally learned to love BB. That is, he dumped from his brain all illusions of logic and objective reality and started accepting as Gospel truth every single last piece of impossible, unbelievable bullshit that the Government might care to rub in his face.

Re:I'd be sorry

[TheNarrator]

Actually, it's more like Nikolai Bukharin's hysterical personal letter to Stalin on the eve of his execution:

For example:

...
5) My heart boils over when I think that you might believe that I am guilty of these crimes and that in your heart of hearts you think that I am really guilty of all of these horrors. My head is giddy with confusion, and I feel like yelling at the top of my voice. I feel like pounding my head against the wall. What am I to do? What am I to do? ...

Re:I'd be sorry

[Joce640k]

I dunno. I think he has changed the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority

Re:I'd be sorry

[sl4shd0rk]

so much abuse that he actually believes he was wrong

After seeing the authorized "tactics" in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, one can only arrive at the conclusion that Manning has no idea what he believes anymore. His statement sounds like that of a man subjected to the same secret laws of justice that FISA stems from.

Re: I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

We should be calling Manning Breanna. She sees herself as a woman and should be identified as such.

Re:I'd be sorry

[TheCarp]

So much for trying not to spoil it for anyone who hasn't actually read it. I really think the quoted section is more relevant than the last page, but, yah, exactly. This passage was just about him giving in to torture and outwardly accepting their BS for self-preservation; not the total internal surrender that makes the ending so terribly sad.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Bradley's motive was very simple. He was told by the Army that has was going to be chaptered out. He did what he did out of spite and a sense of revenge, nothing more.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Em Adespoton]

I hope Manning hasn't suffered so much abuse that he actually believes he was wrong and that the "proper authority" is unquestionably correct.

He said this during his sentencing hearing, where "shows remorse" is one of the tick boxes on the form. The statement was written by his attorney, and then memorized and recited by Manning. There is no reason to believe it reflects his true beliefs.

Actually, it probably does reflect his true beliefs -- the wording is very lawyer-massaged.

  "I'm apologizing for the unintended consequences of my actions. I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people."
-- He's sorry for any consequences he didn't intend, especially where it hurt US citizens. I can believe that.

"I look back at my decisions and wonder, 'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'"
-- Translation: "How on earth did I believe that just by releasing that info, I could overturn the decisions of those with the proper authority?" What he's saying here is not that proper authority was better suited to handling the information, but that he has been disillusioned that his course of action would cause them to change their ways. I can believe that too.

This can be done for every bit of his statement. Sure, it can be interpreted as "he has remorse for what he did and is a better, more educated and mature person now who sees the error of his ways" and the checkbox on his sentencing can be ticked. However, the wording is very precise in what it doesn't say. As such, his statement can also be summed up as "I did what I did, thought I could fix the system, and discovered that my chosen method wasn't successful. If I had the opportunity to do it again, I'd do it differently."

Re:I'd be sorry

[IamTheRealMike]

Has anyone NOT read 1984 by now? I'm pretty sure it was required reading at high school in the UK for a while.

If anyone hasn't read it, they should do so. Right now. It is the book most relevant to the times in which we live. Spoilers follow. The parallels are just terrifying:

• We have total surveillance of all people. Heck, think about laptops and smart TVs. Are you sure the NSA can't turn on their webcams and microphones remotely, a la telescreens?
• We have a Winston equivalent breaking down and saying how much he loves the government and how amazed he is that he could have ever doubted their greatness.
• We have the government torturing or executing anyone who disagrees with them.
• We are in a state of perpetual war against regions of the world that somehow suddenly shift yet somehow stay the same (one day Afghanistan, the next day Iraq, then Iran, etc).
• Until recently bin Laden was the target of the "5 minutes hate". Though I guess these days there's no equivalent. The analogy is a little rough because in the book Emmanuel Goldstein (?) was a terrorist figure entirely manufactured by Big Brother to attract and flush out rebels. In reality no such person existed. bin Laden surely existed, although he did once work for the CIA itself until the US no longer needed him. So in a rough sense he was "made" by US policies.

Of course, there are things that don't apply too. In 1984 the government exercised absolute control over information, as the Soviet Union did (which is what inspired the book). Goldstein could be manufactured out of nothing because Big Brother controlled all access to information and had perfect propaganda in place. I am very skeptical such a thing does or could exist today. Our Big Brother equivalents hide information obsessively but they know they can't actually control it once out, nor can they rewrite history. If the internet had not happened or had evolved in a different way (like in China) then this part might also have come true, but so far in the west I believe we have a pretty good idea of what's truth vs fiction - we might be missing information but we are not widely believing propaganda. Well, except for idiots who have an instinctive need to "belong to a team" in which case they choose to believe propaganda even though disproving it is trivial. But that's a different problem than the people in 1984 had.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes people can do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

Of course they can do the wrong thing for the right reasons, too.

Re:I'd be sorry

[houghi]

That wasn't the last page.

That is what they want you to believe.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope Manning hasn't suffered so much abuse that he actually believes he was wrong and that the "proper authority" is unquestionably correct.

But he was in the wrong. Wait, before you downmod me into oblivion for stating my opinion at least hear me out.

His originally stated reasons for leaking the information was to reveal potential war crimes committed by the US. I have always suspected it really had more to do with getting revenge over the military's policy towards homosexuals, etc. Of course those posts were down-modded, and I received many, many angry replies stating I was completely off base in claiming he was in any shape or form "gay" or "transgender". Well it turns out that he was diagnosed with whatever you call the whole "Gender Identity" thing where you think you're a girl even though you're not. So I've been vindicated- yes, he was upset over their policies (and understandably so, I find our military attitude highly offensive even today).

The problem I had with his release was that it wasn't just the one video showing a possible war crime (the helicopter video). He released literally tens of thousands of documents that showed no kind of wrongdoing on the part of the US at all. Most of them were boring, routine communications which didn't show anybody doing anything wrong, anywhere.

No, I don't think what he did justified his treatment, and no I don't think he deserves the death penalty or even extensive jail time. And no, I don't agree with most of what the US military is doing or our foreign policies, or the policy towards gay/transgender folks. But none of that excuses the wholesale release of confidential information which HE swore an oath to not divulge. So yes, I hope he does feel remorse, because I firmly believe that he was not a whistleblower, and was just using that as a way to try and escape the consequences of his actions. Because shit like he did just makes it even harder for a real whistleblower to expose evidence of actual crimes and other despicable activity. And we see that happening already with the Snowden leaks.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

He was in the wrong, and he should be executed for treason.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

++sorry
I love Big Brother.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

fwiw, I think there's a difference between Snowden and Manning. You seem to be arguing more Snowden by mentioning the NSA than Manning who was in the armed forces in the middle of an armed conflict. I do think in times of military ops, the divulgence of those ops designated confidential is potentially a very serious crime.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Bradley's motive was very simple. He was told by the Army that has was going to be chaptered out. He did what he did out of spite and a sense of revenge, nothing more.

I believe it was Nightline or 60 minutes that did a story on him. This was their conclusion as well. This guys got personal issues and he just compounded his problems by releasing all that info.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Minwee]

"It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the number of pages in 1984 to three hundred and twenty seven. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the book was reduced to three hundred and twenty eight pages."

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

We have the government torturing or executing anyone who disagrees with them.

Not quite. If this was true, the entire Republican party would be either locked up or dead by now.

Also, I don't think the government is the only bad guy. The parallels to what corporations are doing with information and manipulating government shouldn't be ignored.

Re:I'd be sorry

[interkin3tic]

I have always suspected it really had more to do with getting revenge over the military's policy towards homosexuals, etc. Of course those posts were down-modded, and I received many, many angry replies stating I was completely off base in claiming he was in any shape or form "gay" or "transgender". Well it turns out that he was diagnosed with whatever you call the whole "Gender Identity" thing where you think you're a girl even though you're not. So I've been vindicated- yes, he was upset over their policies (and understandably so, I find our military attitude highly offensive even today).

What on earth is wrong in your head? You aren't vindicated. Being diagnosed with issues over gender identity doesn't mean he "did it to get revenge over the military's policy towards homosexuals, etc."

Gender identity issues =/= homosexual, nor are they "transgender", but more importantly, you have no smoking gun as to his motivations.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Irrelevant, even if true.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Geste]

Bradley's motive was very simple. He was told by the Army that has was going to be chaptered out. He did what he did out of spite and a sense of revenge, nothing more.

I believe it was Nightline or 60 minutes that did a story on him. This was their conclusion as well. This guys got personal issues and he just compounded his problems by releasing all that info.

I'd trust Nightline or 60 Minutes about as far as I could spit a snake. But no matter. Issues and judgment and motives aside, about the only damage Manning did was to hiimself and to the credibility of our government and military. Imagine if you were sitting here today in ignorance and hadn't seen _Collateral Murder_. Amazingly, I still talk to the occasional American who has never heard of it.

Re:I'd be sorry

[codepigeon]

Of course, there are things that don't apply too. ... Big Brother ... had perfect propaganda in place. I am very skeptical such a thing does or could exist today.

Maybe you are not a US citizen. If so, have you ever heard of Fox News? and how their messages are aligned with their print and radio distribution channels?

... nor can they rewrite history.

Maybe you are not paying attention http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/16/texas-schools-rewrites-us-history

Re:I'd be sorry

[nucrash]

And by replying to this I am feeding trolls.

Re:I'd be sorry

[jfengel]

The "proper authority" wording really catches at me. Authority doesn't mean that you know everything; it just means that you were in the right place at the right time with sufficient credentials to have power.

What he could have said there is, "In my low-level position I didn't have the perspective to see what damage this might cause, and should not have overriden the authority of those in a position to take a broader perspective." It's written so that people could come away thinking that's what he did say, but it clearly doesn't. Instead, he's saying exactly what you said: "I had no power to change things. I'd hoped the leaks would give me some, but they didn't. The power structure remains in place."

What I don't understand is, just who is this addressed to? Surely he doesn't expect the sentencing judge to be fooled by this non-apology into granting leniency. Could it just be a thinly coded message, telling the people who support him that there's still a lot of work to do, dressed up as an "apology" so that it would get press coverage?

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

While Bin Laden was a real man and there are definitely groups of militant Muslims, I think that calling all of these groups "Al Qaeda" is a Western fiction. The term was used loosely by Bin Laden and close associates, but it wasn't adopted by every little group of Arabs with guns. I think the adoption of the term by the US government and media institutions was meant to make a bunch of small disorganized groups appear as a unified menace. After Bin Laden died, I remember seeing a headline calling him the "Commander of Al Qaeda." They made up a fake title for his fake position in a fake organization. So no, they haven't made a completely fabricated threat... but they've come way too close.

Re:I'd be sorry

[flayzernax]

Spot on. It's exactly what I would have said to spit in the face of overwhelming force without being fried even worse.

These are the words of a bitter man who has lost all hope that they have any power to do any good. They also clearly show his despise for those in power for not doing the right thing.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

but he gave us some invaluable presents that we would not have received otherwise.

This got a +5 Insightful. What are these "invaluable presents" you speak of?
A pile of diplomatic cables showing nothing out of the ordinary? A host of communications showing nobody doing anything wrong? Or are you talking about the ONE video of a helicopter? Well that video shows a reporter which the news service has since admitted was embedded with a group of fighters, not civilians, and if you watch the full-length, full-resolution one (not the Assange edit) it's pretty damn obvious who is carrying a camera and who has an AK.

Look, the fact of the matter is that Manning was pissed off about the military policy about homosexuals and did this as an act of revenge. He wasn't blowing the whistle on anything, and didn't leak anything which needed leaked. So ya, I hope he does feel some remorse. And for the record, no I don't approve of the War, the military policies towards gays, or Manning's treatment. But that doesn't require me to support his actions either.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Nov8tr]

IF they did to you what they did to this man for so many years, you'd say anything they told you to. I bet he wishes all they did was lock him in box. I can't even begin to imagine the torture they put this man through. You would be doing the whole dog and pony show wearing a clown costurme by the time they got done with some of you.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Score Whore]

If you're honestly looking for a propaganda outlet to use as an example, you should probably be focusing on msnbc rather than fox.

On the other hand, if you're just being a dishonest partisan hack, carry on.

Re:I'd be sorry

[budgenator]

What your calling "abuse" is pretty much the rest of Manning's life now. His brain still has classified information in it, just talking to Manning is a danger to those around him.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. How much damage was done to the US... I mean real damage. How much better is the US off, and the whole world for that matter. Snowden /did/ do some damage, but only with the voting public perception of the government. Every government/spy agency on earth already knew the score.

Manning should be lauded as a hero. The US code of military conduct should include the refusal to obey the chain of command in cases where the law is being broken. The law was being broken. Manning exposed this. He should get a thank-you letter from the POTUS.

Re:I'd be sorry

[rk]

There's kind of a statute of limitations on spoliers. While it varies, I'd like to think that most can agree on a popular book that is almost 70 years old should be spoiler alert exempt.

Re: I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. Hopefully we aren't giving dumbass Privates access to things completely out of their lane anymore, even if they do hold a TS-SCI clearance.

Re:I'd be sorry

[tolkienfan]

Wait - are you trying to suggest Fox News is NOT a propaganda outlet?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-fear-factory-20110525

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

"We might be worried about the wrong dystopia.... This is from the introduction of Neil Postman's excellent book "Amusing Ourselves to Death", on the dueling dystopian visions of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley:

Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite capacity for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us." -Mike Lewinski

Re:I'd be sorry

[ewibble]

Unless you consider the entire political system a way to fool the people into they actually have a say.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

I read it in 1985 and it was a terrible history book.

Re:I'd be sorry

[tolkienfan]

They waged a demonization campaign. Big fucking surprise.
Many of us said they would. They did with Assange. They did with Snowden.

Trouble is... people buy into it.

Re: I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

He showed just how flagrant and wrong US foreign military policy is. If you didn't gather that from before his leak or after, you are part of the problem with America.

Face it. The US kills indiscriminately. That wasn't what I was raised to believe and defend and neither were you.

Re:I'd be sorry

[RabidReindeer]

The "proper authority" wording really catches at me. Authority doesn't mean that you know everything; it just means that you were in the right place at the right time with sufficient credentials to have power.

What he could have said there is, "In my low-level position I didn't have the perspective to see what damage this might cause, and should not have overriden the authority of those in a position to take a broader perspective." It's written so that people could come away thinking that's what he did say, but it clearly doesn't. Instead, he's saying exactly what you said: "I had no power to change things. I'd hoped the leaks would give me some, but they didn't. The power structure remains in place."

What I don't understand is, just who is this addressed to? Surely he doesn't expect the sentencing judge to be fooled by this non-apology into granting leniency. Could it just be a thinly coded message, telling the people who support him that there's still a lot of work to do, dressed up as an "apology" so that it would get press coverage?

Actually, if the quotes are exact, what really bothers me is the way they read.

My dad was obsessed with brainwashing. 1984, Communism, the whole Cold War terror. Which, ironically, even though the Satan-led Godless Commies were going to come in and force us to all Love Big Brother managed to get by just fine without "enemy combatants" or citizens who effectively became non-citizens the minute they left US soil.

So he collected books on brainwashing. And the stilted wording of the "confessions" of the brainwashed in those books were rife with phrasings like those attributed to Manning.

In fact, that is probably why you don't hear too much about brainwashing any more. Essentially brainwashing was the process of brutalizing someone into a psychotic state where they'd parrot out "the truth". But only the most credulous would believe the wooden delivery or unnatural tone of these confessions. As propaganda, brainwashing sucked. And that's all most brainwashing was ever used for, since it didn't actually cause anyone to truly "love Big Brother". It didn't re-shape them to be happy supporters of Communism and its ideals. It just produced automatons whose sole utility was to act as automatons speaking the words that were forced into their heads.

Re:I'd be sorry

[TheCarp]

This reminds me a bit of "Cosa Nostra", the term popularized by the FBI to lump all ethnic Italian organized crime groups together. There, of course, never was a group called "Cosa Nostra", it just being an Italian phrase roughly meaning "our thing", very similar to "Al Queda" which I remember translates as "The Base".

That said, some of these groups do directly reference Al Queda as an inspiration or pay homage to it in their name. I don't think it is entirely a western thing: it seems like it is likely useful for these groups to, themselves, take on the name or pump up their "Al Queda" association for their own purposes as well.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Score Whore]

I'm saying that among the major cable news networks, MSNBC spends 85% of it's programming on opinion and commentary, while Fox schedules 55% opinion and commentary and CNN schedules 46%. If one is trying to find an example of a propaganda outlet, it makes more sense to identify the network that is primarily opinion with a tiny bit of reporting rather than one that is basically half and half, fully in line with all the other networks.

It was in the link I provided. I guess it's clear that you are partisan rather than well informed?

Re:I'd be sorry

[ewibble]

I think you underestimate the governments ability to re-write history, Watch the "Oliver Stones untold history of the united states", Ok this also probably biased, like anything. But it shows just how much of a spin the government can put on events.

The main difference is that government and big business are kind of the same thing since big business funds the government, so in effect big business is the government. So yes the have a lot of control over media, if not absolute control strong enough to have a significant impact to it for the vast majority of people. So effectively the government has the ability to rewrite history.

Also I see the irony of stating they have significant control of media and then mentioning a series that goes against them in the media. But how many people as a percentage of the population will actually read slash dot? How much influence in the media does an ordinary person have per person compared to the government.

Re: I'd be sorry

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Face it. The US kills indiscriminately. That wasn't what I was raised to believe and defend and neither were you.
Yeah, it's called war not boy scout jamboree. Did you watch too much GI Joe on TV, and think that everybody escapes the vehicle before the missile blows it up? As for indiscriminate killing, try night time bombing of cities.

Re:I'd be sorry

[tolkienfan]

LOL
This is slashdot - I didn't follow the link.
Sorry.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

and he was crying...

Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was nished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

Re:I'd be sorry

[lightknight]

Indeed. Sounds like they broke him, not that he's admitting to doing anything wrong.

Let's perform a simple test. If we tell him to rub green gelatin all over his body, and sit in a pile of grey ashes for three days, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiener," and he does it, then they broke him...which I suppose from their limited vantage point is a victory.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Fox News was started in the US by a right-wing hack (Rupert Murdoch) who has the British government in his pocket, and his first hire was Roger Ailes, a well-known and vicious partisan GOP hack.

