The Bradley Manning Saga

[Citizen X]

Bradley Manning was recently sentenced to 35 years for the biggest leak of secrets in US history.

He now plans to live as a female and has a chosen name: Chelsea. Well that’s his right and the civil groups will have a field day with the authorities, especially seeing that he also applied for a presidential pardon from Barack Obama.

He apparently announced the decision yesterday in a written statement. In such statement he requests hormonal treatment to assist the transition. If he wasn’t in jail, he could have made this choice and if he had the means paid for it. He is now a sentenced convict. He wants and expects at the State expense that they fund the entire process from initial hormonal treatment through to completion.

He said in such statement "As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible,"

He even has a military posted photo of him dressed as a woman with a wig and lipstick. The thing is the military in the US have never had to deal with such a matter before.

“Fort Leavenworth is an all-male prison. But the staff has some leeway to separate soldiers from the other inmates based on the risk to themselves and others, prison spokesman George Marcec said.”

My only thoughts are that this is a bizarre twist of events in such a huge USA case against one of its own.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-...named-chelsea/

[wynn]

Stick it to them Bradley....err.....I mean Chelsea '))

[Didditmiself]

Vanash, I think the bigger issue here is whether Manning did the world a favour when he released all those cables to Wikileaks
about the USA or not. What do you (and the others on TFSA) think?

[Citizen X]

A very good evening to you Pete,

I sincerely feel that Bradley Manning is a traitor, I’m surprised that he didn’t receive the death penalty! Regardless of the content he revealed, you don’t betray your own country. Such investigations into civilian Casualties should have come from the UN and bodies such as Amesty International etc.

One must never forget that he served as a soldier, a position which calls for loyalty and trust.

[HR Solutions]

The US think that they can get away with murder (literally) . Good for him. Expose all their bullshit and lies !!!

[carl0s]

A very good evening to you Pete,

I sincerely feel that Bradley Manning is a traitor, I’m surprised that he didn’t receive the death penalty! Regardless of the content he revealed, you don’t betray your own country. Such investigations into civilian Casualties should have come from the UN and bodies such as Amesty International etc.

One must never forget that he served as a soldier, a position which calls for loyalty and trust.

I think it's wrong to consider it as him "passing secrets to the enemy". That's not what he did. He released the information from a good moral standing, in an effort to bring justice and accountability to those doing very immoral/illegal things, and hopefully bring about a change in that behaviour. That does not a traitor make.

I wonder if we might all be inadvertently over-influenced (maybe brainwashed??) by modern propaganda from who we have always been lead to believe are the "good guys". Revelations such as these reaffirm my suspicions in that regard.

All this shady stuff regarding Assange - the Swedes want him so badly yet they won't simply give a guarantee that they won't hand him over to the USA?

and the other whistleblower - Edward Snowden - look at the crazy stuff that happened to Evo Morale's airplane. That's just crazy stuff. America is embarrassed and knows that it does things that the people would not want in their name, and it's doing everything it can to hide that bad behaviour, and prevent future bad behaviour getting out. I know a lot of countries do or have done bad things to their people, or their captives, but our teachers and the media are all to happy to educate us about that. All the while we're supposed to keep thinking that our guys are glorious frickin' angels.

[pmbguy]

I think the US intelligence community is mighty happy he turned into a she. They could not have asked for a better result. It is totally possible that the entire Manning fiasco was engineered by the CIA and others to discredit the whistle blowing movement. They knew he was a she and they covertly facilitated his efforts to release classified information and let things play to their advantage. Nobody wants to be like Manning anymore. I bet Assange is pissed.
The damage caused by the information leak is far outweighed by the damage done to the whistle blowing movement as a whole.

Very clever

[Citizen X]

I think it's wrong to consider it as him "passing secrets to the enemy". That's not what he did. He released the information from a good moral standing, in an effort to bring justice and accountability to those doing very immoral/illegal things, and hopefully bring about a change in that behaviour. That does not a traitor make.

I wonder if we might all be inadvertently over-influenced (maybe brainwashed??) by modern propaganda from who we have always been lead to believe are the "good guys". Revelations such as these reaffirm my suspicions in that regard.

All this shady stuff regarding Assange - the Swedes want him so badly yet they won't simply give a guarantee that they won't hand him over to the USA?

and the other whistleblower - Edward Snowden - look at the crazy stuff that happened to Evo Morale's airplane. That's just crazy stuff. America is embarrassed and knows that it does things that the people would not want in their name, and it's doing everything it can to hide that bad behaviour, and prevent future bad behaviour getting out. I know a lot of countries do or have done bad things to their people, or their captives, but our teachers and the media are all to happy to educate us about that. All the while we're supposed to keep thinking that our guys are glorious frickin' angels.

