Bradley Manning Gets 35 Years
That is the reporting from the courtroom in Ft. Meade this AM, where the judge was expected to announce his sentence at 10AM today. The prosecution asked for 60 years, the defense asked for 25. He’ll also be dishonorably discharged from the Army.
Also: “Manning’s sentence will automatically be sent to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals,” The New York Times adds. “Before the next phase can begin, the entire court-martial proceedings must be turned into an official transcript, which both the defense and prosecution, as well as the judge, must approve; that process is expected to take considerable time. Pretrial hearings started in 2012, and the trial itself began in early June.”
Have you been following this? What do you think of this outcome?
Tags: Bradley Manning
Il est défendu de tuer; tout meurtrier est puni, à moins qu’il n’ait tué en grande compagnie, et au son des trompettes.
If you commit war crimes you get a job with McDonald Douglas. If you tell somebody about war crimes you get 35 years in prison.
Remind me if I ever decide to commit heinous crimes to make sure that it’s against the law for the witnesses to say anything… It’s a pretty good deal. Or, perhaps get a set-up like the banks have. Just say yeah, we broke the law, but if you do anything the world will collapse… sorry.
Good thing it was just the army and not Texas. He’d probably have been executed.
If the President had an ounce of political acumen at the end of his term he’d pardon him.
Bradley Manning’s statement as delivered by his lawyer this afternoon.
With time off for good behavior, this scumbag could be free by age 33. Even if he serves his full sentence, he’ll be released at age 56.
He should have to spend the rest of his miserable life in prison; justice has not been done.
What was the sentence for the civilian-killing scumbags on the Apache and B1 crews exposed by Manning?
Regardless of your opinion of the material he released, and what I saw in the Apache video was pretty bad(haven’t seen the B1 video that somebody mentioned), I don’t think the outrageously irresponsible way in which he dumped a ton of information that he hadn’t even vetted can be excused. If he had released those two videos and nothing else I’d probably be more sympathetic, but he did a data dump that threatened a ton of people both in uniform and out.
And now he says he’s a girl, and his lawyer says that he’s going to try to force Fort Leavenworth to give him hormone and surgical gender reassignment treatment. I would hope that the United States government does not ever pay for such sick “conversion” therapies, nor that such would be allowed in prison even if Mr Manning’s whacko defenders raise the money privately. If he wishes to take a knife and castrate himself, that’s fine with me, his choice, but we shouldn’t pay one red cent to help build him any faux female organs.
Just so I’m understood on this one, the point about the haphazard document dump is well taken. I never said he didn’t commit a crime. What I wrote it that the real “scumbags” are still at large and always will be, because as long as you torture and kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets you’re OK. As long as a secret court approves your theft and spying you can skirt the law. It’s disgusting. And to call the kid a scumbag is simply indicative of your blindness and stupidity.
Manning’s transgender issues date to before his crime.
Dana, why should he spend the rest of his life in prison? Are you that much an authoritarian?
Oh and I missed the nasty bit about the transgendered thing… so I’ll add despicable bigot to the list. All this shit talk about Manning the person completely misses the point, or more accurately diverts attention. Which I guess is the ultimate goal, right? @Dana – I understand you’re are prehaps not intellectually equipped to have a detailed conversation about the true issues of the case, but the blatant person insults make your stupidity far to obvious.
Personally, I *was* considering the fact that Dana didn’t come over here calling this kid “raaaaacist” a bit of minor progress, but find out that his bigoted baggage extends to LGBT people too. The Reagan-era tactic of inviting people like Dana to expect that their bigotry should indeed be policy still lives.
Someone has hijacked Dana’s I.D.
— it’s time to punch the NSA’s ticket here. They’ve ruined the brand. They’ve destroyed the idea of privacy. We need some kind of symbolic and profound approach here, that says, ‘look, you’ve violated something that’s very dear to the American people — you don’t get to do that.’ Dennis Kucinich
Geezer asked:
Mr Manning stood up, raised his right hand, and swore that he would “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.” In seeking and accepting a position which required access to classified information, he made further promises not to disclose any information to any but authorized personnel. His actions caused harm to the United States.
