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Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#261

Post by cobrausn »

selfrespect wrote: post #166
rayiner wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, if you actually read up on the helicopter video, you'll see that Assange plays a game of "hide the ball" with what really happens in the video: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike . Specifically: 1) The company had been under fire all morning and the Apaches were called in by a soldier on the ground under attack at the location where the journalists were; 2) Among the group of men the two…

I've seen you apologize for the NSA spying on everyone, for Google giving all of our data to the NSA while putting on their best "don't be evil" face and now you apologize for scum shooting innocent people from helicopters (AND ENJOYING IT!). You're a terrible person, how do you live with yourself?

Well, reading this comment, I find you to be more scum than the helicopter pilot. He was eager to engage to protect the soldiers on the ground and thought he found the ones who were trying to kill them. Probably too eager, because war is hell, and despite all the best efforts of people to minimize civilian casualties, they can't. This is the actual reason I am an anti-war veteran.

You are just a coward behind a keyboard hurling insults from throwaway accounts, imagining yourself to be the better person.

Ugh, too much internet for one day.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#262

Post by jlgreco »

Vivtek wrote: post #235
fusiongyro wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Civilians might not like it, or even understand" is not an attempt to exclude civilians from the conversation, it's just an observation that civilians are unlikely to understand the complexities of the justice system internal to the armed forces. I'm a civilian, but I understand that joining the military means you are legally subject to additional laws and codes which are enforced completely by and within the armed…

I agree with this. The proper function of a military court is to examine compliance with military law, not to pass judgement on ethics outside of that law. The function of civil authority , say a moral President, something I hope to live to see, would be to pardon Manning, overruling the military justice sentence in the context of a greater good. Clearly, this will not happen. Obama will simply wash his hands - not e…

So basically, not only is this true: "Fuck you. It doesn't take a military mind to understand the difference between right and wrong and how little either has to do with institutional rules."

..but the more extreme "It TAKES a civilian mind to understand the difference between right and wrong" is also true? If the military is unable to consider morality itself, then we must rely on civilians to call them out. Accusing civilians of being incapable of doing that then puts the military above any sense of morality. Disturbing, to say the least.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#263

Post by cynicalkane »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #216
cynicalkane wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those officers oversaw the intentional mass murder of millions of Jews and Chinese. That's slightly more serious than the secrets Manning leaked. And by "slightly" I mean "an unguessable number of orders of magnitude." They only executed those officers for which they could prove this was the case, which is why only a few dozen were executed.

It's strange though, because nobody got executed for dropping atomic bombs, which was also intentional mass murder.

What a bunch of pedantic garbage. The Japanese were willing to commit to total war to defend their right to conquer and massacre Chinese people and Pacific islanders and surprise-bomb the USA while they were at it. The only significant debate about the A-Bomb is whether it was more or less deadly than an invasion of mainland Japan. Any fourth grade history student would understand this.

When people talk about the decline of HN, I think it's this sort of information-free, pointlessly contrary posts that they talk about.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#264

Post by anologwintermut »

aqme28 wrote: post #118
lotso wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bradley Manning released a dump of over 700,000 files. Although there were some documents that revealed possible war crimes, there was no do due diligence performed to verify that the rest of the files were not putting people in danger. I'm curious as to how people are justifying those actions? If someone releases a huge dump of classified files, without any possible war crimes, would we still defend them?

Didn't Snowden and Ellsberg also release a trove of files without "due diligence," relying on a third party to vet and process the files for publication?

no. Elseberg released one study about the Vietnam war. he actually read all of it and had been showing it around to senators and officials trying to get something done. he leaked it as a last resort.

in his video interview with the Guardian Snowden explicitly contrasted what he did with what Manning did : snowden looked at what he was leaking and claims he kept stuff that would harm the US. ( he still supports what Manning did).

this is the problem Manning literally did not read the classified information he was releasing and given his obligation to protect sensitive information and knowing that in some cases information was classified to protect lives( e.g informant names), his actions were morally reckless. if he had leaked just the collateral murder video , the he would have been justified.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#265

Post by anologwintermut »

aqme28 wrote: post #118
lotso wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bradley Manning released a dump of over 700,000 files. Although there were some documents that revealed possible war crimes, there was no do due diligence performed to verify that the rest of the files were not putting people in danger. I'm curious as to how people are justifying those actions? If someone releases a huge dump of classified files, without any possible war crimes, would we still defend them?

