Obama Commutes bulk of Chelsea Manning's sentence

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

The 35 year sentence is reduced to 7 years, she is slated to be released in May.

Finally something good from Obama, who has shown that the people he hates most in the world are those who allow us to know what our government is doing. Of course Assange and Snowden are still targets, and they know it, but Manning will finally walk free for daring to show the enemy (that is you and me) what the US government is up to.

 

[ZiprHead]

Is Assange under indictment for breaking US laws?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

No, he's merely holed up in an Equadorian embassy in London because if he leaves it, Britain will send him to Sweden which will in turn send him to the US. From there he'll be held without indictment in Gitmo until the war-hawks in both parties have had enough.

 

[Tharmas]

No, he's merely holed up in an Equadorian embassy in London because if he leaves it, Britain will send him to Sweden which will in turn send him to the US. From there he'll be held without indictment in Gitmo until the war-hawks in both parties have had enough.

I thought he was under investigation for outstanding rape charges in Sweden as well.

 

[repoman]

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

No, he's merely holed up in an Equadorian embassy in London because if he leaves it, Britain will send him to Sweden which will in turn send him to the US. From there he'll be held without indictment in Gitmo until the war-hawks in both parties have had enough.

I thought he was under investigation for outstanding rape charges in Sweden as well.

Yes, that is the official pretext.

 

[Mumbles]

I don't object to the sentence commutation, but please. The idea that Manning was ever going to be found not guilty, when she freely confessed to dumping classified info without evaluation, is absurd. This isn't some amazing Obama conspiracy, it's simply a clear criminal matter - if anything, it would be wrong for the President to demand that she not be prosecuted.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Is Assange under indictment for breaking US laws?

And then Trump will acquit Assange.

 

[J842P]

Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

The 35 year sentence is reduced to 7 years, she is slated to be released in May.

Finally something good from Obama, who has shown that the people he hates most in the world are those who allow us to know what our government is doing. Of course Assange and Snowden are still targets, and they know it, but Manning will finally walk free for daring to show the enemy (that is you and me) what the US government is up to.

This is great news. Quite frankly, I am impressed.

 

[repoman]

Let me ask a short hypothetical, that is a bit related to the Bradley Manning case. First, I will admit that Manning released way too much info to Wikileaks.

Suppose that Manning only released a very small amount of data that was only highly related to illegal actions of the military, and only after going up the ranks a bit and getting rebuffed.

Is his legal duty to report misdeeds of the military satisfied by just telling senior officers who do nothing, or is his legal duty to proactively continue and report it to the general public?

Let me get real silly and say it was something very black and white like a video US soldiers doing an ISIS style execution on an Iraqi (even a terrorist). He went and told his superiors and they told him to STFU. Would he get a jail sentence for leaking THAT video?

In my opinion leaking an ISIS style murder video should get him a medal and his non-reporting superiors a lengthy prison sentence.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Let me ask a short hypothetical, that is a bit related to the Bradley Manning case. First, I will admit that Manning released way too much info to Wikileaks.

Suppose that Manning only released a very small amount of data that was only highly related to illegal actions of the military, and only after going up the ranks a bit and getting rebuffed.

Is his legal duty to report misdeeds of the military satisfied by just telling senior officers who do nothing, or is his legal duty to proactively continue and report it to the general public?

Let me get real silly and say it was something very black and white like a video US soldiers doing an ISIS style execution on an Iraqi (even a terrorist). He went and told his superiors and they told him to STFU. Would he get a jail sentence for leaking THAT video?

In my opinion leaking an ISIS style murder video should get him a medal and his non-reporting superiors a lengthy prison sentence.

Put it this way: Of the 26 officers prosecuted for war crimes in relation to the My Lai Massacre, only one of them was ever convicted, and he never saw the inside of a jail cell despite initially being sentenced to life in prison.

America's culture of soldier worship is too deeply ingrained for that. He could have released a video of his superior officer skull fucking an underage prostitute while standing knee deep in the entrails of her parents, and the only people who would EVER get any real prison time would be Manning and possibly the reporter he leaked it to.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

There are such a thing as Whistleblower protection laws. If these do not apply to the military, then IMO they should. Chelsea Manning's case may be a little more complicated than that because she was alleged to have released too much info. On the other hand, I wonder if the practical reality is that when you're a whistle blower in certain situations, you may have to grab a whole stack or folders of info, not just the one issue. So I think I can say Obama's decision is more fair than the original sentence with some confidence. A pardon or something similar might be hard to justify, I cannot tell--don't have the info on whether it was all necessary, but the story is Manning didn't think so.

