Bradley Manning’s imprisonment does not seem humane to me:
Let’s review Manning’s detention over the last nine straight months: 23-hour/day solitary confinement; barred even from exercising in his cell; one hour total outside his cell per day where he’s allowed to walk around in circles in a room alone while shackled, and is returned to his cell the minute he stops walking; forced to respond to guards’ inquiries literally every 5 minutes, all day, everyday; and awakened at night each time he is curled up in the corner of his bed or otherwise outside the guards’ full view. Is there anyone who doubts that these measures — and especially this prolonged forced nudity — are punitive and designed to further erode his mental health, physical health and will? As The Guardian reported last year, forced nudity is almost certainly a breach of the Geneva Conventions; the Conventions do not technically apply to Manning, as he is not a prisoner of war, but they certainly establish the minimal protections to which all detainees — let alone citizens convicted of nothing — are entitled.
The treatment of Manning is now so repulsive that it even lies beyond what at least some of the most devoted Obama admirers are willing to defend. For instance, UCLA Professor Mark Kleiman — who last year hailed Barack Obama as, and I quote, “the greatest moral leader of our lifetime” — wrote last night:
The United States Army is so concerned about Bradley Manning’s health that it is subjecting him to a regime designed to drive him insane. . . . This is a total disgrace. It shouldn’t be happening in this country. You can’t be unaware of this, Mr. President. Silence gives consent.
(via)
It’s torture.
The only reason for torture is for the sake of torture.
What kind of animals do we have running this country. First W now Obama. It’s disgusting!
You assume that your president is the one in charge of your country…
Detention is an executive function, and especially in the context of the military the US president is the Commander-in-chief. There are certainly many bad things the US government does that cannot be laid at the president’s feet.
This is not one of those things.
Oh, I agree. I’m not absolving him of blame or responsibility, I’m insinuating that for a president who was a champion for fair treatment, a lawyer and a professor of constitutional law to so totally nix his own moral credentials, somebody else must be pulling his strings.
I think that insinuation simultaneously gives Obama too much and too little credit. Too much, because neither you nor I know the actual moral fiber of the man, who as far as we know may be as calculating and Machiavellian as they come. Too little, because we don’t have the whole picture of what factors weighed in the decision. I, for the life of me, can’t think of any factor that would excuse the current course of action, but I have had failures of imagination before.
It’s well in line with his well demonstrated lack of anything resembling a spine. Since he took office he repeatedly caved on anything he claimed he will be standing for from the public option in healthcare to closing Guantanamo to the Bush tax cuts often without even trying to fight for his position. In the Shirley Sharrod incident he demonstrated his fear of fix noise. He’s probably to scared to say anything in case he’ll be called soft on treason by the returdlicans he still hope will cooperate if he bend over far enough.
Since he took office he repeatedly caved on anything he claimed he will be standing for from the public option in healthcare to closing Guantanamo to the Bush tax cuts often without even trying to fight for his position.
This is just pure silliness. Are we to assume that simply because he didn’t make a big messy fight in public about them that he didn’t fight for them? Most of the decision-making in government isn’t done in the public square; that stuff is basically theatre for elections. I think achieving what he did (imperfect as it is) in health insurance reform is remarkable; the legislative goal of every liberal for the past sixty years realized in the first half of a president’s first term. The Bush tax cuts were used as an effective lever to move a whole host of (ostensibly less sexy) agenda items like education funding. I agree that Guantanamo stands as a big policy failure. But didn’t fight for them? That’s assuming a whole lot that is not appropriate to assume.
I agree, and you also have to consider the Repub attitude that they should say no to anything a Dem is involved in and/or put a poison perv pill in it, even if it was a Repub idea in the first place.
To be fair, his objective in closing Guantanomo was to move the detainees (without trial or charges) to Thompson Supermax in Indiana, as if the only reason people objected to torture and unconstitutional punishments was that they were taking place in Cuba.
As for the public option that he “he didn’t make a big messy fight in public about”, we know that the process began with Obama promising the insurance companies that there would be no public option. Was it the best possible compromise he could have gotten? Maybe. Was it what Candidate Obama had promised to fight for? Absolutely not.
Sleep depivation is a tried and tested form of torture. Tthey can’t argue that he isn’t recieving cruel and unusual punishment – he demonstrably is.
Animals don’t do this to each other. Humans do.
It’s abuse. If america treats its prisoners like this then what right does it have to call it’s enemies barbaric or inhumane?
