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Source: (consider it) Thread: Manning's sentence - Unjust?
luvanddaisies

the'fun'in'fundie'™
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Link to a blog by Amnesty International (which also contains a link to a petition).


As a comparison, Manning's sentence is more than three times longer than that of any of those found responsible for torture at Abu Ghraib.
Amnesty are petitioning the Whitehouse to commute Manning's sentence to the three-and-a-half years already served.

Surely the reaction should be against sick soldiers like those mentioned in the linked article, who fire on unarmed people and enjoy it? Surely a sergeant's response to a soldier carrying two children shot by Americans should not be telling him to "stop trying to save these motherfucking kids" and to “get the sand out of [his] vagina” and to “suck it up and be a soldier”? Shouldn't people of conscience be grateful to Chelsea Manning for releasing this information?

Amnesty is arguing that her sentence should be commuted to time already served in recognition of her motives for acting as she did - referred to in this BBC News article ,
quote:
"The decisions I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world we live in," Pte Manning said, "When I chose to disclose classified information... I did so out of love for our country and a sense of duty for others. If you deny my request for a pardon I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society."
while The Guardian points out that;

quote:
Bradley Manning has received a prison sentence that was 10 years longer than the period of time after which many of the documents he released would have been automatically declassified. The military judge handed down the longest ever sentence for a leak of US government information.

Mr Manning, according to this logic, did more harm than the soldier who gave a Jordanian intelligence agent information on the build-up to the first Iraq war, or the marine who gave the KGB the identities of CIA agents and floorplans of the embassies in Moscow and Vienna.

And goes on to expand upon the disproportionate nature of Chelsea Manning's sentence in terms of military courts, while acknowledging that civil courts have been very tough in comparable cases. another article

The Guardian also talks about the neglect she suffered during her childhood, right from conception, which may not really be relevant, but is sad.

What do you think? Is Chelsea Manning's sentence just the USA's government lashing out in embarrassment, and should it be commuted to time served. Should Chelsea Manning even be pardoned, as some have suggested? Should the USA get to is and punish some of those whose conduct was against not only moral laws but the military's rules too?
Or is the punishment justified, and should Manning have known that she was opening herself up to this when she embarked upon leaking the material?

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no prophet's flag is set so...

Proceed to see sea
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I think the sentence is fine only if he shares a cell with that war criminal George Bush.

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\_(ツ)_/

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malik3000
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Among the war crimes Manning exposed was the video of US soldiers (and/or contract hired guns) knowingly killing civilians and journalists. None of those people have been brought to justice. According to the Geneva Convention, soldiers have a duty not to hide war crimes. The "just following orders" defense was repudiated at Nuremburg.

Manning did the world and the cause of decency a great service. Manning is a hero and deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. (Maybe the Nobel Committee can regain a little of its reputation after giving the prize to President Obama for no particular reason except the committee's wishful thinking -- did they ever get that one wrong!)

Pertinent to the above may be this item: Did Manning Help Avert War in Iran?.

Also, whatever problems he had in his life, this report of the sentencing would seem to show something and positive in Manning's character, especially after the depressing spectacle of his apology to the judge prior to sentencing. That was so sad.

But I was very heartened to read, in the story linked to immediately above, about the expressions of support in the courtroom after the verdict. NONE of which I've seen so far on CNN or the BBC or other mainstream media I've seen so far. The only thing the BBC and CNN are interested in is Manning's wish to become a woman. So fucking what! Yes, it is a news-worthy item, but by emphasising that to the exclusion of all the other things above seems like another "mainstream media" ploy to put Manning in the worst possible light.

God bless you, Chelsea Manning. You are a hero.

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Otherwise, things are not just black or white.

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malik3000
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My apologies to luvanddaisies for needlessly repeating much of the info in the excellent OP. Basically i saw the thread title and starting my post.

Anyway thanks for starting the thread.

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God = love.
Otherwise, things are not just black or white.

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Enoch
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I shall not be signing this petition. Two reasons.

1. I'm not an American. It's not my country. Unless another country has gone way off scale in how it treats its traitors, it's wrong for me to presume to tell it how I think it should do so.

2. This may be a less familiar issue in other countries, but the notion that it somehow becomes acceptable or even noble to betray one's country if one does it for ideological reasons, is one that has form here. You either accept the hypothesis or you don't. I happen not to.

Names like Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt and Nunn May may not mean much to people from other countries, but are well known to us.

Nor is it really relevant that somebody else who did something else bad got off with a lower sentence than perhaps many people feel they deserved.

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no prophet's flag is set so...

Proceed to see sea
# 15560

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I think you have to separate the cold war comparison and the context. The list you provide is of double agents in service of the USSR. The current situation with Manning is one of personal ideology and not of exposing and destroying agents is it.

"Chelsea" Manning? Not clear on the "Chelsea".

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luvanddaisies

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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:

"Chelsea" Manning? Not clear on the "Chelsea".

link - BBC News
quote:
Bradley Manning, the US soldier who leaked secret US government documents to the Wikileaks website, has announced an intention to live as a woman.

