Brad/Chelsea Manning: Charged w/AFG file leak, Cdn angles, disposition (merged)

[George Wallace]

I'll try to give you another example. Both my parents most male members of their age served in WWII. I served in the 70's.

During most of the ColdWar  "The Free World" was in peril. At time there were serious overreactions that did a lot of Harm to the practice of "Freedom" Mcarrthy era was one. The Red scare was another.  Bader Meinhof Gang, Red Army, Weather Underground, IRA bombings in the 60's and 70's yet another.

Apples and Oranges.  None of those organization had anywhere near the total numbers as what we are currently fighting in the 'War on Terror', even if we were to add them all up together.  Localized factions as you just mentioned, are not comparable to the international web of cells the Al Queda has spread around South West Asia, Middle East, Africa and the rest of the free world. 

That last point is I think of sigifigance. Despite bombings there was no heavy handed overreaction such as the so-called "Patriot Act" 

Ummmm!  Did you not just mention Northern Ireland above.  Why, yes you did.  Do you not think Parliament in London had not taken appropriate measures and legislated acts to sent British troops to Northern Ireland? 

For General Hillier to refer to the 90's as "The Decade of Darkness"  to my mind does the Forces a disservice. The decades of Darkness ended when The Soviet Union imploded.

I see the point he was making swooshed right over your head.  When the Wall came down and the 'Soviet Union imploded' the Canadian Armed Forces saw a decade of Darkness.  Six years of frozen Pay.  No major equipment purchases.  Large cuts to CAF organizations.  Base closures.  If that all passed your field of vision without your noticing it happening, you were totally ignorant of what was going on in this country and around the world.

.....  My cousin was one of 10 that died at the Edmonton Air show Crash.  Who on earth came up with the idea of Hercules Transports doing unauthorized formation aerobatics.  At least 6 commissioned officers in on the stunt and no one had the brains to stop.  The pilots were stupid beyond belief AND it was a command failure as well.

And you were privy to the final accident report?  Your last sentence tells me a lot about you.  It is not very positive.

 

[cupper]

Both sides of the debate, Manning Hero or Traitor

Is Bradley Manning A Hero Or A Traitor?

http://www.theonion.com/articles/is-bradley-manning-a-hero-or-a-traitor,33322/

Yesterday, a military judge convicted Army Pfc. Bradley Manning of violating the Espionage Act, but acquitted him on charges of aiding the enemy. Manning, who leaked more than 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks in 2010 and now faces up to 136 years in prison, is being hailed by some as a hero for his whistleblowing and a traitor by others for compromising national security. Here are the cases the two sides are making:

ARGUMENTS FOR MANNING BEING A HERO:

Sacrificed his dreams of leading a relatively normal life as a lonely outcast questioning his gender identity

Risked life and limb to reveal documents superiors had mistakenly entrusted to him

Martyred self in name of higher cause no one really wants to read about

Leaked videos meant that Akron, OH resident Carolyn Sutter spent 10 extra minutes on her computer on the morning of February 19, 2010, causing her to miss her usual bus—the very same bus that crashed that morning and would have killed her if she’d been on board

Everybody but the army seems to think he’s a decent enough guy

The chance of Bradley Manning being the product of the one of his father’s sperm that fertilized his mother’s egg and ultimately became a human is specularly low and, actually, almost unfathomable! One in 10^2,685,000, to be exact! So, whether or not Manning is a hero, he is a miracle. We are all miracles.

ARGUMENTS FOR MANNING BEING A TRAITOR:

Has thus far failed to demonstrate himself as anything beyond some flash-in-the-pan, one-hit-wonder whistleblower

Lacks the raw, unadulterated masculinity of an Assange or Snowden

Stubbornly refuses to leave public eye, months after the American people lost interest in him

Pompous “Private First Class” moniker

Closing statement in trial was just “With all due respect, your honor, I fucking hate this country”

Ultimately, the judgment of Bradley Manning is a far deeper question than whether he is merely a hero or villain, streaked with shades of gray and consumed by moral ambiguity. But yeah, sure, he’s probably a traitor.

;D

 

[Inquisitor]

Thanks George.

I should have stayed focused on Col. Hackworth and Roberts.

