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Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

nytimes.com

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Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#711

Post by willstrafach »

colechristensen wrote: post #222
mhurron wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classifying material should not be a way for the Government to hide corruption and wrongdoing. Whistle blowing is the only way that prevents that. Chelsea Manning acted on her conscience, which is the best we can expect anyone to do. The governments punishment was to prevent that happening again.

Snowden released a large volume of information to well qualified journalists who very carefully combed through the data to find the things most relevant and important for the American public to know. Information that was legitimately classified and had no whistleblowing value simply wasn't released. Manning released a large volume of information to the public en masse with no regard to it's whistleblowing value. Some…

> Information that was legitimately classified and had no whistleblowing value simply wasn't released.

This is not true. Aside from the domestic surveillance disclosures which lead to reform in that area, most of the Snowden leaks do not appear to have any sort of whistleblowing value.

Recent example of info release with no whistleblowing value: https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/top-secret-snowden-docum...

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#712

Post by ptaipale »

DarqWebster wrote: post #709
ptaipale wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: Sorry, this was rubbish, I was thinking of Assange not Snowden. -- Note that charges (technically, a European Arrest Warrant in order to get him for questioning) against Snowden have not been made by the U.S. but by Sweden, for a suspected rape. So Obama definitely cannot commute them in any way. There is no extradition request to the U.S., so when fighting an extradition to U.S., Snowden is beating a straw man…

That's Julian Assange, not Edward Snowden.

Sorry. Yes of course. Thanks.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#713

Post by boomboomsubban »

the_trapper wrote: post #699
boomboomsubban wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you think you could use that free time to sort through thousands of pages of classified documents without your fellow soldiers or your superiors knowing? Time isn't the only relevant resource. Maybe I'm an asshole, but the "put lives at risk" line seems like nationalistic swill. Even if it risked American combatants, why should that justify hiding the deaths of possibly fifteen thousand Iraqi civilians?

> And you think you could use that free time to sort through thousands of pages of classified documents without your fellow soldiers or your superiors knowing? Most of the military intelligence Soldiers I deployed with brought their own personal laptops. You really underestimate how much free alone time is available to you when you are deployed. Remember that Manning was also kind of a black sheep at the time. Spendi…

I don't question the free time, I doubt the ability for someone already under a fair amount of emotional distress to be able to hide reading thousands of pages of classified data.

Even with the route she took, it was only a matter of months for her to make a mistake that got her arrested. Giving it to wikileaks reduced her anxiety, going through it likely would have ramped it up. Additionally, needing to keep a local copy of the data is a huge risk.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#714

Post by rudolf0 »

l33tbro wrote: post #370
rudolf0 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Little unethical behavior was actually leaked, though. The killing of the Reuters journalists probably should've been leaked since there was a sort of cover-up (government refused to give Reuters the video or concrete details), so I'll give her that. But the rest was basically just normal communications. I think she's served more than enough jail time, but this didn't really seem like a conscience-driven whistleblowi…

Could you please elaborate on this? I recently had dinner with a friend in intelligence, who was trying to convince me that Snowden was in bed with Russia from the get-go, and that the 90% of the leak had nothing to do with privacy concerns. I took his opinions with a grain of salt given his background, but also couldn't refute due to being relatively unfamiliar with the Snowden saga.

Russia was one of his last choices as a refuge; they were just one of the only countries to accept him.

I doubt he's fond of Russia, either, and he's made some passive-aggressive jabs at them on his Twitter.

That said, it can't be ruled out that he divulged even more secret information to Russia's intelligence services as a condition for asylum, but I don't think there's any evidence it was one of his motives when leaking.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#715

Post by hendersoon »

vkou wrote: post #416
hendersoon wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"May"? We're way past "may". The Arab Spring was catastrophic.

What part of it can be attributed to Manning..? And what part of it can be contributed to food insecurity, economic downturns, the despots running those countries tightening the screws, the CIA's involvement, a civil war in Iraq, the Department of State jumping on the opportunity to stick it to Putin by destabilizing Assad? Are any other architects of these disasters serving 35 years?