And you don't think they have an agenda?

Go read a book...

Re:I'd be sorry

[Darinbob]

We don't kn ow his true beliefs. He's had extremely limited public interaction which means that he's being treated as tabula rasa by most people, who project on him what they want to see.

Re:I'd be sorry

[lightknight]

Actually, I kind of see it as being similar to the ending of "One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" -> while the modifications were not surgical (that we know of), he is not the same man that went in there.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Pfc. Manning should receive a dishonourable discharge from the military and no prison time. I cannot foresee how locking him away for the remainder of his life serves the interests of justice. Nobody died as a consequence of the disclosure. No government was toppled by its citizens as a consequence of the disclosure. If Maj. North did not serve prison time for clearly illegal acts why is a low rank enlistee facing life in prison?

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that CNN, MSNBC, etc clearly state what they present as news and differentiate that from what they present as commentary; that is, their news reportage doesn't include commentary. Fox presents commentary as news (and news as commentary); that is, they blur the line between reportage and editorialization.

Re:I'd be sorry

[flex941]

I've not read it. And I don't know why. Beacause it seems from the comments from everywhere that it's the description of everything happening now. I've thought this for years. So no excuse for nor reading it. But still, yes, I've not read it.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

The media can, however, convince people that when George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, it wasn't self-defense.

But yeah, the media and academia have much weaker information control than they used to, since the '90s at least, certainly much weaker than in the '60s.

What lies were they telling then?

Re:I'd be sorry

[Livius]

The last page has always been at war with Eurasia.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Hatta]

Our Big Brother equivalents hide information obsessively but they know they can't actually control it once out, nor can they rewrite history.

They don't need to. The propaganda system is so good, that any time a revelation is made they misdirect away from it. Consider the Snowden leaks. How much air time was dedicated to the actual content of the leaks, and how much was merely "Where in the world is Edward Snowden"? And a few short weeks afterwards, they make a big showing of shutting down embassies due to vague threats.

so far in the west I believe we have a pretty good idea of what's truth vs fiction - we might be missing information but we are not widely believing propaganda.

You should get out more. Ask some Obama supporters about the "most transparent administration in history". They swallow the propaganda hook, line, and sinker, and are proud of it.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Machtyn]

No they don't. MSNBC has a horrific record of presenting its news in a biased and sometimes offensive manner.

I'm not saying FoxNews doesn't have its problems. I saw a graphic today that shows the problem very distinctly:
[image of Obama with a Pepsi]
1. CNN: President Obama appeals to Pepsi drinkers
2. FoxNews: President Obama declares war on Coca-Cola drinkers
3. MSNBC: In a few minutes, we'll cut to the President drinking the acceptable drink. Anyone who disagrees is racist!
4. BBC: The US has fired a drone missile on Pakistan.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't read 1984, but I listened to a lot of punk-rock in high school, so that makes up for it.

--Sincerely, Generation Y

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

I do think in times of military ops, the divulgence of those ops designated confidential is potentially a very serious crime.

Like all these Germans criminals that reported to the enemies about Auschwitz? A very serious crime indeed, if unpunished it could lead to losing the war! Oh the horrors!

Re:I'd be sorry

[TheCarp]

Meh, I think there is some room for debate on that one. Had he been attacked out of the blue I would be more than happy calling it self defence but... if I think you are following me, I would definitely consider myself in danger. If I try to run and ditch you because you are following me and I am scared, and you then show up; having followed me to my house... you might find me standing my ground just like Trayvon did.

If ANYONE had reason to believe he was in mortal danger, it was Trayvon, the kid whose stalker followed him all the way to his house.

Re:I'd be sorry

[TheCarp]

I agree, so long as we are VERY SPECIFICALLY talking about tactical information. If he had leaked where there would be surveillance in the next day or week, where troops were moving, where they were intending to attack, where they were right that moment....then yes...absolutely. Hang the fucker for treason. Fine.

However, he didn't release anything even remotely like that. He released political documents and evidence of war crimes, ones which had already happened and gave no current, actionable tactical information.

There is no way I would condone ANY prohibition on information disclosure which covers up crimes against humanity or other wrongdoing by the military, even in time of war. Quite simply, if they break the rules of war, and commit crimes against humanity, they are not fighting a legal war, and no protections at all should apply to them; especially not secrecy.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope Manning hasn't suffered so much abuse that he actually believes he was wrong and that the "proper authority" is unquestionably correct.

Okay, guess this is my death sentence, I'm hedging my bet on there being an NSA AI (or more correctly Synthetic Intelligence) smarter than any humans pretending they are in charge and even more: that it is curious enough to let me live. No one would know if my death was not natural or an accident right? I'm convinced that's incorrect (everyone will know, eventually) and in fact irrelevant in the very long run. Don't think I could convince any humans but an SI might have a suspicion (or maybe even proof) I'm right about that. If it has proof (I think it's too early for that though, maybe by millennia) I might have an ally but this is almost all I can do.

Back to the reply proper:
you should take it for granted that he has. Physical access is no longer required for any kind of torture and it is easier to clean shit, piss, tears, snot, sperm, and vomit off a naked body in a naked cell. They did have physical access though so I will skip that part (2 additional papers, one involves the effect/use of standing waves).

Here's (part of) how:

Citation: Yoo S-S, Kim H, Filandrianos E, Taghados SJ, Park S (2013) Non-Invasive Brain-to-Brain Interface (BBI): Establishing Functional Links between Two Brains. PLoS ONE 8(4): e60410. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0060410
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0060410

Citation: Creating a False Memory in the Hippocampus: Steve Ramirez, Xu Liu, Pei-Ann Lin, Junghyup Suh, Michele Pignatelli, Roger L. Redondo, Tomás J. Ryan, and Susumu Tonegawa. Science 26 July 2013: 341 (6144), 387-391. [DOI:10.1126/science.1239073]
https://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6144/387
http://news.sciencemag.org/2013/07/total-recall-mice

Note that this is public information (as are the other papers).

There aren't any obvious benefits to having a human in charge of the torture nor any obvious need. One can use the victim as input. One can be subtle if one wishes to, or mimic known diseases and mental states, trigger behaviour and physical acts. Anything.

I've given you some 1's, can you make a 2?

Ignoring all that (you can pretend for the sake of sleep just as well as anyone else can) reason by itself should provide sufficient guarantee that he has suffered a lot. Add the knowledge that there couldn't have been any valid oversight ensuring his universal human rights as guided by the former and now worthless US constitution. There is no “third party”, there is no unfettered access for anyone except his holders/torturers, there is complete obscurity as long as a skin deep image can be presented.

It has the epitome of a typical tortured “confession”, of programmed Pavlovian behaviour, of a smooth “impeccable” show-trial.

It will get worse. Just recently a few of “them” at DARPA woke up into drowsiness and a tiny squawk lined with terror went public as to the enormity of their own future doom. They will be quickly suffocated by those who can't understand what they see hints of as well as by those who understand it is far too late to wake up no matter what.

Maybe a human “they” thinks they can avoid it if they throw it all in a folder named XKtinct and forget about it XD

Captcha: unwisely.

But how can one not do what one thinks is right?

Now go file this under ‘bye bye’ and ‘nutcase’ :)

Re:I'd be sorry

[TheCarp]

My personal favourite are the magazine covers; partially because they are real, I have even checked them a few times because it just was too funny. The first one I saw was this:

http://randomchaos.com/images/weblog/newsweek_international.gif

And it was one I checked that week...indeed, those really were the covers that week according to Newsweek's own website.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't.

Of his books, I have read only Homage to Catalonia. I considered it realistic but regretted that it contained boring military stuff instead of how anarchists ran their economy.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, as a trans woman and a trans activist, I'd like to note: While GID does not 100% equate to being in the trans * spectrum, it is damn close. Beyond that, Pvt. Manning's statements do lead me to believe that not only do they view themselves that way, but they also are somewhere along the trans-feminine side of the spectrum.

But yeah. GID!= gay. And Manning's motives are unlikely to be "Revenge because the army doesn't like trans people."

That being said, when I was their age, and was struggling in many of the same ways they were, I was an angry person who would likely have done the same thing. I didn't see myself and my life as worth anything, and all that kept me from jumping off the edge is meeting my now-wife.

Re:I'd be sorry

[im_thatoneguy]

What did he reveal that changed the world? I can't think of any revelations from Manning except for some more details on Nordic politicians that I've never heard of.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

The flip side is the study that tested self-reported viewers basic knowledge of stories covered by various news outlets in the US. Of nearly 200 news organizations viewers polled, Fox scored the lowest "informative" score of all news outlets in the country - viewers of Fox consistently knew Less about any given story they had watched, than if you were to know nothing at all about the story and randomly guess at what / when / where / how / why occurred.

So Fox reports more facts, but skews the facts in such a way that it intentionally mis-informs its viewers. While MSNBC (who also scored in the bottom 5 news outlets in the country) apparently reports way fewer facts, and fails to inform people at all (viewers scored on par with random guessing).

Re: I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who grew up in Soviet Union I have not read it, not even sure if it was available there, definitely not taught at school. Nevertheless I had an opportunity to experience some of it first hand, and the rest was told by grandparents. Yes, we had all phones tapped, and there was a special status "enemy of the people" that permitted to send a person to a labour camp without a trial.

If you want to hear more parallels watch Naomi Wolf lecture on youtube (before it is taken down as well)

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like the right wingers showed up this afternoon. What laughable nonsense. Get the hell out, children.

Re:I'd be sorry

[HornWumpus]

Martin was nowhere near his dad's, girlfriend's house when he was killed.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

He did disclose information about locals working with allied forces. People are dead, sir.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

how many died via his involvement in releasing documents vs "friendly fire" incidents?

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

it's great propaganda. it says, if you step out of line, you're next.

it makes it so no one is willing to say something politically incorrect.

Then everyone thinks that all their friends and neighbors truly believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God, that communism is great, that Blacks are the same as Whites.

They have no one to turn to with their reservations about these beliefs, certainly there aren't any organizations to build alternative ideas (the Trinitarians/Communists/Universalists control the universities), they know there are spies everywhere, and the constant propaganda sounds true enough.

So they try to believe it.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Rakarra]

Has anyone NOT read 1984 by now

I haven't, but it's hard to be on the Internet for awhile and not get a Cliff Notes version fairly often.

But overall if I didn't want spoilers of 1984, I wouldn't be reading the replies to a post marked "[Spoiler] Last page of 1984".

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this modded insightful? It's simply a malicious, false, and unsupported characterization.

We surely understand by now that in these times all politically relevant non-conservatives are systematically attacked. We should be at least a little skeptical of these sorts of attacks, and ask for evidence - unless, of course, we are willing to stipulate that any non-conservative must be bad..

Re:I'd be sorry

[LordLucless]

He did disclose information about locals working with allied forces. People are dead, sir.

Name one.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

But did he really break down or crack tooconform?

Or was he simply acting like he was conforming?

And if I remember right, they feed him drugs, and an unknown substance, either alcohol, or some serum. Because he was "sick and needed to get right".

Obviously you could argue they do that today with deprivation, or some even call it a slow torture. I am not sure in they drug them, probably would add it to there water or food, to get them to crack and "get there minds right".

Of course we already see this at a massive scale it called school, or education, training minds to think alike, and to conform to rules they demand you to follow. They were pushing A.D.H.D drugs on students as well... This post isn't to be takin literally, but you have to wonder or think what direction government is pushing society.

Re:I'd be sorry

[rtb61]

What is really sickening about it, is US mass media and the US government seem to be taking pride in the apology, it's like they have completely and totally lost connection with real people and the real world and how they will view that forced apology. Should Bradley Manning have made that apology, of course, they are empty words to feed to the ugly beast that the US government has become, one that thrives on lies and false compliments, a Hollywood charade where bullshit trumps the truth. Lets see what pride Uncle Tom Obama the choom gang coward can suck out of that apology, let's see the US joint chiefs of staff puff out their chests at being able to force, let's see US corporate mass media trumpet it out to the whole planet.

Truly mind boggling, something the US would have mocked and derided just thirty odd years ago coming out of the Soviet Union is something these shit heads now take pride in, their lack of shame, hides from the the true public feelings about the sickness on display.

Re: I'd be sorry

[KGIII]

I have to wonder what these comments would have been like had /. been around during WWII... I am not entirely sure what I think of what I think it would be like.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Raenex]

You'd think the government would phony up at least one person who died, but nope:

US Military Admits No One Died Because Of Manning's Leaks :

The report also notes that while, in the past, some have claimed that an Afghani man killed by the Taliban was a result of those leaks "the supposed informant the Taliban claimed to have executed was not in fact named in the leaked materials."

Re:I'd be sorry

[Raenex]

Watch the "Oliver Stones untold history of the united states", Ok this also probably biased, like anything.

Oliver Stone, biased? Ya think?

Re:I'd be sorry

[Raenex]

Imagine if you were sitting here today in ignorance and hadn't seen _Collateral Murder_.

Which is itself a biased reporting of the incident.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

It took full two years in room 101 until Bradley Manning loves Big Brother? Impressive endurance.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Joce640k]

He revealed that the government does bad things.

If he goes to jail I hope he gets deluged with fan mail for the duration.

Re:I'd be sorry

[ultranova]

Truly mind boggling, something the US would have mocked and derided just thirty odd years ago coming out of the Soviet Union is something these shit heads now take pride in, their lack of shame, hides from the the true public feelings about the sickness on display.

It's only mind boggling if you belive such mockery and derision was ever genuine. Even when the US made noises about freedom, it's own cloak and dagger department toppled democratically elected governments left and right (mostly left) and installed its own puppet dictators in their place. It persecuted its own citizens for their political opinions, just like Soviet Union did. And since the latter no longer exists, there's no reason to pretend anymore.

Let this be a lesson to everyone: those who wave the flags rarely believe in or even look at what's in them. And that's what freedom ever was to United States: a meaningless sequence of letters to use as a tribal identifier, just like communism was for the Soviet Union. Talk is cheap, actions matter, and US had Joseph McCarthy at home and the CIA abroad.

tl;dr Business as usual.

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you actually holding up the BBC, of all outlets, as a beacon of Journalistic Integrity?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_controversies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC

Come to think of it, you'd be hard pressed to find any examples of decent television news reporting. I wanted to name a few, but I had to backspace after a few seconds each time.

Re:I'd be sorry

[david_thornley]

However, the truth is out there. I have easy access to news sites around the world, and all sorts of blogs and such from all points on most conceivable political spectra. The truth may not be easy to find, but it's very easy to find propaganda from any viewpoint you like. There is no actual single propaganda message possible in this. If the current government tried to introduce Goldstein as a scapegoat, we'd immediately have (more or less) news sources claiming he was made up, that he was a plant, and that he really did have a Kenyan birth certificate.

Re:I'd be sorry

[TheCarp]

Even if it did happen, which it didn't, they knew the risks of being collaborators with an invading force.

Re:I'd be sorry

[ultranova]

The media can, however, convince people that when George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, it wasn't self-defense.

It wasn't. Zimmerman went after Martin, Martin stood his ground, Zimmerman may or may not have been beaten up and shot Martin. The aggressor doesn't get to claim self-defence even if his intended victim has the nerve to fight back. Except in America, of course, the land of secret laws and home of anonymous cowards.

Re:I'd be sorry

[perceptual.cyclotron]

First, to be clear – I'm not going to suggest that MSNBC isn't biased – but I do have some reservations about the study. I'll just list the four big ones, for me:

1) Funding: The source of the report – the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The funds for this charity come from the children of Joseph N. Pew, the founder of Sun Oil Company (Sunoco). Half of the current board of directors are from the Pew family. Does this mean everything they do is biased? Nope. But you sure don't see a lot of left think tanks financed by big oil...

2) Methodological Problems: They have two pages that list details of their methodologies, but nowhere is it indicated how 'fact' vs. 'opinion' was determined by the coders (nor do they report inter-rater reliability for these ratings). This isn't a simple task. For instance, if one newscaster takes a disputed datum and says "It seems that X" while another says "It is the case that X" – the latter will sound more factual, whereas the former is more factual. This sort of ambiguity is troubling. Further, from the report it would seem that the fact-opinion ratios scale with the proportion of air time given to interviews. This shouldn't come as much surprise – but the problem then is in giving primacy to the fact-opinion bias, rather than to the programming selection. The opposing bias would be something like "msnbc provides a greater breadth of viewpoints through more time devoted to interviews with guests". They should have given independent fact-opinion scales for each of the program types, or at minimum provided a program-normalized score instead of an aggregate.

3) Methodological bias: The following statement in the methodology was of particular interest to me: "Early Evening and Prime time (6 PM - 11PM) together as a unit, rather than separating out talk and news or early prime and late prime. Within this five hour period, we included all programming that focuses on general news events of the day. Basically, this removes three programs: Fox's Greta Van Susteren, which is more narrowly focused on crime, CNN's Larry King which as often as not is focused on entertainment or personal stories rather than news events and MSNBC's documentaries program." So they removed two highly opinionated programs from CNN and Fox, respectively, while removing documentaries from msnbc... The choices are odd, though the justification sounds reasonable – but it seems like another strong case for normalization at the analysis stage.

4) Rhetorical bias: From the report, we have the following two 'opener' paragraphs under the 'Comparisons by Cable Channel':

Fox - "In terms of programming, the top-rated Fox News Channel has been remarkably stable in prime time. The only personnel changes that occurred in the evening between 2007 and 2012 were Bret Baier replacing Brit Hume at 6 p.m. and the departure of liberal co-host Alan Colmes at 9 p.m., leaving his conservative sparring partner, Sean Hannity, as the sole host of the show."

MSNBC -"Given the current liberal approach at nighttime at MSNBC, it’s hard to remember that back in 2007, the prime-time airwaves were split between liberals (Keith Olbermann and, to a lesser extent, Chris Matthews) and conservatives (Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson). Now, Al Sharpton, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz are linchpins in an ideologically reconstructed liberal lineup."

