Ethics of Mannings actions aside, has nobody paused to consider why Manning even had access to that information in the first place?The fact that numerous warning signs that Manning was unfit for security clearance aside, you seem to imply two things:
If anybody needs to be on trial, it's the people who let a Pfc. gain access to that many sensitive documents.
It is funny how freaked out people get when an individual actually exercises their freedom of will. How terrible and distrustful we are when the first thing we imagine will happen when people act according to their own opinion of justice is anarchy and much suffering.He exercised free will when freely entering into a contract to keep the secrets of the state, and he freely agreed to be bound by military law. These things people keep overlooking.
tl;dr
A quick question for dougrayrankin and others who share this opinion, is there any single state secret he could have exposed where you would feel punishing him for the revelation was unjust? This is a serious question; I am trying to get a hold on whether this is as truly black and white to the supporters of his punishment as it seems to be.I personally don't presume the right to decide what punishment (if any) would be suitable. I merely wish people would defend a man for breaking a contract and lying in the same breath they berate a government for doing the same.
So exactly WHAT is a soldier to do when there are, what they feel, are violations of the Constitution?Personally, I'd wouldn't have gone straight to "leak a ridiculous number of documents", but that's all neither here nor there now.
I'm not familiar with all the contents of all the wires Manning releasedGiven there were hundreds of thousands of them, I submit to you that he wasn't either.
Tell me again why you have to believe this? If the thousands of documents WikiLeaks has exposed have taught us anything, it's that most material marked as classified is not in fact important enough to be classified. There should be laws against knowingly classifying documents that do not contain sensitive information in them, particularly when their authors are in the direct employ of the citizens of the United States of America.The question then arises: What if you classify something at CONFIDENTIAL, it is given the commensurate level of protection and ends up leaked and somebody dies. If you had erred on the side of caution and gone with SECRET, that might not have happened. Is the person who decided on CONFIDENTIAL then to be tried for manslaughter? Criminal negligence?
"There’s no reason for a corporal in Iraq to have access to all of our diplomatic communications. That’s just stupid."I should add, for the purposes of clarification, that he is not making specific reference to the rank of the individual. He was saying that there is no need to know for an intelligence analyst dealing with Iraq to have access to cables dealing with diplomatic manners unrelated to the Iraq War.
In 1959, Ellsberg became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation, and consultant to the Defense Department and the White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making. In 1961 he drafted the guidance from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the operational plans for general nuclear war. He was a member of two of the three working groups reporting to the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOM) during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.posted by dialetheia at 5:28 PM on March 3, 2011 [4 favorites]
Ellsberg joined the Defense Department in 1964 as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs) John McNaughton, working on the escalation of the war in Vietnam. He transferred to the State Department in 1965 to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, evaluating pacification in the field.
On return to the RAND Corporation in 1967, Ellsberg worked on the top secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000 page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971 he gave it to the New York Times, the Washington Post and 17 other newspapers. His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him, which led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.
Militaries are inherently bad. They exist to kill people, and it should always remain a last resort. The effect of the US military is evil because it's leadership is mostly evil, and their orders are mostly followed without question. Excepting the leadership, the US military itself is made up of good people, but so far, not many of them have stood up and done the right thing. They are afraid of being court martialled. They are afraid of losing their jobs for even being critical of any other part of the hierarchy.posted by dougrayrankin at 2:23 PM on March 4, 2011
Or they keep abusing the system and causing more death and destruction to satisfy their own egos and desire for promotion. And killing people effectively, as long as the report sounds good, is how you get promoted.
The US military does not reward moral behavior. It rewards destruction and worships power, which are historically negative aspects of an entity that was originally designed to protect our country, not invade others to protect business interests.
So, yeah, it's fucking bad, man.
Spoken like a true graduate of the school of "I've seen Full Metal Jacket don't you know!"
In recent days and weeks the US government has condemned human rights abuses and repression in almost every country across the Middle East – yet at a prison within its own borders it sanctions the persecution, alleged psychological torture and debasement of a young soldier who appears to have made a principled choice in the name of progress.This. This is the story. It is irrelevant if Manning is guilty / notguilty; or if armed forces are evil / good; Irrelevant.
After being promoted to lieutenant general, Mattis took command of Marine Corps Combat Development Command. On February 1, 2005, speaking ad libitum at a forum in San Diego, he said "You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right upfront with you, I like brawling." Mattis's remarks sparked controversy and General Michael Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps, issued a statement suggesting that Mattis should have chosen his words more carefully, but would not be disciplined. (source)That man is now the commander of CENTCOM.
dougraykin if you read the article you would see that the letter was released via his lawyer.Am I being a serious mong or have I read the article six times and seen no reference to a lawyer?
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posted by Salvor Hardin at 7:17 AM on March 3, 2011 [53 favorites]