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Bradley Manning Offers Guilty Pleas

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TheDemSocialist

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Bradley Manning, the Army soldier accused of leaking more than a half million confidential U.S. documents to whistleblower website WikiLeaks, has offered to plead guilty to some charges during his ongoing pre-trial hearing.
Among the charges that Manning faces, and that Coombs wants dropped, is "aiding the enemy," which can be punishable by life in prison.
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Read more @: Bradley Manning Offers Guilty Pleas - Yahoo! News

In my opinion he isnt guilty of anything. But hopefully since we are working within the court of law here and what not, this plea goes through and is approved because Manning does not deserve life in prison. He did not "aide the enemy" in any which way.
 
I'm against capital punishment, I'm glad he seems to have avoided it. I'm fine with life in prison.
 
i'm conflicted on this case. on the one hand i know whistleblowers are a critical part of a free society. on the other it smells of treason. :confused:
 
Life in prison at hard labor is adequate. If anything, to make an example for those who would remotely consider doing something similar. And I have no problems with whistleblowers, thats not what Bradley Manning is....at all.
 
roflpublican said:
i'm conflicted on this case. on the one hand i know whistleblowers are a critical part of a free society. on the other it smells of treason. :confused:
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The military has a clear policy on how to be a whistleblower. Releasing documents on the internet is not the legal method. Treason I think is too strong for what he did. Espionage I think covers it.
 
Redress said:
You base your belief that he is not guilty on what?
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"Because"...

You did read his name didn't you?
It's also known as Suspending Disbelief.
 
Redress said:
The military has a clear policy on how to be a whistleblower. Releasing documents on the internet is not the legal method. Treason I think is too strong for what he did. Espionage I think covers it.
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but can a legitimate whistleblower really trust that policy? never know how far up corruption extends.
 
Redress said:
The military has a clear policy on how to be a whistleblower. Releasing documents on the internet is not the legal method. Treason I think is too strong for what he did. Espionage I think covers it.
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His espionage rises to the level of treason.
National security isn't something you mess with in the manner he did.
Put him to rest.
 
roflpublican said:
but can a legitimate whistleblower really trust that policy? never know how far up corruption extends.
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At some point you have to trust some one, and more importantly, when in the military you have to follow the procedures and rules. You swore an oath. I took that very seriously.
 
Redress said:
At some point you have to trust some one, and more importantly, when in the military you have to follow the procedures and rules. You swore an oath. I took that very seriously.
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indeed, that's why this incident conflicts me. i've not been able to come to terms with my opinion on it yet.
 
"Whistleblowers" generally expose wrongdoing. If all Manning had done was release a video of some soldiers breaking the law in Iraq, I'd be fine with it. But you can't release a bunch of diplomatic cables about how the Ambassador to Turkey thinks the Turkish president is stupid, or how Zimbabwean political dissidents secretly advocated for sanctions, or how other Latin American leaders disliked Ecuador's immigration policy.

Exposing this kind of **** has nothing to do with blowing the whistle on anyone. Just because you have access to some confidential information doesn't mean you need to share it with the public.
 
If Bradley Manning did what he was accused of, then thank god for Bradley Manning and I hope there will be a million more like him.

The funny thing about this is that even after all this time, nobody can really actually point to a direct harm caused by these leaks. The only real harm was that American officials are embarrassed that their dishonesty was exposed to everyone including their efforts to cover up their knowledge and compliance with Iraqi torture.

Edit: Also, I would like to point out that what should really be troubling people is the fact that Bradley Manning has spent over 900 days in prison without trial, 9 months of that were spent in solitary confinement. Human Rights agencies have called his treatment 'akin to torture'.

And what happened to the war criminals in the 'collateral murder' video?

That's right. . .nothing!
 
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FinnMacCool said:
If Bradley Manning did what he was accused of, then thank god for Bradley Manning and I hope there will be a million more like him.

The funny thing about this is that even after all this time, nobody can really actually point to a direct harm caused by these leaks. The only real harm was that American officials are embarrassed that their dishonesty was exposed to everyone including their efforts to cover up their knowledge and compliance with Iraqi torture.
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That isn't true, in fact part of the problem has been the incredible magnitude of the documents revealed which have been so voluminous that it becomes difficult to actually figure out what was released. Of course this makes Manning look more guilty, not less. The whole point of a whistle blower is that you have found some wrong, some evil that you want to expose and shed light on for the public. Manning had no idea what 99% of what he was releasing concerned because he couldn't possible have read the millions of documents and cables. He recklessly endangered US foreign policy, private communications, and so much else.

But there are a plethora of cases that have resulted in adverse outcomes due to Manning and his releases. For example Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's contacts with the United States government were exposed and led to a renewed crackdown on his party and 'investigations' for possible treason and conspiracy charges. Zimbabwe AG probing Tsvangirai over WikiLeaks disclosures - CNN.com

There were hundreds of thousands of state department cables and SIRPAnet releases, there was plenty of damaging material. The blessing in disguise was that Manning and Assange released so much information that it became nearly impossible to discern what was what and stories were buried. Even the 'worst' stories like the US intelligence presence in West African countries through energy companies barely made a blip because there were too many stories.
 