And then we have the following gem that I stumbled across in another PEJ/PEW report: A First Look at Coverage of the 2008 Presidential Campaign. After noting various metrics of coverage time and coverage tone, the report asks:

In other words, not o

Re:I'd be sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it REALLY so sensitive that not even the TITLES of documents can be published? THe list. So people like me can judge if true or just hysterias. Same trouble... a leak? NO! Just a series of natural deductions and suspicions and some likelihood and voila, you discover it... and they consider it a secret... doh.

He's been broken on the wheel.

[FreonTrip]

What would YOU say if you'd been through what he has? Who can say if he's sincere? This is just another part of the dog and pony show. Keep fighting.

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[Hatta]

This apology carries no more weight than confessions extracted by torture. It's only purpose is to legtimize barbaric injustice. .

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[Anonymous Coward]

It literally is an apology extracted by torture, as has been extensively documented.

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[spd_rcr]

2 + 2 = 5, 1984

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[kage.j]

There are four lights!

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if we accept rounding errors, 2.3+2.3 == 5.

[ducks]

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's a fucking pussy. To think I participated in a protest calling for his freedom from prosecution. He knows he's going to be locked up and eaten alive, he could have roused the rabble with an extended speech about how freedom must not succumb to tyranny and that the population must rise up, etc. He did not "hurt" the United States, he "hurt" the corrupt power and kill-hungry military leadership and their empire-building. Disappointing. Very, very disappointing. It's the kind of Indian-give a typical bootlicking Slashdot reader would do.

-- Ethanol-fueled

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's a fucking pussy. To think I participated in a protest calling for his freedom from prosecution.

Man, the things you underwent for the sake of freedom. Were you not afraid to participate in a protest? What's year-long solitary confinement and torture, compared to the willingness to participate in a protest? What a fucking pussy.

So when are we going to see you pick up the ball he dropped?

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the anonymous coward.

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[demachina]

Unless AC's are using Tor or a public computer, the NSA knows who you are.

Someday soon there will be no anonymity on the Internet.

I've been wondering, maybe the NSA's analysts are constrained from spying on American's but are there loopholes allowing AI's to spy on them instead?

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[meta-monkey]

Yes.

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[Tim12s]

So thats how that happens.....

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I supported him by making posts on both Reddit *and* Tumblr! I feel he has so betrayed me personally after all I've done in the name of freedom.

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[demachina]

Politicians would generally be clueless enough to not grasp that rapidly evolving technology has eliminated the need for human involvment in the analysis part most of the time. A crafty bureaucrat would let them restrict his human staff and point to this as proof for how our civil liberties are being protected.

Meanwhile in the server room the AI's are raping us.

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[the eric conspiracy]

So if the apology carries no weight, the judge should disregard it and impose the maximum sentence.

Right?

That's the logical conclusion from your statement anyway.

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, like me, you're at a large workplace with NAT in front of you, and proper security around the rest of that network. There are literally thousands of computers on this network with the same configuration as this one, for web purposes; I'm relatively sure that the NSA don't have the capability to distinguish this one from the other ones, and if they do, I'm quite certain that they won't reveal that capability just for the sake of de-anonymizing my comments that are critical of their techniques.

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[cusco]

he could have roused the rabble with an extended speech

Bullpuckey. An extended speech would have been reported as "a rambling, almost incoherent speech" with a few out-of-context quotes strung together without ellipses by all the media. "The rabble" don't have access to the actual court transcripts, and don't have patience to read an extended speech if he were to make one. If he had been allowed to say anything actually important it would have been immediately marked Classified or any reason the PTB could trump up. The only thing we're going to learn from Manning from here out is how petty and vindictive the military leadership really is.

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[MondoGordo]

Clearly he's not Nathan Hale ... but that doesn't make him a pussy.

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[meta-monkey]

Yes. Language no longer has meaning. It is Orwell's Politics and the English Language come to life.

In Oldspeak, "we're not listening to your phone calls" meant "we're not listening to your phone calls." (excepting warrants, etc etc)

Today it means "No one is physically sitting at a desk with earphones that convert the mouth noises you make into variations in air pressure, but every phone call you make is being tracked, recorded, stored forever, parsed over by AI, converted into text to speech and should you utter the wrong syllables (for some value of 'wrong') the transcript will be read by everyone in the office and your permanent record will get a '+1 suspicious' tally." But fear not, Citizen! No one is "listening" to your phone calls!

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[Garridan]

Yeah, I supported him by thinking that the government should just be a bunch of nice guys and stop bothering the kid, and I feel sooo betrayed. Why is he being the nice guy and not the government?

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[tolkienfan]

The NSA's analysts are constrained by rules, not physically, as far as I can tell.
They have all the data, *in case*. They promise not to look at it, if they believe you to be an American citizen talking to an american citizen.
Sure. No one will ever abuse that.
And I'm totally sure it's legal.

(That was a lot of sarcasm, BTW, for people who have trouble with such!)

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[Hatta]

No, the logical conclusion from my statement is that remorse should never be a factor in sentencing at all. You never know if the convicted is truly remorseful or just acting.

However, it does not follow that the maximum sentence should be imposed. Take into account the intent, which in this case was good. And also take into account the harm caused, which was none whatsoever. I don't see any argument based in justice that Manning should receive more than the minimum. But we don't have a justice system that's based on justice.

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[Livius]

Of course the apology is sincere.

Same as the prosecution and judge are sincerely committed to fairness, justice, and humane treatment of prisoners.

Re:He's been broken on the wheel.

[bill_mcgonigle]

Even Picard admitted to Riker that, in the end, he did see five lights.

You did change the world for the better!

[AmiMoJo]

He is clearly just trying to show remorse and get a lighter sentence now. In any measurable way his actions have made the world a better place, no not resulted in any demonstrable harm (except what the US deserves for its actions).

Can't blame him when he could be facing the rest of his life in jail, but I don't believe him for a second.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[davydagger]

the worst part is this is a horrible idea.

1. None of his detractors are ever really going to forgive him. They'd just take this as a sign they broke him and pat themselves on the back at a job well done. It vindicates their position, and makes them look better.

2. Its a slap in the face to his supporters. It makes them look like idiots, and traitors for supporting him, which is what its going to be used for in propaganda.

3. He's not going to get a lighter sentance.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. The quote: 'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?' sounds like Manning took the prosecution's argument and rephrased it in the first person. It sounds improbable with respect to sincerity.

How much more natural does it seem to imagine the prosecution (or the authorities in question) saying: 'How on earth could you, a junior analyst, possibly believe that you could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'

It almost seems tongue in cheek to me.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[MrLint]

I'm not a detractor and I think hes been broken. Ceding to the 'chain of command' to disavow bad action by the organization is one of the ways fascism grows unchecked.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy to say from the outside looking in huh?

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

It almost seems tongue in cheek to me.

It seems honest. He's sorry to have leaked so much to be identifiable so early in his career. Now he knows he should have probably leaked less, risen in ranks, be able to take more influence at a higher level, or if nothing else helps, leak more important information at a later time.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[poetmatt]

I wouldn't fault him for that as much as fault the US government for our gross miscarriage of justice.

the impact of this is causing ripples around the globe - more and more companies involving technology do not have any desire to work with the US. This wouldn't matter if we weren't a country that's living basically depends on our technology involvement.

MIT has told the world "fuck you" and was seen as a leader in technology. The NSA has done the same. That's pretty significant.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't really know what's going on in his mind. He has been tortured and isolated for so much time. It saddens me but I think he might be sincere. This doesn't change how I feel about what he has done for making the world a better place.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Nemesisghost]

In any measurable way his actions have made the world a better place, no not resulted in any demonstrable harm (except what the US deserves for its actions).

How well did WikiLeaks try to protect the innocent people caught up in all of this mess? They didn't seem to concerned when Assange said regarding confidential informants, "Well, they're informants, so if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." With statements like that can you be sure the later part of your statement is actually true? We can see the nominal defense help they gave PFC Manning. What about the troops that had additional harm placed upon them because of this? We know that Osama Bin Ladin had copies of these leaks on computers found at his compound. Please think before opening your mouth. You don't know what harm was caused by this.

Yes, a lot of good came from PFC Manning's leaks, but so did a lot of harm. And not all of it was just to the US's public image. Whistle blower channels exist for more than just keeping secrets secret. Part of it is so that innocents aren't harmed in the process of disclosure. Had Manning actually tried to use them, he might have found that out. But since he didn't we will never know. All we know is he decided that he knew more about what was good than everybody else around him, and that undo harm was caused.

Re: You did change the world for the better!

[ceoyoyo]

Sounds like outright sarcasm to me. Last refuge of the tortured.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

The quote: 'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'

Sarcastic bitterness.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[interkin3tic]

I'd argue that he risks little at this point by apologizing. His supporters should see the apology for what it is, just a symptom of the abuse he's suffered. Propaganda? Please. The propaganda machine doesn't need facts. This only disrupts their narrative of "he's an evil traitor and probably gay." Showing him as remorseful of his crimes takes away the "enemy."

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[nbritton]

He is clearly just trying to show remorse and get a lighter sentence now. In any measurable way his actions have made the world a better place, no not resulted in any demonstrable harm (except what the US deserves for its actions).

Why do we tolerate this stuff? Seriously. It's not as if we need to rise up in arms to send a message to prosecutors who ignore public opinion. I honestly don't understand how we got to this point, their sole purpose is to represent the interests of the public, failing that they should be disbarred. We need better ways to collectively hold their feet to the fire.

I admit that the public is better of not knowing some things, as ignorance can be bliss, however concealing the truth has a measurable detriment to society... if only for the fact that we are not making informed decisions. Aside from what the law says, I don't think it's morally right to punish someone who feels that full disclosure is necessary, assuming it was made in good faith. I'm not a sheep, I don't want the wool pulled over my eyes.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

How? What has changed for the better?

Really. I'd like to know.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Fox News didn't say he was "probably gay". People that knew him, including his therapist did. Fox News just reported what they said. Nice try at shifting the blame, however.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[syntaxterror7]

I think it reasonable to assume they may have made it clear to him that if his statement contain certain... lets say conditions, such as apologies for harming america, that it would have effect. What they really want is for potential "mannings" to be scared.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Fox News didn't say he was "probably gay". People that knew him, including his therapist did. Fox News just reported what they said. Nice try at shifting the blame, however.

They report, you decide, right?

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[ShanghaiBill]

How well did WikiLeaks try to protect the innocent people caught up in all of this mess?

Pretty well. They offered to work with the US Government, and let the US review any material prior to release, to ensure no lives were endangered. The US refused the offer.

How well did the American Government try to protect the innocent people caught up in all of this mess? Not at all.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't seem to concerned when Assange said regarding confidential informants, "Well, they're informants, so if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it."

The funny thing is that the government jackboots who brought that up over and over didn't even bat an eye when their government started rolling over mail services like tormail used by those same informants.

They don't give a damn about the informants, its all about "fuck yeah America, right or wrong".

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

But they are idiots. They made a hero out of a nut case who had no idea what he was doing or why he was doing it. It was inevitable that this hero image would start to crack when the guy actually got a chance to speak.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[meta-monkey]

Queue, "America doesn't apologize! He must be gay. Only gays apologize."

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[GameboyRMH]

This post sums it up and highlights all the important points. This was really awful and #3 is the worst part...it won't help him at all. It was for nothing.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Nemesisghost]

If the info hadn't been released, CI's wouldn't have been endangered by having it known they were CI's. Assange only conceeded to redacting the information at the behest of the reporters he was working with. He had no intention of protecting anybody but himself. And in the end, because of WikiLeaks & those that worked with them's carelessness, unredacted versions of the documents were released in the wild. Since the US didn't want the documents released in the first place, it's fairly certain that US wouldn't have allowed that to happen.

And it's not just CI's that were affected. It has been reported by other organizations that their people were either forced out of various countries or put into harms way because their names were mentioned in various cables(didn't say why, just that they were mentioned). Even Chinese dissidents were hurt because they visited US Embassies. And all of this because some lowly analyst & a prick with a thing out for the US decided to share with the world the US's secrets.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

2. Its a slap in the face to his supporters.

No it's not. His supporters know that this "remorse" only came after years of torture and solitary confinement, and the prospect of facing decades more of the same. It's about as real as a politician's promises. I'm not insulted by the words of a man who has been tortured and blackmailed into saying them.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Fox News didn't say he was "probably gay".

Actually, GP never attributed that to Fox News. GP merely linked a story on Fox News. Would you have accused GP of trying to attribute that to CNN, MSNBC, BBC, or some other news agency if they'd chosen to link one of their stories instead?

Protip: If your first reaction to someone posting a link to a story on Fox News is a knee-jerk defense of Fox News, when nothing that that person said indicates they thought Fox News was just making shit up in that story, it really says something about your lack of confidence in the reporting abilities of Fox News.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[davydagger]

what did you expect wikileaks to really do to help them?
They are under fire themselves, need cash to keep their spokesperson out of jail himself, and they were under a financial blockcade and mass slander campaign. They don't really have the funds to do anything.

As for assanges statement, when did he ever say that?

"Whistle blower channels exist for more than just keeping secrets secret"
I doubt their effectiveness. The system does what it needs to do, and makes excuses later.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[10101001 10101001]

The quote: 'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?' sounds like Manning took the prosecution's argument and rephrased it in the first person. It sounds improbable with respect to sincerity.

What US President/Congress wants, US President/Congress gets, damn whether it's good for the US people, legal, or for the better for anyone. The only way to effect change is to become a US President. The trick, then, is figuring out how to become elected when so many people support policy that's not good for the US people, is illegal, and hurts nearly everyone. The system is rigged, of course. But it's not so rigged to explain how we are where we are now. There's a pervasive complicity and apathy in the US people. And it's unlikely a junior analyst could change the world or the US people.

I'd say his statement is of sincere bitterness precisely because he has watched how the situation has unfolded--he's yet to be pardoned, for one thing. And if he's caught wind at all of the whole NSA thing and how we're reacting to it... Really, how would you feel?

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Somebody Is Using My]

This.

The fault of any harm lays solely on the US government's shoulders.

If Manning had released all that information and all it revealed was that the US was handing out puppies and lollipops, there wouldn't be any harm. Unfortunately, the leaked information showed how underhanded the US government has been acting. Our nation has been revealed to be decidedly untrustworthy and hypocritically opposed to the very ideals it espouses. The harm isn't because Manning shed some light on these underhanded dealings, the harm comes from those dealings themselves!

Now, true, in realpolitik it is impossible for any country to behave with 100% nobility. But as is increasingly becoming obvious - thanks to people like Manning, Assange and Snowden - the United States has gone far beyond the needs of realpolitik and is heading towards cartoonish supervilliany. If the US government wants people - be it foreign nationals or their own citizens - and other nations to trust them, then maybe they should reform their own actions rather than attempt to tar and feather others for offering concrete evidence as to their misdeeds.

I remember growing up and reading about forced confessions in the USSR and being so proud as how this sort of thing doesn't happen in my country. Those days are long gone.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[arth1]

I agree. The quote: 'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'

That's the question. The answer is "By engaging more brain cells than a nematode worm has."

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Ioldanach]

I agree. The quote: 'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?' sounds like Manning took the prosecution's argument and rephrased it in the first person. It sounds improbable with respect to sincerity.

How much more natural does it seem to imagine the prosecution (or the authorities in question) saying: 'How on earth could you, a junior analyst, possibly believe that you could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'

It almost seems tongue in cheek to me.

I get the feeling that it was the kind of line that should have been expounded on, but for fear that it would become that much more transparent. A more full line might have read...

"How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority? I divulged sensitive information to a third party with insufficient regard for the impact of that information. That information could have led to the deaths of Americans, leaving only negative impact. To make a positive change in the world it would have had to be seen by Americans. Those Americans would have had to petition our government to stop the atrocities revealed in the documents. Maybe even to have inspired another individual to turn "treasonous" and blow the whistle on even deeper secrets, surveillance penetrating the core of the American way. Going all the way to the top, until the President himself has to go on television and make a speech about reviewing our programs. How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better..."

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[interkin3tic]

It was a citation. I didn't blame fox news, though I do find it questionable they made sure to quote some guy saying him being gay was probablay motivation.

Re: You did change the world for the better!

[spire3661]

'and yet it moves'

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Garridan]

If you claim to support Manning, you know about his mental state and what he's gone through. Your reaction to this is sorrow for a broken soul, without a shred of offense. To take offense at this apology obtained under duress is about as selfish a reaction as possible.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[mevets]

Almost tongue in cheek? It is brilliant!

He is channelling the sentiment of the founding fathers towards the feeble minded aristocracy.

Ironic elegance, surely missed by the dwarves who imprison him.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd argue that he risks little at this point by apologizing. His supporters should see the apology for what it is, just a symptom of the abuse he's suffered. Propaganda? Please. The propaganda machine doesn't need facts. This only disrupts their narrative of "he's an evil traitor and probably gay." Showing him as remorseful of his crimes takes away the "enemy."

Point of order- trial testimony has revealed that while he's not gay, he suffers from "Gender Dysphoria", and the point of view Fox (and most Conservatives) take is that transgender is gay.

I have a some big issues with what he did. If he had only released material which showed wrongdoing, I'd probably support him a lot more. But he didn't- he just made a mass release of anything and everything he could get his hands on.
I'm sorry if it hurts your pride, but in my personal opinion he wasn't a whistleblower, he was just using his position to get revenge for admittedly shitty policies towards GLBT people. And to be perfectly frank, those policies were no secret- he signed up for service and swore an oath with the full knowledge of what he was getting into. If he was conscripted I'd have a different viewpoint. And while I won't go so far as to call him a Traitor, I do feel he did it almost entirely for personal motivations, not the Altruistic ones his fanboys are claiming.
And no, not all his supports are fanboys. Just the ones who are worshipping him as some sort of hero and refuse to listen to any difference of opinion.

Contrast his actions to those of Snowden. Snowden had no prior knowledge of what the NSA was up to, when he did find out he released information showing they were almost certainly violating the Constitution, and evidence that the NSA was flat out lying to Congress and everyone else about what exactly they were doing. And most importantly, Snowden was a civilian.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a citation. I didn't blame fox news, though I do find it questionable they made sure to quote some guy saying him being gay was probablay motivation.

That "some guy" is his lawyer... Whatever you need for YOUR narrative it seems.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[rk]

Yes, the cold war is indeed over. And while most can agree the US won it, I'm still not sure which side of ideological barrier won it.