Good morning Carlos,

You raise pretty fair points.
Notwithstanding this, my position is that he served as a soldier in a position of trust. This position gave him access to documents which are privileged or classified. He knew that disclosing such information and/or documents even to a family member in secret and on a once off basis would have constituted an offence, despite this he still betrayed his very own country on what has been described as a large scale!

This is what the prosecutor had to say of him:

"He was not a troubled young soul," Fein said. "He was not a whistleblower. He was traitor -- a traitor who understood the value of compromised information in the hands of the enemy."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/bradley-manning-closing-arguments_n_3653466.html

Let’s assume that he done this between 1775 and 1783 during the American revolution. Suppose he passed some documents on to the British thinking that he was acting out of morality or good conscience; I think it’s safe to say that even George Washington would have personally ordered his execution had it come to his knowledge. I doubt very much that Thomas Jefferson would have objected. I actually think he would have supported a decision to have Manning shot.

As a soldier in a position of trust Manning had a duty to obey and not to betray trust.
I don’t condone the killing of any civilians regardless of who they are. This is the reason why the media, the UN and bodies such as Amesty International exist. They need to make the world aware of such things..

[Citizen X]

I think the US intelligence community is mighty happy he turned into a she. They could not have asked for a better result. It is totally possible that the entire Manning fiasco was engineered by the CIA and others to discredit the whistle blowing movement. They knew he was a she and they covertly facilitated his efforts to release classified information and let things play to their advantage. Nobody wants to be like Manning anymore. I bet Assange is pissed.
The damage caused by the information leak is far outweighed by the damage done to the whistle blowing movement as a whole.

Very clever

Good morning pmbguy
This is what is mind boggling for me: Is Bradley manning pretending to have an orientation towards being a female all of a sudden just to win the sympathy and support of civil rights movements such as the gay, lesbian, transsexual community. If so, then he’s very clever, cunning and manipulative!
He also applied for a presidential pardon. So President Obama will have to consider this new development and ask him-self, whether it was just possible that emotional imbalance or hormonal imbalance was of such a magnitude that it affected Manning’s conduct i.e. caused him to behave in a way he otherwise wouldn’t have behaved in. In the same breath President Obama may realize that he’s not planning to run for another term and that granting the pardon won’t harm him as Obama.
The other issue is whether the military will indeed pay for his treatment. If he was free, he had every right to undergo hormonal treatment, surgery and counseling as long as he paid the health care provider. I doubt that health care providers will conduct a sex change out of the goodness of their heart, they want money!
So, even if he remains in prison, the civil rights groups are going to campaign for the US to pay for his treament

[pmbguy]

There is the possibility that he wants to be famous, "do some good" and also gain the support of the civil rights movements, the gay, lesbian and transsexual community. He might be doing this for the sex change mostly or he may even have greater ambitions in the civil rights movement her way. The benefits to the US government may be incidental, but I suspect a larger plot is at play.
The key here is the big issue. Is manning a lone she wolf? or is he/she part of a larger conspiracy. The US has the most to gain from the manning debacle. Most often such events are not that alone of the main character themselves, but rather it includes a propaganda TV show with all the usual side-actors and puppeteers. Think about some of the effects. Whenever there is a new whistle blower the joke will be: Is this another Manning? Powerfull! stuff!

[Citizen X]

Is manning a lone she wolf? or is he/she part of a larger conspiracy.

I doubt very much that Manning acted alone. They must have been some planning and deliberation with one or more people involved here.

[AndyD]

Regardless of the content he revealed, you don’t betray your own country.

Surely this is the line of thought that ends up with people like the Nazi officers who were instrumental in the murder of millions and were 'just following orders'. The Neurenberg trials didn't agree with you.

[tec0]

This is a difficult one to answer correctly. For example you own a business you give your employee sensitive information. Now your intentions are not clear to the employee. What will the employee do?

Will the employee trust your judgement? OR will the employee mistrust your judgement? If so what will their actions be?

There really is no easy answer to this question.

[pmbguy]

I doubt very much that Manning acted alone. They must have been some planning and deliberation with one or more people involved here.

I am not talking about whether he acted alone or not regarding the leaks, ek is mos nie stupid nie. I am questioning whether the HE/SHE THING was totally that of Manning’s making, or whether the US manipulated the he/she thing to their advantage.

[pmbguy]

Hey Vanash, imagine how Assange is feeling about the sex-change thing. I suspect he is....what’s the word....apoplectic.
The sex-change twist is undoubtedly damaging to whistleblowers like wiki-leaks and others. But the larger impact is the effect on the sentiments of the general public towards such individuals and organisations. Essentially the whistle blowers have lost their martyr. In fact, their girl backfired on to them big time. I think the US government helped the backfire