Soldier gets 24 years for killing Afghan civilians

apdst said:

But, not currently being prosecuted. Yes?

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He is currently being held and awaiting a hearing. He will almost certainly be prosecuted when that time comes.

PeteEU said:

To be frank no. He should have been judged after local law and not the corrupt US military justice system. Hence it is a whitewash.

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I'm sure the locals would be happy to behead them.
Death is the standard punishment for any crime in those parts, after all.

StillBallin75 said:

He is currently being held and awaiting a hearing. He will almost certainly be prosecuted when that time comes.

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I'm sure that time will come, after the higher-ups that fed him the info have sufficiently covered their asses.

Jetboogieman said:

But he will go on trial.

Which makes these two statements bull.





The Commies, the Commies!

It's 2011 bro.

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When his trial starts, you be sure and let us know. K'sport?

apdst said:

I'm sure that time will come, after the higher-ups that fed him the info have sufficiently covered their asses.

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lol u think this went up the chain of command? Kid was a hacker...Maybe there was some negligence involved but I highly doubt anyone fed him data.

StillBallin75 said:

lol u think this went up the chain of command? Kid was a hacker...Maybe there was some negligence involved but I highly doubt anyone fed him data.

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There ain't no way that a private--no matter what hacker skills he has--was privy to that much information.

I bet you actually believe a simple Lt. Colonel ramrodded the Iran-Contra deal, too. Am I right?

I would like to point out in a war where any civilian can turn into the enemy by going inside, putting down his gardening tool, picking up his AK-47 and coming back outside and shooting at our troops, I would hesitate to call people "innocent civilians."

The reason I bring this up is because this war is not a typical one where you have one army dressed in one type of clothing vs another army in another color outfit with civilians on both sides dressed only in civilian clothing. You have civilians, who will talk to you all nice one minute, and blow your head off the next. Tolerate that for 8 years and you've got a ripe situation for "innocent" people to get killed, just to revenge the killing of soldiers by these so called "innocents" who lost their innocence when they picked up their rifles.

Does it excuse the behavior? Of course not. But I'm not about making excuses, just understanding why someone would do such a thing. Thank goodness this isn't the norm as it is in muslim nations.

The Preacher said:

Death is the standard punishment for any crime in those parts, after all.

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Again...not true.

You confuse the Taliban culture, which has been an influence since the Soviet/Afghani war, with the longer history of the Afghani culture. I don't blame you entirely. Though you could simply read a book or two on the subject, this celebrated ignorance has been a Leftist and a Rightist phenomena. Assuming that today equals hundreds to thousands of years of Afghani culture is a phenomena not only presented to you by the sensational hungry media, but also the voter hungry politician. So between flipping channels from Star Seacrh (or whatever the reality fascination is today) and your most cherished news media station, you have no idea what the standard punishment for anything in this region is, much less the Afghani culture.

Here's you first clue into enlightenment......did you know that in the 1960s that Afghanistan supplied the world with only 1% of the heroin trade with a much more emphasis on fruit exportation? And that today they supply 90% percent of the world's heroin with no fruit to speak of? What changed? Gaining the answers to this question would enlighten you into what is "standard" in these cultures.

The intentional murder of civilians for the sake of murdering civilians is unacceptable. It is an unlawful order, which means that it is not only unacceptable to give, but unacceptable to follow. It is against the good morailty of our military. Don't get caught throwing away the vast majority of our uniformed personnel for the sake of defending the pieces of garbage that should be cut from the cloth. Doing so not only gives our Euopean haters their masturbation material, but also undermines our efforts. No good comes from defending what you know is wrong.

apdst said:

There ain't no way that a private--no matter what hacker skills he has--was privy to that much information.

I bet you actually believe a simple Lt. Colonel ramrodded the Iran-Contra deal, too. Am I right?

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Since when does a Lib fail to accuse Reagan of anything...but if you have any evidence that higher-ups were involved feel free to share.

StillBallin75 said:

Since when does a Lib fail to accuse Reagan of anything...but if you have any evidence that higher-ups were involved feel free to share.

