Bradley Manning Sentenced To 35 Years

An anonymous reader writes with bad, but not unexpected news: "The U.S. soldier convicted of handing a trove of secret government documents to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks has been sentenced to 35 years in prison. Pte First Class Bradley Manning, 25, was convicted in July of 20 charges against him, including espionage. Last week, he apologized for hurting the U.S. and for 'the unexpected results' of his actions. He will receive credit for three and a half years, but be dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army."

Comments

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a traitor, he deserves it. I know I'll get down-voted to oblivion for that, but that's how I feel. Why people have such a problem with the fact that he was in the army, supposedly serving his country, and did something that he was forbidden to do, and so should face the consequences? Personally, I wouldn't have any objection to execution as the standard punishment for acts of treason.

In other news...

[BringYourOwnBacon]

Slashdot editor senteced to 35 years of grammar school.

Re:When a secret is a criminal act, it's evidence.

[MarkvW]

I could maybe get over the fact that Manning was a soldier and he betrayed his duty--but my problem is that Manning's disclosure was so very indiscriminate.

Manning is the living definition of a fool.

I believe Manning's apology. I think that there is a likelihood real human beings were harmed by Manning's disclosures.

Still think he got way too much time and was way overprosecuted.

Re:When a secret is a criminal act, it's evidence.

[clarkkent09]

Exactly. Reading comments from pro-Manning people, you would think there is a huge list of horrendous crimes that he made public, but that is simply not the case. To me, the stuff he made public actually kinda proved that we are the good guys after all. Even the few incidents that are iffy (that apache video) are fucking videotaped, archived, investigated etc and eventually they tend to become public knowledge. What other country has ever done any of that? Russians in Afghanistan routinely carpet bombed towns and villages as a collective punishment and killed over a million of Afghan civilians and even Russians will still bitch about the US being bad guys for some reason. You want us to be perfect? Fine, I want that to, but at least I realize that perfection in war is not possible and I try to have some perspective.