All true. But there are actual spies (people who turned over material to the enemy) who didn’t receive 35 years.
Mr Geezer wrote:
In the age of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” PFC Manning’s superiors probably knew that he was homosexual; it is less probable that they knew he saw himself as female.
However, Mr Manning knew that he felt whatever he felt, and at some point it became his responsibility to go to his commanders and tell them that he felt unable to perform his duties as a soldier, even if that meant a medical discharge. That would have been the responsible and honorable thing to do.
DA/DT was the dumbest policy ever put in place in the military: it allowed homosexuals to serve in the armed services, but forced them to live a lie, and created a blackmailable security weakness. How on God’s earth can you have a system in which someone is going to be granted access to classified information, yet be unable to ask them about a blackmailable weakness?
Mr Geezer wrote:
The Israelis are still trying to get us to release Jonathan Pollard, sentenced to life in prison, and all that he did was to disclose classified information to an ally; Mr Manning disclosed it to everybody.
We have had caught spies “traded” for our spies who were caught by the enemy.
Interesting that you consider spying by “an ally” to be just fine.
Israel is not “our ally.” Our only treaty with Israel is the Camp David Accord.
And the entire LGBT community knew about Manning’s transgender claims from the first, so I’m pretty sure his commanding officers knew about it, too.
The best that can be said about Israel is that they are our proxy and even then, I’m not sure who is the real proxy, them or us.
The term “ally” is appropriate for the U.K., Australia, Canada, and the like. Applying that term to Israel disrespects the relationship we have with those nations.
What did Bradley Manning Disclose?
His document dump was more embarrassing than dangerous:
Cassandra, it doesn’t matter what classified information Mr Manning disclosed: not only did he not have the authorization to disclose it, or the position to evaluate classified material for possible declassification, he didn’t even review most of the stuff; he just dumped it.
Further, whether you call the disclosures “embarrassing” or not, they still harmed the United States.
Once again, a conservative puts principle above the facts on the ground. Why can’t you folks handle reality?
Mr Geezer wrote:
I’d call that after-the-fact projection. The vast majority of the homosexual community never knew who Mr Manning was until after his arrest, so to say that they “knew about Manning’s transgender claims from the first” still means they knew about them only after the fact.
Further, even if Mr Manning discussed his feelings with other civilians, he would have had to have kept such quiet from his commanding officers; discussion with them would have led to him violating his half of “don’t ask/don’t tell.”
As one Army recruiter once said to me, “You don’t have to ask to be able to tell,” in a lot of cases, but most of those guesses are going to be guesses about homosexuality, and not “gender identity disorder.” An Army doctor or psychiatrist might have known, if PFC Manning had discussed it with such further, but they could not have disclosed that to the chain of command.
He would have more effective if he had been selective about the information he downloaded. The diplomatic gossip and wikileaks made the news but the exposure of nastiness of war was pretty much ignored.
Mr Geezer wrote:
It is very true that I place a great deal of importance on principle. That’s why I’d like to see Edward Snowden apprehended, tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison even though his revelations primarily hurt President Obama and his Administration.
I do not see notions of examining how much harm was caused by breaking security as relevant, because such extends to the leakers some judgement and authority over whether something should be disclosed.
Mr McKenney wrote:
PFC Manning really didn’t know what he was disclosing; he didn’t have much chance to review it, and his document dump constituted thousands and thousands of pieces of classified material. He put a lot of thought into how to obtain and dump the documents, but not very much at all into what he was disclosing.
Further, whether you call the disclosures “embarrassing” or not, they still harmed the United States.