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If I did, it would already have been posted. For now, I only have the fact that NO Army private has access to that much high level material.

apdst said:

If I did, it would already have been posted. For now, I only have the fact that NO Army private has access to that much high level material.

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Well until then I don't think it's implausible that the kid was just a good hacker, or someone was being loose with their information security.

StillBallin75 said:

Well until then I don't think it's implausible that the kid was just a good hacker, or someone was being loose with their information security.

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implausible, no. improbable, yes.

I'm not sold on the idea that this kid, alone leaked hundreds of thousands of pages of classified material. I do believe that he was fed most of this material by someone higher up on the food chain; hence the reason he's being held under such tight security.

apdst said:

implausible, no. improbable, yes.

I'm not sold on the idea that this kid, alone leaked hundreds of thousands of pages of classified material. I do believe that he was fed most of this material by someone higher up on the food chain; hence the reason he's being held under such tight security.

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Interesting, guess we'll see how it turns out.

StillBallin75 said:

Interesting, guess we'll see how it turns out.

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I'm sure we won't hear much about it, in the end.

apdst said:

If I did, it would already have been posted. For now, I only have the fact that NO Army private has access to that much high level material.

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That's also not true at all. A Private with the MOS of Intel will have more access than a sergeant and plenty of officers. In fact, just because you have clearance in a particular office, which has sensitive material lying around on a desk, doesn't mean that his clearance level will gain him access anywhere else that demands the same or lesser clearance. Authorization matters.

I am a Marine Master Sergeant of 19 years. I have a Secret clearance with access to extremely sensitive material that others with a Secret clearance can't touch because of my team mission. In my team of 17, I have one Sergeant who happens to be one of the 6 intel "officers." He has a Top Secret clearance.

My point here is that rank doesn't matter. Also, "high level material" isn't as Hollywood as civilians think. You should know this.

apdst said:

implausible, no. improbable, yes.

I'm not sold on the idea that this kid, alone leaked hundreds of thousands of pages of classified material. I do believe that he was fed most of this material by someone higher up on the food chain; hence the reason he's being held under such tight security.

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Of course he did man, c'mon. Are you telling me that Army intel has no non-NCOs in the MOS? That all are officers and high level SNCOs? Even Intel needs someone to organize papers and take out the trash. Marine Intellgence has PFCs and Lance Corporals in the MOS. That PFC will have a higher clearance than the Motor T mech who holds the rank of SSgt or that Supply Officer who holds the rank of Lt. in most cases.

MSgt said:

That's also not true at all. A Private with the MOS of Intel will have more access than a sergeant and plenty of officers. In fact, just because you have clearance in a particular office, which has sensitive material lying around on a desk, doesn't mean that his clearance level will gain him access anywhere else that demands the same or lesser clearance. Authorization matters.

I am a Marine Master Sergeant of 19 years. I have a Secret clearance with access to extremely sensitive material that others with a Secret clearance can't touch because of my team mission. In my team of 17, I have one Sergeant who happens to be one of the 6 intel "officers." He has a Top Secret clearance.

My point here is that rank doesn't matter. Also, "high level material" isn't as Hollywood as civilians think. You should know this.

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I had a top secret security clearance when I was an E-7, because of weapons systems that we had in our units, at that time. Although I had a top secret clearance, there was also a, "need to know", factor involved and while Manning might have had the security clearance access that information, I doubt he had the need to know, which wouldn't allow him to get his hands on that many docs, all by himself.

apdst said:

I had a top secret security clearance when I was an E-7, because of weapons systems that we had in our units, at that time. Although I had a top secret clearance, there was also a, "need to know", factor involved and while Manning might have had the security clearance access that information, I doubt he had the need to know, which wouldn't allow him to get his hands on that many docs, all by himself.

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Why do you doubt this? There's no conspiracy here. Any individual with a SIPR account can read and print tons of material, especially if one's MOS placed him in a secure environment where said material was readily available. Where his fellow soldiers failed was allowing him to break procedures by handling CD-Rs and external hard drives (thumb drives). But my guess is that they were all breaking the rules and listening to music devices through their computers and paid no attention. They all failed, but only one maliciously betrayed us all.