“what right does it (America) have to call it’s enemies barbaric or inhumane”?
Because unlike them (Taliban/Al Qaeda et al) we don’t make a habit out of carving young women’s ears and noses from off their beautiful young faces with a hunting knife or stringing them up in the public square by their necks for all to see just because they insisted on the right to an education for themselves or their daughters like their male counterparts, that’s why. And we don’t send our children into shopping centers with explosives strapped under their clothes to maim and kill others at random, that’s why.
Those things are utterly despicable, barbaric and intensely inhumane. Bradley boy’s on easy street in comparison. We don’t hear him, his supporters or his legal team begging to be tried under Sharia law do we? Because he’d already be dead having been tortured, stoned, shot, you name it, that’s why.
There are inarguable differences in degree as far as intentional cruelty goes. But (moral equivalency alert) I also don’t see al-Qaeda or the Taliban wiping villages off the map with daisy cutters or wiping out thousands at a time with sustained drone bombardments. Now, to be excruciatingly clear, I don’t give *Credit* to al-Qaeda et al. for this, since the only reason they don’t do these things is because they are incapable from a practical standpoint. But what it does reveal is a problematic callousness to collateral casualties on our part, which remains fairly unanswered for from a moral perspective.
And exactly why and when did those retributional attacks on our part begin? Oh yea, after some bombings of a couple of tall buildings in NYC on some insignificant date in which ~3000 innocent civilians were killed right? C’mon Elemeno, you’re one of the more *reasonable* ones here, surely even you must realize that the moral equivalency card isn’t even in the playing deck here?
You say that like it makes it any better.
The people who are now dying in Iraq and Afghanistan had very little–if anything–to do with the attacks you refer to. Period. Their deaths are not a moral answer to our losses.
I didn’t say anything about Iraq and yes, one of the sad and inevitable consequences of initiating war or some vicious attack on another is that the innocent will eventually get caught up in it to some degree, will pay a heavy price, history proves this over and over regrettably. Why? Because we are our brothers keeper without regard to race, creed, nationality, gender and so on. We just don’t do any keeping.
Uh-huh. That really doesn’t at all address what I’m talking about. Nothing in human decision making, even on matters as grave as war and peace, is inevitable. The responsibility for each choice and the things that proceed from it are owned by the people making them, and it is an ineffective dodge for them to claim they couldn’t have chosen otherwise.
And it doesn’t address the fundamental point that this isn’t a handful of innocents we’re talking about. As I said, nearly nobody involved today could be held reasonably morally culpable for what happened in September ten years ago; all we are engaging in now is tribal whack-a-mole, with horrific human cost.
THIS.
Watch for it to keep happening.
What a surprise. John C shouts some nonsense about Sharia law and equivalency, then hides under the covers when his posts are subjected to nuanced scrutiny.
Same same, John. Still full of wind and bullshit, ain’t ya?
Hey Ty, no I’m just now getting back to the forum. I see you’re still as friendly as ever, I can always count on your kindness ;). That new nature you’re offered, what the gospel is really all about…perhaps you should do a little more ‘research’ into it friend, ya never know what wonderful surprises might be in store. All the best.
And why did Al Qaeda attack us? Just because they hate our freedoms, or did it have something to do with our long-standing foreign policy in the Middle East?
Or do we just get to draw a line on 9/11, and say that everything that that happened before that is irrelevant, and didn’t cause anything that came after?
Aren’t you, like Custy a Brit or Canadian or some such Winter? I could swear I’ve seen you say that before? Maybe not.
9/11, for better or worse, changed the geopolitical orientation of *the world*, not just the US. It is a parochial and myopic view that only considers how things look from one’s own back yard.
Yes, I’m British, living in America. Britain’s policy towards the Middle East has been as bad as America’s.
John C, if you really think that’s true then you don’t know the history of the region at all. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and the US has been regularly dropping bombs on Iraq since after the first Gulf War. That’s after having armed both Iran and Iraq during their war. And a long, long history of other very bad things. Sorry, but 9/11 or some other retribution against the US was innevitable.
“Oh yea, after some bombings of a couple of tall buildings in NYC on some insignificant date in which ~3000 innocent civilians were killed right?”