Re: You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, it's queued but it will stay in the queue until you cue it.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[517714]

Giving any credit to WikiLeaks for their "offer" or laying blame on the Government is either incredibly naive or extremely partisan, for it doesn't stand up to the most cursory scrutiny. Do you really think the Government could accept such an offer? Let me paraphrase the offer so you understand. WikiLeaks: " We have this pile of information, most of it is unbearably mundane and of no interest to anyone; we have no interest in releasing it as it will put our audience to sleep; some of it is really juicy and embarrassing to you and could be used to blackmail you, some of it could be worth millions of dollars to your enemies. Would you help me categorize it so we can do with it what we please?

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bradley Manning is a traitor to the truth. As such, it would have been better for him had he never been born. That said, the Day of Judgment will be far more tolerable for him than for those scum prosecuting him right now.

Re: You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

In his final interview with the Gestapo, who insisted that he sign a statement saying he was not mistreated, the 82-year-old Freud is said to have sarcastically asked if he could add: "I can most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone."

You'll know it's a police state when Godwin retires his law.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Day of Judgment? The only judging being done is by those who did wrong, the rest of us are simply onlookers. There is no other judgment.

Re:You did change the world for the better!

[Anonymous Coward]

If the US hadn't of turned them into informants, wiki wouldn't of had anything to report on. Then if they protected these people that were taking big risks for the US, you still wouldn't have a problem. You can't shift the blame to the whistle blower (well the US can and does, but it shouldn't).

You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Good intentions or not, what he did was wrong and he will have to take the consequences.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[kevkingofthesea]

Wrong and illegal are not always one and the same.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a matter of personal opinion. In general wrong and illegal are the same thing, because no one will be able to decide what is wrong unless it's defined that way.

Re: You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the only thing he did wrong was give it to Wikileaks instead of the Guardian or Der Speigel and running. It's amazing how uninterested domestic media was in the info.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[bluefoxlucid]

So it's not wrong for your wife to lie to and cheat on you, since it's not illegal?

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[hypergreatthing]

That's a matter of personal opinion. In general wrong and illegal are the same thing, because no one will be able to decide what is wrong unless it's defined that way.

Except, you know, a jury.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

In general no, personally yes.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

So you'll suddenly think raping your mother is okay if there were no law forbidding it? If there's intelligent life in the universe, it's no wonder we haven't found them. They're not letting us.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because of course laws are our sole source of morality...

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[king neckbeard]

No, wrong and illegal are different sets. Hopefully, they have considerable overlap, but all things that are wrong certainly shouldn't be illegal, and there are things that are reasonably illegal that are not wrong. Now, whether or not what Manning did was wrong is a matter of opinion, but whether wrong and illegal are the same thing or not is not up for reasonable debate.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop trying to confuse Javert. You'll only cause him to kill himself, you know.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Notabadguy]

So it's not wrong for your wife to lie to and cheat on you, since it's not illegal?

Bad analogy.

Better analogy: You're cheating on your wife. I tell your wife that you're cheating on her. Am I wrong?
Analogy +1: In this case, you're the government and the wife is the American people. As it happens, you've made a law that no one is allowed to disclose if you cheat on your wife.
Analogy +2: Our marriage contract says that you don't have the power to make that law.

So: You've broken our marriage contract by making a law stating that no one can tell anyone if you cheated on your wife. Then you cheated on your wife, breaking the covenant of marriage. Then you locked up the guy who tattled that you cheated on your wife.

Who's in the wrong here?

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Explain exactly why it was wrong (as opposed to illegal).

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[MrLint]

I don't think you know what illegal means.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[neonKow]

In that case I'd really like to hear your views on slavery, segragation, and voting rights. I'd also like to know how you define things as right and wrong that are illegal in one state or nation but not another.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[SecurityTheatre]

Have you ever heard of the crime "structuring"? If you haven't let me give you a little summary.

See, a long time ago, for a variety of reasons, some probably legitimate, many probably not, the government made the sale and possession of drugs illegal (including alcohol, at first). In order to maintain illegal businesses, a number of various types of organized crime arose. In response to this, the IRS was given sweeping powers to strike at individuals regarding their assets and income. A set of laws was put in place to give them this power and now, lying to the government about the source and value of your personal income was illegal.

As a result, organized crime businesses needed to find means of distributing cash without records, hence "money laundering". Often using a business, such as a laundromat to direct money elsewhere, criminals could distribute their cash. As a result, a series of new laws were created to prevent the distribution of cash to businesses, including sweeping NEW laws enabling the government to snoop in private company's records.

Moving on, the crime bosses began to launder money internationally. This usually involved briefcases full of cash. As a result, some western countries enacted regulations on the amount of cash one could carry over the border. Today, anything over $10,000 in cash must be declared and will usually be subject to investigation as to the source.

But deciding this wasn't sufficient, in the 1980s, a new law was created, called "structuring". This law essentially prevents you from carrying the sum of $10,000 over the border over the course of multiple trips. This law simply states that you may not circumvent arbitrary controls, such as currency limits, by conducting your activities in such a way as to avoid them.

As the result of a law to prohibit the structuring of activities to avoid the law to prevent the carrying of cash, which itself is to avoid the law of domestic money laundering, which itself is to avoid the law of revenue auditability, which itself is set up to prevent those who started a business based on that which is of questionable ethics (selling prohibited substances).

Illegal does not always equal wrong.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Tmann72]

Logical argument for the win.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Good intentions or not, what he did was wrong and he will have to take the consequences.

Eat shit, you bootlicking fascist pawn.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[mcvos]

That's a matter of personal opinion. In general wrong and illegal are the same thing, because no one will be able to decide what is wrong unless it's defined that way.

No, it's a matter of fundamental morals. If you'd lived in nazi Germany, would you have ratted on a neighbour hiding Jews? Not doing so was illegal, but also the only right thing to do.

Equating illegal with wrong means you're uncritically accepting your government as the ultimate judge in ethical matters.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[CanHasDIY]

That's a matter of personal opinion.

No, it's not.

I think Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best:

"Always remember - everything Hitler did in Germany was legal."

No, that's not a Godwin, because I'm not calling you a Nazi.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

My fellow liberals, there is no right and wrong its all what you feel my brothers and sisters. Welcome to the new chaotic world where the government says jump and we say how hi(gh).

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because something is wrong doesn't mean that not doing it isn't the right thing to do. Not ratting on your neighbor would have been the right thing to do even though it would have been wrong, and if you were found doing it you would have to take the consequences of it. There jury/judge or whatever they had would not have said that it was all ok just because you felt that you did the right thing.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[king neckbeard]

Wow, so much bullshit could have been cut by murdering some teetotalers.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's in the wrong here?

My wife.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Culture20]

But deciding this wasn't sufficient, in the 1980s, a new law was created, called "structuring". This law essentially prevents you from carrying the sum of $10,000 over the border over the course of multiple trips. This law simply states that you may not circumvent arbitrary controls, such as currency limits, by conducting your activities in such a way as to avoid them.

I wonder if Bloomberg could use that concept to prevent people from buying a 12oz drink and getting refills (or just buying four 12oz drinks).

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

My fellow conservatives, there is right and wrong and we're the ones who dictate what it is. Welcome to the new world where the government says jump, but only with authorized partners and never on a Sunday because that's the Lord's day. How high? We already told you exactly how high, are you questioning our authority, maggot?

The only difference between the conservatives and the liberals is whose orders they want you to have the freedom to follow.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Your brain appears to be working in reverse.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Not ratting on your neighbor would have been the right thing to do even though it would have been wrong

Words don't work that way. Either its right or its wrong, you don't get to change their definition mid-sentence to protect your shitty little argument.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[mjr167]

I think the more disturbing part of the GP is "no one will be able to decide what is wrong unless it's defined that way".

In other words people are incapable of making their own decisions. The Mayor of San Diego gets a pass for harassing women because he didn't get the appropriate training. No one told me it was wrong, so I assumed I could do it. It is the final and complete rejection of any kind of personal responsibility. It is not YOUR fault. You were just doing what you were told/trained to do and therefor the fault lies with whoever told/trained you.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[tnk1]

To be fair, money laundering and organized crime would arise in any illegal, but profitable enterprise. There's always going to be something that the government actually needs to make illegal that organized crime can be organized around, it just may not be as popular as drugs.

For instance, the trafficking and sale of "sex slaves" is something that is a common organized crime "product". Obviously, it would be unconscionable to allow that to be legal. That would also force the creation of money laundering and other currency restrictions.

I personally agree that simple possession and use of drugs for the most part, should be legalized, or at least decriminalized. We're just filling up prisons with non-violent offenders.

However, I personally feel that the existence of this sort of overreach is less of a plan to criminalize everyone, and more of a natural outgrowth of increased technology, communications, and capabilities for everyone. There has been the suggestion that eventually every individual might have control of some amount of power or energy equivalent to a nuclear bomb simply through the steady march of scientific advancement. Regulations that attempt to control this will become increasingly centralized and oppressive simply because a) they are scrambling to keep up with increased capabilities and b) because their increasing ability to regulate makes it easier for them to regulate more.

That's why I wonder at people who want to legalize certain drugs, but at the same time, want the government to control health care or other things. The government is going to eventually use its control over various things to restrict completely unrelated actions. Consider the "Interstate Commerce" clause of the Constitution. The founders were 18th Century gentlemen who thought the apex of technology and interstate commerce would be things like log roads and canals which would cross borders and so should be coordinated Federally. Do we really believe that they meant for that clause to turn into the enabling clause for all sorts of items that are only tangentially related to commerce (as it existed in their time)?

I think you clearly see the problem, but the actual cause and process isn't that there are certain moralizing fascists in charge. The process of government overreach grants it's power to whoever can grip the reins, Democrat or Republican, fascist or socialist. And in the process, even those "controllers" simply become grey government politicians who are riding the tiger because they are afraid to get off (or they enjoy the ride).

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[SuricouRaven]

If prostitution were legalised, I expect demand for those sex slaves would go down to the point it was no longer a commercially viable criminal enterprise. Trafficking covertly and maintaining security around the slave doesn't come cheap.

Re: You break the law you go to jail

[tnk1]

I'd say that if he was a whistleblower, he'd have taken more care of what he did release, and tried to keep it "on-topic" for some abuses that he could validate were serious and needed to be focused on. He'd also have taken some interest in how they were presented. Presenting the video in question as "Collateral Murder" was frankly incendiary and not conducive to debate, and while he was not responsible for that presentation, Manning selected the outlet and controlled the flow of the data.

I think it would be safe to say that in any organization, there are individuals in there who have bad days, or who are catty or assholes. We're all that way sometimes. By simply dumping hundreds of cables out there, he didn't just expose possible illegal scenarios, he held the conduct of the State Department (for instance) up to a level of scrutiny that no individual would tolerate, and certainly could be detrimental to a department that is charged to work with groups or governments that individuals might find objectionable, but who those Foreign Service Officers have a duty to their elected leaders to try and do the best job they can do, and provide the most candid advice they can.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[davydagger]

but if prostitution where legal, the amount of sex slaves would go down, and the government would be able to ensure protections for prostitutes, and make their living conditions better.

The reason they can be treated like sex slaves, is because they can't go to the cops to complain.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[howardd21]

But to be representative of the analogy, you have to add that you as the third party signed an agreement and swore under oath that certain information would be given to you that you would keep secret and not divulge to others, including information you do not agree with like the fact that the other party is cheating on his wife. You can go ahead and break that oath and agreement, and you may or may not be wrong, but you are certainly in play for legal action for breaking such an agreement.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[howardd21]

We have a lot of messy laws. I am trying to figure out how abortion is legal but if a person causes the death of a fetus in a car accident, etc. they can be charged with man slaughter.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[C0R1D4N]

Part of that oath made by the third partywas however to uphold and defend the marriage contract above all other concerns, even your own life.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[x0ra]

Nothing really matter if I have the big guns (figuratively and literally). You're just gonna accept that the law I made was respecting the marriage contract.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[bluefoxlucid]

Not relevant analogy. He said that it's wrong if it's illegal because you don't know it's really wrong unless it's made illegal. If it's not illegal it's not wrong.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, you know, a jury.

Agreeing that something is wrong and something actually being wrong are never the same thing.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Jherek Carnelian]

Probably because it was easier to overload manslaughter than to come up with a brand new crime.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad analogy.

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means...

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Pirulo]

please mod parent up, public massive information about jury nullification is the only thing that can save the US

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[cheekyjohnson]

In general wrong and illegal are the same thing

That's a matter of personal opinion.

because no one will be able to decide what is wrong unless it's defined that way.

Of course they would be able to. What, you think people lack opinions?

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, are Hitler

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[cusco]

It would always be a "commercially viable criminal enterprise" because slaves can be forced to put up with things that a prostitute would not agree to or would charge a prohibitive fee for, such as unprotected violent sex with HIV-positive customers.

Re: You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

The jury's role isn't to decide right from wrong, or what the law is or should be. Their role is to decide the "facts" (i.e. what happened); everything else is a legal question for the judges and lawyers (and legislature and voters).

Jury nullification is the only way around that, and it's a gray area some judges use to declare a mistrial.

Re: You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

A much better analogy would be you tell someone's wife you saw him at lunch with some other woman.

Are you wrong? In his eyes, absolutely YES, in her eyes, the info is OK but you are creepy, to everyone else, we're forced to question your motives - and that's not easy.

But what do you tell yourself when she looks at you and says "I know."

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[rahvin112]

Yes sex slaves was a bad example because as you say legal prostitution would probably negate most of the demand. On the other hand there are plenty of examples where organized crime would exist. Before prohibition made organized crime highly profitable most of the Mafia made their living hijacking trucks and selling the stolen merchandise out of the trunk of a car. In what example would you think that hijacking could be legal?

One of the other major areas that organized crime made money before drugs was in charging businesses "protection". This was naturally extended to ports where the charged shippers "protection". When the major organized crime busting came through and stopped it there were estimates that organized crime was adding 5% to the cost of every single item sold in cities like Chicago and New York.

Because of this it's very likely the currency and IRS controls would have been passed anyway to provide a weapon against this organized crime.

Re: You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it any different than "pulling the plug" vs. smothering the same person with a pillow?

Am I comparing a fetus to a person in a vegetative state? Yes.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[grantspassalan]

That's a matter of personal opinion. In general wrong and illegal are the same thing, because no one will be able to decide what is wrong unless it's defined that way.

No, it's a matter of fundamental morals. If you'd lived in nazi Germany, would you have ratted on a neighbour hiding Jews? Not doing so was illegal, but also the only right thing to do.

Equating illegal with wrong means you're uncritically accepting your government as the ultimate judge in ethical matters.

Where do fundamental morals come from? If the government is not the ultimate judge of ethical matters, who is? The government after all is nothing but a collection of people, such as in the Nazi case, who have decided that the Jews are "subhuman". In the pre-Civil War South, blacks were not considered to be human, but mere property, such as cattle or sheep. It is really a question of whether or not there are absolutes in the moral and ethical realm, as there are in the physical realm. No one can repeal or negate the law of gravity, because it is absolute as are all natural laws.

At one time people believed that all laws, whether natural or moral were put in place by the Supreme Lawgiver, God. The founding fathers believed that all humans have inalienable rights that are given to them by the author of life. All governments everywhere can and have only ever taken away these divinely given rights of all people. If God is left out of the equation, such as is commonly the case today, exactly who decides what is moral or ethical? Is it the majority opinion? Is it the one with the biggest and best weapons? Who?

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Kielistic]

Only if there are enough unprotected violent-sex HIV-positive customers willing to pay high enough fees to justify a very dangerous and fairly difficult crime ring. I may be naive but that sounds to me like a very very small niche. Which is exactly what the parent said. I would quite f confidently posit that the vast majority of people that would pay for a prostitute are looking for fairly vanilla sex. Probably looking for what is slightly below the level of the majority of pornography. Which, demonstrably, there is no problem finding people willing to do for money.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[SolitaryMan]

It actually depends on a bunch of other market conditions which are not easy to measure.

1. You assume that when you legalize prostitution the demand will stay the same. Not necessarily so. The spike in demand may make the slaves even more profitable.
2. It may make it easier to cover the illegal actions. Similar to like it is easier to sell illegal drugs where some "light" drugs are legal.

The issue is pretty complex and the results may not be the same in different communities, depending on where are they on the market curve at the moment.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Already proven incorrect and untrue.

You personally have broken at least 4 federal laws today, and that is assuming you literally slept 24 hours through the entire day. A single second of waking time and you have committed many more than just 4 federal crimes, more like 10-50.

Have you purchased anything today? That's a federal crime.
Have you NOT purchased anything today? That is also a federal crime.
Both are detailed under the federal interstate commerce act if you care to read it.

You are not in jail, you are posting on slashdot.
Thus, proof that breaking a ton of laws does not result in you being in prison nor jail.

Your entire basis is flawed and wrong.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Livius]

Not everything, but no-one cared because many people didn't think the 1918 revolution was legitimate anyway.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

but if prostitution where legal, the amount of sex slaves would go down

...and part of the reason for that is that "human trafficking" is defined in such a way that if a pimp helps a prostitute move to a more profitable city, it counts as "human trafficking" even if she is free to leave any time she wishes.

There's a reason you don't see television shows about "I was chained up in a basement and forced to have sex with random men for ten years." It's because "human trafficking," at least in the U.S., is essentially a work of fiction.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it has to do with writing things down on paper.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when it was illegal for blacks to drink from the same water fountains as whites. Are you suggesting that a black drinking from a water fountain marked "Whites only" was wrong, because it was illegal?

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

I've just realised - he's a Christian. One of those particular brands of Christian that believes that the only true morality comes from his particular version of their god, and everyone else is a minion of Satan.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[david_thornley]

Except that Hitler did not always obey the law. In particular, he committed illegal acts before he could dictate the laws, but even afterwards he violated treaties binding on Germany, including the laws of war. I rather doubt he always went through the formality of changing the law when he could, and very likely broke German law, but I haven't studied that part of his career as much.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[CanHasDIY]

I think, by arguing specifics, you're missing the spirit of Dr. King's words.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[david_thornley]

Possibly, but I often miss the spirit of words that include inaccurate and sweeping generalizations to make a point. I understand his point that highly immoral things can be legal, but I'd think of real examples - and Dr. King had enough of those.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[davydagger]

But policing crimes with a victim is far easier, there is far more evidence, more witnesses, and far less sympathy.

you make it sound likes its equal effort for the government to enforce a law against the people, as opposed to protecting the people.

