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I Am Bradley Manning

iam.bradleymanning.org

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Re: I Am Bradley Manning

#41

Post by pekk »

mpyne wrote: post #17
genwin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the 2003 invasion of Iraq was to establish democracy you'd have a point on #3. I'm still waiting for a leader of Iraq to be elected by its people.

I'm not sure that even the neocons could tell you the actual reason they went to war. Only the WMD thing even made a bit of sense (in the aftermath of 9/11). But even most of the normal tinfoil theories (e.g. blood for oil) wouldn't have made practical sense. Puzzles me to this day.

It sure helped their domestic politics and justified military spending

Re: I Am Bradley Manning

#42

Post by rowanseymour »

mpyne wrote: post #28
nikcub wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

800 people died in Egypt, 300 in Tunisia, 8 in Algeria, 120 in Bahrain To put this into context, over 2000 people died in Iraq in only the last month . This is years after the war being 'over' and many more years after mission accomplished, and the monthly death total is still greater than the net total of the Arab Spring revolutions You can't compare Iraq to the Arab spring nations that democratized peacefully. You…

I'm glad you think the war in Iraq was bad, because so do I. But why would it be OK for someone to have a hand in 116,000+ deaths for democracy but not be OK to have a hand in 600,000+? There's no good answer to this question, which is why I don't see why Manning would want to be known as the instigator of it all. The rest of your points, even if we simply specify them as true, don't really explain why Manning's own…

But why would it be OK for someone to have a hand in 116,000+ deaths for democracy but not be OK to have a hand in 600,000+? There's no good answer to this question, which is why I don't see why Manning would want to be known as the instigator of it all.

"have a hand" is a little too ambiguous don't you think? There is a significant moral difference between "providing information" (what Manning did), and "invading a sovereign state using fairly indiscriminate bombing after a propaganda campaign about WMDs" (what the coalition forces did)

Re: I Am Bradley Manning

#43

Post by res0nat0r »

alwaysinshade wrote: post #38
exposing_truth wrote: post #33

The site features another falsehood: "There is no evidence that anyone died as a result of the leaked information" Not true. The cables contained the actual names of Afghans who helped us fight the Taliban. Once their names were exposed, unredacted, via the Wikileaks calbes, "punishment" and death -- courtesy of the ascendant Taliban leaders -- came quickly. http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/07/28/murphy-rides…

Your post misses a key point: "WikiLeaks published a lengthy statement on its website Thursday morning, accusing the Guardian of "negligently [disclosing] top secret WikiLeaks’ decryption passwords to hundreds of thousands of unredacted unpublished US diplomatic cables." According to WikiLeaks, the disclosure of the password began months ago when Rusbridger's brother-in-law David Leigh, also the Guardian's investigat…

The Guardian wouldn't have had any documents to bungle the release of if Manning hadn't released them in the first place.

Re: I Am Bradley Manning

#44

Post by mercurial »

mpyne wrote: post #14
streptomycin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 3... so you're saying that foreign aggression based on lies is morally equivalent to a local revolution as long as both ostensibly have some similarities in their end goals?

You if you can claim with a straight face that you'd trade 40,000 lives and a despot for a democracy, then what would your reasoning be to quibble about whether the results were achieved by local revolution or foreign aggression? Do you think every Libyan who died was either for the regime or for the revolution? Many just wanted to live their lives and neither side spoke for them . What does a "local revolution" even…

I don't know, what about the American Revolution? Was it morally wrong as well?

You certainly have a point wrt to how many people's interest is represented in the Arab Spring. It looked like the Egyptian revolution was mostly due to urban population, for instance. But, well, you can't expect everybody to agree with a revolution, you will always find plenty of people who want to keep the old regime because it is (or they think it is) more closely aligned with their interests, and other people who won't take sides. That's still "local revolutions". That's not a conflict originally triggered by the mistakes of a third party, in order to further its own selfish interests.

Re: I Am Bradley Manning

#45

Post by mercurial »

exposing_truth wrote: post #33

The site features another falsehood: "There is no evidence that anyone died as a result of the leaked information" Not true. The cables contained the actual names of Afghans who helped us fight the Taliban. Once their names were exposed, unredacted, via the Wikileaks calbes, "punishment" and death -- courtesy of the ascendant Taliban leaders -- came quickly. http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/07/28/murphy-rides…

> "Yet the dead are the lucky ones. The more unfortunate may wind up in a torture chamber similar to one found by Coldstream Guards. It features such amenities as chains to hang prisoners from walls. Not that the inmates would want to walk on the floor: that features broken glass. And there is limb amputation, kneecapping with an electric drill, eye gouging, bone-breaking or ritual rape to smash the will. Where the offender is not himself available punishment will be visited on his relatives."