"I am Chelsea Manning," Pte First Class Manning said in a statement to NBC's Today programme. "I am a female."

The 25-year-old said he had felt female since childhood, wanted at once to begin hormone therapy, and wished to be addressed as Chelsea.


Unfortunately, there seems to be more interest in this in the media today than in the justice, sentencing and wider implications of her case.

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Jane R
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Enoch:
quote:
1. I'm not an American. It's not my country. Unless another country has gone way off scale in how it treats its traitors, it's wrong for me to presume to tell it how I think it should do so.
So you don't think a sentence more than three times as long as the abusers at Abu Ghraib got is disproportionate, then?

It's also worth noting that Amnesty International's stated mission is precisely to tell countries when they are going 'way off scale' in their treatment of traitors and political prisoners, so it is not really surprising that they are organising a protest.

quote:
2. This may be a less familiar issue in other countries, but the notion that it somehow becomes acceptable or even noble to betray one's country if one does it for ideological reasons, is one that has form here. You either accept the hypothesis or you don't. I happen not to.
... so what would you accept as a legitimate reason? Money? Or are you just saying 'my country, right or wrong' here?
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malik3000
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I am quite aware of Burgess, Maclean and Philby, and comparing Manning (and Snowden for that matter) to them is a horrendously false comparison.

Burgess etc. were spies for a foreign hostile government. Manning and Snowden are revealing to the citizens of their own country (and the world) the wrong things being done by their own country, including war crimes.

Just one look at the video mentioned above amply documents that this was a war crime full stop (and surely not the only one.) As I said in my first post the Geneva Convention opposes the covering up of war crimes. The U.S. is a signatory to the Geneva Convention.

Indeed, the U.S. is guilty of two violations of the Geneva Convention in this. The first is the persecution of the person who revealed the U.S.'s criminality. The second is the U.S.'s failure to prosecute those who perpetrated the criminal acts caught on the videotape.

As a citizen of the U.S., the U.S.'s claim to "protect my security" by committing war crimes and covering them up does me no favors. (It would be nice to be the citizen of a country of which one didn't have to be ashamed in the eyes of the rest of the world.)

[ 22. August 2013, 20:34: Message edited by: malik3000 ]

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Otherwise, things are not just black or white.

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Martin60
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I expect nothing less of Caesar. And I expect nothing less of Chelsea but to hold her head up for 35 years if need be while we petition Babylon's C-in-C for mercy.

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Love wins

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luvanddaisies

the'fun'in'fundie'™
# 5761

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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I shall not be signing this petition. Two reasons.

1. I'm not an American. It's not my country. Unless another country has gone way off scale in how it treats its traitors, it's wrong for me to presume to tell it how I think it should do so.

I am not an American either. I did, however, sign the petition. I think you're right - in purely internal affairs I don't really have a dog in the fight so it'd be a bit weird to do so - however, I think this is a case where the USA has gone "way off scale" in how it treated Manning.

The USA is also, like it or not, a massive influence on the world stage, often setting itself up as an arbiter of other nations' behaviour. If the US government stands in judgement on others, and in doing so influences international action or lack thereof, it seems logical that an awareness of the American approach to Human Rights (Guantanamo?) or War Crimes (some of which were exposed by Chelsea Manning) is something that those of us in other nations should be interested in, and may, in some small way (such as the signing of a petition, for example) seek to influence.

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:

2. This may be a less familiar issue in other countries, but the notion that it somehow becomes acceptable or even noble to betray one's country if one does it for ideological reasons, is one that has form here. You either accept the hypothesis or you don't. I happen not to.

I think the flipside of that, where the defence "I was only following orders" is not accepted as an excuse for complicity in or silence about [for example] war crimes, is negated if one takes your view.
Manning found things that were terribly wrong, and thought they should be reported. None of the things she leaked were "Top Secret". She saw war crimes being committed - for example, US soldiers knowingly killing civilians - and thought covering up for these war criminals was wrong. Hiding war criminals is wrong under international law, after all.

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:

Nor is it really relevant that somebody else who did something else bad got off with a lower sentence than perhaps many people feel they deserved.

At its most basic level it shows, in the case of Chelsea Manning's sentence relative to the total non-action against those her leaks exposed, or to those of others who have given away classified information (see links in my earlier post), a frightening, warped and twisted set of priorities.

[cross-posted with a cast of thousands. Well, at least three. That's what you get for watching the telly while you write a post]

[ 22. August 2013, 20:38: Message edited by: luvanddaisies ]

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Ricardus
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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
the notion that it somehow becomes acceptable or even noble to betray one's country if one does it for ideological reasons, is one that has form here.

I would say that's a strawman (at least as expressed above). Nobody's saying you can betray your country if it's for a cause you really really believe in. But some of us do believe that if duty to one's country comes into conflict with some other good, it is possible for that conflict to be resolved to the detriment of the former.

Or to put it another way, duty to one's country is a good, but it's not the highest good. In fact it slightly surprises me that people think it is.