That's impossible to measure quantitatively. It's very clear that the leaks contributed to some degree, much like the email leaks and FBI notes to congress contributed to the election results, but how much? Nobody will ever know.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#716

Post by hendersoon »

danenania wrote: post #564
hendersoon wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"May"? We're way past "may". The Arab Spring was catastrophic.

It was catastrophic because despotism fought back and (mostly) won. But that doesn't mean the uprisings or the actions leading to it were wrong or futile. It's a long road.

Yes, the results were catastrophic, even though the protests themselves had pure motives. But results matter.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#717

Post by dtparr »

hendersoon wrote: post #331
dtparr wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From prior discussions, both the DOD[0] and intelligence communities[1] have whistleblower programs. This inevitably leads to questions of whether the DOD/IC IGs can be trusted to investigate the DOD/IC without the forcing function of a public release, but the programs are in place. [0] - http://www.dodig.mil/programs/whistleblower/index.html [1] - https://www.dni.gov/index.php/about-this-site/contact-the-ig...

The top NSA official who would have received Snowden's whistleblowing report was just fired for retaliating against a whistleblower. Also, Snowden was a contractor not a NSA employee so he wasn't covered by such programs. Your argument does not hold together. http://www.pogo.org/blog/2016/12/intelligence-community-land...

I'm not sure what argument you think I was making other than 'yes, whistleblower programs exist' in response to the parent's question of

> Has there been any sort of "ethical" system designed to show a person how they are supposed to whistle blow?

As you helpfully exemplified, many people dismiss the IG's programs due to the potential for (or reality of) retaliation (which I mentioned), but I specifically wanted to avoid that whole set of arguments because there's only so many times I can read through all that.

Also, the first line in the DNI whistleblower program mentions "An IC employee, assignee, detailee, or contractor" so unless that means something other than the plain reading, it would apply to someone today who is similarly situated.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#718

Post by hendersoon »

cm2187 wrote: post #268
nothrabannosir wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's right there in the article: She copied hundreds of thousands of military incident logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which, among other things, exposed abuses of detainees by Iraqi military officers working with American forces and showed that civilian deaths in the Iraq war were likely much higher than official estimates.

That was not in the diplomatic cables. What wrongdoing has been exposed in the diplomatic cables?

Nothing in particular. That's where Manning went wrong. There was no malfeasance or injustice exposed in the cables. They embarrassed the US and caused diplomatic difficulty for no public gain.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#719

Post by hendersoon »

DonHopkins wrote: post #374
hendersoon wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no record of any individual being physically harmed, but the leaked diplomatic cables were highly embarrassing, hurt the interests of the US, and were completely unjustified. They weren't exposing malfeasance or war crimes. They should not have been released. Manning did it wrong, Snowden did it right.

The fact that the US murdered innocent civilians was highly embarrassing and hurt the interests of the US, not the fact that Manning leaked that information itself. Punish the murderers, not the messengers. The only people were actually harmed were the innocent children and journalists on the receiving end of US machine guns.

I was specifically talking about leaking the diplomatic cables-- that wasn't OK.

Chelsea had a moral imperative to leak the murder of innocent civilians by the US military. But she should have stopped there.

Re: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

#720

Post by KirinDave »

rjeli wrote: post #678
KirinDave wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is everyone here forgetting the millions given by foreign nations?? Not terribly, since we can see where a lot of it went and we're not terribly upset with the outcomes? > The outright collusion with media? Yeah emails that emails went emails really emails well emails, right emails? > The lack of sensitivity to LGBT rights? Clinton has a mixed track record on LGBT rights, but I trust her infinitely more than I do T…

> Did you use your pizzagate decoder ring to figure out where they hid the girls yet? I miss detox "week".

You mean the conservative control week?

The vast majority of stories that ban filtered were about proposed human rights abuses by Trump's advisory board, and subsequent details about how foreign intelligence agencies helped the conservative candidate without the hobble of campaign finance laws or ethical considerations.

Or are you mad I'm here, being pugnacious and irreverent about the more absurd allegations leveled against various candidates (which I have done on behalf of Trump as well, if you check my post history far enough).

What, exactly, do you miss? And if so, why then did you click into this thread and read into something nested 3 deep?

I submit if you cast a vote in this country you should not be afforded the luxury of looking away from the results of that vote.

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