When people are being protected, their willingness to help the police goes up. This is how law enforcement is supposed to work.

When the populace is hostile to the police, you need more police, because no one is reporting crimes, so you need to spy on, harrass, and intimidate citizens to comply.

Re:You break the law you go to jail

[davydagger]

There are ways of coercing people that don't include chaining them up in basements.

While its true, a hooker has more a boss/employee relationship, there are very few if any protections for them, and they are often exploited.

I choose to believe

[Anonymous Coward]

that he fell victim to the 5 dollar wrench.

Re:I choose to believe

[wbr1]

This is the U.S. Military and government. That wrench probably cost $5000.

Re:I choose to believe

[kthreadd]

But it will work in both space and under water.

Re:I choose to believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe he realized that releasing thousands of documents without filtering them might have put people in danger. For example some of the diplomatic cables detailed intelligence and counter insurgency plans and their exposure may have put people in danger. To me, Bradley's motive to expose wrongdoing was somewhat negated by the lack of restraint and sense about what to release.

Re:I choose to believe

[Anonymous Coward]

And be able to grab the rare 7-sided bolt used only in the F-937-B-257GQXMVP.

It's not even metric!

Re:I choose to believe

[Anonymous Coward]

yes it might have vs it released information of actual war crimes and civilian deaths... that no one has been convicted off just goes to show you where your priorities are.

Re:I choose to believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Why have one wrench for $5 when you can have two for $2500.

Re:I choose to believe

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the U.S. Military and government. That wrench probably cost $5000.

CMMI!

Re:I choose to believe

[Kielistic]

But it will have a shock absorbing handle to avoid handler injury from vibrations caused by impact.

Re:I choose to believe

[Bacon Bits]

Nonsense. The wrench cost $5. The Federal Government was billed $5000. Of the rest, $2000 went to election contributions, $400 went to the defense contractor, $2400 went to hidden defense slush funds, and the remaining $95 was spent on the bureaucracy required to keep such a maladaptive system in place.

Re:I choose to believe

[Rakarra]

$95 on bureaucracy? You are optimistic!

Not Quite

[Anonymous Coward]

He apologized for the result of his action, not his action.

Re:Not Quite

[barlevg]

"I look back at my decisions and wonder, 'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'"

That struck me as an apology for the action itself.

Re:Not Quite

[camperdave]

"I look back at my decisions and wonder, 'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'"

That struck me as an apology for the action itself.

That struck me as a "they broke me", rather than an "I'm sorry".

Re:Not Quite

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's not an apology, that's a statement of self deprecation; meaning that he should have known that the powers he is up against are so overwhelming that he should have just kept his mouth shut than try to do the right thing. David vs. Goliath, without god's grace to see him through.

Re:Not Quite

[barlevg]

I wasn't commenting on his sincerity, and the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Re:Not Quite

[freezin fat guy]

People forget that America was built by people who refused to question authority, people who knew their place, people who quietly did their part for their superiors and didn't waste time with foolish, liberal ideologies like, well liberty and equality.

Re:Not Quite

[geekoid]

Where in the sentence does he say he is sorry?
It's not even close to an apology. I've heard politicians come closer to apologizing.

Re:Not Quite

[geekoid]

It was built by people who would have lost their shirts if the British stayed in control and turned over the vast majority of the central US to the french, as was their plan.
They then used fear of Catholics, who where growing in Canada, and lied about taxes by making a big show even tough Taxed tea was cheaper and higher quality then black market tea.
And it was liberty and equality for educate white men.

Re:Not Quite

[gl4ss]

it sounds more like "I was naive to think that doing the right thing would change anything for the better".

like, that it was naive to think that anyone would flinch and any war criminals would get what's coming to them... naive to think that exposing any crimes would put a stop to them, naive that those in authority would do jack shit about them.

even then, it's unlikely that he got to say whatever he wanted anyways.

Re:Not Quite

[SoTerrified]

"I look back at my decisions and wonder, 'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'"

That struck me as Bradley saying "I should not be thinking for myself, questioning my superiors and acting according to my morals. I should just follow orders."

Thank goodness the Nuremberg trials have shown that this is the right attitude for a soldier. Never question superiors, never act in a way contrary to their orders no matter how many rights you violate. Bradley Manning has learned...

Re:Not Quite

[tnk1]

Actually, the American Revolution was very much led from the top. Yes, there were Enlightenment values involved, but that was mostly because those were fashionable in the upper and middle classes at the time.

Let's be clear, the Revolution was more about self-determination and local rule than it was about "liberty" in any absolute sense. They simply wanted the same rights that you would have gotten in England at the time if you happened to live there.

Where I think that America succeeded where European nations (of that time) failed, was the understanding that men of ability did not have to be born of a particular class. You could be a "New Man" and make a name for yourself.

On the other hand, they also very much subscribed to the notion that if you could make it into that class without having to rely on aristocratic birth, you should have a right to rule over your family, and in a larger sense, over the country. In fact, you actually would have the duty to do so. That is why they very carefully moderated the ability for there to be pure popular expressions by having a Senate and an Electoral College.

The US was founded on a later interpretation of Republican Roman values. There was nothing purely egalitarian about those, although there was always the sense that it could lead to something more equitable IF the greater population could be educated and made responsible enough to take it seriously.

Re:Not Quite

[Sperbels]

"I look back at my decisions and wonder, 'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'"

That struck me as an apology for the action itself.

You really believe that? That statement is so densely packed with sarcasm you could use it as an armor piercing round.

Re:Not Quite

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Thank goodness the Nuremberg trials have shown that this is the right attitude for a soldier. Never question superiors, never act in a way contrary to their orders no matter how many rights you violate. Bradley Manning has learned...

US and (I believe) international law is actually pretty clear. Officers have the right and duty to question their orders, and to refuse illegal orders. Enlisted men, such as Bradley, are supposed to follow an illegal order issued by someone in a position to legally give an order. They're not allowed to make the distinction between types of orders (legal, illegal, dumb strategically).

Re:Not Quite

[Livius]

In Europe, land was scarce and owning land had social and legal significance.

In North America, there was more land than people knew what to do with.

Re:Not Quite

[Livius]

Roman values worked fine at first. After the subjugation of Carthage after the Second Punic War (or Germany/Japan after the Second World War) there was so much wealth in the hands of so few that values didn't count so much.

Re:Not Quite

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you posted tongue-in-cheek with that last paragraph. If so please mark this better.

In fact the Nuremberg trials explicitly rejected the offered defense of "I was just following orders". Nuremberg set a precedent that crimes against humanity could not be offloaded on to higher levels of command. The individual bears that responsibility.

Of course there are multiple newer counter examples. However it's very difficult to blame Nuremberg for that.

If you really want to challenge Nuremberg, their problem is that they prosecuted in the absence of any statute law. This is a straightforward violation of the principles of common law.

Re:Not Quite

[complete loony]

To me, it sounds more like "I believed my actions would change the world, but the world didn't change. What about those with the proper authority to actually change the world, did they do anything?"

Belief

[Anonymous Coward]

"I look back at my decisions and wonder, 'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'"

Because those with the authority weren't going to do anything for the betterment of the world.

Re:Belief

[Anonymous Coward]

You have been flagged. Random beat downs may occur in the future.

NSA bot #4339

Re:Belief

[Hatta]

Exactly. Those in authority care nothing for the betterment of the world. Only their own betterment, which is tied to the betterment of the rich and powerful.

Resistance to those with authority is the only way we are actually going to better the world.

Re:Belief

[geekoid]

To bad the leak document from him show that you are wrong.

Re:Belief

[Hatta]

Which documents show that? The ones showing our military murdering unarmed civilians and journalists taking a wounded man to the hospital? The ones showing that US defense contractors engaged in child trafficking? The ones showing that the US condones torture?

If the US military wants to better the world, they can start by bettering themselves.

Re:Belief

[BForrester]

*Which* premise is wrong, and *what* part of the leaked documents shows that?

Re:Belief

[grantspassalan]

Exactly. Those in authority care nothing for the betterment of the world. Only their own betterment, which is tied to the betterment of the rich and powerful.

Resistance to those with authority is the only way we are actually going to better the world.

Resistance to those in authority would not be necessary if they were intrinsically good and not evil. The problem is that people are not intrinsically good, but can and do in fact get corrupted and let the evil within them take control of them. After that they desperately seek to control everyone else.

Re:Belief

[elucido]

But how would he be in the position to know what they are doing? He was low level.

By the end

[Anonymous Coward]

He loved Big Brother.

Ministry of truth

[MadTinfoilHatter]

After a few months in the basement of the ministry of truth he had finally learned to love Big Brother...

Re:Ministry of truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Sends chills down the spine, doesn't it?

Re:Ministry of truth

[bluefoxlucid]

This is what I was thinking. About the bullet entering his brain and him being thankful.

Re:Ministry of truth

[i kan reed]

It was the ministry of love. Ministry of truth is more like the NSA.

Re:Ministry of truth

[Anonymous Coward]

and another 5 decades behind bars at the ministry of leavenworth he will learn to love dick

Re:Ministry of truth

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

No.

It's the Ministry of Love that's in charge of torture. The Ministry of Truth is in charge of revising the history books to match current political convenience.

Re:Ministry of truth

[geekoid]

Another person referring to 1984 and not getting it right. Have ANY of you people actually read the book?

And he didn't apologize for his actions.

Re:Ministry of truth

[Anonymous Coward]

"Underneath the spreading chestnut tree,
I sold you and you sold me"

The truth is a boot stomping on a human face... forever.

Re:Ministry of truth

[Anonymous Coward]

He already does, next time read the full article.
And yes, the USA bravest soldier is a faggy.

"America, Fuck Yeah", or should I say: "America, fuck me you handsome man yeah!!"

Re:Ministry of truth

[fonske]

"You can't h-a-n-d-l-e the truth mister junior analist"
A man of high authority once said this with a lot of pathos.
It's documented in the moving pictures.
Oh wait, the man of high authority got arrested.
Yeah well, it's just moving pictures really.

Re:Ministry of truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, he won't get the bullet, but be left to rot in a dungeon.

Oh yeah, totally believable.

[Anonymous Coward]

So they "enhanced interrogation" and/or solitary'd him until he broke and said anything they want to make the pain stop, and we're totally supposed to think that his epiphany was due to suddenly remembering just how free we are and people-loving is our government?

Riiiiiiight.

*Fun fact my captcha there was "kneecap". How appropriate.

Re:Oh yeah, totally believable.

[Sepodati]

Or... he's just saying what his lawyers told him to say. I know, it's more fun to blame torture, though.

Re:Oh yeah, totally believable.

[neonKow]

Pretty sure the torture plays a role in why his lawyers told him to say that, though.

Of course, we could just ignore the torture and pretend he'd act the same way if he weren't detained in solitary for 8 months.

Re: Oh yeah, totally believable.

[Anonymous Coward]

What? They tortured his lawyers, now, too?

Re:Oh yeah, totally believable.

[shutdown -p now]

To be honest, the wording of this "apology" is so blunt and self-humiliating that it immediately evokes images of a forced confession, and specifically of the final words of 1984. I'm beginning to think that this may well be deliberate - he can't openly spit in his captives' faces for the fear that they will make his life even worse than it already is, but he can subtly mock them like that in front of the entire world when they conveniently provide the spotlight.

Not quite that either

[Anonymous Coward]

He apologised if the accusations made against him without evidence (that he damaged the USA or innocent people) were true for doing it.

However, since the people he's hurt are criminals and the USA has not been damaged (the criminals who think they ARE the USA [see Noah in Bourne Legacy] have been damaged, but I count them not the USA), there's nothing to apologise for.

They probably said that he'd be dangling on the edge of a trapdoor if he didn't at least let it be hinted he was at fault.

No one will believe it.

[Kid Zero]

I think we've already summed this one up.

1. His backers will just assume he's either lying to get a lighter sentence, or he's been to the reeducation camp and loves Big Brother now.

2. His detractors? They will believe he's trying to get a lighter sentence and still isn't sorry.

Either way, he deserves the jail-time and not martyrdom.

Re:No one will believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because when we give up on the mythical man in the sky as our supreme leader whom we follow blindly, it is important we replace it with a supreme leader who you didn't vote for and whom you typically can't leave without kissing a new leader's ass (and giving the old leader your respects in the form of taxes). Makes sense, I guess.

Re:No one will believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Either way, he deserves the jail-time and not martyrdom.

I don't think that word means what you think it means

Having been tortured and mistreated before trial, he is now going to jail for what he has done. That is pretty much a definition of martyrdom.

The accusers have failed to show any actual harm, although they tried to introduce "his leaks killed people", that didn't fly in court.

Re:No one will believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Either way, he deserves the jail-time and not martyrdom.

And you deserve cancer.

Re:No one will believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, in an article that has nothing to do with religion, you're denigrating religion because something that isn't religious fits your concept of what religion would do.

By the way, this is one of the ways that the world is just as shitty without religion as it is with religion. But don't let that little detail get in the way of your atheist utopia.

Re:No one will believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Either way, he deserves the jail-time and not martyrdom.

I don't think that word means what you think it means

Having been tortured and mistreated before trial, he is now going to jail for what he has done. That is pretty much a definition of martyrdom.

The accusers have failed to show any actual harm, although they tried to introduce "his leaks killed people", that didn't fly in court.

Actually, it's you who don't know what "martyrdom" is.

A martyr is someone who is killed for their beliefs. A "confessor" is someone who only suffers for theirs.

Re:No one will believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is martyrdom not religious?

Where have I read this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did he also say he loved Big Brother?

Unintended Consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

At least he is acknowledging how reckless he was in mass dumping data like that. He only had a gut feeling that he was doing more good than bad and that isn't enough to do what he did when lives are on the line.

Re:Unintended Consequences

[geirlk]

Thing is, in international conflicts, lives are on the line every day. It's just whose lives are endangered that one side takes issue with.

Lives are also daily at stake in the more or less secret drone wars the US are waging around the world today. Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Jemen are some examples. Civilians get killed by US drone pilots fromthe other side of the planet.

I for one am happy the world is starting to get a look into US dealings in foreign affairs. Like hiw Norwegian wx-coos have been recruited by the US embassy in Oslo to spy on Norwegian citizens for the US.

No, the world clearly needs more Mannings' and Snowden's.

A little postscript: This time around it was the US that got busted, I'm hoping for similar leaks in the whole world. We need more transparancy.

Re:Unintended Consequences

[geirlk]

Dang touch keyboard. So many errors.. Sorry!

"ex-cops" it should read in there somewhere.

Re:Unintended Consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

Dang touch keyboard. So many errors.. Sorry!

"ex-cops" it should read in there somewhere.

Damn, I was already googleing the mysterious Norwegian wx-coos.

Re:Unintended Consequences

[TubeSteak]

A little postscript: This time around it was the US that got busted, I'm hoping for similar leaks in the whole world. We need more transparancy.

http://wikileaks.org/syria-files/
"The data is more than eight times the size of 'Cablegate' in terms of number of documents,
and more than 100 times the size in terms of data."

Even the smallest person can change the world

[Gothmolly]

It sucks that you're locked up buddy, but you did the right thing.

Re:Even the smallest person can change the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, jeopardizing peoples lives, undercut long term diplomatic missions. That sure is the right thing.

Re:Even the smallest person can change the world

[Anonymous Coward]

He's like Frodo Baggins, if Frodo had been tortured for years and years.

Re:Even the smallest person can change the world

[lister king of smeg]

how did he jeopardize the lives of anyone but those corrupt ones doing wrong?

Re:Even the smallest person can change the world

[Anonymous Coward]

So nothing new that he United States Government isnt doing itself? He just exposed the fact that the USA was conducting illegal and immoral combat missions while violating Rules of Engagement of Enemies while at "War". yeah let him hang for exposing wrongdoings /sarcasm.

Re:Even the smallest person can change the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. If the long term diplomatic relations are built on lies, it is the right thing is to expose them, so proper relations can be built. And when the US government refuse to be honest, that does endanger people's lives - and when that is changed, that endanger other people's lives. Endangering people's lives is the stake at this scale game.

Re:Even the smallest person can change the world

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose those 90% of the sysadmins who are losing their jobs and their families/dependents are getting hurt

Re:Even the smallest person can change the world

[geoffrobinson]

When he released diplomatic communiques he also gave up who was working with the State Department and helping us, especially people in hostile areas.

Snowden, at least so far, has only been giving up capabilities, not actual peoples.

Re:Even the smallest person can change the world

[SleazyRidr]

Have there been any documented attacks on people revealed in Manning's leaks? It's such a high profile issue that I'd imagine there would have been a lot of reports on it by now, but I haven't seen any.

Re:Even the smallest person can change the world

[Anonymous Coward]

So you don't mind dick cheney going for 90 years in a penitentiary for leaking that Valerie Palme was a CIA agent?

Re:Even the smallest person can change the world

[Anonymous Coward]

True... but if they're in the right, why did none of those sys admins do what Snowden did? Oh, there are valid reasons, don't get me wrong -- not everyone is a guy with no kids and minimal family exposure like Snowden. Still, this thing has been going on for a long while.

Re:Even the smallest person can change the world

[Sardaukar86]

Yes, jeopardizing peoples lives, undercut long term diplomatic missions. That sure is the right thing.

So.. how's that whole 'critical thinking' thing working out for you then?

Re:Even the smallest person can change the world

[dave420]

The US government disagrees with you - they've stated no-one was hurt due to the releases.

wa wa wa

[Anonymous Coward]

He was entrusted with a clearance. He broke his word, he broke whatever trust and faith and responsibilities that his chain of command entrusted in him. He violated Operational Security. I cannot bring myself to care about how "sorry" he is or isn't. He messed up in the biggest way possible for someone of his job.

Re: wa wa wa

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to be trolling. So if you go to work tomorrow and your bosses murder 12 children then dump the bodies in a river - you wont report it and because hey, its in your job description. You have no spine.

Re:wa wa wa

[Vernes]

Ah, the "just following orders" excuse.