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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)

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luvanddaisies

the'fun'in'fundie'™
# 5761

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quote:
Originally posted by malik3000:
My apologies to luvanddaisies for needlessly repeating much of the info in the excellent OP. Basically i saw the thread title and starting my post.

Anyway thanks for starting the thread.

Oh, I meant to say earlier - no problem, i don't thin you repeated stuff, and you probably said it better than me anyway.

I especially liked this link, well, I'm not sure if like is right - it made me sad.

Ricardus - I think this quote from that article goes well with your last sentence.

quote:
Manning quoted Howard Zinn in the statement: "There is not a flag large enough to cover the sins of killing innocent people."


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"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." (Mark Twain)

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PaulBC
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He endangered service persons lives by what he released. So he is right up there with Philby & co , o.k. he was not a spy but he was a member of the US Army & should have known better. And toss Snowden in the lock up if & when he leaves Russia .
Oh as for mannings request for a s ex change procedure . No . and why is then media even giving a hoot ?

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"He has told you O mortal,what is good;and what does the Lord require of youbut to do justice and to love kindness ,and to walk humbly with your God."Micah 6:8

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malik3000
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quote:
Originally posted by PaulBC:
He endangered service persons lives by what he released.

In the Manning trial the prosecution couldn't prove even one case of that. And the lives of innocent children, snuffed out and documented on video, don't count for anything?

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Otherwise, things are not just black or white.

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Gramps49
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Manning's revelations endangered and even lead to the killings of some of the Iraqis who were assisting the Allies.

With time served, Manning will likely be up for parole in six years.

He was not convicted of revealing the video of the killing of civilians per se.

We have not heard the last of this. There will be a whole set of appeals through the military justice system all the way to the Supreme Court, though I do not think the SC is likely to act favorably towards Manning.

BTW, I too would like to see the Bush and Cheney company brought up on charges, but it is not going to happen in an American court.

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The Silent Acolyte

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Manning is a hero.
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Gramps49
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Manning's revelations endangered and even lead to the killings of some of the Iraqis who were assisting the Allies.

With time served, Manning will likely be up for parole in seven years.

He was not convicted of revealing the video of the killing of civilians per se.

We have not heard the last of this. There will be a whole set of appeals through the military justice system all the way to the Supreme Court, though I do not think the SC is likely to act favorably towards Manning.

BTW, I too would like to see the Bush and Cheney company brought up on charges, but it is not going to happen in an American court.

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RuthW

liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
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Manning is a hero.
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Gramps49
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Sorry about the double post on my part.

I do want to correct when s/he is eligible for parole. It will be in seven years.

Now s/he is demanding the Army pay for her/his sex change.

The Army does have the obligation to maintain Mannings' basic health needs, but sex change is considered an elective procedure.

If Manning is a hero, then Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the psychiatrist who shot up the processing center at Fort Hood, is a hero.

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PaulBC
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Manning is no hero. Maybe no uber villian either. And if you think I am back tracking my earlier post. I AM for 1 big reason I put this young man in the same class of agent as Philby & co. that is a stretch.
I think Manning is a confused young man
hopefully he may straighten out his life.And being so young maybe by the time he is released his other choice will be easier too.

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"He has told you O mortal,what is good;and what does the Lord require of youbut to do justice and to love kindness ,and to walk humbly with your God."Micah 6:8

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RuthW

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quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Now s/he is demanding the Army pay for her/his sex change.

Bullshit. She has said she wants to undergo hormone replacement therapy. She hasn't demanded anything.
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the giant cheeseburger
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I would consider Manning a hero if, and only if, it had all been leaked to some other body a bit more respectable than Julian Assange (currently cowering in an embassy to avoid extradition for rape) and if it had been done in more a stand-up manner like Edward Snowden did.

I'm also a bit miffed as to where Chelsea has come from, last time I read about Manning's gender identity disorder the chosen name was Breanna E Manning.


I won't be signing the Amnesty International petition, mainly because they should be focusing first on calling the USA to abolish the death penalty, a far greater abuse than what will only turn out to be a six year prison sentence.

I am predicting, however, that Barack Obama will commute this sentence on his last day in office. It would be a good way for him to retrospectively do something worthy of his Nobel Prize.

[ 23. August 2013, 04:04: Message edited by: the giant cheeseburger ]

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Gramps49
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Ruth! Your language!

The beginning of a sex change is intensive psychological counseling along with hormone therapy, true. But it can also entail surgery in the later stages.

Manning told the Today Show s/he is requesting sex change therapy.

Ft Leavenworth's (The military prison where Manning will go) has said s/he will have to get a court order for that. His.her lawyer has already said he will file a petition to that effect. Therefore, Manning will be demanding sex change therapy.

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RuthW

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quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Ruth! Your language!

What of it?

quote:
The beginning of a sex change is intensive psychological counseling along with hormone therapy, true. But it can also entail surgery in the later stages.

Manning told the Today Show s/he is requesting sex change therapy.