FinnMacCool said:
If Bradley Manning did what he was accused of, then thank god for Bradley Manning and I hope there will be a million more like him.

The funny thing about this is that even after all this time, nobody can really actually point to a direct harm caused by these leaks. The only real harm was that American officials are embarrassed that their dishonesty was exposed to everyone including their efforts to cover up their knowledge and compliance with Iraqi torture.

Edit: Also, I would like to point out that what should really be troubling people is the fact that Bradley Manning has spent over 900 days in prison without trial, 9 months of that were spent in solitary confinement. Human Rights agencies have called his treatment 'akin to torture'.

And what happened to the war criminals in the 'collateral murder' video?

That's right. . .nothing!
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So you approve of people who break the law? You approve of material being released that put people at risk? If the charges are true, then Manning broke the law, broke his oath, and damaged diplomatic relations of a country he was sworn to serve. You somehow think that is something good?
 
Redress said:
So you approve of people who break the law? You approve of material being released that put people at risk? If the charges are true, then Manning broke the law, broke his oath, and damaged diplomatic relations of a country he was sworn to serve. You somehow think that is something good?
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Our government is the only real criminals here. I don't approve of everything that wikileaks has done, but I think that information wants to be free and it's important that people know the truth.
 
He is definitely guilty. He may have believed he had a good reason for what he did, but he is guilty of breaking the law. I don't think he should spend life in prison though.
 
FinnMacCool said:
The funny thing about this is that even after all this time, nobody can really actually point to a direct harm caused by these leaks.
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A crime is deemed committed at the time the law is broken, not after a leisurely analysis of negative or positive subsequent events. There may be enhancements to the penalty if it is proven that he caused great harm.

Reading the article, it appears that his plea offer is only to lesser included offenses, so it appears to be only a tactical move by the defense to cut short the enormous amount of damning testimony.

He'll get enough time at Leavenworth that he will wish he had been more circumspect in his behavior. Maybe followed the rules like soldiers are expected to do.
 
FinnMacCool said:
Our government is the only real criminals here. I don't approve of everything that wikileaks has done, but I think that information wants to be free and it's important that people know the truth.
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Wow, this is just a HUGE pile of naivity. Do you realize the biggest thing that was hurt by Manning's leaks was diplomacy? You know, the method of negotiating with friends as well as enemies to avoid actual conflict. So in essence, he hurt Peace and created tension. Diplomacy is a poker game, you don't want who you're negotiating with to see your cards. Manning showed them the cards.

His release was indiscriminate, thats why he's not a whistleblower.
 
Where is the idea that Manning is a whistleblower coming from? He didn't identify specific incidents of wrong-doing and selectively leak information relating to them, he copied data in bulk, much more than he could have personally read, and passed it all to a third party. Even if there was no major harm as a result of any of the information he passed on (which is somewhat disputed I believe), the fact is that there could have been. That's why leaking information like this is illegal.
 
HonestJoe said:
Where is the idea that Manning is a whistleblower coming from? He didn't identify specific incidents of wrong-doing and selectively leak information relating to them, he copied data in bulk, much more than he could have personally read, and passed it all to a third party. Even if there was no major harm as a result of any of the information he passed on (which is somewhat disputed I believe), the fact is that there could have been. That's why leaking information like this is illegal.
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His fanboys keep repeating that lie over and over hoping it takes hold.
 
Fishstyx said:
Wow, this is just a HUGE pile of naivity. Do you realize the biggest thing that was hurt by Manning's leaks was diplomacy? You know, the method of negotiating with friends as well as enemies to avoid actual conflict. So in essence, he hurt Peace and created tension. Diplomacy is a poker game, you don't want who you're negotiating with to see your cards. Manning showed them the cards.

His release was indiscriminate, thats why he's not a whistleblower.
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According to dictionary.com, a whistle blower is someone who " informs on another or makes public disclosure of corruption or wrongdoing."

Seems fair to say that he is one based on the definition. Maybe he didn't know everything that he sent out, but he obviously knew enough to get the picture since is motives, as conveyed by the chat logs with Adrian Lamo, were to encourage world wide debate and reforms. Again, sounds like a whisteblower to me.

But really we are just arguing semantics now. Who cares what we call him?
 
FinnMacCool said:
According to dictionary.com, a whistle blower is someone who " informs on another or makes public disclosure of corruption or wrongdoing."

Seems fair to say that he is one based on the definition. Maybe he didn't know everything that he sent out, but he obviously knew enough to get the picture since is motives, as conveyed by the chat logs with Adrian Lamo, were to encourage world wide debate and reforms. Again, sounds like a whisteblower to me.

But really we are just arguing semantics now. Who cares what we call him?
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And yet he still broke the law because he failed to utilize proper protocol for military whistleblowing....protocol he would have been well aware of as a member of that military.

What I find absolutely disgusting is people who defend those who put us at risk. He didn't know the content of most of those documents. For all he knew, he could have been releasing cables that led to war, attacks on our soil, attacks at our embassies. It is by shear LUCK that his actions didn't result in deaths. Fortunately, our system doesn't care about lucky outcomes and focuses purely on the original illegal action.

Manning deserves to be punished because he broke the law. The fact that you apparently think he's some kind of enlightened hero is rather telling.
 
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