Actually, they didn’t. Certainly not in any way that continuing drone strikes or tolerating Israel’s war by bulldozer does. What he did do was to point out the incredible amount of time and overhead that goes into trying to protect mundane information. Except for the crimes disclosed by the Apache guys, of course.
Mr Geezer wrote:
I am not supporting the release of Mr Pollard; he is right where he belongs.
However, only a naif would believe that we aren’t spying on the United Kingdom, on Germany, on France, on Israel, or on Canada, or that they are not spying on us. One of Edward Snowden’s disclosures was along those lines, and of course our European allies reacted with (feigned) indignation, but they knew exactly what was happening all along, and did the same things themselves. To not do so would be sloppy, and (most) mature intelligence agencies aren’t sloppy.
Cassandra wrote:
Oh, I absolutely support our “continuing drone strikes,” and think that they are immensely helpful. We have evolved war from having masses of armed men having to fight through the troops to get to the leadership, to strikes over the heads of the common soldiers directly against the leadership.
And I support Israel’s attempts to attack the Hamas leadership directly, destroying their facilities and their people, and reducing, as much as is possible, the collateral destruction amongst the non-combatants. It is the smart thing to do.
There is no gallantry, there is no chivalry, in combat. The goal is to impose your will on the enemy while reducing your own casualties to the greatest extent possible, and that is what the drone strikes do. They are not perfect, and there will be non-combatant bystanders killed in the process, but they are far less deadly, overall, than the way that wars used to be conducted.
Apparently Manning’s problem is that he didn’t try to *sell* this information — 8 Real Spies and Bad Guys Who Got Shorter Sentences Than Bradley Manning.
Dana just said he “absolutely” supports drone strikes. Before that, he absolutely supported our preemptive strike on Iraq. He also supports the fact that his two daughters are getting their college educations free, paid for by Uncle Sam, meaning by you and me. Let us see his attitude if/when his two lovely daughters are sent into combat. Let us see how he feels if, god forbid, one of his daughters is captured by the enemy and tortured. Would I then have to remind him that he supported the Bush wars, which included the tortures we were doing then?
Dana, who claims to be principled, is actually duplicitous, as noted by Dorian Gray and puck earlier in this thread. His principles reach a divergence when he claims that Obama is the “worst President ever”, while Bush-43 “wasn’t so bad”. So much for Dana’s so-called principles.
“I’d call that after-the-fact projection. The vast majority of the homosexual community never knew who Mr Manning was until after his arrest, so to say that they “knew about Manning’s transgender claims from the first” still means they knew about them only after the fact.”
Perhaps, but a transgendered person of my acquaintance told me about this within a day of his name hitting the news. Also, the transgendered community is not the same as the homosexual community.
Meanwhile, thank you for clarifying my suspicion: You are indeed an authoritarian. One can’t help but wonder how your hatred of government co-exists with your love of military power. Indeed, one wonders why modern-day conservatives don’t share the Founding Fathers’ mistrust of the career military. My own suspicion is that, like most conservatives, you are a seething mass of fear and insecurity and feel protected only by the military and your own guns.
Only a naïf would believe that we actively spy on the U.K. considering that if we want to know something they know and we don’t, we simply ask (and vice versa). Additionally, we have cooperative agreements with the U.K. (and others) for joint operation of intel systems. At least with the U.K., them are us.
Israel is no U.K.
Perry wrote:
Kind of a silly statement when you consider that the drone strikes are intended to take out the Islamist leadership without exposing our troops to enemy fire; I’m supporting a policy which lessens the risks to not only my daughters but to all of our soldiers.
Look at our current President, a man to whom the Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize just for not being George Bush; after 4½ years of Mr Obama’s policies, does anyone here see the Muslims as somehow liking or respecting us more? Perhaps, just perhaps, the Islamists don’t like the man for whom Perry twice voted any more than they liked the President for whom I twice voted.
