http://rt.com/usa/bradley-manning-obama-pardon-805/

"Manning handed over more than 700,000 Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports and State Department diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2010.

"You didn't have to be a person who was against the war to see that something was wrong," said Coombs."


Obama's response:
"Col. Lind credited Pfc. Manning with roughly three-and-a-half years for time already served and the conditions he endured during that confinement. That block of time will be taken off the 35-year sentence. "

What a fucking joke on us.



Hero or traitor?

Kind of both.

He knew full well what he was doing and the damage that could be caused lives possibly lost as a result.

However, He did what he did, didn't run or try to hide.  Owned up to it and accepted the consequences. I do have to respect that.

Battlefield reports after the fact aren't or shouldn't cause any loss of life, he didn't give away plans for future operations, simply reported on what had already taken place.

Something we apparently aren't supposed to know about. Under penalty of law.

I think it's necessary whistleblowing about the US's misdeeds.  I'd lean more towards hero than traitor.

If the administration had a clue, they'd take the opportunity to reign in excess.  Hubris will be what makes the decline of the US dominance particularly ugly.  Instead, he gets 35 years?  Didn't Calley serve less time and get a pardon for being responsible for the murder of hundreds?  And the entire command chain that ordered the massacre(s) concealed evidence and got off entirely?

I also think that giving him 35 years is going to really fuck the US.  It means that anyone who feels morally compelled to call out the US on its activities will also be compelled to leave the country to do so (as Snowden has already done) and who knows what additional information they may give up for sanctuary, beyond just revealing some specific misdeed.

He broke the law and was in breach of contract. The US had to set a strong precedent.

35 years though?
I'm tossed on that one ...

35 years is absurd when soldiers commit war crimes and get a few months or a couple of years.

She's being punished for damaging the moral authority of the US.  Not for the seriousness of the crime.

Also interesting to think about, with respect to musings on moral authority:

The founders of the US went to great pains to couch the legitimacy of the country in natural law and social contract theory.  If the government imprisons anyone who would reveal information that they are in violation of this contract, then you fall into one of the classic problems with that sort of political philosophy:

There is no redress.  If the government classifies information that it is violating its own laws and imprisons anyone who reveals that information, then the contract cannot be held as legitimate.

So it's important for the government to turn these issues around on the individual, otherwise its myth of its own legitimacy is tarnished.

Good point ...

July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike

July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike

This is one of the many releases that Manning was behind. Essentially the argument behind his conviction was that he hurt the troops' morale and potentially enraged relations with the people in the effected countries. I don't believe he did anything wrong by leaking this secret information, as pointed to earlier.

This event is the Pentagon Papers of our time. We as a nation should be informed about the underpinnings of our conflicts and campaigns in other nations.

I recently picked up Howard Zinn's Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal. A paragraph in the book seemed to summarize my feelings about the Manning case:

". . . war is a monstrously wasteful way of achieving a social objective, always involving indiscriminate mass slaughter unconnected with that objective; that even World War II, with its stark moral issues--the 'best' of all wars--presented agonizing moral questions; and that any situation where right and wrong were not so clear, and where human life was being sacrificed, should be regarded with deep suspicion."

I regard Manning and Snowden as heroes, and the ferocity with which the US government has gone after them should speak volumes about what those people have to hide.  Supposedly, Snowden has only disclosed 1% of the information he walked away with.

We all know that the US government is neck deep in its own bullshit and the fact that they're trying so hard to pull everyone else down with them just screams out about its illegality.

But, what do we do about it?