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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

#441

Post by PhasmaFelis »

briandear wrote: post #373
zeteo wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Abu Ghraib a crime against humanity? Yes, that's similar to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. That's nearly exactly the same thing as the genocide in Rwawanda. That's definitely on the same level as Pol Pot. The difference however is Abu Ghraib didn't put intelligence sources at risk, it didn't endanger the lives of people. How many people died in Abu Ghraib from being photographed with underwear on their head? How ma…

"Abu Ghraib a crime against humanity? Yes, that's similar to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. That's nearly exactly the same thing as the genocide in Rwawanda. That's definitely on the same level as Pol Pot."

Right, then, so you're fine with me murdering you as long as I don't torture you first? Better than the worst is not good enough.

"Manning's releases however put dozens of people directly in the line of fire."

Everyone keeps saying this. Can you explain how it is that the Army and the Obama administration, who have unparalleled interest in seeing Manning discredited and have gone to great lengths to do so, have so far failed to uncover a single instance of Manning's releases actually harming a human being?

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#442

Post by foobarbazqux »

mpyne wrote: post #418
madaxe wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, Japan were ready to throw in the towel as a result of the tripartite pact being enacted, and Russia joining the fray. Sakhalin was the trigger, and their worst fears were confirmed when the soviets raped and pillaged their way through the island, killing some 20,000 civvies. Atrocious. They surrendered because of Stalin and his unending and brutal (and brutalised, the Red Army was not a happy place) cannon-…

> Actually, Japan were ready to throw in the towel as a result of the tripartite pact being enacted, and Russia joining the fray. People say this a lot, but no one has clearly explained how the U.S.S.R. would have been able to stage an invasion of the Home Islands of Japan. It's not a matter of simply ferrying a bunch of people over the Trans-Siberian railroad, you also need a navy, sufficient air cover (which if I r…

> It either did or did not happen for the causes described.

Well, whatever the actual reason for the surrender, any claims about it one way or the other are totally unfalsifiable. But, thanks for the historical analysis here nonetheless.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#443

Post by scotty79 »

mpyne wrote: post #402
baddox wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But would I get angry at my friend, or the person who told me what my friend secretly thinks of me?

"If you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear" Or I forget how the quote goes, but anyways I thought we supported the concept of privacy in general on this site. Governments need privacy to serve the interests of their people for the same reason people need privacy to serve their own interest.

Yeah. And corporations are people too. /sarcasm

Government should operate in the open. I might understand need for military secrecy of government of a small country in unfriendly region, but not for a broad secrecy of the government that has has largest military force in the world at its disposal. Unless you think that all this NSA thing is all good because government needs to have its privacy when it's spying you.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#444

Post by scotty79 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #438
baddox wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not married, but I doubt that I would tell her everything. That's not what I have an issue with. My issue is with the idea that society is some brittle construct that's reliant on honesty, and especially the idea that you would be angry at the person who leaked a secret rather than the person holding the secret.

>My issue is with the idea that society is some brittle construct that's reliant on (dis)honesty, and especially the idea that you would be angry at the person who leaked a secret rather than the person holding the secret. Well, I am sorry to say that in fact society is that brittle and you are being lied to in one fashion or another most of the time. I do want to clarify what I mean by lying though because it would…

> Well, I am sorry to say that in fact society is that brittle and you are being lied to in one fashion or another most of the time.

And you don't believe bit more honesty might be in order?

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#445

Post by foobarbazqux »

mpyne wrote: post #420
samastur wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, even then. Even if you could be sure that there would be more civilian deaths (which you really can't be), there is a big ethical difference between choosing to kill someone and being forced to do it.

No one "chose" to kill civilians at Hiroshima or Nagasaki though. The U.S. dropped leaflets all over both cities warning them of the bomb. Either way by your logic firebombing attacks such as at Dresden or Tokyo would have been just fine (oh no, my bomb had to have hit a barracks, not a hospital!) even though they can't possibly all have been right. So it's not even true to say that conventional bombing wouldn't have…

I'm actually kind of curious, are you okay with nuking cities in the future?

My point here was never that other war atrocities are somehow good. It's just my belief that intentionally killing unarmed civilians is murder, in a moral sense, irrespective of circumstance or nationality. If you must take out a military target and there are civilian casualties, then so be it, provided you did your best to minimize them. However, sprinkling some leaflets before dropping an atomic bomb is not doing your best to minimize casualties.