Ft Leavenworth's (The military prison where Manning will go) has said s/he will have to get a court order for that. His.her lawyer has already said he will file a petition to that effect. Therefore, Manning will be demanding sex change therapy.

On what planet is a petition a demand?

[ 23. August 2013, 04:41: Message edited by: RuthW ]

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Eutychus
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A couple of thoughts.

Firstly, the comparison with Abu Ghraib is comparing apples and oranges. The charges are different. The argument about whether it's appropriate that, say, armed robbery frequently gets you more jail time than rape and murder is well worth having, but has nothing to do with Manning's case in particular. It would be better to compare sentencing for similar charges.

Secondly, as I understand it the sentencing is far short of the potential 100+ years incurred.

Thirdly, I suspect that in the judge's mind the sentencing is as long as it is because they felt the need to add a strong deterrent component. Again, one can argue about the rights and wrongs of what Manning did but there were clear breaches of the law and related risks in terms of punishment. There is clearly something of a trend in the US especially to break the law in this or similar fashion (again, regardless of the motives) and too lax a sentence would, it could be argued, fuel that trend. (One could also argue about whether deterrent sentences actually achieve their effect and whether they are fair on the convicted individual, but again this applies to many, many other cases).

Fourthly, and again as I understand it, the sex change information was released by the defence team. Again, its use in this way (as opposed to the rights and wrongs of the request itself) appears to me clearly to be a ploy to invite sympathy for Manning and the hope that this will be reflected in how the prison term plays out.

I say all this as someone who knows plenty of people who I almost always believe have done wrong, who I often think have been disproportionally sentenced (sometimes for deterrent reasons), and some of whom have genuine health issues that they nevertheless do not hesitate to exploit to the full in order to obtain leniency, early release, and so on.

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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the giant cheeseburger
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quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
On what planet is a petition a demand?

On what planet is using the legal system to get your own way not a demand?

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If I give a homeopathy advocate a really huge punch in the face, can the injury be cured by giving them another really small punch in the face?

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Kelly Alves

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When it is encompassed in a petition. The name of the action says it all.

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Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.

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Lord Jestocost
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Thirdly, I suspect that in the judge's mind the sentencing is as long as it is because they felt the need to add a strong deterrent component.

Absolutely. Manning is of a generation that grew up accustomed to believing that information is/should be free and universally shareable. The top brass want to make it very clear that as far as they're concerned no it isn't.

Charles Stross recently wrote an interesting piece on a problem that is only going to get worse, as far as the establishment is concerned: what will happen as their workforce become more and more of Manning's generation and outlook.

[ 23. August 2013, 08:31: Message edited by: Lord Jestocost ]

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betjemaniac
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I'm going to stick my head *slightly* above the parapet as I am ex-forces. I'm sympathetic to the argument that it's not my business as I'm not an American (while reserving judgment on the various different sentences for various different crimes angle, as it seems to me that's a tangential argument - one very much having, although I can't believe it's never been done before on here, but probably not for this thread).

I'd like to pick up on No Prophet's distinction between Manning acting purely out of personal ideology vs Burgess et al as agents of an enemy state. I think that reading ignores the context of the Cold War (particularly as it was in the 1950s) and actually the comparison is valid. It was Burgess et al's personal ideology and belief in Communism which led them to decide to aid the Soviet Union in the hope that Communism could win. It really wasn't about helping the USSR/Russia win except in so far as that would be the triumph of their ideology and what they believed would be best for mankind.

In an internet-enabled Cold War, they would most probably have done exactly what Manning did - there would have been no need to actually join the KGB. Aiding the USSR was the outworking of personal ideology every bit as much as was aiding Wikileaks - none were doing it for the money.

Just my take on it anyway - I'm not sure I'd have introduced the comparison myself, as it is perhaps hubristic and unhelpful, but I do believe that at base it is probably valid.

The interesting thing with the military (certainly in the UK), pace Lord Jestocost's post, is that thus far they remain remarkably good at recruiting people who (in the military's terms) know how to play the game and how to behave. Consequently, I'm not too sure that the coming generation is going to present them with too many problems (outside the conditions of conscription and a general mobilisation, which, as Sir Iain Moncreiff observed, "draws all manner of strange cattle into the ranks"). Thus a strategy of hitting perceived malefactors hard may be all that's needed as a workable deterrent.

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luvanddaisies

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quote:
Originally posted by the giant cheeseburger:

I won't be signing the Amnesty International petition, mainly because they should be focusing first on calling the USA to abolish the death penalty,

Er, they do campaign about that ( link )- and have done for years - I think I remember them campaigning about the death penalty in the USA while I was still at school. And yes, they campaign about Guantanamo too. Here's the 2013 Amnesty International report on the USA, if you're interested.
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

Fourthly, and again as I understand it, the sex change information was released by the defence team. Again, its use in this way (as opposed to the rights and wrongs of the request itself) appears to me clearly to be a ploy to invite sympathy for Manning and the hope that this will be reflected in how the prison term plays out.