MSgt said:

Why do you doubt this? There's no conspiracy here. Any individual with a SIPR account can read and print tons of material, especially if one's MOS placed him in a secure environment where said material was readily available. Where his fellow soldiers failed was allowing him to break procedures by handling CD-Rs and external hard drives (thumb drives). But my guess is that they were all breaking the rules and listening to music devices through their computers and paid no attention. They all failed, but only one maliciously betrayed us all.

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True Many Non-Com and Jr Enlistment Marines here have Secret and TS clearance and have access to all that "good stuff" it's not as hard to get your hands on it as one would think.

MSgt said:

That's also not true at all. A Private with the MOS of Intel will have more access than a sergeant and plenty of officers. In fact, just because you have clearance in a particular office, which has sensitive material lying around on a desk, doesn't mean that his clearance level will gain him access anywhere else that demands the same or lesser clearance. Authorization matters.

I am a Marine Master Sergeant of 19 years. I have a Secret clearance with access to extremely sensitive material that others with a Secret clearance can't touch because of my team mission. In my team of 17, I have one Sergeant who happens to be one of the 6 intel "officers." He has a Top Secret clearance.

My point here is that rank doesn't matter. Also, "high level material" isn't as Hollywood as civilians think. You should know this.

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this is true. I have a top secret clearance. I have 3 officer MOS (14E, 31A and 90A: air defense, military police and logistics) I am a Captain and have been a company commander and a staff officer. my daughter is a specialist (E4) 35F intel analyst. during our last deployment, she had access to more sensitive info/material than I did because, as an analyst, she had a need to know and I as battalion supply officer did not.

I was listening to a piece about Pvt. Manning and his early life on NPR this morning. It seems that he was the type of the person that should never have been in the Army in the first place. The only reason he was even in a uniform was because Army recruiting standards became lax and his father twisted his arm to join so that he would "have some instruction in his life."

StillBallin75 said:

I was listening to a piece about Pvt. Manning and his early life on NPR this morning. It seems that he was the type of the person that should never have been in the Army in the first place. The only reason he was even in a uniform was because Army recruiting standards became lax and his father twisted his arm to join so that he would "have some instruction in his life."

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What specifically was laxed? what specific issue did you come across?

ReverendHellh0und said:

What specifically was laxed? what specific issue did you come across?

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Well, unrelated to this subject I've read a lot about how the Army lowered its education standards and granted more waivers for criminal offenses, etc. things like that in a drive to meet the Army's recruitment demands when it was expanding around 07-08. I don't think those stories are hard to find if you do a google search.

However in Manning's case it seems that he was constantly in and out of trouble, his parents were divorced, he had family issues and his dad kicked him out of the house because he was gay, and when he was in the Army he was undisciplined and was prone to angry outbursts and throwing chairs around, things like that. He clearly didn't want to be in the military and the only reason he joined was because his dad twisted his arm. Just strikes me as someone who never should have been in a uniform in the first place.

ReverendHellh0und said:

What specifically was laxed? what specific issue did you come across?

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Waivers.

The Marine Corps has around 10 or 15 waivers that can be granted by recruiters. The Army has hundreds. The reason being is that Army recruitment has always been a difficult road. There job is to get people in...not keep them out.

StillBallin75 said:

Well, unrelated to this subject I've read a lot about how the Army lowered its education standards and granted more waivers for criminal offenses, etc. things like that in a drive to meet the Army's recruitment demands when it was expanding around 07-08. I don't think those stories are hard to find if you do a google search.

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I have, often the claim is far exxagerated and not very accurate.

However in Manning's case it seems that he was constantly in and out of trouble, his parents were divorced, he had family issues and his dad kicked him out of the house because he was gay, and when he was in the Army he was undisciplined and was prone to angry outbursts and throwing chairs around, things like that. He clearly didn't want to be in the military and the only reason he joined was because his dad twisted his arm. Just strikes me as someone who never should have been in a uniform in the first place.

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Was he convicted of a felony?

you are right he never should have been in, however, unless he was a felon, and did not score on his ASVAB, etc, I don't see this as the Army's fault/