That’s rich, coming from you, J C. Since the U.S. has killed far more than 3000 innocent people in Iraq, and far more than that in Afghanistan, and far more than that dropping bombs on Japanese civilians, I can, by your weird logic, claim that 9/11 was a piffle, the perpetrators almost blameless, just as you think torturing one human – Private Bradley – is a piffle compared to 9/11.
You should have stuck with your normally opaque mutterings, which were largely benign. Instead, you’ve revealed a side of you that’s morally wanting, if not revolting.
Feel better Dave? Morality is a fallacy friend. What we’re actually witnessing is two kingdoms in conflict manifesting in the seen realm that which is ever occuring in the unseen, ie a war of light & dark, good & evil, right & wrong, love & hate, two very disparate natures, not ‘moral positions’.
And aren’t those same theme’s the very things that all the best books, fairy tales, movies, stories, etc are all made of? And all true fairy tales end well don’t they? They live happily ‘ever’ (eternally) after.
Keep on peddling…
No. What we are watching is us mucking around with their lives and now paying the price. Just 20 years ago we were watching Rambo murder Russians with the help of people such as the Taliban. If we saw them torture Russian Soldiers we would have cheered. Now we are paying the price for supporting such people and our constant interference in their politics rather than just “leaving them the hell alone”.
The question remains is, who are the baddies. They claim to be fighting for freedom. You claim that they are fighting to somehow threaten you. With what? 3000 people died that day, We treated it as an act of war legitimising them as soldiers, not murderers. If we tried them as criminals we would have been ahead.
If the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq were retribution… Then why did we invade Iraq which had nothing to do with the attacks. I think afghanistan has won the war, we spent more money blowing up huts than the huts were actually worth. We would be better off driving around a cargo plane filled with sacks of 1 cent coins and simply hurling them at enemy huts than wasting a million dollars worth of cruise missile to destroy something worth less than a dollar.
If we wanted retribution we would have been in Saudi Arabia who sponsor most of the terrorism. Do you really think a bunch of unsophisticated warlords in Somalia and Afghanistan have the technology and wherewithal to produce those kinds of attacks? They may be training grounds but the money comes from Saudi. The ideas come from Saudi. The recruits from everywhere but those ideas come from a sophisticated place where people are still beheaded in public and women are not allowed to travel on their own without a niqab/burkha.
No, our war in the gulf is about money. This was an excuse. Afghanistan was a kicking toy we expected to knock over and instead have replaced one set of warlords for another. Seriously nothing much has changed and it will go back to the way it used to be when we leave there.
@Dave W
“You should have stuck with your normally opaque mutterings, which were largely benign. Instead, you’ve revealed a side of you that’s morally wanting, if not revolting.”
John C has hinted at the sort of arsehole he really is before with his non-believers are a different species and admitting that he doesn’t particularly read what other people post, just replies with what he wants to say. Now he’s actually engaged in some sort of debate he’s shown what an arsehole he is and maybe now some of the regulars will see as such.
So in conclusion John C is an arsehole, always has been and always will be … hopefully now he’ll fuck off and not come back.
“We don’t hear him, his supporters or his legal team begging to be tried under Sharia law do we?”
No, we hear them begging for him to be tried under American law.
But seriously, so long as there is one country more repressive and violent than us, we can imprison people without trial and torture them for months on end, and still think of ourselves as the Good Guys? If I punch a baby in the face, can I feel righteous for not being as bad as Charles Manson?
John C…
When you stand up and say “We aren’t barbaric because our enemies are the finest minds of the 10th century and torture men and women who irk them while our torture is less strenuous and just humiliating rather than dangerous or disfiguiring” then you are basically saying “Atleast we aren’t the Taliban”.
You compare yourself to the best, not the worst. Avicenna is not like Ted Bundy is not a glowing character reference, its is a worrying thought (Note. Ladies and Gentlemen. Avicenna is a sane individual with many glowing character references and certificates confirming his sanity).
This psychological torture is meant to dehumanise a person. It was torture when it was first done. It wasn’t done by americans. It was done for exactly the same reasons by the Japanese during WW2. We hung the people who did this kind of thing. Back then we thought it was barbaric. Yes they even used the “non uniformed combatant” excuse to torture hundreds of thousands of people like this to death. You do know this can kill people right? Drive you to suicide? Or worse to simply just cause your body to give up. The history of this kind of behaviour is not taught that well to americans but a lot of the other people who fought the japanese tell their children to this day how bad the POW camps were for allied soldiers.