Any reports I've seen say that this information was released after sentencing precisely because they did not want it to overshadow her trial;

quote:
Asked why Pte Manning was making this announcement now, the day after sentencing, Mr Coombs said: "Chelsea didn't want to have this be something that overshadowed the case."
However, Manning's gender identity issues were mentioned throughout her court-martial;

quote:
Defence witnesses, including therapists who had treated Pte Manning, testified that the soldier had spoken of wanting to transition to being a woman, suggesting that these problems had affected his mental health.
- and she had sent a photo of herself in a blonde wig to one of her supervisors in 2010, under the subject heading "My problem", so it's not like it's suddenly a new thing that's been sprung out of nowhere.

The sad thing is that the news of her wanting to live as a woman seems to have made the press drop all idea of anything else and mostly get excited by that, rather than the rather more widely important coverage of the rightness or otherwise of the sentence, and the implications of that as they apply to the rest of the world - the USA, like it or not, carries enough sway in international politics and action that their approach to human rights, liberty and many other issues concerns everyone to some extent.

Quotes from BBC article ,same one as before, linked again for the hard-of-scrolling.

quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:


BTW, I too would like to see the Bush and Cheney company brought up on charges, but it is not going to happen in an American court.

Wouldn't we all - and Tony Blair along with them. I wonder if it's total pie-in-the-sky that some day they might face war crime charges? It certainly looks that way.

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Enoch
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Betjemaniac, your comments about Burgess et al have said what I was about to add.

As for the implication in some posts that Manning was a confused young man, and that this somehow makes him different from Burgess et al, true, Guy Burgess was a seedy, raffish rake who knew exactly what he was doing. He seems to have been entertaining company but deeply unpleasant. But Donald Maclean does seem to have been rather a confused young man. This doesn't let him off any more than it lets Manning off. Manning knew he was supposed to observe whatever the US equivalent is of the Official Secrets Act. He also knew that if he broke that, the State would throw the book at him.

There is a fundamental ethical issue as to whether we each of us are entitled to choose to break rules we know to be serious and claim that because we believe - according solely to our own personal inner sense of judgement - we are entitled to do so, the State and public opinion should admire us for doing so and let us off the obvious consequences for us of what we have done.

That's either noble or outrageously conceited. In this context, I go with the latter.

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The Silent Acolyte

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quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
If Manning is a hero, then Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the psychiatrist who shot up the processing center at Fort Hood, is a hero.

I suspect I may not be alone in failing to see the thread of logic connecting the two.

Care to shine a little light on your thinking to help us out?

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luvanddaisies

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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:

There is a fundamental ethical issue as to whether we each of us are entitled to choose to break rules we know to be serious and claim that because we believe - according solely to our own personal inner sense of judgement - we are entitled to do so, the State and public opinion should admire us for doing so and let us off the obvious consequences for us of what we have done.

That's either noble or outrageously conceited. In this context, I go with the latter.

I think you're missing the point - Chelsea Manning didn't just decide to leak things in a random sort of way - she was legally obliged to do so.

(I started to write something, then decided that this link, from the Huffington Post had done it all for me, which was nice of them).

quote:
Section 499 of the Army Field Manual states, "Every violation of the law of war is a war crime." The law of war is contained in the Geneva Conventions.

Article 85 of the First Protocol to the Geneva Conventions describes making the civilian population or individual civilians the object of attack as a grave breach. The firing on and killing of civilians shown in the "Collateral Murder" video violated this provision of Geneva.

Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions requires that the wounded be collected and cared for. Article 17 of the First Protocol states that the civilian population "shall be permitted, even on their own initiative, to collect and care for the wounded." That article also says, "No one shall be harmed . . . for such humanitarian acts." The firing on rescuers portrayed in the "Collateral Murder" video violates these provisions of Geneva.

Finally, Section 27-10 of the Army Field Manual states that "maltreatment of dead bodies" is a war crime. When the Army jeep drove over the dead body, it violated this provision.

Enshrined in the US Army Subject Schedule No. 27-1 is "the obligation to report all violations of the law of war." At his guilty plea hearing, Manning explained that he had gone to his chain of command and asked them to investigate the "Collateral Murder" video and other "war porn," but his superiors refused. "I was disturbed by the response to injured children," Manning stated. He was also bothered by the soldiers depicted in the video who "seemed to not value human life by referring to [their targets] as 'dead bastards.' "

The Uniform Code of Military Justice sets forth the duty of a service member to obey lawful orders. But that duty includes the concomitant duty to disobey unlawful orders. An order not to reveal classified information that contains evidence of war crimes would be an unlawful order. Manning had a legal duty to reveal the commission of war crimes.

So, not so much 'outrageously conceited' as legally and morally obliged.

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Marvin the Martian

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The key issue to my mind is simple - members of the US armed forces were engaged in war crimes. The Geneva Convention requires anyone who knows of those crimes to report them. Manning did so.

That the US top brass didn't want those war crimes to be reported is irrelevant. That US service personnel might be hurt as a result of them being revealed is irrelevant - they shouln't have been doing it in the first place.