I hope this is not an attempt as moral outrage. When you and your allies rely on torture (not to mention the good old "chai boys" tradition of the Afghan police...), you lose the moral high ground.

Re: I Am Bradley Manning

#46

Post by neurotech1 »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #25
mpyne wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that even the neocons could tell you the actual reason they went to war. Only the WMD thing even made a bit of sense (in the aftermath of 9/11). But even most of the normal tinfoil theories (e.g. blood for oil) wouldn't have made practical sense. Puzzles me to this day.

Saudi Arabia (like Kuwait) doesn't have much of a military, but it is absolutely crucial to the world energy market. The US will apparently spare no expense to protect it. That and genwin's reason.

Saudi Arabia has one of the largest and well supported Air Forces in the middle east, other than Israeli AF. The RSAF has 250+ fighter/attack aircraft in service. F-15s and Tornado's mainly. Also another 120 F-5E/F fighter "trainers" available.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Saudi_Air_Force#Current_a...

Re: I Am Bradley Manning

#47

Post by alwaysinshade »

res0nat0r wrote: post #43
alwaysinshade wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post misses a key point: "WikiLeaks published a lengthy statement on its website Thursday morning, accusing the Guardian of "negligently [disclosing] top secret WikiLeaks’ decryption passwords to hundreds of thousands of unredacted unpublished US diplomatic cables." According to WikiLeaks, the disclosure of the password began months ago when Rusbridger's brother-in-law David Leigh, also the Guardian's investigat…

The Guardian wouldn't have had any documents to bungle the release of if Manning hadn't released them in the first place.

Not untrue, but analogous to saying someone wouldn't have died from a gunshot if the ammunition hadn't been sold. It misses the bit where someone pulled the trigger.

Re: I Am Bradley Manning

#48

Post by uid »

anigbrowl wrote: post #39
nikcub wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

800 people died in Egypt, 300 in Tunisia, 8 in Algeria, 120 in Bahrain To put this into context, over 2000 people died in Iraq in only the last month . This is years after the war being 'over' and many more years after mission accomplished, and the monthly death total is still greater than the net total of the Arab Spring revolutions You can't compare Iraq to the Arab spring nations that democratized peacefully. You…

Wait a minute, it's not like everyone through the war in Iraq was a good thing until Bradley Manning leaked information about it, or that there was a news blackout about how poorly it was going or that the US created a power vacuum that degenerated into a hideous civil war. I'm not willing to address any of the detail in your argument when you start out with such an enormous attempt at misdirection. Try again by all…

I read it as a response to the line:

> that same exact logic would also justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq...

and it argued that justifying the Iraq war is on a different scale, not comparable in either death toll or long-term effects to what has taken place thus far in the Arab Spring.

Re: I Am Bradley Manning

#49

Post by knz42 »

res0nat0r wrote: post #43
alwaysinshade wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post misses a key point: "WikiLeaks published a lengthy statement on its website Thursday morning, accusing the Guardian of "negligently [disclosing] top secret WikiLeaks’ decryption passwords to hundreds of thousands of unredacted unpublished US diplomatic cables." According to WikiLeaks, the disclosure of the password began months ago when Rusbridger's brother-in-law David Leigh, also the Guardian's investigat…

The Guardian wouldn't have had any documents to bungle the release of if Manning hadn't released them in the first place.

Strawman argument. By the same argument "Manning would not hav had anything to release if the DOD had implemented compartimentalization of access to state documents." (which most modern armies were already doing before, and which the DOD now has)

Re: I Am Bradley Manning

#50

Post by res0nat0r »

knz42 wrote: post #49
res0nat0r wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Guardian wouldn't have had any documents to bungle the release of if Manning hadn't released them in the first place.

Strawman argument. By the same argument "Manning would not hav had anything to release if the DOD had implemented compartimentalization of access to state documents." (which most modern armies were already doing before, and which the DOD now has)

Understandable, but the parent is trying to shift the blame of anyone dying to The Guardian and I would argue that blame lies on Manning by releasing hundreds of thousands of documents wholesale vs. a whistleblower like Ellsberg in where he only published data directly related to a specific crime.
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