If Perry doesn’t like the fact that my daughters, and every other soldier who serves his country honorably, is eligible for the GI Bill, maybe he can ask his congressman and two senators to introduce legislation to end the GI Bill; let’s see just how far this gets.
The Geezer wrote:
Apparently you define “authoritarian” far differently than most people. The military is under civilian control in this country, something I very much support, even though I believe that our current Commander-in-Chief is a lousy one.
And, quite naturally, you guessed wrong: while I support the Second Amendment, and believe that it means exactly what it says, that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, I do not choose to own firearms myself. I’m not a hunter, I’m not a target shooter, and I live in a very safe small town; our last murder was 15 years ago. Then again, I chose not to own a firearm when I lived in New Castle County, either, or when I lived in Virginia, or when I lived in Kentucky. (I had a .22 and a shotgun when I was a teenager, but got rid of them before I left for college.)
Authoritarian: 1. favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, esp. that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom.
So I define it the same way the dictionary does. And if Bradley (Chelsea) Manning and Edward Snowden chose to break their oaths because they believed they were doing wrong by following orders to keep classified information secret, I’m going to look at the material before I decide to take the military’s side in placing blame.
Now let’s look past my wrong guess and address the issue I raised: Why don’t you share the Founding Fathers’ distrust of a standing army?
I’m glad I waited to read all of these before responding again. On the whole drone strikes do far more harm to the reputation of the United States than the documents Manning revealed. But to Dana this is not relevant. Although it is demonstrably true.
The torture program certainly did terrible harm, not only to our reputation, but more because they were terrible war crimes. But I guess that was OK as long as we ensure secrecy!
Dana is a bald-faced hypocrite. The point is that regardless of Manning’s crimes we have a big fucking problem in this country and it is creeping authoritarianism. You see it doesn’t matter how effective a police state may be, just like it doesn’t matter how effective evidence is when procured by nefarious illegal means.
You don’t believe transgendered people have certain rights, ok. You think no matter how egregious the war crime may be, if you’re sworn to secrecy I guess it’s just tough shit… This is a very odd position indeed… I said it above. If I commit a crime but it’s illegal for anyone to bear witness against me or gather any evidence, can I be brought to justice? Your arguments are very strange and difficult to follow. You’re talking about Israel striking Hamas… you’re all over the place, bud.
So answer me this, should the Bush Administration’s OLC be charged with war crimes for authorizing torture? Why or why not?
Does Israel meet the definition of an apartheid state? Why or why not?
If the government assassinates US citizens without charge or indictment should the evidence be made public? Why or why not?
If the NSA can collect all you phone calls, texts, emails and GPS on your mobile so it can be queried and used later to establish patterns of movement, etc… Should this program be exposed? Why or why not?
These are serious questions for serious people. Talking about guns or how you don’t like the president is meaningless and adds nothing. It’s like a freshman high school civics discussion.
“Jemund mußte Josef K. verleumdet haben, den ohne daßer etwas Böses getan hätte, wurde er eines Morgen verhaftet.”
The Geezer wrote:
In the military, you are not required to obey an illegal order, but if you believe an order to be illegal, and disobey it on that ground, you had better be right; Mr Manning was not right.
What you are suggesting would give every person authorized access to classified information the right to determine whether the material ought to be classified; that’s nothing but chaos.
I did answer it, though you didn’t recognize it: we have civilian control of the military. The Framers were familiar with an army which owed strict obedience to the king, a king who held office for life. While George III hadn’t been using the army against his barons, English history was full of that sort of thing, and the Framers knew history.
Our Commander-in-Chief is elected every four years, and (now) limited to just two terms. As bad a President as I believe Mr Obama to be — he is the worst President in my lifetime, and my lifetime includes Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter — he will still be out of office, for good, in 3½ more years.
The concerns about a standing army in the late 18th century and today are simply different. We have never had a military dictatorship here, or even a realistic attempt at one.