Manning acted completely correctly, and that's all there is to it.

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Sylvander
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Thanks for posting the link in the OP. Signing a petition and distributing it is the little one can do as an outsider against human rights violations. Sometimes AI is amazingly successful by building public pressure.

I do not get the "he endangered other army personnel" argument. I was in the army (we had conscription) and in fact we were *obliged* to report crimes committed by other soldiers. We were also *obliged* to disobey orders that violated human rights (not sure that applies in US army, too, but morally I have no doubt this is the right thing). If superior officers to whom one should report first are themselves involved in (covering up) crimes it may well be that the public is the right arena to "report" them. Especially in a democracy where the people are ultimately responsible for controlling the army.

Now the US army has been involved in systematic and serious war crimes from torture of POWs in the first Gulf War in 1991 to the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib. Murders of civilians were not systematic but condoned.

If you are in an army involved in war crimes you cannot complain that a whistleblower "endangers" you. Quite the contrary - you should face the risk of being tried for war crimes yourself.

Bradley Manning is one of the biggest spots of shame on Obama's reign.

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Anglican't
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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
The key issue to my mind is simple - members of the US armed forces were engaged in war crimes. The Geneva Convention requires anyone who knows of those crimes to report them. Manning did so.

But did he? The question I posed on the related thread about journalism (and which appears to have gone unanswered so far) is did he leak specific information that concerned him or did he put into the public domain vast swathes of data regardless of its importance and without even looking at its contents? If the latter is correct, I don't see how he can be considered a 'whistle blower' or 'reporting' anything.
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luvanddaisies

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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
[did he leak specific information that concerned him or did he put into the public domain vast swathes of data regardless of its importance and without even looking at its contents? If the latter is correct, I don't see how he can be considered a 'whistle blower' or 'reporting' anything.

quote:
At his guilty plea hearing, Manning explained that he had gone to his chain of command and asked them to investigate the "Collateral Murder" video and other "war porn," but his superiors refused
...so she decided to leak the details to the public instead, where they had some chance of being noticed and acted upon. Remember she has a legal (and moral) duty to report war crimes, and as her superiors refused to act, another way of reporting was to make the stuff public. Maybe Wikileaks wasn't the best choice in the world - I have no idea what other options might have existed - but it did have the effect of publicising the abuses - although nobody involved in them has been prosecuted, which is shocking.

Here's a little list of what she leaked, from the Wall Street Journal.

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Anglican't
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quote:
Originally posted by luvanddaisies:
Here's a little list of what she leaked, from the Wall Street Journal.

A useful, brief guide. So Manning could have leaked the video and be done with it. I think he might've got a lot of sympathy if he'd stopped then. The State Department Cables run to hundreds of thousands of documents so I think it's accepted (but correct me if I'm wrong) that he didn't have the opportunity to read them before leaking them. For this alone I think a lengthy prison sentence was justified.
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chris stiles
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
For this alone I think a lengthy prison sentence was justified.

I come reluctantly to the same conclusion. Though fairness would also dictate that his entire chain of command have the book thrown at them for violating military law - doubt that will occur though.
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Eutychus
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quote:
Originally posted by luvanddaisies:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Fourthly, and again as I understand it, the sex change information was released by the defence team. Again, its use in this way (as opposed to the rights and wrongs of the request itself) appears to me clearly to be a ploy to invite sympathy for Manning and the hope that this will be reflected in how the prison term plays out.

Any reports I've seen say that this information was released after sentencing precisely because they did not want it to overshadow her trial
I chose my words carefully. I didn't say anything about the sentencing; I said "how the prison term plays out", and I stand by what I posted.

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Enoch
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quote:
Originally posted by luvanddaisies:
I think you're missing the point - Chelsea Manning didn't just decide to leak things in a random sort of way - she was legally obliged to do so.

(I started to write something, then decided that this link, from the Huffington Post had done it all for me, which was nice of them).

quote:
Section 499 of the Army Field Manual states, "Every violation of the law of war is a war crime." The law of war is contained in the Geneva Conventions.

Article 85 of the First Protocol to the Geneva Conventions describes making the civilian population or individual civilians the object of attack as a grave breach. The firing on and killing of civilians shown in the "Collateral Murder" video violated this provision of Geneva.

Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions requires that the wounded be collected and cared for. Article 17 of the First Protocol states that the civilian population "shall be permitted, even on their own initiative, to collect and care for the wounded." That article also says, "No one shall be harmed . . . for such humanitarian acts." The firing on rescuers portrayed in the "Collateral Murder" video violates these provisions of Geneva.

Finally, Section 27-10 of the Army Field Manual states that "maltreatment of dead bodies" is a war crime. When the Army jeep drove over the dead body, it violated this provision.