Re: comments on the crash here is bonus link to the mother of all command failures, http://www.uscg.mil/safety/docs/CRM/Darker_Shades_of_Blue.pdf please note the authors copyright instructions.

One of my overarching concerns and part of the reason that I'm am being so deliberately contrarion is my belief that certain aspects of society are suffering unacceptable and perhaps irreversible levels of collateral damage from the "War on Terror"

For example - The US executive branch granting itself additional powers
                      The NSA issues
                      Lies leading up to the Iraq war.
                      Much of the press self muzzling itself
                      Blatant corruption not just in  Iraq and Afghanistan but the US Government as well. example read "Capitol Punishment - The hard truth about Washington Corruption
                      from America's most notorious lobbyist" by Jack Abramoff.
                      Restrictions on Habeas Corpus
                     
One of the maxims of war is that one should never do what his opponent wants. OBL wanted The West to engage in these wars in so doing going the way of the Soviet union.


                   

 

[Inquisitor]

and that's just North America

Then there's this link http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/iraq-july-death-toll_n_3688443.html?utm_hp_ref=canada&ir=Canada&utm_hp_ref=canada

Going back to my comment about "The March of Folly" a new chapter indeed.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Why do you hate freedom?

That'll teach you to ask questions

 

[Inquisitor]

A lot of the discussion has so far focused solely on Manning, the individual.

I suggest that we may be missing something much bigger.

How the system reacts to an individual or individuals who believe, presuably in good faith, that the orders that are commanded to act under are no longer lawful orders.

God forbid that any find ourselves in such a situation.

This applies to both Manning, Snowden as well as others likely to follow.

They did not adhere to the authorized procedures to resolve their issues, likely because of lack of faith in the outcomes.

I find this article interesting  "
A Real Democracy Would Strip the Military of Court-Martial Jurisdiction Over Whistleblowers

How the Manning Trial Betrayed the Constitution" link here 
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/02/how-the-manning-trial-betrayed-the-constitution/

Its a fairly heavy read and I Include some snippets that seem to stand out under the fair use provision of the copyright act

"The military under its civilian commander in chief denied Bradley Manning his constitutional right to a jury trial under the Sixth Amendment ... This denial of Bradley Manning’s rights also deprived “we the people” of our  constitutional rights to witness a “public trial” as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment and to have our views represented on a fairly selected, representative civilian jury.  Though the efficacy of juries has come into question recently in the Trayvon Martin case, it remains true that a fairly impaneled jury, competently informed by the agency of lawyers, and instructed by an impartial judge, can be fairly representative of, and a legitimate disinterested proxy for, informed public opinion.  This process is the bedrock of democracy by guaranteeing that no one may be denied life liberty or property except upon trial by their peers who are resonant of informed public opinion.

...

Keeping secrets of crimes is not related to a legitimate “fighting function,” nor is the revelation of those secrets.  In O’Callahan v. Parker, 395 U.S. 258 (1969), where the Court refused to subject a member of the military to court-martial and insisted upon trial in a civilian court on a civilian criminal charge, the Court warned that “expansion of military discipline beyond its proper domain carries with it a threat to liberty” because  “military law has always been, and continues to be, primarily an instrument of discipline, not justice.”  395

...

The military was given an opportunity to defer its own conflicting interests in secrecy to the people’s higher right to know.  It failed.  It redefined espionage as telling the truth to the American voter about misdeeds the militiary prefers to hide.  The remedy is now for Congress to amend the Military Justice laws to provide that whistle-blowers must be tried in a constitutional court and not be punished under the guise of a military disciplinary proceeding.  The military has lost its credibility to try such cases.

...

Under the Constitution it is the people, through the constitutional process of a civilian jury trial, not the military apparatus, who must be the judge of whether Manning’s selfless act of service to the people is deserving of punishment.  So long as the military continues to hold Manning they are denying him the speedy and civilian trial that the Constitution requires.

Rob Hager is a public-interest litigator who filed a Supreme Court amicus brief in the 2012 Montana sequel to the Citizens United case, American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock, and has worked as an international consultant on legal development and anti-corruption issues."

 

[kevincanada]

A lot of the discussion has so far focused solely on Manning, the individual.

I suggest that we may be missing something much bigger.

How the system reacts to an individual or individuals who believe, presuably in good faith, that the orders that are commanded to act under are no longer lawful orders.