Ask a veteran of the pacific. My grandfather said he would kill himself rather than be captured and be sent to one of those camps where you stop being human after he was there at the taking of the Death Railway (the british Bataan if you will) and the Hell Ships at Singapore.
People want to come to America because “you are the best” and we often do agree with that. Bradley is an american citizen he should be tried by american laws and be held according to the Geneva Convention. Do you really think we aren’t watching and making notes? Do you really think American Sentiment ™ is going to improve if you torture the man we think revealed to the world a lot about how diplomacy works?
And which numbskull thought it was a good idea to trust documents such as these to some private with zero clearance? That jackass should be in with him for being criminally stupid in the world of spying on people.
“And which numbskull thought it was a good idea to trust documents such as these to some private with zero clearance?”
IIRC correctly he did have the correct clearance although I believe that certain controls that were put in place (basically don’t allow mass downloads of data by an individual) had been removed for those operating in Iraq as they were a “bit annoying” … ah – the great debate of security vs. usability!
The problem seems to be that the default is to classify everything as “secret”, unless someone can come up with a good reason to make it public, and there fore a lot of people need secret clearance to be able to do their job.
Obama, who campaigned under slogans of greater transparency, falls victim to the same trap of Nixon, whose staffers on being asked who suggested that things be classified replied that “no-one suggested they not be classified”.
He’s not a prisoner of war, and therefore the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply. But he should be held according to the Constitution, which is rather more stringent.
Honestly, I would kinda like to see an uprising from our people. Something besides letters to our congressmen. Marches and rallies showing we actually care about our country. But unfortunately, we’re too busy with Jersey Shore and Justin Bieber.
Say what you like about the Tea Party, at least they actually stand up for their beliefs.
Say what you like about the Tea Party, at least they actually stand up for their beliefs.
I wouldn’t go that far…
They are certainly standing for someone else’s beliefs.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/13/pj-crowley-resigning-as-s_n_835077.html
Looks like P.J. Crowley is gone now because of the Manning situation.
Move along; nothing to see here. The president checked in with the perps, and they themselves told him Manning’s being treated fine. If you can’t believe the accused, who can you believe? I feel so much better now.
I also see in the news today that P. J. Crowley has been forced to resign for sticking up for human rights in American.
Indeed. I’ve been sticking up for Obama for a long time, but I think it’s time to accept… New boss, same as the old boss.
“You can’t be unaware of this, Mr. President. Silence gives consent.”
This comment cracks me up. I think it might be a rhetorical statement. OF COURSE HE’S AWARE OF IT. (Okay, no more caps lock.) Of course he gives consent!
It alludes to the myth that if only Obama knew what was going on he would take steps to stop it. He has the integrity. Not like that W-guy. Can you imagine anybody saying to Bush “Are you unaware of the abuses of your administration”. We knew he was doing exactly what he wanted. And so is Obama. Fool me once shame on you …fool me…you can’t get fooled again.
Interesting article in the Guardian on Manning and American hypocrisy. The world is aware even if many, including the President, are not.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2011/mar/04/bradley-manning-us-wikileaks-hypocrisy
“In recent days and weeks the US government has condemned human rights abuses and repression in almost every country across the Middle East – yet at a prison within its own borders it sanctions the persecution, alleged psychological torture and debasement of a young soldier who appears to have made a principled choice in the name of progress.”
“In recent days and weeks the US government has condemned human rights abuses and repression in almost every country across the Middle East – yet at a prison within its own borders it sanctions the persecution, alleged psychological torture and debasement of a young soldier…
A great point, well made.
(Crosses fingers), Don’t ruin it, don’t ruin it, don’t…
…who appears to have made a principled choice in the name of progress.”
D’oh!
Doesn’t your constitution charge all citizens with the duty to rise up and revolt against tyranny within the US government? Watching that gun-camera footage and knowing that elements of US Gov tacitly sanctioned it by covering it up and protecting the pilots, I think that’s exactly what Manning did.
Doesn’t your constitution charge all citizens with the duty to rise up and revolt against tyranny within the US government?
No. You’re perhaps referring to the Declaration of Independence, which most legal scholars treat as a situational (and currently non-operative, since its object was achieved quite a while ago) document.
Watching that gun-camera footage and knowing that elements of US Gov tacitly sanctioned it by covering it up and protecting the pilots, I think that’s exactly what Manning did.