Mr Gray wrote:
The drone strikes kill our enemies during wartime, Mr Gray, and that is what concerns me; do you think that I’d rather have to send our troops in to accomplish the same missions, exposing them to danger?
Oh, wait, now I see. It isn’t that you are worried that using drones to accomplish our missions hurts our reputation, but that you don’t want to see the missions accomplished at all. You would, it seems, be perfectly happy if the Islamist terrorist leadership remains alive and untouched and able to strike again.
Only a naive person does not believe we spy on friends and allies. While friendly countries may exchange large amounts of information with each other, no country completely gives up all of its information. Sources are particularly well guarded.
I’m really struggling with the justification that he didn’t deserve a punishment because worse things have gone unpunished. That, while true in terms of worse things going unpunished, seems kind of like something a 5 year old would argue.
Dana, even with civilian control the Founding Fathers wrote quite a bit about the dangers of a standing army; it’s addressed in five different Federalist papers, IIRC.
I disagree completely about the “military dictatorship” idea. We are at permanent war; are you sure the Founders’ concerns were unfounded?
@Falcor: The point isn’t that he shouldn’t be punished, it’s that the punishment is overly severe. Can you seriously claim 25 years wouldn’t have done the job?
“Can you seriously claim 25 years wouldn’t have done the job?”
I look at this prison sentence the same way I look at non-guaranteed NFL contracts. Yeah the contract may say 70 million, but it is really nowhere near that.
I’d be surprised if he serves 15 years.
Mr Geezer wrote:
I didn’t say that they were unfounded; I have said that their concerns were different, and have been addressed.
If we are at “permanent war,” is that not still the result of decisions taken by the civilian government? In the United States we have been very successful in relegating the military to the function of being a tool of civilian policy, and our wars are all external.
In 2006, 2008 and 2010, the voters changed the government; in each case, the previous office holders left office peacefully and under the law. I can’t imagine that the officer corps were very pleased with the results of the 2006 and 2008 elections, but the military still remained at their posts and did their duty under the Constitution and followed the orders of the civilian authorities.
Falcor wrote:
Actually, I would be, too. Most of the conditions for early parole wind up being satisfied by good behavior, and Mr Manning does not appear to be a very violent person. The problem is a federal sentence structure which allows for parole after only a third of one’s sentence has been served.
I don’t have time at the moment to round up the quotes about the standing army from the Federalist Papers. If you have a chance, look them up yourself. They do not say what you apparently think they say.
If you think the ONLY thing drone strikes do is kill our enemies you are perhaps the most credulous person I’ve ever heard from… that or you willfully ignore facts you don’t like. When you shoot a hellfire missile into a cafe in Yemen occasionally some children and non-combatants are incinerated. Your simple choice of sometimes having to massacring kids and women and innocent people to ensure terrorist don’t kill us is the argument of a simple minded person… and not very American either.
Mr Gray wrote:
Not very American? How many German civilians, non-combatants, old people, children, babes-in-arms, did we kill during the bombing campaigns of World War II? We think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki when it comes to the bombing campaigns against Japan, but the March 9-10 firebombing of Tokyo killed more people than either of the atomic bombs.
War is Hell, and it is just as much Hell for civilians as it is for soldiers. With drones and precision attacks, we are able to significantly reduce the collateral damage and strike directly at the leadership without having to go through armies to get to them. It ain’t pretty, but it’s a heck of a lot better than it was before.
I’m really struggling with the justification that he didn’t deserve a punishment because worse things have gone unpunished. That, while true in terms of worse things going unpunished, seems kind of like something a 5 year old would argue.
The questions pertain to justice, priorities and use of resources — the usual questions citizens paying attention should be asking their government. This isn’t manipulating guilt by claiming favoritism.
Yes, war IS hell, which is why we shouldn’t start them so blithely.
War is hell. We fire bombed Dresden and nuked Japan… so that’s just how it is. Great argument. You’re very astute. Way to set the bar low…
So since we are at war with Yemen and Somalia now I guess when they bomb cafes in Boston and Atlanta and Dallas it’s just part of the deal. Just soldiers at war. I’m glad that’s cleared up.