God forbid that any find ourselves in such a situation.

This applies to both Manning, Snowden as well as others likely to follow.

They did not adhere to the authorized procedures to resolve their issues, likely because of lack of faith in the outcomes.

While I will try to avoid finger pointing and character bashing.  If you read a little past the Leak/Court case fiasco surrounding Manning.  You can see that he has exercise what I believe to be poor judgement in a number of issues, some of which had nothing to do with going through proper channels but where merely bad choices before his legal troubles ever began.  Read some of his history online prior to the leak.  It may influence your view of him and the choices he made.

 

[FJAG]

I suggest that we may be missing something much bigger.

How the system reacts to an individual or individuals who believe, presuably in good faith, that the orders that are commanded to act under are no longer lawful orders.

Up to this point you asked a valid question. Unfortunately after that you went off on a naive rant that uses articles authored by equally misguided individuals.

Your argument is that courts martial should be stripped of jurisdiction over whistle blowers in a democracy. That premise is grounded in a presumption that courts martial are intrinsically unfair to someone who feels he has a higher calling than to keep his country's secrets.

In short that is pure claptrap. In short courts martial in the US, like those in Canada, are constitutionally recognized. In the US they are the created by the executive and the legislative branches. The civilian legislature has created the laws governing the powers and processes of courts martial and further have created the laws that they are empowered to adjudicate over. In addition they have created appeal courts that supervise the trial level courts all the way up to the Supreme Court.

What is really at play with Manning is a much simpler principle that applies to all those who feel a need to leak government secrets to the public contrary to the country's secrecy laws: "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."

A properly instructed jury would apply the law and convict him for the utterly stupid and arrogant things he did. What you are really advocating for is an opportunity to appear before an uneducated jury that can be driven by a plea for sympathy into ignoring the law.

Have a good one.  :2c:

 

[ModlrMike]

Had he stuck to reporting a war crime to the CoC rather than releasing 19000 files to Wikileaks then he might be a hero. Now he's a criminal, and a self aggrandizing one at that. You'll notice how quickly Assange et al distanced themselves from him once the trial started. I'm struck once again how the phrase "useful idiots" comes into play.

 

[Inquisitor]

"Obama Promise to Protect Whistleblowers Scrubbed From Website"
Link here http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/16184-obama-promise-to-protect-whistleblowers-scrubbed-from-website

snippet reproduced here under the fair use policy of the coyright act
"Memory hole: a hole in a small chute leading to an incinerator. In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, information — printed evidence of history — that contradicted the ruling party’s official version of events from the past was sent down the memory hole

...

Specifically, in its analysis, Sunlight noticed:

While the front splash page for Change.gov has linked to the main White House website for years, until recently, you could still continue on to see the materials and agenda laid out by the administration. This was a particularly helpful resource for those looking to compare Obama's performance in office against his vision for reform, laid out in detail on Change.gov.

...

Sunlight suggests that this artifact from the website might hold the key:

Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process."

Comment: Wow, just Wow

Posted on the snowden thread as well

 

[tomahawk6]

There is a law pertaining to whistle blowers - if you follow the procedures.Manning and Snowden are NOT whistle blowers.
Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 .

The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 provides protection only for individuals within the federal government. The coverage applies to current and former government employees, as well as people who are applying for a job with the federal government. Some federal employees do not receive protection from the 1989 act, including members of the FBI, the United States Postal Service and the National Security Agency.

 

[Inquisitor]

I see your point. I find the exclusions rather interesting.

 

[Inquisitor]

Bradley Manning's Maximum Possible Sentence Cut To 90 Years

Reproduced under the fair use provision of the copyright act from Huffington Post
link here
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/06/bradley-manning-sentence_n_3713400.html

"FORT MEADE, Md. -- A military judge has reduced Army Pfc. Bradley Manning's maximum possible sentence in the WikiLeaks case to 90 years in prison.

Manning had faced up to 136 years in prison after he was convicted of charges related to his disclosure of classified information to the anti-secrecy website. But the judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, found during his sentencing hearing Tuesday that a number of the charges refer to the same actions and therefore were duplicative for sentencing purposes.

Manning was convicted at his court-martial of 20 counts. His defense attorneys had argued that some of the counts amounted to multiple convictions for a single act.