Enshrined in the US Army Subject Schedule No. 27-1 is "the obligation to report all violations of the law of war." At his guilty plea hearing, Manning explained that he had gone to his chain of command and asked them to investigate the "Collateral Murder" video and other "war porn," but his superiors refused. "I was disturbed by the response to injured children," Manning stated. He was also bothered by the soldiers depicted in the video who "seemed to not value human life by referring to [their targets] as 'dead bastards.' "

The Uniform Code of Military Justice sets forth the duty of a service member to obey lawful orders. But that duty includes the concomitant duty to disobey unlawful orders. An order not to reveal classified information that contains evidence of war crimes would be an unlawful order. Manning had a legal duty to reveal the commission of war crimes.

So, not so much 'outrageously conceited' as legally and morally obliged.
Sorry, but that's legally and ethically seriously duff.

I can't comment on whether Manning had a duty under US military law to do something about this. I know nothing about US military law. We only have an article in the electronic press to go on, and since when has the press been reliable on anything?

However, were that the case, he'd complied with any such duty by going to his chain of command. Suppose they refuse to do anything about it. He has two choices. To bite his lip, feel resentful but say, 'I did my bit - it's their business now' or to go further up the military chain of command. Neither of those involve Mr Assange.

Put the question a different way. If he had not leaked his story to Mr Assange, would any court martial have been able to punish him for not doing so? Unless it could, yet alone would, the military law argument in his favour is, as I've just said, duff.

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luvanddaisies

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So what did you mean by "how the prison term plays out" then?

This little Slate article doesn't exactly suggest that having decided to declare her intention to live as a woman and be addressed as one will make her prison term easier.

She'll be locked up with men
quote:
Manning is set to serve her sentence at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. It is a male-only facility; female military prisoners are all housed at the Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar in San Diego.
Ok, I can see that the whole anatomy thing might make it a bit difficult for them to put her in a women's prison. I guess that's a little complicated.


That said, however;
quote:
As a trans woman living in a men’s prison, Manning will not only be denied hormone therapy. She will also face an elevated risk of harassment and sexual assault behind bars from both fellow inmates and members of staff. One 2006 study of California prisons found that trans women housed in men’s prisons are 13 times as likely to be sexually abused than other prisoners. That year, 59 percent of transgender women in the system were abused.
Doesn't really sound appealing if "how the prison term plays out" is vulnerability to rape and other abuse.

I suppose

quote:
the act ostensibly requires facilities to—among other things—take extra care in assigning housing to transgender inmates to reduce their risk of assault. That often means respecting the prisoner's stated gender identity. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, housing decisions “must be made on a case-by-case basis” and “cannot be made solely on the basis of a person’s anatomy or gender assigned at birth.” The transgender inmate’s “views regarding their personal safety must be seriously considered,” as well, and the “decisions must be reassessed at least twice per year.”
She might get her own cell. Is that what you meant?

it looks more likely that she was waiting until the outcome of the trial was known, whichever way it went, in order to announce her intention to live as a woman.
This article quotes the email she sent to a supervisor while still serving;
quote:
This is my problem. I’ve had signs of it for a very long time. It’s caused problems within my family. I thought a career in the military would get rid of it. It’s not something I seek out for attention, and I’ve been trying very, very hard to get rid of it by placing myself in situations where it would be impossible. But, it’s not going away; it’s haunting me more and more as I get older. Now, the consequences of it are dire, at a time when it’s causing me great pain it itself…
I don't know what to do anymore, and the only "help" that seems available is severe punishment and/or getting rid of me.

- so it looks like something that has been becoming more and more inevitable that she'd have to address, and, as this, possible rather less biased , article says, if Manning had been openly transgender, she wouldn't have been allowed to serve in the military anyway. It seems that Manning joined the army to try to "fix" her gender dysphoria, and it must have been increasingly clear that that wasn't going to work. I suppose (and it is just supposition) that starting gender reassignment while still in the military wouldn't have been an option.

During the trial, Manning's defense also alluded to her fragile mental state as a mitigating circumstance.
It would appear that as well as feeling she had to report gravely wrong behaviour (which, under the Geneva Convention), despite her superiors' ignoring of it, she also had to deal with her own issues.
quote:
During Manning's trial, master sergeant Paul Adkins described Manning's worsening mental condition while serving in the Army. In a memo to Manning's doctors, he said he believed Manning needed "extensive psychological therapy" after witnessing Manning during violent episodes and near catatonic states.
That article does point out that
quote:
Some analysts have asked why a junior intelligence analyst with demonstrated mental instability had access to hundreds of thousands of classified documents in the first place.

Maybe this is a valid point - although I'm sure a lot of people with 'demonstrated mental instability' have very responsible jobs, and hold them down with no problem. Maybe it was that Manning's problems weren't being fully addressed - like I said, just how much help would she get for gender identity disorder in the military? So maybe she was vulnerable, and maybe might otherwise have been more calculating and strategic in to whom she leaked material and in its volume. I don't know, I'm not in her head.

However that may be, I still believe that her actions were punished disproportionately, that she leaked things that should never have been covered up, and that the US government is acting badly (well, illegally, but it's not like they're going to accept that) in prosecuting her for that, and in not prosecuting those whose crimes her leaks exposed.