Perhaps. I have a problem with blithely apotheosizing a guy whose actions deserve a bit more nuanced handling. He did violate a freely sworn oath and the trust given to him in exchange for his access to classified data, and that should not be ignored. He probably did it for noble motives, that should also not be ignored. A key element of civil disobedience is acceptance of the resulting consequences, so I really don’t understand the “let’s free him and give him a medal” crowd. At the same time, those consequences should never, ever include torture of any sort.
Custador,
There is one possible defence. American pilots are often given amphetamines to improve their alertness in the air and allow them to fly long boring missions. As we all know “crystal meth” even medical crystal meth is not very good at allowing you to make snap judgements. This may have been a case of that.
That being said. My issue is not that they shot the journalist. I agree that they thought it was an RPG launcher. Shit like that happens at war. You don’t get time for a second look… What I am angry about is that they shot up the ambulance that was trying to help people. That was unnecessary.
“You don’t get time for a second look…”
They had ample time for a second look as you say “shit like that happens” I just don’t think that this was one of those occasions.
“What I am angry about is that they shot up the ambulance that was trying to help people.”
Don’t believe it was an ambulance just a van … I think I said before that once the inital (and I would say avoidable mistake was made) what follows is quite natural i.e. they’re the bad guys so you want to kill them and anybody who tries to help them.
A lot of ambulances look just like that. Just a big people carrier repurposed to pulling people to hospitals really. Nothing swanky. It may have been a case of fire on medical staff.
I am from the region so I have seen “ambulances like that”.
Yes but it wasn’t an ambulance was it, which was my point …
I urge everyone to blog about this, post it on your Facebook, and write or call the White House. Here’s what I wrote:
“Dear Mr. President,
I am reading with disgust articles documenting the mistreatment–nay, torture–of Bradley Manning. When you ran for President, you promised to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. You promised to reverse the policies of the previous administration that allowed for torture. However, you’ve not only failed to honor those promises, now you’re allowing for an *alleged* “traitor” to be tortured by his own government. Mr. Obama, should this atrocity be allowed to continue and should you say or do nothing to stop it, I cannot in good conscience support your re-election bid.”
Note, the WhiteHouse.gov site wants messages to be limited to 2,500 characters, so I kept my message short and to the point.
I happened to watch the film Nixon yesterday, and that man certainly was a fascinating character. I found it quite amazing that, in light of what seems to go on day in and day out at every level of government today, he was brought down largely by a bungled burglary. As dirty tricks go, these days it would have been seen as contemptible more for its classlessness than for it its illegality. Bush managed to ride countless storms, including an actual storm that killed thousands while his administration fumbled around, and the closest he was to being held to account came in continual lampooning from comedians and commentators on TV. And along came Obama, who swept into power largely on the back of the frustration the American people and the world felt at watching those in power continue to thumb their noses at the rule of law and the concept of morality. He has made an encouraging gesture here and there, eventually ending DADT and dropping DOMA defences, but what quantitative difference is there if as a president he still sits on his hands while human beings are tortured in his name? What moral authority can he possibly have if he observes with a dispassionate gaze the opposition party tearing federal and state constitutions to shreds to ram through legislation designed purely to break the backs of public employees? The White House has gone very quiet compared to the incoming candidate who had a stirring speech to make about every injustice he could find. It makes me wonder, in this great game they call politics, is anything actually against the rules any more? How did we get from Watergate to “whatever”?
The key is, if you are going to fail, to fail soooo big it blows the mind of your critics. A burglary is not only wrong, but it is comprehensibly so. Crimes on the scale of wars and torture prisons carry with them an intrinsic surreality that serve to leave critics gobsmacked and floundering to find appropriate terms and language.
This is beyond very wrong, and I have been following, and reposting to FB, articles from sources such as AlterNet or MoveOn.org.
Has he been tried already?
Not as far as I know.
This is by far the most troubling thing.
It means that you can’t do something the government doesn’t like, legal or not, without punishment.
Where are all the 2nd Amendment stalwart defenders now?
Where are the democracy exporters?
This.
I’m not defending the treatment of Bradley Manning, but it’s worth pointing out that he’s not a “whistleblower.” Whistleblowers find evidence of specific illegality and get it into the hands of people who can remedy and/or prosecute it. What Manning did was to collect hundreds of thousands of classified documents and dump them into the hands of Wikileaks. He did it not because he was righting a wrong, but because … well … I guess because he could.