 

[Mumbles]

Let me ask a short hypothetical, that is a bit related to the Bradley Manning case. First, I will admit that Manning released way too much info to Wikileaks.

And to a non-US entity as well. OTOH, it sounded like she had been easily manipulated into doing so, which strongly suggests that she should never have been given access in the first place. Still, what she did *is* clearly a crime - although I'd argue that keeping her in solitary for long periods of time should be as well.

Suppose that Manning only released a very small amount of data that was only highly related to illegal actions of the military, and only after going up the ranks a bit and getting rebuffed.

Is his legal duty to report misdeeds of the military satisfied by just telling senior officers who do nothing, or is his legal duty to proactively continue and report it to the general public?

Let me get real silly and say it was something very black and white like a video US soldiers doing an ISIS style execution on an Iraqi (even a terrorist). He went and told his superiors and they told him to STFU. Would he get a jail sentence for leaking THAT video?

In my opinion leaking an ISIS style murder video should get him a medal and his non-reporting superiors a lengthy prison sentence.

That's more difficult. I'm neither a legal expert nor a person who has worked in the military, so I don't know every situation for certain what the laws and military codes say about every option. But I'm pretty sure it depends on who you report it to. If you report it to a congressman, you're legally protected from retaliation - I know this much. Foreign (ie. non-US) entity, probably illegal, strictly speaking, although again I can't say for sure.

And yes, nobody in the US military should be pulling off any ISIS-style executions, that's far worse than leaking evidence about such a murder to anyone. That would be both brazenly illegal and deeply immoral - as would any order to do any such thing, obviously.

 

[barbos]

There are such a thing as Whistleblower protection laws.

I understand it implies that you blow that whistle to the government only. You can only report the crime to the government and since government is a perpetrator to some extent at least of the the crime in this particular case then you can imagine how well that protection will protect you.

 

[DrZoidberg]

No, he's merely holed up in an Equadorian embassy in London because if he leaves it, Britain will send him to Sweden which will in turn send him to the US. From there he'll be held without indictment in Gitmo until the war-hawks in both parties have had enough.

Lol. No. That's what the voices in Assange's head are telling him. Sweden has no extradition agreement with USA, and has rules against extraditing people to countries who torture people. We got those rules after we extradited 9/11 suspects to USA and they ended up being tortured.

CIA has a method of moving suspects to countries where the UN torture laws don't reach. So that they can do whatever they want. Sweden has a problem with this.

 

[SimpleDon]

Like most things this is a tightrope requiring a delicate balance. We need whistleblowers to expose the worse excesses of the government. We need to secure our intelligence gathering and analysis. We need civilian oversight of the military. We need discipline in the military and to maintain the chain of command.

I think that we got the balance right in this case. Manning exposed some of the worse excesses but went too far and exposed too much of our intelligence. The military court marshalled her as they should but sentenced her too harshly, which Obama has now corrected.

Somehow it all worked.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Presidential Parsons have always looked like corruption to me, but this looks like it was actually done on principal.

 

[barbos]

No, he's merely holed up in an Equadorian embassy in London because if he leaves it, Britain will send him to Sweden which will in turn send him to the US. From there he'll be held without indictment in Gitmo until the war-hawks in both parties have had enough.

Lol. No. That's what the voices in Assange's head are telling him. Sweden has no extradition agreement with USA, and has rules against extraditing people to countries who torture people. We got those rules after we extradited 9/11 suspects to USA and they ended up being tortured.

CIA has a method of moving suspects to countries where the UN torture laws don't reach. So that they can do whatever they want. Sweden has a problem with this.

Interesting, I wonder who CIA tortured to get their "Russian hackers did it" report.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

There are such a thing as Whistleblower protection laws.

I understand it implies that you blow that whistle to the government only. You can only report the crime to the government and since government is a perpetrator to some extent at least of the the crime in this particular case then you can imagine how well that protection will protect you.

I think when the govt is the perpetrator people ought to be able to blow the whistle in the press instead.

 

[Mumbles]

I understand it implies that you blow that whistle to the government only. You can only report the crime to the government and since government is a perpetrator to some extent at least of the the crime in this particular case then you can imagine how well that protection will protect you.

I think when the govt is the perpetrator people ought to be able to blow the whistle in the press instead.

That makes little sense. If folks in government are willing to go to that length to cover things up, then they will not react well to you leaking to the press, even of the wrongdoing.

Better to think very hard about if you're actually right, and if you're completely sure, just assume that you'll be attacked for it by the government, and accept it as a sacrifice that you're making.