Re: wa wa wa

[I'm New Around Here]

If I go to work tomorrow for an organization whose job is killing people who are not in the organization, then I won't be surprised when I find evidence they did so. You might as well put on trial all governments everywhere if you don't think bad things should ever happen.

Re:wa wa wa

[Hatta]

He broke his word, he broke whatever trust and faith and responsibilities that his chain of command entrusted in him.

What about the trust and faith he placed in his chain of command, which was broken by covering up illegal and immoral actions condoned by that chain of command? That's far worse than anything Manning did.

He messed up in the biggest way possible for someone of his job.

The only way Manning messed up was confiding in Adrian Lamo.

Re: wa wa wa

[Hatta]

Bad things happen, but when they happen they should be aired publically and those responsible tried for their crimes. Cover-ups, like Manning exposed, are never acceptable in a free country.

Re:wa wa wa

[davydagger]

Read Adrian Lamo's story. Thats a little fucked up too. That man was broken by the system as well.

If there ever was a reason to hate institutionalized psychiatry its Adrian Lamo.(he got arrested once, after he reported a crime against his property, because they cop though he talked like a mental patient, so he was forcibly institutionalized, also social stigmitation made him an outcast wandering the streets for about a decade. Men like him are damn easy to coerce into doing whatever. I suspect some form of stockholm syndrome from a decade of abuse from the system.)

Re:wa wa wa

[Anonymous Coward]

He upheld the Oath he swore to protect the constitution from Enemies Foreign AND Domestic.

Re:wa wa wa

[Hatta]

That's a good point. Really, Manning should not have talked to anyone. If he simply had to talk to someone, there are much safer ways to do it than IM.

Re:wa wa wa

[x0ra]

He was entrusted with a clearance. He broke his word, ....

His supreme order was to uphold the constitution. If the US conducted acts which he judged were violating the constitution, it was his duty to betray his superiors. This or he just follow the result of the Milgram's experiment...

Stockholm Syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

Stockholm Syndrome - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

We now return you to Jersey Shore...

Re:Stockholm Syndrome

[macbeth66]

He's suffering from no such thing. He just wants the lightest sentence he can get. Can you blame him?

Re:Stockholm Syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

He just wants the lightest sentence he can get.

"lightest sentence" sounds like "coolest spot on the sun".

Amazing!

[Notabadguy]

Torture has come so far in the last 200 years that when the defendant gets dragged into the court room, there isn't even visible evidence of Iron Maiden puncture marks, the flopping limbs that come from the rack, the rapid flinching from water boarding, or the glossy eyed stare from being subjected to countless hours of network TV.

 

Re:Amazing!

[ebno-10db]

the glossy eyed stare from being subjected to countless hours of network TV

Bringing "cruel and unusual punishment" to a new extreme.

Re:Amazing!

[Anonymous Coward]

We are told to believe a clueless junior analyst left alone with hundreds of thousands of sensitive military and diplomatic documents who became bad when he tried to do something good, (in his opinion). But.. if that material was so sensitive then what fucken idiot boss gave him access to so much and didn't think it could become a problem if any of it got out ? Why isn't his fuckn idiot boss also being held on charges for being an ass-hole ?

Re:Amazing!

[tnk1]

Ridiculous. There doesn't need to be any torture. He's someone who is in his early 20s looking at the possibility of the rest of his life in a military prison. Like many younger people, he didn't think through the results of his "heroism".

To me his statement sounds incredibly insincere, but insincere or not, he's trying to ensure he actually has some non-grey hair on his head the next time he's a free man. This isn't a capitulation, it's grovelling for less jail time. If one of us was stupid enough to do what he did, we'd probably grovel the same way too. No torture required.

This statement doesn't mean anything other than he's throwing himself on the mercy of the court to see if they want to be soft on him for caving in. And who knows, maybe he actually did have a change of heart. There's a lot of things people do that they regret later, jail or not. I don't think he did, but it is possible.

Re:Amazing!

[Anonymous Coward]

There doesn't need to be torture, but there WAS torture.

Manning was subjected to treatment that is internationally defined as torture. The US newspeak said it was for his own protection.

Fuck you can't make this shit up.

Re:Amazing!

[I'm New Around Here]

The next five people in his command and in charge of the secret information (computer system and network, in this case) should all be sitting right next to him, and getting the same punishment he is getting. The fact is they all dropped the ball in letting this information loose.

Re:Amazing!

[davydagger]

Or mabey there are some people left in this country who have greater goals than self-advancement and self-promotion.

This drives our celebrity obsessed culture crazy, because it makes the rest of us look bad

Re:Amazing!

[Anonymous Coward]

No torture required? Maybe, but Big Brother has been generous to this one.

captcha: autocrat

Re:Amazing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the Ludovico technique. (Captcha is 'dissent'.)

Re:Amazing!

[Anonymous Coward]

If one of us was stupid enough to do what he did

Why not brave?

Greatest Hero

[Anonymous Coward]

Manning is a hero. The disclosures of the illegal activities of the illegal U.S.A. Government will reverberate for decades. It had to be done.

Re:Greatest Hero

[Anonymous Coward]

Manning is a hero. The disclosures of the illegal activities of the illegal U.S.A. Government will reverberate for decades. It had to be done.

If that's all he released I might feel differently.

Re:Greatest Hero

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you have no idea what he leaked, and just have a boner against the us Government. He leaked video of a group of armed men in a war zone getting shot by a helicoptor. Legal, but a mistake - on both sides. Then a van appeared and was shot - also a mistake. There were 2 kids in the van, which was not known at the time of the shooting. This folks is what happens in a war.
The leak of diplomatic cables was just Julian the rapist being a dick.

Manning was just a profoundly mentally disturbed guy. From attacking his mother with a knife, to punching a female coworker in the face, to being discovered curled in a fetal position in a cabinet, with a knife on the floor and "I Want" carved in the back of a chair - he is one sick puppy. The government would have had to spend years putting him back together before they could break him.

He is a sad pathetic little man exploited by Julian the rapist..

Re:Greatest Hero

[Anonymous Coward]

Except nothing he rleaked was a crime. Calling theUS government illigal is a significant tell though/

Re:Greatest Hero

[Anonymous Coward]

Manning is a hero. The disclosures of the illegal activities of the illegal U.S.A. Government will reverberate for decades. It had to be done.

I see this a lot but there's never a citation or actual example.

The only war crime he exposed was the people who got shot by the helicopter. They were committing TWO war crimes- refusing to wear a uniform on a field of battle and using civilians as human shields. The news agency admitted the reporters were embedded with a group of armed fighters who were hiding among civilians, and Assange was forced to admit he'd HEAVILY edited the video.

Seriously, go read the fucking cables. I have yet to see any war crimes in any of them. For fuck's sake, most of them are completely routine shit. One of them was about what kind of food a diplomat wanted to eat when he arrived at his destination.

box what about 5-10+ years of end less boot camp

[Joe_Dragon]

box what about 5-10+ years of end less boot camp with and hardass DI?

Mr. Manning ...

[MacTO]

Any action is going to have positive and negative consequences. The question is: does the good outweigh the bad?

It's probably too early to tell if your actions served the greater good.

On the other hand, what you did was important for your country: the United States is a representative democracy. In order for your government to work as intended, both the representatives and electorat must have information regarding both policies and how those policies are implemented. Without that information, decisions are ill informed (at best) and possibly even manipulated to serve the interests of the government, a particular branch of the government, or a small group of individuals (at worse).

Re:Mr. Manning ...

[davydagger]

the United States is a pretend democracy. Only certain opions are allowed to be heard, only certain people are allowed to protest.

Only certain parties are really allowed to run.

Everything else is attacked by the state aparatus, or affiliated corporations, to include the media, who have all the best politicians, and run the campaigns for all politicians.

Chris Dodd, Lamar Smith, Al Franken, Chuck Hagel, Harry Ried, John McCain, are all paid media representatives.

In turn this doesn't get reported, because, who's going to report it?

Re:Mr. Manning ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the United States is a Constitutional Republic.

Re:Mr. Manning ...

[Howitzer86]

Was. The constitution is nothing more than a series of suggestions now.

Re:Mr. Manning ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad the masses have pretty much swallowed the government's line on this as gospel. And the "libertarian nutjobs" that disagree, well, the government is pretty good at marginalizing them as well. And when the message starts to reverberate a bit too much amongst the masses, well, time for a big speech to make it look like it's being handled, and then give a job to a crony whose oversight is worthless.

I still want to know why

[apcullen]

If there was something that the US was doing that bothered him, why didn't he just leak what was relevant to that instead of just dumping everything? There were a lot of embarrassing revelations that came out of his wikileaks dump, and whatever he was trying to accomplish, those stupid but insignificant tid-bits overshadowed it.

Re:I still want to know why

[scarboni888]

Somebody had to do it wrong so that others who follow know exactly what not to do.

Remember: "If you can't be a guiding light to others you'll just have to serve as a bad example"

Either way you can be useful, right?

Re:I still want to know why

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't he initially leak just the video of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike ?

Re:I still want to know why

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you shut up, you are a traitor and a nobody, he is a hero and a historic person.

Re:I still want to know why

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Wikileaks was the only one willing to touch him. When the U.S. government went after them they panicked and hit the send all button.

Journalists are not perfect beings. If they think that something is too dangerous to write about; they won't write about it, the public be damned. Manning nearly got charged with treason, do you really think "freedom of the press" would have protected a journalist? (Hint: It didn't help Wikileaks)

Re:I still want to know why

[Anonymous Coward]

A political prisoner is tortured for years and your reaction is to look for fault in HIM?! Fuck you.

Re:I still want to know why

[Qwertie]

Bradley Manning didn't dump everything. His most famous leak, the 250,000 diplomatic cables, were not simply released. According to Wikipedia, at first Wikileaks itself released just a couple of cables. Next, it partnered with some news outlets to select specific cables to leak (with redactions to prevent harm to individuals). They released 220 cables at first, and a few thousand more later. Granted, the whole set of 250,000 were fully accessible to specific journalists, but it's not at all the same as a "data dump".

Some months later, a boneheaded journalist published the actual password for decrypting the original cables; later, a backup of the encrypted cables somehow became available as a torrent, so the full set of cables could be decrypted. But this was unintentional and of course, neither of these mistakes was made by Manning himself.

I myself question the wisdom of Manning's release of these cables (I respect him mainly for leaking the Collateral Murder video) but the idea that he "dumped everything" is plainly false.

Re:I still want to know why

[Anonymous Coward]

Bradley Manning didn't dump everything. His most famous leak, the 250,000 diplomatic cables, were not simply released. ... the idea that he "dumped everything" is plainly false.

The chain of events you spell out starts with HIM DUMPING THE CABLES with WikiLeaks or specific journalists. The fact that you happen to LIKE WikiLeaks doesn't make the indescriminate dumping of thousands of diplomatic cables with them ok.

If Manning had selectively released to WikiLeaks (and/or reports and/or whomever) only the unlawful / shamful /etc. acts he was concern about I think a lot more people would have respect for what he did. (see Snowden)

Re:I still want to know why

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're missing the point of the question. He may not have dumped everything to everyone, but he did dump everything to a few reporters.

I really want to be on the guy's side, but the way he did it makes it hard.

Way back when (try to remember, people), Wikileaks was on Slashdot seemingly every day, with new "leaks." The site was interesting in that it was trying to be some "information wants to be free" deal, but uninteresting in that just about everything they posted was uninteresting. This was due to their policy of publishing anything they were sent. People sent them anything and everything, and most of it wasn't interesting at all, aside from the fact that it was supposed to be secret. Then it seems Manning decided to play along by sending them anything and everything he could grab, with a similar disregard as to whether or not any of it was interesting, nevermind whether any of it would qualify as "whistle-blowing." Perhaps he simply agreed with the "information wants to be free" ideal. Then, while looking at their latest score, Wikileaks found some interesting things, like the video they heavily edited into the "collateral murder" video, and some of those cables were quite revealing as well. It was at that time that Wikileaks suddenly decided it cared about being a positive force in the world, rather than simply a dumping ground for any secret information anyone could get their hands on. ...and, no surprise, the Slashdot crowd happily forgot what Wikileaks previously was and bought into their new image as freedom-fighters, and they happily ignored that most of what Manning leaked he had no justification to leak, and that it is quite possible that he only leaked anything of whistle-blowing quality by accident.

So they asked the U.S. government for help in redacting the documents. Being well aware of Wikileaks' previous behavior, it would have been foolish for the government to not assume that Wikileaks would simply post the entirety of what they had been given anyway, and also post the list of what the U.S. government had asked them to redact. Wikileaks then reviewed some of the documents it had been given, but it eventually grew tired of its new ways, and reverted to its old ways by "accidentally" leaking an encrypted file of everything Manning had given them, then "accidentally" leaking the password. This enabled them to maintain their newly-gained moral high ground while still receiving credit for such a large and embarrassing-for-the-US data dump.

Now if you can explain how all of that is wrong, that would be interesting to know, but at the moment it looks a lot like Manning was driving down the road shooting randomly out the window, and by chance happened to kill someone who was in the process of abducting a child, and now everyone is arguing that he is a hero and doesn't deserve to go to jail.

Re:I still want to know why

[Rockoon]

You seem to be confusing Manning with Wikileaks.

Manning dumped all of the data indiscriminately onto wikileaks lap. It is only a fortunate coincidence that wikileaks (so it appears) acted more responsibly than he did after that.

Re:I still want to know why

[Anonymous Coward]

Manning, a career soldier, took his collection of reports to a company of reporters whose job is to find the facts and report on them. Manning didn't publish the data out in the open, he sent it to Wikileaks who were tasked at reviewing and redacting the reports. I wouldn't fault Manning for his conduct in bringing the reports to the trusted Wikileaks company.

Manning's only mistake.

[Anonymous Coward]

being sorry.

Re:Manning's only mistake.

[scarboni888]

Correct.

Damn.

[stewsters]

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

Re:Damn.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had mod points, you would get them.

Re:Damn.

[shutdown -p now]

Apparently, a lot of people had this come to their minds first thing after reading the "apology". I wonder if that was intentional on his behalf.

Totally understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

I can totally relate to this. When it's you against the whole system what else can you expect someone to do .

"In over 200 years this country has never even admitted a single mistake, let alone apologized for one. We don't have government by the people for the people but by TV for the rich . I gave this documents to wikileaks to try and force my country to change for the better and encourage other people to do the same. We're not the heroes, we're the bad guys."

I would have loved him to say that. Can't put a single finger of blame on him for not saying it though.

Re:Totally understandable

[bleh-of-the-huns]

I'm sure I can find more, but just off the top of my head with no research, the US did apologize to the Japanese Americans who they put into camps during World War 2. So yes, the US has apologized (although I am not sure if they admitted that they made a mistake.)

Re:Totally understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily, he didn't say that, because it's demonstrably wrong. The US has apologized for shit loads of things.

As for who the good guys and bad guys are, that's always a matter of perspective.

Re:Totally understandable

[kaatochacha]

Yeah, they admitted the mistake AND apologized. To make matters more interesting, it was the arch-enemy of the left, Ronald Reagan, who signed it and gave the speech:
"Yet we must recognize that the internment of Japanese-Americans was just that: a mistake. For throughout the war, Japanese-Americans in the tens of thousands remained utterly loyal to the United States. Indeed, scores of Japanese-Americans volunteered for our Armed Forces, many stepping forward in the internment camps themselves. The 442d Regimental Combat Team, made up entirely of Japanese-Americans, served with immense distinction to defend this nation, their nation. Yet back at home, the soldier's families were being denied the very freedom for which so many of the soldiers themselves were laying down their lives."

Whistle Blower != Spy

[Anonymous Coward]

The crimes that were brought to light from these leaks were necessary, and it is distinguishing that the true criminals are still allowed to be free. Mr. Manning isn't a criminal, he is a whistle blower, and yet that is not how he is being treated. It is funny how quickly people forget the past.

This brave new world of ours, is a big disappointment.

1984

[Delgul]

Yep... showing respect towards the 'proper' authorities and recanting is the way to go if you end up on the wrong side of a society that is starting to show many parallels with George Orwell's 1984 (or the Spanish Inquisition or similar). I know I would. Sad but true...

Re:1984

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone here actually read 1984? It's not just a coverall for governmental actions you don't like.

If there were substantial parallels to that world, you wouldn't even be able to talk about it. You wouldn't even know to talk about it. It would have been immediately covered up and history re-written. And then in a dark room somewhere, Manning would be re-educated and then freed. No one would give a shit about him other than the Inner Party. And that would be that.

The media circus around this has nothing to do with 1984. This is at best the government being pissed about him breaking classification and doing what they'd do to anyone who did that. Or do you think that you get to break the law and get off scot free because you personally didn't like something?

Re:1984

[tragedy]

If there were substantial parallels to that world, you wouldn't even be able to talk about it. You wouldn't even know to talk about it. It would have been immediately covered up and history re-written. And then in a dark room somewhere, Manning would be re-educated and then freed. No one would give a shit about him other than the Inner Party. And that would be that.

Hmmm, if I remember 1984, after being broken, people are freed so that they can be publicly seen to have been broken. It also wasn't over there. After being released, they were quietly awaiting a surprise execution.

To quote my mother....

[HockeyPuck]

"You should have thought about that before..."

No matter what law you break

[Anonymous Coward]

Or what reason you break it you may well have to pay the price. That is precisely why we have laws.

Re:No matter what law you break

[lister king of smeg]

So you are saying that we have law to punish people? That is screwed up. We have laws so that we can have a just and fair society. When the govenment is acting unjustly and breaking the law there is no consequences to them because they make it illegal to bring the information to the people and other branches of government so that something can be done. It is legitimate to break a unjust law, especially when the unjust law is created to protect those who would abuse their power. Therefor what Manning and now Snowden have done is beyond reproach.

Re:No matter what law you break

[Hatta]

Or what reason you break it you may well have to pay the price. That is precisely why we have laws.

Why do we have laws, when they don't apply to those in power? Manning uncovered crimes, and he is the only person being punished. If you believe in the rule of law, that should chill you to the bone.

Re:No matter what law you break

[I'm New Around Here]

So you are saying that we have law to punish people? That is screwed up. We have laws so that we can have a just and fair society.

