U.S. soldier gets 16 year sentence for trying to sell military secrets to Russia.

[Luminous Animal]

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/15849-sixteen-years-for-espionage-life-in-jail-for-whistleblowing

Whistleblower Bradely Manning faces life in prison for exposing war crimes and corruption.

Contrast that motive with Bradley Manning’s. In chat logs with government informant Adrian Lamo, Manning hypothesized, “what if i were someone more malicious…i could’ve sold to russia or china, and made bank?”

“Why didn’t you?” Lamo asked.

“Because it’s public data,” he said. “It belongs in the public domain…information should be free…because another state would just take advantage of the information… try and get some edge…if its out in the open… it should be a public good.”

Manning expounded on his reasons for passing to WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of documents chronicling U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and U.S. diplomacy worldwide, in a statement earlier this year,

I believed that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information contained within the [Iraq and Afghan War Logs] this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as well as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.

That statement accompanied a guilty plea to lesser offenses, including communicating information to someone not entitled to receive it. That plea could have put Manning in jail for up to twenty years. But that wasn’t sufficient for military prosecutors, who immediately succeeded that statement with the announcement that they’ll continue to pursue all 22 charges against Manning, seeking life in jail without parole.

[msanthrope]

1. 16 years isn't sufficient for this reason:

David Leigh and Luke Harding's history of WikiLeaks describes how journalists took Assange to Moro's, a classy Spanish restaurant in central London. A reporter worried that Assange would risk killing Afghans who had co-operated with American forces if he put US secrets online without taking the basic precaution of removing their names. "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." A silence fell on the table as the reporters realised that the man the gullible hailed as the pioneer of a new age of transparency was willing to hand death lists to psychopaths. They persuaded Assange to remove names before publishing the State Department Afghanistan cables. But Assange's disillusioned associates suggest that the failure to expose "informants" niggled in his mind.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/18/julian-assange-wikileaks-nick-cohen

Mr. Manning and Mr. Assange provided the governments of the word information on their dissidents for free. 16 years isn't enough.

[Luminous Animal]

2. First,John Goetz, journalist with Der Spiegal who was at the dinner, says it never happened.

Second, what, if true, does that have to do with the fact that a another soldier convicted of attempting to SELL secrets to a foreign government gets far more lenient treatment that a whistleblower.

[msanthrope]

3. Given the libel laws of Britian, I seriously doubt the journalists who reported on this are lying.

Mr. Manning was offered a plea. He didn't take it.

[Luminous Animal]

8. Really. With no tape how could it be proved? Leigh says it happened. Goetz says no.

Assange says no. So tell me Barrister, how firm is the foundation for a lawsuit.

And please give us a link to the plea deal.

[msanthrope]

19. I think it would be an excellent case. The burden of proof would have been on the defense.

As for Mr. Manning's plea offered by the government, his attorney argued in pre-trial that the coercive plea offered by the government (which would have required testimony before the Virginia grand jury) was the impetus for the "overcharging" of the indicment.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70787_Page3.html


We will probably not see the physical plea documents (the goverment's offer) until long after the trial is over, as that would be improper.

What Manning is offering the court now is a 'naked plea' that is designed to mitigate sentencing. It's a last ditch effort.

[Pelican]

4. The secrets he tried to give...

... were limited and specific. Yes it would hurt, yes it would be a problem but it has a defined scope.

Manning literally made diplomacy with every nation on earth more difficult. If they believe that they can't talk to DoS and the Administration in confidence then they won't take the risk.

A much broader scope of damage.

[Luminous Animal]

5. My point. One betrayed for profit. The other for transparency....

We The People should know what the powers that be do in our name. Every citizen in every country should demand that right. Manning exposed war crimes and corruption.

[burrowowl]

6. I agree!

Manning did good! The other one wanted money.

[Pelican]

11. Manning was just striking back at the organization...

... that he had failed so miserably at.

If for some reason, he had something that he felt specifically showed a specific crime, then there are channels to go through. If those were ignored, I could see a defense being made for releasing that specific thing to a reputable source.

That in no way reflects what happened. He did a mass data dump, most of which he hadn't read. That's not whistleblowing. That's just violation of your clearance.

Do you believe that the US government should have no classified information? Everything should be available to everyone?

[Luminous Animal]

17. I believe that we fuck people up on a daily basis..

We terrorize communities with bombs and drones. We straddle the world and take what we please at the point of a gun. We topple democracies and prop up dictators and when those dictators exercise independence, we take them down and prop up faux democratic governments... witness Iraq and Afghanistan.

And yes, I do believe that everything should be available to everyone. They are our elected REPRESENTATIVES, they work on our behalf and we should have the information necessary to direct them to work in OUR interests.

We should have all the information to give informed consent.

[Pelican]

22. It's hard to take you seriously...

When you claim that you feel like troop movements and identities of informants and agents should be available for public consumption.

As someone with experience at the actual point of the spear, I can look out my window right now, literally, tell you that we aren't taking diddly shit from the place. We are dumping a ton of resources in however.

As for faux democracies, I think if we had Karzai under our thumb we might still have folks in Chak, Wardak.

[DevonRex]

9. Read the article. No information was passed. nt

[Recursion]

13. What "war crimes" did Manning expose?

His dump of the State cables uncovered that diplomats were covering up some TIP by allied governments, but he hadn't read the State cables before he released them.

A lot of people seem to be under the mistaken impression that it was Manning who released the Gitmo documents. That was not him.

[Luminous Animal]

14. Collateral Murder.

[Recursion]

15. Where the helicopter shoots the armed insurgents out after curfew?

Yeah, shooting the enemy isn't a war crime.

[Luminous Animal]

18. We both know that is not true.

[Recursion]

20. Apparently you never watched the video

The weapons are visible. The pilot comments about them.

[msanthrope]

21. I know Assange got his ass kicked by Stephen Colbert, who pointed out the guy with the RPG.

http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/thu-april-25-2013-gene-robinson

Assange himself admitted that one of the persons on the video had an RPG--and admitted that he edited out that person in his released version of "Collateral Murder."

[DevonRex]

7. Plus that other soldier was not successful in passing info. Manning WAS.

And his info very well could have gotten people killed for all we know. He didn't give a shit apparently. Either that or he was just too stupid to realize he had no control over what was done with it once it left his hands. Same thing AFAIC. Whistleblower, my ass. He took the same oath I did in MI. We don't think of people like him kindly. There's a word we have for them.

[Luminous Animal]

12. Our own government has stated several times that they have no evidence

that anyone was put in danger.

Bully for you and your kind that witnesses war crimes and our too cowardly to act.

[DevonRex]

16. You really think Bradley Manning

exposed war crimes? Unbelievable.

[Daniel537]

24. The Iraq war itself was a war crime.

The more info we got from that criminal endeavor, the better. Manning did the world a public service.

[Daniel537]

25. And apparently you don't give a shit about the crimes our govt. commits

every day overseas. You'd rather just stick your head up your ass and pretend everything we do is wonderful and a blessing. You keep living in fantasy land, some of us actually like to be informed.

[DevonRex]

26. oh you poor thing

[Recursion]

10. "Trying"

"Attempted X" usually has a lower sentence than "X".

[jberryhill]

23. You beat me to it - "trying to"