This, of course, is no reason to torture him. It is reason to court-martial him for misusing information, and let a military jury decide; then if they convict him, sentence him appropriately, and have done with it. I’m not sure that military courts would be too kind to Manning, but it would have to be an improvement over this.
As for Manning’s treatment, this just goes to show that, unfortunately, a change of administrations — even from one party to another — doesn’t mean the federal government or the military will suddenly behave any differently than they wish to. Everyone who thought Obama was a virtual messiah who would magically change the country, based only on his good intentions and charisma, must now be bitterly disappointed at his lack of ability to make any substantive changes. Not that this is his fault … the sort of change he was supposed to have magically imposed, is simply impossible for any person to achieve.
I’m with you for the most part, but this is one of those cases where it wouldn’t take anything in the way of good intentions or charisma for Obama to change the physical conditions of Manning’s incarceration.
You’re right. There’s nothing preventing Obama from ordering Manning held under different conditions. But he won’t do it. And why not? There are several reasons, any or all of which might be in play:
1. Manning showed how vulnerable the government is to a disgruntled insider, and Obama wants to make an example of him, so that other disgruntled government employees won’t do the same thing.
2. Obama fears that military and civil service personnel will rebel at treating Manning better and doesn’t want to offend them.
3. He doesn’t want to make more of an issue of Manning than he already is; if he does nothing, it will all quietly blow over.
4. Obama is personally angry at Manning for having embarrassed his administration, and wants him to suffer.
5. Obama is convinced, whether rightly or wrongly, that these conditions will push Manning into coughing up information about the Wikileaks operation.
6. Treating Manning better may open Obama up to Rightist accusations that he’s “gone soft” on Manning and on Wikileaks, and in extremis is somehow covertly working with them.
7. Obama wants to send a message to other countries that he doesn’t tolerate the disclosure of their confidential information.
I could go on with additional possible factors involved here, but I think my point is made: Being a presumptive part of the ideological Left doesn’t mean Obama must behave any differently than a Rightist would under the same conditions. The power of office itself is a kind of straitjacket, causing whoever is in it to be influenced by the same things and forcing him or her to respond in certain ways.
This is yet another example of why I’m convinced the nation’s two ideologies differ only cosmetically and not substantively; both sides are dedicated to controlling people and plundering the country, they just go about it in slightly different ways. They’re actually working together to do it, by making it seem they’re enemies. Ultimately, both the Left and the Right are the dedicated foes of the American middle class.
No, he’s a whistle-blower. He did exactly what Ellsberg did with the Pentagon Papers – got a huge amount of information covering a wide range of illegal activity in the military and government into the hands of the media and the public.
What is this based on? When he was first talking to Lamo, he made it quite clear that he wanted to expose systemic illegality so that the light of public scrutiny could begin to fix it. If you’re going to claim he was lying about his motivations from the start, I assume you have some evidence?
It’s not immediately apparent which example of illegality he was trying to expose, which wasn’t already known about. If Manning was truly a whistle-blower, he would have forwarded what he had to people who could have investigated and/or prosecuted it. He did no such thing. He blew it all open for the world to see.
Moreover, rather than select just a small number of documents that would have shown the specific illegality he was trying to reveal, he collected up as many as he could, and just dumped them — all. At once.
That also is not the behavior of someone who’s sincerely trying to right a specific wrong he knows about. It’s the behavior of someone who wants the world to know who he is and what he was capable of. Well, we now know … and I for one am not stupid enough to be impressed by him.
Consider, too, that it’s now hard for anyone reviewing Manning’s document-dump to find the specific incidents of illegality he (presumably) was so concerned about. In other words, by doing what he did, he made it harder, not easier, to get any wrongs he knew about righted.
Manning may not deserve the treatment he’s getting, but he’s no “hero.” Not by any stretch of the imagination.
Perhaps he considered that there was no constituted authority that was trustworthy enough to do its job in investigating? With some justification, I would think.
You keep insisting with the word “specific”, I didn’t know a whistle-blower had to be “specific”, at least when he may want to improve government’s transparency. Maybe the only able authority was the people. Did I got something wrong? I thought democracy was people’s government.
As I’ve said before, it’s not about specific illegality, but systemic illegality. You don’t prove that with two or three hand-picked examples, but with tens of thousands of examples from dozens of different spheres.
The problem with that is that the proper authorities are the military, the Executive Office and the Attorney General’s Office, who (at best) are already covering up and excusing these abuses. They already know all of this, and are doing nothing about it. On the other hand, making the information publicly available can force policy changes.