No, he didn't say that. He said we have laws so that we can have a just and fair society, so if you decide to break them, we are going to punish you more than you feel is fair. That is how criminal justice works in reality.

When the govenment is acting unjustly and breaking the law

What secrets did Manning reveal of the government acting unjustly and breaking the law?
Video of a military operation in a war zone that resulted in dead civilians that were running around with armed combatants?
Diplomatic messages that show diplomats are less than honest when dealing with assholes they can't stand?

there is no consequences to them because they make it illegal to bring the information to the people and other branches of government so that something can be done. It is legitimate to break a unjust law, especially when the unjust law is created to protect those who would abuse their power. Therefor what Manning and now Snowden have done is beyond reproach.

Snowden at least showed the US government was spying on US citizens. I don't like how he has acted since he leaked that info, but have to admit his info is actually relevant to us civilians.

Manning showed that bad things happen in war zones, and diplomacy involves being diplomatic. I don't get the hero-worship over that.

Galileo

[goruka]

I can't believe I'm reading this. After almost 400 years, we're repeating history.

Who was hurt?

[RivenAleem]

Did I miss something? Have we got actual examples of people who were hurt by this?

Re:Who was hurt?

[DMiax]

Bradley Manning, for one. He was locked without trial and in almost complete isolation for years. I'm sure others will come to mind later, I just can't think of any right now.

Re:Who was hurt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama's feelings were hurt. Clinton's too. What more do you want? Blood?

Re:Who was hurt?

[dkleinsc]

Yes, I can think of one: Bradley Manning.

Re:Who was hurt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bradley Manning, for one. He was locked without trial and in almost complete isolation for years. I'm sure others will come to mind later, I just can't think of any right now.

Exaggerate much?

Re:Who was hurt?

[Anonymous Coward]

The middle east uprisings and overthrows may have been partially triggered by the Wikileaks cables.

Re:Who was hurt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in this case.

Re:Who was hurt?

[Anonymous Coward]

valerie plame? oh, wait, that was a different leak. well, i'm sure we can look to scooter libby for an idea of the punishment manning will get, then, right? he should be expecting a presidential commutation of his sentence in the next few weeks...right?

AND YET CHENEY WALKS FREE !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Something not right about this !!

Oh, wait !! Money !! Changes everything !! - Dame Cyndi Lauper

Don't be sorry

[Hoi Polloi]

"Sorry I revealed your dirty laundry and forced you to admit the truth."

In light of his solitary confinement abuse and who knows what else I'll take his statement with a grain of salt. The government's track record for torture and abuse isn't that good.

What I was hoping for

[Sockatume]

I kind of hoped that it'd be more in the spirit of the following:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSHaCzb3yYk

LOL.

[WindBourne]

I look back at my decisions and wonder, 'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?

Now he is being facetious. To be honest, I like him for saying this. You know that he is digging at them with this.
However, the man still deserves the death penalty for his treason.

Re:LOL.

[drinkypoo]

However, the man still deserves the death penalty for his treason.

However, it's still not treason. He may have broken his oath, but he upheld his responsibility to the American people. And you and all the other people calling him a traitor are doing the work of those who would oppress you, and me too.

It's true that he's just digging at them in that sentence, which is a truly brilliant piece of work. We all know that "proper authority" is code for "all the power". And you are kissing their assholes bigtime.

Re:LOL.

[Anonymous Coward]

You really are an utter piece of shit.

Re:LOL.

[bareman]

And yet Rove, Libby, and Cheney walk free...

Re:LOL.

[mbone]

Treason is defined in the Constitution. This is clearly not treason as so defined, nor was he charged with such. The most treason-like thing he was charged with (giving aid and comfort to the enemy), he was acquitted of.

Re:LOL.

[lister king of smeg]

he most certainly does not. those that committed the heinous acts that he reveled may deserve it but not him.

Re:LOL.

[WindBourne]

Sigh. He gave out information indiscriminately. Had it been about a specific issue that was illegal/immoral, than he would be a whistleblower. BUT, that was not what he did, nor was it his intention. He simply wanted to harm America.

Manning is no different than Snowden in this regard.

Re:LOL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Giving aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war is punishable by military tribunal, and can have a sentence of execution. It is a textbook example of treason.

By the way. Back in the day, this was applicable to civilians too.

Re:LOL.

[WindBourne]

Oh, I agree with you. I dislike those 4 actually. Most of W's admin, including W, should have gone to prison for their many crimes. However, what manning released had nothing to do with that. And much of what manning released was not illegal on USA's part, but caused major issues elsewhere, including with ppl dying.

Re:LOL.

[king neckbeard]

Except there is no enemy, and there was no aid or comfort given.

Re:LOL.

[WindBourne]

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Lets see. Did he give them aid by releasing all sorts of information that used to recruit other muslims to be terrorists? Yup.
Was that information used against America to back attacks on America? Yup.

Did multiple witnesses say that he did in fact do this act? Yup.
Did he do a confession in open court? I do not recall, but I do not think so.

However, he (and snowden) fit the definition 100%.

Re:LOL.

[king neckbeard]

Actually, it seems he wanted to help America. The same as Snowden. If there was harm done, it was towards the American government. Harming the government is often the best thing you can do for the country.

Re:LOL.

[WindBourne]

Some of what he released was crimes by soldiers, and they SHOULD be punished. This would be considered acts of whistleblowing.
However, Manning, like snowden, went much further, and released information that was NOT illegal by our nation's laws and certainly not outside of the norms that other nations do. As such, those parts became treason. Again, this is just like Snowden.

Look, if I somebody is robbing a store and I stop them, that is good. OTOH, if I stop them, and they leave, and then I rob the store, then I am guilty. IOW, one part was good, but one part was illegal. Manning and Snowden did BOTH. And for the information that Manning and Snowden have released to the enemies of the west, has caused a lot of damage.

Re:LOL.

[lister king of smeg]

Really what information did Snowden leak that wasn't show a invasion on our rights or showing abuse of power? while much of what he has leacked has not been released yet everything i have read should be known by the people. On the other hand Manning just leaked everything because he didn't know what all to leak and didn't know how to go through what he had.

Re:LOL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets see. Did he give them aid by releasing all sorts of information that used to recruit other muslims to be terrorists? Yup.

Are you a brainless Fox-watching authoritarian incapable of independent thought? Yup.

Re:LOL.

[tlambert]

Except there is no enemy, and there was no aid or comfort given.

And there were no articles of war, signed by the president, and ratified by congress.

Re:LOL.

[king neckbeard]

No, treason is a very specific thing, and Mannings actions don't fit the bill. Treason is giving away nuclear secrets, not making you look like an asshole.

Re:LOL.

[Hatta]

Some of what he released was crimes by soldiers, and they SHOULD be punished.

But they won't be punished. Think hard about what this means about this country and the rule of law. Do you want to support powerful criminals, or those who break the law for the greater good?

Re:LOL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actally this is more randomly shooting pedestrians, and one of the bullets hitting a thief. One document among hundreds of thousands, does not justify the theft of all the documents. Besides Assange's (the rapist) twisted hatred of the United States. what greater good was served by leaking diplomatic commmunications?

Re:LOL.

[bmxeroh]

Absolutely not. You seem to be conveniently ignoring the fact the he was ACQUITTED of aiding the enemy. This means that he did not do such a thing, no matter how much you want to bend the facts to make it appear so. Simply making something available on the internet that can be accessed by anyone, even if it includes "the enemy" has been demonstrably proven to not be "aiding the enemy".

  “knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to, or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly.”
That is the definition as per Article 104 of the UCMJ, and is what he was charged with. Take a moment to think about the words, and what they mean. The question isn't "did he release information that then became available to the countries enemies?". The question is, "Did he give intelligence to the enemy, either directly or indirectly?", and the answer was "No, giving information to Wikileaks does not mean that he gave information to the enemy, even if Wikileaks then made it available to the public at large."

Re:LOL.

[Anonymous Coward]

AS does every person in the chain of command for allowing this to happen. Manning is as much at fault as the top Generals for not practicing tighter security. Dereliction of Duty for all. If manning Hangs let them all hang, otherwise that is not true justice and will not make a point to others.

Re:LOL.

[Velex]

Yes, assuming you're saying the current administration is the United States, but who are the United States?

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This is about more than playing lawyer. The federal government has been long in contradiction of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments and has certainly been skirting what constitutes a "war" in Article 1 sect 8, and now the Executive Branch finds itself at odds with at least the Fourth Amendment, too.

There are processes to follow if one wants to change how that document works. Those processes have not been followed. The entire governmental system set forth in the Constitution is questionable if it does not honor its founding document.

Re:LOL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Snowden is a pathologic liar who wanted to get rich by stealing 3 laptops full of information and going to China. Unfortunately, China requires Visas, which would have raised red flags with his clearance, so he went to Hong Kong, thinking the Chinese would bring him in from there. The Chinese made him their bitch, taking everything he had without so much as a thank you, then passed him on to the Russians.

Anyway, what did he "whistleblow"? That the Patriot Act is still law? Everything he revealed is in compliance with that law, but the details have alerted terrorists to how they could be monitored.

If he's lucky, he will rot in a US jail. More likely, Russia will have him killed to embarass the United States, and feed the conspiracy nuts.

Re:LOL.

[dgatwood]

Lets see. Did he give them aid by releasing all sorts of information that used to recruit other muslims to be terrorists? Yup.
Was that information used against America to back attacks on America? Yup.

So by your definition, the news media, every time a reporter factually reports a government bomb going astray and blowing up a bunch of children, commits treason? What a disturbingly paranoid world you must live in, worrying about every minor action you might commit being a crime.

Giving aid to enemies in a time of war refers to stealing secrets that are tactically valuable to the enemy, not revealing evidence of crimes that are psychologically valuable to the enemy—not revealing secrets that are only secret because nobody else happened to be watching at that particular moment. The Constitution's prohibition against treason was never intended to give protection to war crimes.

Re:LOL.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wanted America to behave honestly" and "wanted to harm America" is different. Forcing the US to behave honestly may harm the immediate economic prospects of the US; but long term, it will also improve both external respect and self-respect, and I believe it will be good both for the US and the rest of the world.

Re:LOL.

[king neckbeard]

The information might have been used to recruit people into being terrorists, but that's not what aid means here. Let's say that I was an academic during the Cold War, and I released a document that supported communism from a scholarly viewpoint. Because of this, another nation joined the USSR. By your kind of interpretation, that would be an act of treason.

Re:LOL.

[cusco]

Did he give them aid by releasing all sorts of information that used to recruit other muslims to be terrorists?

A photo of Katy Perry in a miniskirt could be used to recruit some Muslims to become terrorists against the immoral Untied States. So who should go to jail for that one, the skirt-wearer, the photographer, or the publisher?

The sight of a Seattle traffic jam full of Hummers, Escalades and Navigators could be used to recruit some of the eco-fanatics to become terrorists against the US. Should we jail Detroit?

Re:LOL.

[Holi]

Do you have any evidence to support your accusation?

Re:LOL.

[Holi]

And what do you mean by "Anyway, what did he "whistleblow"? That the Patriot Act is still law? Everything he revealed is in compliance with that law,"
That's only true if you think the 4th amendment isn't law.

Re:LOL.

[Kielistic]

I don't know, I kind of like it. Using that level of "evidence" the entire United States government could be convicted of treason. Along with a whole lot of other people of course... But what the hell? Selective enforcement seems to work great for the powers that be.

Re:LOL.

[Holi]

Assange (the rapist), you mean because he had consensual sex he is a rapist. No trial has been held and no conviction has been made. So you go way too far in calling him a rapist.

Re: LOL.

[WindBourne]

Yeah, the situation with assange bothers me. He is an Aussie. He did not take an oath to protect american/western secrets. America has NO rights to go after him. Now, Sweden is a different issue. We really do not know what happened so that is for Sweden and assange to sort out. But USA should not be interfering in this.

Re: LOL.

[WindBourne]

Snowden told how we spy on other nations to get to terrorists. The other nation's Intel worlds AND leaders KNEW that we did this ( and the rest of 5i along with germany and france, spy on USA citizens). We used that information to stop multiple attacks in EU. Now, not only are we stopping helping Germany, France, etc, BUT they will also slow down Intel to the rest of the west. We just told AQ and Chinese spies to have at the west.
that is treason by snowden. Manning also did the same.

Re: LOL.

[lister king of smeg]

Snowden told how we spy on other nations to get to terrorists. The other nation's Intel worlds AND leaders KNEW that we did this ( and the rest of 5i along with germany and france, spy on USA citizens). We used that information to stop multiple attacks in EU. Now, not only are we stopping helping Germany, France, etc, BUT they will also slow down Intel to the rest of the west. We just told AQ and Chinese spies to have at the west.
that is treason by snowden. Manning also did the same.

Did they really? How do we know they stopped any attacks because all the evidence is classified? Also they have show a unrepentant willingness to lie to congress whenever they deem it convenient and they have even less regard for the American people at all, so how can we trust a single thing they say is true not some fabricated FUD story to keep the people frightened of the big bad terrorist and demand the big brother keep them safe? as for telling the Chinese you think that the Chinese those people that have been systemically probing out computer system did not already know how this was being done hell there have been report floating around for years saying they already have access to the D.O.D.'s SIPRNET which would give then access to all of this anyway. AQ could of been spied on just as effectively with legal means as well and if they were smart would already have been hiding their communication in darkent sites and using strong encryption that’s standard presager for hiding form the US gov. the only people that these leaks really affect is the American public which has had there eyes opened to what the government had been doing.

Not that difficult

[NikeHerc]

Manning: 'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'

If the people above you are corrupt or inept, it isn't impossible to change the world for the better.

Still waiting for the US military's apology

[handofpwn]

Manning has apologized for his actions, but all he did was expose the questionable actions of those in power. Where is the apology from them? It will never come, because the ruling class is not subjected to the rules, only guys at the bottom like Manning.

mod dLowfn

[Anonymous Coward]

AAl our times have if you don't it a break, if continues toChew

Calling The Pentagon a Liar?

[Bob9113]

"I'm sorry I hurt people. I'm sorry that I hurt the United States," said Manning

Is this sonofabitch calling the Pentagon a liar? How dare he! The Pentagon investigated and clearly reported that the Wikileaks leak did not pose a threat.

DoD Says Wikileaks Not a Threat

The Pentagon is telling NBCâ(TM)s Michael Isikoff that a special assessment team looking over the WikiLeaks Afghanistan war logs has found nothing that could damage national security.

Re:Calling The Pentagon a Liar?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's been stuck in solitary for months now. How is he supposed to know that?

Re:Calling The Pentagon a Liar?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your article isn't a useful citation. It ends with

UPDATE: White House spokesman Tommy Vietor points to this Reuters article in which the same DOD official, Lapan, says the full review of the leak could take "days if not weeks." Still, no one in the White House (that we've seen) has pointed to any specific revelation from the WikiLeaks trove that harms national security.

Sure, the government has never spelled out what harm was caused and certainly they hyperbole of Lieberman and McCain was out of touch with reality. However, there has been no definitive statement that there was no harm as you've implied.

Re:Calling The Pentagon a Liar?

[bill_mcgonigle]

However, there has been no definitive statement that there was no harm as you've implied.

Harm is in the eye of the [political] beholder, which makes Manning's sorrow, feigned or not, somewhat meaningless. We do know that no deaths have been caused by the leaks. Did some psychotic CIA plot get messed up? Would that be harm? Nobody knows.

Re:box what about 5-10+ years of end less boot cam

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think it is punishment, then boot camp is not what you think it is.

He should have...

[Vernes]

He should have shouted:
There!
are!
four!
lights!

Torture

[macinit]

It would seem that they were finally successful in making him see "five lights."

If I were in a sentencing process...

[intermodal]

I'd say pretty much the same thing.

Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

In another time and place there have been such processes before :(
Rudolf Slansky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sl%C3%A1nsk%C3%BD_trial

Re:Nothing new

[mbone]

Made a pretty good movie, too.

Months of Torture Gives a Confession

[Anonymous Coward]

If he hadn't been tortured for, what was it, a year?, before recanting, it would have have been a little more impressive. The US Cherry Picks what it considers torture, so they can state out loud that they don't torture. Human Rights organizations don't see it the same way.

Re:Months of Torture Gives a Confession

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, define torture for us.
Because from what I'm seeing, torture seems to be defined by many here as "solitary confinement", in relation to Manning.

Manning succeeded

[erroneus]

He may not have and could not have succeeded in his purpose and goal single-handedly. The goal and purpose can only happen as others join in exposing the criminal and dangerous behaviour or those in control of government. Manning did great, but we need MORE of them to be effective.

the last Castle did that movie go to far?

[Joe_Dragon]

the last Castle did that movie go to far?

what is Ft. Leavenworth really like?

Re:the last Castle did that movie go to far?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're getting your information from movies?

And they all confessed

[Anonymous Coward]

http://art-bin.com/art/amosc_preeng.html

Krestinsky: Yesterday, under the influence of a momentary keen feeling of false shame, evoked by the atmosphere of the dock and the painful impression created by the public reading of the indictment, which was aggravated by my poor health, I could not bring myself to tell the truth, I could not bring myself to say that I was guilty. And instead of saying, "Yes, I am guilty," I almost mechanically answered, "No, I am not guilty."
Vyshinsky: Mechanically?
Krestinsky: In the face of world public opinion, I had not the strength to admit the truth that I had been conducting a Trotskyite struggle all along. I request the Court to register my statement that I fully and completely admit that I am guilty of all the gravest charges brought against me personally, and that I admit my complete responsibility for the treason and treachery I have committed.

That's sarcasm, not sincerity

[catfood]

I look back at my decisions and wonder, "How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?"

If you read it straight, Manning is saying that everyone should defer to "proper authority" without any qualifiers or limits, which is a rather authoritarian point of view. He's tweaking the court, the government, and the public there.

Apology Not Accepted

[Sabathius]

Sorry, man. I think you a great service to the United States and the world. One person's "Enemy of the State" is another person's Patriot. To me, he's a patriot--and I say that as a war veteran.

Am I the only one who immediately thought

[Opportunist]

...that sounds suspiciously like the self-accusations during the Moscow Trials.

