The Bradley Manning Saga

[Citizen X]

So it was alright for Nazis to kill Jews because they were loyal trustworthy soldiers? crimes against civilians are crimes and need to be outed and all the other crap also needed airing same as with Edward Snowdon, I am sure they both considered what they did very carefully before they blew the whistle.
I don't like the Idea that USA killed innocent news cameramen or the fact that they are possibly spying on me!!!

The Nazis were fascists whereas the USA, despite its shortcomings is a democracy. So the question is how should a soldier behave in a democracy?

4. With Manning, he/she was serving under a democracy in the capacity of a soldier. Common sense should have told him/her that what he/she was doing was treason. Besides the media were already reporting on civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. Again, I don’t condone the killing of any civilians by any military

Back to Nazi Germany:
There was selective morality at Nuremburg! Not all that should have been tried were in actual fact tried. One would imagine that the scientist who developed the v1 and v2 rockets which killed indiscriminately i.e. just landed in any civilian area in Britian and exploded would be on the list of those to have been tried at Nuremburg. No so!
Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun, developed these rockets that killed so many civilians. He was aware of their purpose. Yet after WW11, the USA actually recruited him. H worked on the United States Army intermediate range ballistic missile. In 1975 he received a medal from the states for his contribution!

Back to Manning: If he truly had a sense of morality, he would have only released the documents that pertained to the civillian killing.

Let’s assume that the court held that based upon his sense of morality he is acquitted on charges pertaining to specific documents regarding civilian killing, let’s assume further that the court states that the leaking of the diplomatic cables is a treasonous act and grants the death penalty. What would now be wrong with this scenario?

It's common cause that it's plain wrong, simply an atrocious crime against humanity, for any military to to kill civillians regardless of who those civilians are
I'm by no means suggesting that it was right for the Nazis to murder the Jews, I'm merely pointing out the fact that the civilian killings in Iraq and Afghanistan was covered by the media of that day, though not in fine detail.

I'm further attempting to demonstrate that Manning is not the moral character that he/she presents himself/herself to be. If so why did he/she restrict the leaks to only the civilian killings which would have not been more than a 100 pages. He released thousands of pages of documents, most of them diplomatic cables.

So let's remove the civilian killings from this equation. Isolate the diplomatic cables. leaking this alone was sufficient for him to be granted the death penalty.

I come back to my initial point: Had Manning existed in the 18th century and done the same serving George Washington in the American revolution, he would have been shot!

So, for me the issue in dispute is not the civilian killings, it's the leaking of thousands of other documents that were classified in his capacity as a soldier

[wynn]

So, for me the issue in dispute is not the civilian killings, it's the leaking of thousands of other documents that were classified in his capacity as a soldier

So assume that when I was doing my military service in 1970 I came across a hoard of secret military and diplomatic correspondence indicating crimes against humanity by the then Apartheid NAT government and I sent them all to a neutral party, because to filter them would expose me to greater risk of being caught, assume as Manning did that 'Wiki Leaks' and certain well known newspapers were going to redact the hoard and only leak the ones that showed civilian casualties, crimes against humanity and internationally illegal behavior.
Then imagine through circumstances the 'Wiki Leaks' of the day were forced to protect themselves and publish everything, after all that is what happened.
Manning never meant for everything to be published but the bullying tactics of the USA and their clandestine operators forced the hand of 'Wiki Leaks' and the selected news papers that were doing the redacting, hence the fact that a lot of secret stuff that never should have seen the light of day was put out for everybody to see.
For this the NAT's would have either hung, shot or jailed me for life but after the new Democratic dispensation I would have been hailed as a hero, much like certain Afrikaner Clergymen who went against the grain and refused to accept the meddling of the NAT's in their beliefs, they were demonized and persecuted but today are heroes.

Perhaps when the new American President comes to power he will pardon Manning and declare him a hero for exposing all the wrongdoing of the American Forces, after all he was just the messenger not the boogyman.

[HR Solutions]

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

[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 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.

[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.

[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]

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