Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years • Hacker News Board

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#281

Post by math0ne » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:23 PM UTC

pinaceae wrote: post #208

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Civilians might not understand." 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. This country once took a firm stand that military orders were no excuse for committing or condoning evil acts, when it suited our purposes at Nuremberg. We abandoned that stand the moment it became inconvenient, in Vietnam if not ear…

you're arguing from an ethical viewpoint, which is fine, but it does not apply to this sentence. i know this is hard, but let me explain. in the civil justice system there are laws. if you break them, you get punished. some of them have special rules around them. take murder. kill someone, go to jail. but if it was self defence, you might walk. easy, right? in the military justice system, leaking classified docs is a…

You make it sound as if life is a video game or something. He broke an arbitrary rule so he must pay the price. This isn't a game, ethics are always at play and we as the public have a duty to make sure our military is acting ethically.

It's not like the us military has had some unchanging set of rules. Throughout the last 50 years public ethics policy has vastly changed how the military functions and will continue to do so.

The armed forces may not be a democracy but they exist by the grace of our democracy.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#282

Post by frank_boyd » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:23 PM UTC

enoch_r wrote: post #206

zeteo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After WW2, the Allies condemned and executed a number of German and Japanese officers who had done little more than follow orders. What they had done was not against any laws at the time, and definitely within their organizations' code of conduct. I think that was a good thing because it established the principle that joining an organization does not absolve you from higher duties towards your fellow citizens or huma…

People in the military have the right, and legal duty, to refuse unlawful orders, including orders that violate the international laws of war. They do not have the right to unilaterally decide to violate a lawful order because they think it is better for humanity at large. They do not have the right to expose classified information because they think it shouldn't be classified. They do not have the right to violate o…

Also, the name of the rat is:

Adrian Lamo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Lamo

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#283

Post by nsxwolf » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:23 PM UTC

monsterix wrote: post #218

nsxwolf wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced I see a crime committed. From what I saw and heard, I don't believe three crew members woke up that morning and decided "let's kill some civilians today". Remember "mens rea"? We HNers all seem to think that's an important concept, except apparently when it's people we don't like (US military).

I do understand what you mean. Being an HNer may sound like becoming one of the echo-chamber but you might want to look at these statistics [1] and then decide for yourself: [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_War_... Hundreds and thousands of civilian deaths for what cost? Who paid the price of waging such a war ( crime according to some), the taxpayers? As to measure the 'crime' in the video…

I understand what you're saying too, but it's a different point - a judgement of the war overall vs. a specific event.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#284

Post by splrb » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:24 PM UTC

In the United States of backasswardness, we punish those that reveal war crimes, not those that commit them.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#285

Post by brazzy » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:28 PM UTC

throwaway9848 wrote: post #178

enraged_camel wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The stubborn application of law is not justice. It is authoritarianism, which Wikipedia defines as "a form of government as well as a personality and social trait [that] is characterized by absolute or blind obedience to authority, as against individual freedom and related to the expectation of unquestioning obedience." It seems people are quick to point out that Manning broke some rules, but are too narrow-…

"The stubborn application of law is not justice. It is authoritarianism, which Wikipedia defines as [...]" That is super stupid. You don't understand authoritarianism, then, citations of Wikipedia aside. You do a disservice to the actual victims of authoritarianism. EDIT: Look at the downvoting.. and this is nice compared to what I wrote at first. Since I'm already -3, I'll remove the politeness filters and say that…

> Perhaps I'm the stupid one for believing that WORDS have MEANINGS beyond what is convenient at the moment.

Funny. That is exactly the point this "retarded" commment is making.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#286

Post by throwaway9848 » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:29 PM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #285

throwaway9848 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The stubborn application of law is not justice. It is authoritarianism, which Wikipedia defines as [...]" That is super stupid. You don't understand authoritarianism, then, citations of Wikipedia aside. You do a disservice to the actual victims of authoritarianism. EDIT: Look at the downvoting.. and this is nice compared to what I wrote at first. Since I'm already -3, I'll remove the politeness filters and say that…

> Perhaps I'm the stupid one for believing that WORDS have MEANINGS beyond what is convenient at the moment. Funny. That is exactly the point this "retarded" commment is making.

Explain how. Also, I removed that word. You were right to call me out for that.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#287

Post by rdl » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:29 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #242

beedogs wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the people in that video were armed with AK47s or RPGs. Also, way to completely ignore the van they shot up with two children inside. Which they knew were inside .

The Army found two RPG launchers, an AK47 and an RPG round under one of the bodies among the first group. Assange later acknowledged as much. "Based upon visual evidence I suspect there probably were AKs and an RPG, but I'm not sure that means anything..." As for the kids, look at this picture and tell me how you think they knew children were inside: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Col... .

AKs were commonly carried for security reasons at the time, but the RPG was damning as insurgents. (I had a 9mm and an AK most of the time, and a bunch of suspiciously mortar tube like satellite dish stands in the back yard, which always scared me whenever helicopters flew over...)

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#288

Post by rayiner » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:32 PM UTC

zeteo wrote: post #248

enoch_r wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in the military have the right, and legal duty, to refuse unlawful orders, including orders that violate the international laws of war. They do not have the right to unilaterally decide to violate a lawful order because they think it is better for humanity at large. They do not have the right to expose classified information because they think it shouldn't be classified. They do not have the right to violate o…

>when enough members of the military decide to do what's better for the country against the lawful orders of the elected government that they serve, we call it a coup I'm not disputing that Manning broke the laws of the military. But calling his actions an incipient coup is laughable. In a world in which the worst offenders at Abu Ghraib got ten years (and were released much sooner), sentencing him to 35 years (as a…

What did manning release that was an actual war crime?

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#289

Post by glesica » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:34 PM UTC

throwaway9848 wrote: post #178

enraged_camel wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The stubborn application of law is not justice. It is authoritarianism, which Wikipedia defines as "a form of government as well as a personality and social trait [that] is characterized by absolute or blind obedience to authority, as against individual freedom and related to the expectation of unquestioning obedience." It seems people are quick to point out that Manning broke some rules, but are too narrow-…

"The stubborn application of law is not justice. It is authoritarianism, which Wikipedia defines as [...]" That is super stupid. You don't understand authoritarianism, then, citations of Wikipedia aside. You do a disservice to the actual victims of authoritarianism. EDIT: Look at the downvoting.. and this is nice compared to what I wrote at first. Since I'm already -3, I'll remove the politeness filters and say that…

It sounds like a totally reasonable definition to me. All you've done is to repeat over and over again that the definition is stupid, without identifying why it is stupid or how it could be improved. That's why you got downvoted, not because of your opinion.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#290

Post by brazzy » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:36 PM UTC

foobarbazqux wrote: post #260

Spooky23 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Winning the war is obviously the biggest factor in terms of who goes to the gallows. But there's a difference between loss of life in combat versus deliberate murder of noncombatants outside of a combat situation or of prisoners who are in your care. It's not about who has the highest scorecard of death and depravity. Ask the same question about incendiary bombing, which happened throughout the war. The B-29s droppin…

Yeah, I only meant the atomic bombs, which was quite clearly "deliberate murder of noncombatants outside of a combat situation" as far as I can tell. I mean, it was essentially, "We have unlimited capacity to randomly murder 100,000 of your civilians at once, we've demonstrated it twice now, so submit to our authority." Well, they did.

Well, what you can tell is wrong. The atomic bombs were horrific in their destructions and death toll, but not really any more than the conventional bombings. Even the Japanese didn't think much of Hiroshima based on that alone (they had gotten used to cities getting wiped out) and it took Nagasaki to make clear that this was really a game-changer.