Didn't Snowden and Ellsberg also release a trove of files without "due diligence," relying on a third party to vet and process the files for publication?

no. Elseberg released one study about the Vietnam war. he actually read all of it and had been showing it around to senators and officials trying to get something done. he leaked it as a last resort.

in his video interview with the Guardian Snowden explicitly contrasted what he did with what Manning did : snowden looked at what he was leaking and claims he kept stuff that would harm the US. ( he still supports what Manning did).

this is the problem Manning literally did not read the classified information he was releasing and given his obligation to protect sensitive information and knowing that in some cases information was classified to protect lives( e.g informant names), his actions were morally reckless. if he had leaked just the collateral murder video , the he would have been justified.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#266

Post by anologwintermut »

aqme28 wrote: post #118
lotso wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bradley Manning released a dump of over 700,000 files. Although there were some documents that revealed possible war crimes, there was no do due diligence performed to verify that the rest of the files were not putting people in danger. I'm curious as to how people are justifying those actions? If someone releases a huge dump of classified files, without any possible war crimes, would we still defend them?

Didn't Snowden and Ellsberg also release a trove of files without "due diligence," relying on a third party to vet and process the files for publication?

no. Elseberg released one study about the Vietnam war. he actually read all of it and had been showing it around to senators and officials trying to get something done. he leaked it as a last resort.

in his video interview with the Guardian Snowden explicitly contrasted what he did with what Manning did : snowden looked at what he was leaking and claims he kept stuff that would harm the US. ( he still supports what Manning did).

this is the problem Manning literally did not read the classified information he was releasing and given his obligation to protect sensitive information and knowing that in some cases information was classified to protect lives( e.g informant names), his actions were morally reckless. if he had leaked just the collateral murder video , the he would have been justified.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#268

Post by milosp »

Its not clear to me what basis there is for any imprisonment in any prison inside of US soil, when there is no war in US soil and all the so called foreign wars are made up bullshit.

If his offense stems from a breach of contract, then kidnapping and forced imprisonment and slavery can not be a punishment for that breach of contract except as enforced by civilian courts. He should be able to tell the mercenary group to get lost and sue him in US civilian court.

How many years do soldiers get for killing civilians in the civilian courts?

The use of military tribunals in cases of civilians was often controversial, as tribunals represented a form of justice alien to the common law, which governs criminal justice in the United States, and provides for trial by jury, the presumption of innocence, forbids secret evidence, and provides for public proceedings. Critics of the Civil War military tribunals charged that they had become a political weapon, for which the accused had no legal recourse to the regularly constituted courts, and no recourse whatsoever except through an appeal to the President. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed, and unanimously ruled that military tribunals used to try civilians in any jurisdiction where the civil courts were functioning were unconstitutional, with its decision in Ex Parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 (1866). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_tribunals_in_the_Unit...

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#269

Post by foobarbazqux »

cynicalkane wrote: post #263
foobarbazqux wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's strange though, because nobody got executed for dropping atomic bombs, which was also intentional mass murder.

What a bunch of pedantic garbage. The Japanese were willing to commit to total war to defend their right to conquer and massacre Chinese people and Pacific islanders and surprise-bomb the USA while they were at it. The only significant debate about the A-Bomb is whether it was more or less deadly than an invasion of mainland Japan. Any fourth grade history student would understand this. When people talk about the dec…

> What a bunch of pedantic garbage. [ ] Any fourth grade history student would understand this. [ ] When people talk about the decline of HN, I think it's this sort of information-free, pointlessly contrary posts that they talk about.

If you have a valid point, why do you need to resort to incivility?

> The Japanese were willing to commit to total war to defend their right to massacre Chinese people; the USA took them up on the offer. The only significant debate about the A-Bomb is whether it was more or less deadly than an invasion of mainland Japan.

So you actually think that intentionally killing civilians to win a war is morally okay? I just don't hold that view.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#270

Post by sp332 »

clarky07 wrote: post #209
sp332 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

35 isn't even half a lifetime. He was born in 1987 (geez, he's younger than I am) so with "time served" he'll be about 60 when he gets out.

right. missing out on 25-60 is totally reasonable. nothing important happens during those years anyways.

Stop putting words in my mouth.
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