If a display of nuclear power as a deterrent was truly required to end the war, and it may well have been, I can think of numerous less deadly steps that could have been taken first. An aggressive warning strategy that comes to mind would be bombing the remote and relatively unpopulated mountainous regions of Japan.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#446

Post by bwaldrep »

LekkoscPiwa wrote: post #397
Perceval wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when every soldier feels within their rights to determine who the domestic enemies of the Constitution are, and takes unprecedented action against those enemies? Did Manning reveal anything that was prima facie unconstitutional?

If the US wasn't breaking its own Constitution all the time, this wouldn't be even a problem. PRISM for that example breaks 4th, 5th and probably 9th Amendment. That's about a third of the Bill of Rights. Each and every NSA employee is under Oath to protect the Constitution. And then a person who tries just doing that (Snowden) is the one called traitor! If not for things like PRISM the military and other branches of…

That was not the question. The question was if Manning specifically released ANY evidence of unconstitutional activity. The answer seems to be no.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#447

Post by clarky07 »

sp332 wrote: post #355
aclevernickname wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that people use the "stop putting words in my mouth" line when someone follows their words to a logical conclusion. This leads me to believe that the sentence really means "quit pointing out flaws in my reasoning."

I guess you could read the conversation before commenting. Here, I'll make it easy for you: I said "35 isn't even half a lifetime... he'll be about 60 when he gets out." and clarky07 said "missing out on 25-60 is totally reasonable. nothing important happens during those years anyways." which is not the same thing as what I said. See? clarky07 tried to make it sound like I said that 35 years was no big deal, but I di…

>clarky07 tried to make it sound like I said that 35 years was no big deal, but I didn't say that.

>35 isn't even half a lifetime. He was born in 1987 (geez, he's younger than I am)

How is this not minimizing the severity again? At the very least it's more than half his remaining lifetime, and possibly all of his remaining lifetime. He also gets to miss out on pretty much any chance at having a family. His only friends will be other convicts. I hope he at least manages to get out on parole, but there is certainly a chance he doesn't.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#448

Post by grey-area »

kondor6c wrote: post #389
grey-area wrote: post #357

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. So if they witness a crime, they should speak out. Manning did release evidence of several crimes leading up to and during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: The cheerful murder of Reuters journalists and later innocents who came to help by that helicopter crew The purchase of…

With regards to your first "crime": How was that a murder? The unit on the ground received RPG fire, and the person was holding a large object and pointing at ground forces. What do you think is going to happen? For them to come down out of the helicopter and ask for the press pass? When you say murder you imply that the service men had the intent to kill some journalist. When in reality they thought they had weapons…

It's a difficult case, and I understand why you see it as a tragic mistake, but I don't think the helicopter crew were sufficiently diligent in checking who they were going to kill, particularly in the aftermath of the first shots where people tried to help the wounded, and were then mown down. Just because someone was armed, doesn't make them an enemy (they could be for example a bodyguard for journalists), and just because someone tries to give medical assistance to others in a battle, doesn't mean they also need to be killed. Their callous reaction to the news that children were in the van having just killed their father demonstrates their lack of care.

At the very least Reuters should have been provided with this footage (instead it was covered up), and an independent investigation held.

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#449

Post by nthj »

jellicle wrote: post #145
hullo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article points out he is eligible for parole after a third of the sentence, and that he'll receive credit for time already served. They even do the math for us - he'll be eligible for release in 8 years.

Leonard Peltier is still in prison. It's extraordinarily unlikely that Manning will ever be paroled; the U.S. Government holds grudges, as Greenwald's spouse has so recently seen.

uhm, the UK government is the government that detained Greenwald's partner, not the Feds

Re: Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years

#450

Post by smsm42 »

eliasmacpherson wrote: post #419
eliasmacpherson wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Abu Ghraib a crime against humanity? Depends on how you define such, your examples meet old UN definition, Abu Ghraib meets newer ICC definition. > How many people died in Abu Ghraib.. at least one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisone... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Jamadi > How many innocent lives were put at risk because of Abu Ghraib? Depends on how you define innocent, but given WMD…

> How many innocent lives were put at risk because of Abu Ghraib? further to what I wrote above: On April 20, 2004 insurgents fired forty (40) mortar rounds into the prison. Twenty-two detainees were killed and 92 wounded. Commentators thought the attack was either as an attempt to incite a riot or retribution for detainees' cooperating with the United States.[6] reasonable to surmise shelling was to stop or prevent…

So wait, now US soldiers must take the blame for one set of terrorists killing other terrorists to prevent the latter from talking? Maybe also the police is to blame when Mafia is killing witnesses? Abu Ghraib abuses are bad, but it looks like you're losing perspective here and try to paint every wrong being done as US fault, no matter who did it or why.
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