False. He passed them all on to Wikileaks, who worked with various high-profile newspapers around the world to select a tiny fraction of the documents to be released. So far, the majority of the documents involved have not been released. This is the opposite of dumping them all at once.
Systemic, not specific. Pick out any document: That is the illegality he was concerned about.
As I’ve said before, it’s not about specific illegality, but systemic illegality. You don’t prove that with two or three hand-picked examples, but with tens of thousands of examples from dozens of different spheres.
So far the leaks have been a failure in that regard, showing primarily an American foreign service that is conscientious and capable and resolutely non-criminal. There have been “two or three” exceptions. Of course, we don’t know for sure because only a fraction of leaks have been published, but on the other hand there are good reasons to believe that if anything that juicy were revealed it would have been front-loaded rather than held back.
The problem with that is that the proper authorities are the military, the Executive Office and the Attorney General’s Office, who (at best) are already covering up and excusing these abuses. They already know all of this, and are doing nothing about it. On the other hand, making the information publicly available can force policy changes.
I think we can all agree that the means by which the government classifies information is rife with abuse because of a simple quis custodiet ipsos custodes problem. If that is the real problem looking for address, this was perhaps the very worst way to attack it. Going forward, the US government is likely to clamp down on info and classify even more, and restrict access further because of this breach.
False. He passed them all on to Wikileaks, who worked with various high-profile newspapers around the world to select a tiny fraction of the documents to be released. So far, the majority of the documents involved have not been released. This is the opposite of dumping them all at once.
You seem to be confusing the roles of Manning and Wikileaks. Manning did, indeed, *dump* the lot to Wikileaks. What Wikileaks then did with them is a separate issue. Manning gets no points for Wikileaks’ relatively ethical handling of the data after it passed from his hands, as he is and was in no position to control that part of the process.
Systemic, not specific. Pick out any document: That is the illegality he was concerned about.
Seriously? “Pick out any document”? Have you even read any of these? The vast, vast majority so far released simply highlight US diplomats making reports on their assigned countries and engaging in the work of diplomacy, and doing it rather well at that.
I don’t think that this would discourage people. This would merely encourage more people to do what he has done only better and with more controvertial things. Most of the stuff in Wikileaks is stuff we already know. Americans are world class hypocrites, most of Europe is run by the Chuckle Brothers, India’s Prime Minister is a puppet and China’s government are grade A douchebags. Seriously some of the stuff included statements like “India and Pakistan don’t get along”. Someone will release somthing deadly… And didn’t Bush do something equally retarded like release names of CIA agents who were in the field at the time blowing their cover? That’s a sensitive leak. These are just diplomatic transcripts and that’s what embassies are there for. Low grade spying.
He has become a martyr. Just look at the vitriol drummed up on here. It won’t discourage people, it will just make them smarter and less likely to come forward and admit it.
Maybe Manning did the wrong thing by giving info to Wikileaks. However consider that he was apparently driven by the gun camera footage of the helicopter to do this. The footage was suppressed within the military itself. If he went higher up chances are nothing would have happened. People knew that this kind of stuff happens all the time and just didn’t bother prosecuting it or even if they did prosecute they would prosecute it very very weakly as in the case of Stephen Green which was in judicial hell until the information was leaked out. The normal sentence for his crime is the death penalty initially they gave him and other people who comitted the crime just 20 years in jail for the gang rape and murder of a 14 year old iraqi girl and the conspiracy to provide incorrect evidence. There was a cover up by members of his unit for the crime. Only after the information was leaked out to journalists did it become a big deal and he got prosecuted.
When Iran finds American “spies”, it tortures them with solitary confinement for months on end.
When America finds American “spies”, it tortures them with solitary confinement for months on end.
Remember, soldiers, this is what you get for defending the Constitution against the wishes of your government.
At least Iran doesn’t dress up its torture in blandly pious bureaucratese about how they are really concerned only about the victim’s health and well being.
Increasingly, I find Obama almost more annoying to watch than W. There is something…slick…about the man. W was just flat out evil. Obama serves the exact same masters (and largely the same policies) but does so in a more blandly, smug manner.
At least Iran doesn’t dress up its torture in blandly pious bureaucratese about how they are really concerned only about the victim’s health and well being.
Not for nothing, but I bet you anything that when it comes up, they do.