--------------------
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luvanddaisies

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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
So Manning could have leaked the video and be done with it. I think he might've got a lot of sympathy if he'd stopped then. The State Department Cables run to hundreds of thousands of documents so I think it's accepted (but correct me if I'm wrong) that he didn't have the opportunity to read them before leaking them.

No, you're not wrong about the volume, and I don't know what proportion of it she read before passing it on.
quote:
Manning passed 250,000 State Department cables and 470,000 Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield logs to WikiLeaks, as well as files pertaining to detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, and video of a 2007 attack by a US helicopter gunship in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters journalists.
- says the Guardian.

It is very likely that, even if not reading every file, she knew the broad category (battlefield logs, cables, whatever) of what the things she was leaking were - it wasn't like she emptied out the filing-cabinet utterly blindly.

Manning's leaks served to inform the public. Maybe she didn't make the greatest choices in how she did this, but her sentence is longer than that of anyone before who's leaked information - how is that proportionate?
American Civil Liberties Union said
quote:
"This is a sad day for Bradley Manning, but it's also a sad day for all Americans who depend on brave whistleblowers and a free press for a fully informed public debate."
Amnesty International's request for commuting the sentence to time served doesn't seem unreasonable.

--------------------
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Anglican't
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Leaking sensitive information might well 'inform the public' but I'm not sure that's the same thing as being in the public interest.

Was this leak one of the biggest ever? If it was, I imagine that might explain the harsh sentence.

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Eutychus
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quote:
Originally posted by luvanddaisies:
So what did you mean by "how the prison term plays out" then?

I meant the actual conditions of detention as well as issues like parole and conditional release or its equivalent.

My experience is overwhelmingly that of the French criminal justice system, but I think there are likely to be some common factors.

The first and largest of these is that in many cases, convicts tend to maximise the potential of their health issues in the hope of more lenient treatment.

While many inmates do not get the treatment they deserve, others make the most of genuinely life-threatening conditions to secure early release - and return to their old ways. I have had first-hand examples of both situations within the past month.

In addition, Manning is a celebrity inmate. In France he* would be in isolation (not to be confused with solitary confinement) from the main prison population, basically to make him easier to deal with and less likely to be killed. Similar arrangements are likely to be true in any first-world country. The higher his media profile now, the more it's in the prison's interest to make sure nothing bad happens to him. In any case, he will be a headache for whichever prison gets him. Prisons hate celebrity inmates dying on them. It's a great play on the part of his defence team.

[ETA forgot to add: and his emotional and health issues of this nature have no bearing at whatsoever on whether a crime was committed. If I had a dollar for every inmate I know with an unstable family background...]

(*I believe that for the prison system he will be a he for as long as he is biologically. I have already mistaken a male inmate for a female social worker and had some very head-scratching moments over a claimed man in a women's prison who was in fact nothing of the kind...).

[ 23. August 2013, 17:23: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

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Ricardus
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Thirdly, I suspect that in the judge's mind the sentencing is as long as it is because they felt the need to add a strong deterrent component. Again, one can argue about the rights and wrongs of what Manning did but there were clear breaches of the law and related risks in terms of punishment. There is clearly something of a trend in the US especially to break the law in this or similar fashion (again, regardless of the motives) and too lax a sentence would, it could be argued, fuel that trend. (One could also argue about whether deterrent sentences actually achieve their effect and whether they are fair on the convicted individual, but again this applies to many, many other cases).

FWIW I think the question of whether her sentence is excessive is separate from the question of whether or not she should be pardoned.

There is no question that she broke the law. There is also no question that laws against leaking intelligence documents are strict for a good reason. The only question in this case is whether Manning could justify breaking the law with reference to a higher cause.

To my mind, if Manning got the full 100-year sentence and then a presidential pardon, that wouldn't actually be unreasonable.

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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)

Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004  |  IP: Logged
Martin60
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# 368

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In Caesar's terms, Caesar has been lawful, just, appropriate. A purely liberal, countercultural critique is merely reactionary, adversarial therefore part of the problem. Is Caesar's other personality.

Mercy triumphs over judgement.

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Love wins

Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Dave W.
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# 8765

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quote:
Originally posted by luvanddaisies:
It is very likely that, even if not reading every file, she knew the broad category (battlefield logs, cables, whatever) of what the things she was leaking were - it wasn't like she emptied out the filing-cabinet utterly blindly.

Actually it was a lot like that, according to Wikipedia:
quote:
The contents of the U.S. diplomatic cables leak [of 251,287 cables] describe in detail events and incidents surrounding international affairs from 274 embassies dating from 28 December 1966 to 28 February 2010. The diplomatic cables revealed numerous unguarded comments and revelations: critiques and praises about the host countries of various U.S. embassies, discussion and resolutions towards ending ongoing tension in the Middle East, efforts for and resistance against nuclear disarmament, actions in the War on Terror, assessments of other threats around the world, dealings between various countries, U.S. intelligence and counterintelligence efforts, U.S. support of dictatorship and other diplomatic actions.

Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004  |  IP: Logged


 
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