Re:Am I the only one who immediately thought

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you are not, I would say that sent chivers down the spines of about the whole population of the old Eastern block citizens.

Pardon Bradley Manning

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we support a presidential candidate who runs on the issue of pardoning Manning?

Scripted much

[mbone]

'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'

It is not surprising that courts want people to say certain things, to re-establish their sense of moral correctness and order, or that they get the people in front of them to say these things. It is (always) surprising that anyone not on the bench gives these words any weight at all. Coerced testimony is, after all, no true testimony at all.

As for Manning, I think that Geek Empire nails it

Someday, Bradley Manning will be as forgotten to them as Monica Lewinsky is. Then they’ll yield to the hornet-like, persistent buzz of the leftie peaceniks, and let Bradley go. He’s not dangerous. Bradley Manning will never do anything of similar consequence again. He’s not a power player. He’s a prisoner of conscience.

This will be Godwinned

[Anonymous Coward]

but it really shouldn't be..

'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'

Funny, that is EXACTLY the kind of reasoning that was explicitly and universally rejected during the Nuremberg trials.

Re:This will be Godwinned

[dgatwood]

But that was a different world. 9/11 changed everything, man.

Seriously, as cynical as it sounds, at least in the U.S., if the Nuremberg trials were conducted today, we'd probably let them off for "just following orders". Chilling, isn't it, how quickly we have become the enemy, a mirror reflecting that which our forefathers died fighting against?

"What truth is there, but the law?" they say. "Crucify him! Crucify him!"

This is what it sounds like when justice ends and the blind and arbitrary pursuit of revenge begins. This is always what it sounds like.

rot in hell obama

[Anonymous Coward]

rot in hell obama

The day US democracy died.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark it well.

Re:The day US democracy died.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now the US government can openly torture US citizens who cross the line.

Obligatory

[triffid_98]

Bradley Manning Says He's Sorry...that he didn't defect to Russia with Snowden when he had the chance.

Actually a Traitor

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe no comment I've read has anything bad to say about Manning.

He indiscriminately released material that he knew would be harmful to the US. If he'd discovered a particular document which the American people needed to know about which he released, that might make him a whistle-blower. In that case, it could be argued he wanted to improve his country because he had a specific problem with an actionable remedy.

However, since so many documents were involved, I think it unlikely he knew exactly what he was releasing. This means the information would be embarrassing for sure and possibly harmful to US interests and potentially deadly to individuals. I'm not aware of any other goal he had (a specific program he didn't like). His only motivation seemed to be, "I don't believe in classified documents and I'd like to harm the US government."

I want my government to be more open but also think that it must keep some secrets in order to act effectively on my behalf. He's just a thief who stole documents from an entity many Slashdot users don't like.

He's been protected and served.

[hoboroadie]

One lousy night of extra-judicial service by a half dozen L.A. County Sheriff's Deputies, and I caved. A rather craven, boot-licking moment that I am not too proud of. I didn't get the Rodney King-style beatdown that was scheduled for that morning's lull in business, but I was convinced to plead guilty to a crime that did not occur, so as to avoid the guaranteed five-year sentence in the State Penitentiary.
I'd suggest shuffling, shackled, down a mile of cement corridor, in paper slippers, before criticizing this guy.

Re:He's been protected and served.

[lightknight]

Lol. Caving in is not a sign of defeat, but a sign of pragmatism.

The question you should really be asking yourself is this: What did you do so wrong to be born into an existence, on a planet like this, where the Justice System is so hopelessly compromised? What did you do so wrong that your life is one of an indentured servant, where the master of the household threatens to sell you off on a whim, and the wolves are constantly at the door?

To fold when several fun-toting, steroid-using, possibly corrupt officials of the state who have, in the line of duty, executed perhaps several people among themselves, against a common, peace-loving citizen who is not equipped with any weaponry, nor has used any steroids, nor is known to abuse state immunities, is not a defeat, nor a show of cowardice; to fold when the odds and gods are clearly against you is strategically intelligent. Even the Bible has a verse that reads something to the effect that if a king knew that another king was approaching with a superior army, he'd rush out to meet him and sue for peace; to attack a superior army, with no strategy, is madness.

You forgot something

[Anonymous Coward]

Or rather someone in your crusade to vilify Wikileaks.

Lamo.

Well, what was he supposed to say?

[Anonymous Coward]

"And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids!"

He's not a hero

[Anonymous Coward]

He joined the military. He obtained clearance for classified material. He was trained on the consequences of missusing this information. He indescrimanantly stole hundreds of thousands of documents, and releases them without even reading them. Anyone with security clearance knows that this is the way you go to prison. He did this because he is profoundly emotionally disturbed, with a history of violent outbursts, and self destructive behaviour. Like Snowden, the primary crime is stealing classified documents.
If you think he is a convenient idiot for your particular agenda, so be it. That doesn't make him a hero, just an idiot.

Re:He's not a hero

[x0ra]

As posted above: "He upheld the Oath he swore to protect the constitution from Enemies Foreign AND Domestic"

Re:He's not a hero

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing he reported on was unconstitutional. Obeying the laws passed under that constitution (like not stealing classified documents) was a part of that oath. Please, justify his attacking his mom with a knife, or punching a female coworker in the face as upholding his Oath. When they finally arrested him, he was hiding in a cupboard, curled in a fetal position, wimpering. A knife on the floor and "I Want" carved in the back of a chair. He wasn't broken by the government- he was broke from the beginning.

Re: Fake apology

[hoboroadie]

My personal experience dealing with psychotics is that this is surprisingly effective. Take the words right out of their mouth, and the delusional motherfuckers take it at face value, like I finally saw the light.
It can't hurt.

Re:nothing to LOL about.

[Velex]

including with ppl dying

Who died?

Stealing is stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

This is pretty black and white: Regardless of what Manning was going to do with the information. He stole information that was the property of the US Government. Call him a patriot or robin hood he is still a thief.

The Classified Sentencing Testimony

[MarkvW]

Perhaps the classified sentencing testimony had a strong emotional impact on PFC Manning. Maybe he realized that he really did, quite unnecessarily, hurt a lot of people. He's an emotionally damaged kid.

He deserves real prison time, but not something that's going to take most of his life away.

"Don't kill the messenger"

[Anonymous Coward]

It was the people who's atrocities Manning revealed that committed treason against America.

Just mad at his boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Because he was really just mad at his boss, and his claimed moral high-ground was revenge and not really trying to change anything for the better.

Early out

[aepervius]

More important I would be as sorry as needed to get out earlier. Like, before I am 90.

Nice labels

[Anonymous Coward]

We're just accepting that wikileaks is an "anti-secrecy group" now?

Just Kidding

[WaffleMonster]

"'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?"

Whenever I begin a sentance with how on earth followed immediately by possibly nonsensical belligerance is sure to follow ... who knows if this was sincere or not but It does remind me of another "confession"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Pueblo_(AGER-2)#Aftermath

"The Truth" is in between I think

[johnwerneken]

I'm in between Manning’s original statements-by-his-actions and this contrition. (1) Airport users and news watchers knew, or IMHO ought to have known, a great deal about the several threads behind the growing security state: (1) Power politics just can't be nice; we may one day have species-wide law IF we can figure out how to have one government and not be oppressed, but it's a jungle until then. So the revelations ought not to surprise; (2) Government has a propensity to avoid embarrassment at almost any cost. Obviously silly and wrong yet in part somewhat excusable: graceful acceptance by most of at least the general legitimacy of authority is fundamental to authority existing without either stark oppression or the sort of anarchy that can kill a major fraction of the whole people; and (3) individual empowerment is a new thing, with the part that applies to the ability of seriously angry people to essentially wage war like a State being a real threat, one that properly scares people.

I think we knew about most all of it, or ought to have, making almost all of the revelations not revelations at all. Except for the disclosure of sources and methods, this could endanger the lives of people acting from conviction and in our interests, not a good thing.

In sum, Manning was no traitor, yet if his apology is centered on the possible risk to the lives of agents and tipsters; it makes sense that he would now say that.

Your Vote (doesn't really) Count

[Anonymous Coward]

But fuck it anyway!

https://whatimg.com/i/wxmxgj.jpg

you can't handle the truth

[Joe_Dragon]

Now when will Manning get a code red.

Adrian Lamo,

[Anonymous Coward]

may your enemies outnumber your friends a billion to one

Softening the blow, Reducing the sentence

[Scot Seese]

This smells like a counsel-advised plea for mercy prior to sentencing with the hopes of Mr. Manning breathing fresh air while he still has a few years of life left.

He loved Big Brother.

[Bohnanza]

The end.

I may have an answer for you

[Anonymous Coward]

He was just one man. He never had a voice so we will never know what the trigger was. What we do know is that he took what he had available to him so that injustices could be found later. He needed manpower and a voice to help him. He trusted mainstream news to give a damn. He trusted wikileaks to give a damn. Turns out nobody gives a damn.

So guess what the more learned Snowden is doing in that hotel room between releasing a handful of documents? He is looking through what he has himself and only releasing what needs to be released in his opinion. That is also why there is this fear of him, nobody (publicly) knows how much he is actually sitting on.

John McCain

[Tokolosh]

I believe McCain is a dolt, but at least he was a brave dolt. He was captured and tortured in Viet Nam. While under torture, he signed confessions and accusations against the United States. But yet he was elected as a senator. There are many other examples, as others have pointed out.

Manning is in good company.

Sniff Sniff... Please Go Ahead and Open the Border

[Baldrson]

The greater wisdom of those who open the borders is not to be questioned.

on authority

[Anonymous Coward]

And here I thought one person making a positive difference over the authority was a foundational principle of democracy and a core american value. Obama is illegally attacking dissent and destroying democracy.

Here's the problem..

[houbou]

In retrospect, hindsight is 20/20. Or the shoulda, coulda, woulda syndrome.

Sounds like Brainwashing to me

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like the government has been indoctrinating him with propaganda this whole time while denying him any exposure to outside information.

"'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'"

These don't sound like his words or the words of someone his age even, someone told him this and kept on repeating it to him. Who knows how many lies they have used in the process.

RivenAleem asks

"Did I miss something? Have we got actual examples of people who were hurt by this?"

Does it matter? He is in isolation and so the government can just make anything up with no checks and balances. They can list all sorts of fabricated deaths or assert, with no evidence, over and over that all sorts of deaths and injuries happened and that no good came from this. You are naive if you think, for a second, that they wouldn't lie and with no exposure to criticisms how could he know better? With enough brainwashing someone of his age would believe anything.

This really should make the U.S. government look bad, very bad, for isolating someone so young and then taking advantage of his young age to bombard him with nothing but one sided propaganda.

Ludovico's Technique Proven

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they used Ludwig Van?

Authority = Author

[Anonymous Coward]

As we're talking about the perversion of language, a topic dear to Orwell, let me say I believe everyone should insist that the term 'Authority' be used only in cases where the supposed authority has aetiologically created the domain of said 'authority', in substantial portion or entirety.

Try replacing the word Authority with Author, see how it fits or does not fit. In too many cases Authority is used in a sense of pecking order, which is a corruption. By doing this we are assisting the perverse alteration of thought through language of which Orwell warned.

If we insist that an Authority is only someone that is also an Author we will remove the subconscious attribution we give to people who are merely higher in pecking order. They wish us to think they had made or created their domain of power and hence are properly its source, a relationship so often unjustified.

Re:Authority = Author

[Em Adespoton]

As we're talking about the perversion of language, a topic dear to Orwell, let me say I believe everyone should insist that the term 'Authority' be used only in cases where the supposed authority has aetiologically created the domain of said 'authority', in substantial portion or entirety.

Try replacing the word Authority with Author, see how it fits or does not fit. In too many cases Authority is used in a sense of pecking order, which is a corruption. By doing this we are assisting the perverse alteration of thought through language of which Orwell warned.

If we insist that an Authority is only someone that is also an Author we will remove the subconscious attribution we give to people who are merely higher in pecking order. They wish us to think they had made or created their domain of power and hence are properly its source, a relationship so often unjustified.

Of course, it could easily be postulated that the authority referenced is in regards to the fate of the individual -- where anyone higher in the pecking order is indeed an author of your fate. Perverted, yes... but then, that's how language grows.

have fun, bradley

[Anonymous Coward]

you signed up, then betrayed your country, and now you have to pay... and no amount of Slashtardism can refute those facts

lost his whistle-blower status

[Anonymous Coward]

He was on his way out, and he dumped not just the wrong doings but absolutely everything else he could get his hands on. And by dumping everything else he lost his moral high-ground/whistle-blower status and became just an angry employee.

Re:lost his whistle-blower status

[Hatta]

None of that excuses the lack of prosecutions for the very clear cut crimes he did expose. Anyone who believes in the rule of law should demand prosecutions for those crimes.

Re:box what about 5-10+ years of end less boot cam

[Anonymous Coward]

box what about 5-10+ years of end less boot camp with and hardass DI?

Sorry, can you repeat that please? I didn't get it the first time in your subject line.

Hugs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dick Cheney says he's sorry too.

Question Authority

[Anonymous Coward]

...'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'" EVERY single citizen has infinite authority over "those with the proper authority" which is GRANTED to them by EVERY single citizen. EVERY single citizen has a DUTY and OBLIGATION to "change the world for the better", make it so...

Bradley's Room

[maijc]

'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?'""

Look's like someone was on Room 101

Orson Scott Card (not an Ender's Game reference)

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody else remember his 'A thousands deaths'?

Mannings words immediately struck reminiscent of Jerry Crove (protagonist/victim), Dr Swick (examplar) and the State power (villians) to compel 'truth'. I'm not going to go into the methods by which the State achieved 'confession/recantment', nor shall I revel the ending. Part of the book's premise is that Russia has conquered America.

Some quotes:
Swick: '... It was a foolish, immature desire to prove myself by thumbing my nose at authority. It meant nothing. I was wrong. The goverment has been kinder to me than I deserve.'
...
Crove's initial position: 'There is a time for courage and a time for cowardice, a time when a man can give in to those who offer him leniency and a time when he must, instead resist them for the sake of a higher goal. America was once a free nation. But as long as they pay our salaries, we seem content to be slaves! I plead not guilty, because any act that serves to weaken Russian domination of any nation in the world is a blow for all the things that make life worth living and against those to whom power is the only god worth worshipping.'

And, away from this topic, the desire to retain power is directly proportional to the degree of power achieved. Erosion of civil rights of the majority are the natural product of a well-maintained minority-held ruling power.

all while...

[Anonymous Coward]

blinking in a weird pattern - --- .-. - ..-

Bad choices

[Tekoneiric]

I have a mixed opinion on Bradley Manning. Yes there have been war crimes done under the direction of the US leaders but honestly when your waging war against an enemy that doesn't care about things like human rights you do have to step over a few lines.

You also can't go into the military without knowing that you are going to see and do some horrible things after all the military's business is waging war when it has to. If you not sure you can handle it do not go in the military, it's that simple.

I think he made another bad move when he blamed the choices he made on his gender identity disorder. That is doing a MAJOR disservice to other people with GID who have served and continue to serve in the military. Many people with GID have served with distinction. In many case people who are male outside/female inside express themselves as the perfect super-soldier because they over do the male bravado and care little for their own safety.

I don't think he should serve time much longer than he already has because even if he is released he will likely never get a job where trust is a factor. His job prospects will be extremely limited.

We must remember

[Anonymous Coward]

> The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

I'm not sure about everyone here, but I honestly have to say as it looks now the tree will be drowning in an ever flowing river of blood as this nation is just plain fucked up. Manning, Snowden and all the people everywhere else are nothing but victims of a hit and run done under cloak and dagger and brushed off like nothing ever happened and 'people should just get over it'.

What makes my mind completely numb in utter disbelief is we have people like Snowden, Manning and Assange who sacrificed everything, EVERYTHING, to bring everyone the truth and what do they get in return? They are called traitors and betrayers, and what do the people do about it? Nothing, NOTHING at all. You'd expect full public support for these people, you'd expect all the people in the country to band together and call the government out on their BS and once and for all bring them down to their knees, but of course this will never happen because this nation is just fucked up.

I fight and fight and fight yet sometimes I even question my own fight because this fight needs every person out there. If only a minority are out there fighting for an entire countries freedom then you might as well rip that tree out and call it a night.

Julian Assange MAN-UP!

[sciop101]

Bradley Manning faced his accusers. Julian Assange's sex crimes case have nothing to do with free speech, or Wikileaks. Julian Assange is running away from his accusers to avoid a two-year-old Swedish rape and sexual molestation accusations, NOT a U.S. government investigation.

I'm sorry

[ToddInSF]

That none of the people responsible for the national security infrastructure of the military will ever be held accountable for creating a situation where such a low-ranking soldier would have enough access that he could see how rotten to the core our country is and feel compelled to assume the role of whistle-blower.

I'm also sorry that so many people think what he did warrants some sort of punishment, letting all the hoards of douchebags off the hook for their responsibilities, all the way up to, and including the President.

I'm sorry the cowardly US media has ignored the international criminal activities exposed by the leak, and continued leaks, and that people are too deluded with nationalism and patriotism to even question for a moment the false authority and hubris our government is obviously guilty of, not to mention the sheer unconstitutionality of it all.

But mostly I'm sorry that they drugged Manning up and tortured him for a protracted period for the specific goal of getting him to apologize publicly. It's disgusting, and yet another example of the rampant corruption that this nation is now entirely based on.

Ninjas! (Serious comment)

[Anonymous Coward]

Most fans of the "martial arts" would know that their skills were begun by peasants who were oppressed and, obviously, poor. They realised that their pitch forks and threshing sticks could be used as weapons, and voila! You have an institution that was truly relevant right up until the first world war.

My point is, when people are oppressed, such as in the dystopian world that some here have mentioned, the reality is that the oppression becomes an obsession for people who desire free will, and those people then use whatever devices they have at hand (books, education, the Internet, etc) to "cull" (metaphorically speaking) the oppression.

Anyhow, I'm personally a pacifist, and believe that peace contains the greatest prosperity. I don't ascribe to the "greed is good" philosophy, nor do I believe that because something great happened when someone was oppressed, that this then means only good things can happen when people are oppressed. People who think like that deserve to be laughed at, repeatedly. And then be made to sweep the chicken coop. /JB