Testimony during Manning's sentencing hearing was to continue at Fort Meade, near Baltimore."

 

[cupper]

It appears that the defense team is going for the "Well you knew he had problems so you should have done something before it happened" mitigation.  :

Army ignored Manning’s deteriorating mental health, defense attorney says

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/army-ignored-mannings-deteriorating-mental-health-defense-attorney-says/2013/08/13/56dd9e70-0451-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html

Pfc. Bradley Manning was experiencing an intense personal crisis and deteriorating mental health in the months he was leaking large amounts of classified data to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, and he should not have been kept in a war zone, his attorney argued at a court-martial Tuesday.

In April 2010, while serving as an Army intelligence analyst in Baghdad, Manning sent an e-mail to Master Sgt. Paul Adkins, his superior, to tell him that he was suffering from a gender-identity disorder. Manning attached a photograph of himself wearing a blond wig and makeup.

“I have had signs of it for a very long time. It’s caused problems within my family,” Manning wrote in the e-mail with the subject line “My Problem,” which was released Tuesday for the first time. “I thought enlisting in the military would get rid of it. . . . I’ve been trying very, very hard to get rid of it. It’s haunting me more and more as I get older. Now the consequences are getting harder.”

Manning was convicted last month of multiple charges relating to the leaking of classified material, including violations of the Espionage Act. The court-martial is in the sentencing phase, and Manning’s defense team hopes to persuade a military judge not to impose the maximum 90-year sentence on the 25-year-old.

The defense hopes to show that Manning was on the verge of a breakdown leading up to the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of secret military and diplomatic documents, and that his commanders did not help him or remove him from Iraq.

Adkins said he did not inform his superiors about the e-mail until after Manning was arrested. “I really didn’t think at the time that having a picture floating around of one of my soldiers in drag as in the best interest of the intel mission,” Adkins told the court.

The month after he sent the e-mail, Manning was found in the fetal position in a storeroom with a knife at his feet. Adkins testified Tuesday that he found Manning unresponsive but was able to get him to talk about how he felt “fragmented.”

Within an hour, Adkins said, he escorted Manning to his workstation so he could complete his shift. When he finished work, Manning got involved in an altercation with another person at the forward operating base, Adkins testified.

When defense attorney David Coombs pressed Adkins on why Manning was not removed, the sergeant responded that the unit was experiencing “manpower allocation” issues and that the analyst’s skills were essential to the mission.

“My intent was to make sure, if I could possibly do it, that he could maintain his functionality as an intelligence analyst,” Adkins said. “In a perfect world, I think if I could have left him back to make sure he was getting behavior health care, I think I would have.”

The sentencing phase will continue Wednesday, when Manning is expected to make a statement before the judge, Col. Denise Lind.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Should have thought of this BEFORE hitting "Send" ....

Pfc. Bradley Manning told a military judge during his sentencing hearing Wednesday that he is sorry he hurt the United States by leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive military and diplomatic documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks and he asked for leniency.

“I’m sorry I hurt people. I’m sorry that I hurt the United States,” said Manning, who was convicted last month of multiple crimes, including violations of the Espionage Act, for turning over the classified material. “I’m apologizing for the unintended consequences of my actions. I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people.”

The former Army intelligence analyst, who served at a forward operating base in Iraq, had not previously expressed regret for his actions, and during trial had justified the leak as necessary to spark a debate about the nation’s preoccupation with “killing and capturing people.”

Speaking publicly for only the third time since he was arrested in Iraq in June 2010, Manning said he had been naive. “I look back at my decisions and wonder, ‘How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?’” said Manning, who spoke for less than five minutes, often in a quavering voice ....

Washington Post, 14 Aug 13

 

[cupper]

Well. they do say that your net presence will follow you everywhere, forever. ;D

You would think an underground hacker type like him would know that.

 

[OldSolduer]

Now he's blaming gender identity issues over this.

Really now..... :facepalm:

 

[Jarnhamar]

Now he's blaming gender identity issues over this.

Really now..... :facepalm:

If that excuse works for him then I'll use it for myself and have one more reason why I'm late  ;D

 

[PMedMoe]

If that excuse works for him then I'll use it for myself and have one more reason why I'm late  ;D

Because you had to put on make up?   

 

[GAP]

Because you had to put on make up?   

Who knew?