You make the arguments of a 17 year old boy… are you a 17 year old boy?
Well, Mr Gray, is your answer then that we should stop using drones and go after the bad guys the old fashioned way, with troops and tanks, just to give the enemy a fairer chance of shooting back at us?
Oh, wait, now I see it! It isn’t so much that you are protesting the way we go after our enemies, but the fact that we fight back against the Islamists at all.
Perhaps, since this discussion is getting slightly off track, our honored hosts would write an essay and start a thread on the Delaware Liberals’ position on under what circumstances war is acceptable.
Drone attacks are not “fighting back.” Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan attacked us (nor have they attacked Pakistan, for that matter), but we have attacked them.
If only we could confine the collateral damage to the warmongers, on their side and ours.
That’s easy: When we are attacked by a foreign state, we are entitled to fight back. Alternately, when and if Congress decides we should go to war with a foreign state, we must fight.
Terrorist networks are not foreign states, but since our military is structured around traditional war, that’s what we frequently wage.
I don’t mind the concept of using drones for warfare, but that’s not what we’re doing. We’re targeting people on intelligence of unknown veracity, not acknowledging that we’re doing it and lying about it when caught.
If you weren’t an American, would America look like the good guys or the bad guys? We lost 3,000 Americans. We have killed at least 10 times that number (once collateral damage is included) and maybe much more than that. Millions are refugees.
The military response to 9/11 was both overly severe and damaging to our country’s long-term interests, and the intelligence response has made clear that every American is being treated as a possible threat.
Good question… what I am saying is that there needs to be transparent rules communicated to the public about when we can assassinate people in countries when we aren’t at war. So if you want to blow someone to peices by vaporizing a car full of people or bombing a tea shop in Yemen or Somalia or Libya or Mali the target needs to be charged with a crime based on evidence… like, you know, we do in the United States.
This is a salient point when it comes to Manning and Snowden. If the government collects evidence in secret, considers the evidence in secret, approves an assassination in secret to be executed in whatever country a person may been in and pretends it didn’t happen… it’s a big problem.
When we just sit back and say, well it’s bad people, other people, in places I’ll never go affecting people I don’t understand or know… it’s really disgusting to me.
Hey, look, if we need to fucking kill terrorists that fine by me. Fuck them… but this isn’t how to do it and somebody needs to have the bollocks to step up up and take a big risk to say so… hence… I support these guys 100%.
“Drone attacks are not “fighting back.” Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan attacked us (nor have they attacked Pakistan, for that matter), but we have attacked them.”
We really if you’re going to get into semantics about Afghanistan you could argue that because we never recognized the Taliban as the government of that “country” all we were doing was offering assistance to the Northern alliance in stomping out a rebellious insurgency. And really, when a guy murders 3000 people on American soil and you refuse to give him up you may not be openly declaring war but you’d be insane to think that your actions didn’t just start one.
That argument makes a lot more sense for Iraq who had nothing to do with 9/11, I don’t think it’s that accurate when you bring Afghanistan into the discussion. As for drone strikes, they certainly result in civilian casualties, but you’d be surprised how small the ECR on a Hellfire is. I’ve heard of stories of them hitting motorcycles and not killing the rider. Not a point in the drone discussion on that just an observation.
I think they make much more sense in support of people on the ground and in targeted strikes on very remote area than they do when civilians are around. At that point you killing a leader now but creating one who is going to come seeking Badal on you later.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/shorter-sentences-than-bradley-manning_n_3789754.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000010
All but one of the people listed on the above website pled guilty. That explains most of the “lighter” sentences.
Dana-
WAR is acceptable when Congress grows a set of balls and DECLARES WAR. That hasn’t happened since WWII.
@LeBay:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ40/pdf/PLAW-107publ40.pdf