Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chelsea Manning stood trial. Edward Snowden did not.
This has been discussed before. A President can pardon people for crimes they may be charged with in the future.
The good ole Nixon pardon
Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
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Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
#202Seven years is still a long time for whistle blowing. I'm glad to see she is still getting released though. It's important to note commuting the sentence is not a pardon. Chelsea will still have this conviction for the rest of her life. I know there is a lot of controversy with Manning compared to Wikileaks et. al. as far as not redacting documents or using a discriminating news source to filter them. Still, I oppose…
By definition, a whistle blower must reveal evidence of the commission of a crime. The term does not extend to "actions by the government that I disagree with" or "things that violate my personal interpretations of the Constitution" If you misuse the term, you make it more difficult for legitimate whistle blowers to get the protection they deserve.
> "things that violate my personal interpretations of the Constitution"
The fact that it's even feasible to release confidential information about government action implies that there is some ability for individuals to interpret the law. Otherwise, if the government does it, you just have to accept it as legal.
Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
While he isn't blameless, the ACA helped a lot of people, the economy recovered greatly (admittedly all he had to do was not fuck it up), permitted states to legalize weed. For me I have to say the ACA is probably the biggest reason why I liked him well enough. I was able to stay on my parents insurance until I was 26, and then since I was self-employed I was able to easily get insurance through the marketplace. Now…
And his support for LGBT issues
I look forward to a day where we don't need to celebrate our leaders for basic human decency.
Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
#204[deleted]
Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
#205Off-topic but.. "they"? Manning isn't a group of people. Just say "she", it's really easy.
I love it when people pronoun-bully other people. It shows how progressive they are
I think in this case, it's raised that we know the subject's gender identity, so the use of gender-ambiguous "they" isn't necessary. Not out of any sense of pronoun policing or bullying - I suspect more because it scans weirdly when you have the information that it would normally abstract.
Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
#206Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
#207Manning indiscriminately leaked tons of diplomatic cables, as part of a personal vendetta against the US Army. It is without contention that the vast majority of the leaked cables revealed nothing that anyone considers wrongdoing. This wasn't the act of a whistle blower. It was the cowardly act of someone who put their own petty fantasies ahead of their solemn duty to protect the information they were entrusted with…
Chelsea Manning brought us video footage of Baghdad airstrikes with civilian and press casualties. The motive was clear-cut: she wanted to expose hidden truths about the war in Iraq that might convince the American people it was no longer worth the cost. That's the definition of a whistleblower.
"[She] didn’t like that people were being killed, particularly the citizens, innocent people," Campbell said. "I remember us specifically talking about how we were having a hard time getting information on how many people were being killed."
"On one of [her] last visits to Boston, Manning told Keith Rose, a friend [she] had met at Brandeis, of [her] misgivings about Iraq because of what [she] was learning as an intelligence analyst. "[She] expressed a feeling to me like how messed up the situation is," Rose said. "[She] said things like, 'If more people knew what was going on over there, they would not support the war.'"
Manning: “The thing that got me most was discovering that 15 detainees taken by the Iraqi Federal Police for printing ‘anti-Iraqi’ literature” had in truth printed a “benign political critique” against the corruption in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s cabinet.
Her conscience could not bear to keep these human rights abuses secret, and she revealed them to a world that needed to know about them. I am getting very tired of a narrative in which Manning's actions are mischaracterized as a "vendetta against the US Army" and a "cowardly act." It's an insidious and despicable way to shift attention away from civilian deaths in war and the mistreatment of detainees, the latter of which Manning continues to experience even today.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/who-is-wik...
Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
#208Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
#209It's been said that one person's freedom fighter is another's terrorist. > The files she copied also included about 250,000 diplomatic cables from American embassies around the world showing sensitive deals and conversations, dossiers detailing intelligence assessments of Guantánamo detainees held without trial, and a video of an American helicopter attack in Baghdad in two Reuters journalists were killed, among othe…
It has been argued that the diplomatic cables had a strong influence on the uprising in Tunisia after they spread on Facebook and when Bouazizi lit himself on fire the stage was set for their revolution, which was the first domino of what we later called the Arab Spring, which Syria became a part of, but has not resolved for six years.
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Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're knowledgable enough to censor the documents yourself before release, that's the way to go. Not everyone has perfect knowledge. Releasing only to journalists and stuff is a fairly good method too, but maybe create unnecessary exposure. Manning also went for a bulk dump strategy rather than being selective. Ultimately when you're dealing with a lot of data, that might be the only reasonable way to get it, but…
Snowden was very selective, and look where that got him...
He wasn't very selective. If he were being selective he would only have released information that had constitutional issues. Most of his documents were regarding foreign spying.