Manning's 35 year sentence works out to about 25 minutes/document-released, which is just about

[struggle4progress]

the amount of time it would have taken him to give each document a thoughtful first-read (if he didn't do anything else 24/7): that's about how much time per doc it took the army to examine a sampling of his release

He would have been in a much better place right now if he'd intelligently chosen his release. With ten or twenty documents telling an important coherent story to a newspaper, he would have had widespread political support IMO. With a hundred carefully chosen documents, he would have faced court-martial and dishonorable discharge but he wouldn't be looking at 35 years

Retired Colonel James McCarl said .... initial military review included assigning personnel to read the first 2,000 documents in a set of 110,000 that might include military information ... "Our calculation is that we spent 855 man-hours, which equates to roughly about $200,000 to do all that work," McCarl said ...
Manning's WikiLeaks breach triggered costly U.S. Army scramble: witness
FORT MEADE, Maryland
Wed Aug 7, 2013 1:52pm EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/07/us-usa-wikileaks-manning-idUSBRE9760ZZ20130807

(35 x 365 x 24 x 60)/730000 ~ 25 min ~ (855 x 60)/2000

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Seriously? This is a view you support?

[struggle4progress]

4. It's a factual observation: I provided the arithmetic for anyone troubled by calculation

The amount of time Manning got just happens to work out to the amount of time it would take him to actually read all the stuff he released

[Warren Stupidity]

8. So do you support the viewpoint expressed in the OP?

[struggle4progress]

9. Do you dispute the arithmetic? How much of Manning's gigantic release have you read carefully?

Do you believe Manning would still have gotten a 35 year sentence if he had only released (say) 100 documents?

[morningfog]

11. Yes, he would have gotten decades even for only 100 docs.

[customerserviceguy]

2. I agree, the sentence is just

He can look forward to seeing some life outside of prison, and with the potential of early parole, it might not take terribly long. Of course, I wouldn't expect that during a Hillary Clinton administration, he embarassed her terribly. If a Repuke follows her one or two terms, they won't let the military release Manning either.

[GeorgeGist]

3. At nearly $234/hr ...

Maybe he would have.

[morningfog]

5. That is some sick spin.

[struggle4progress]

6. It's an interesting and informative coincidence. He'll be out in ten

[DefenseLawyer]

7. The military spent $200,000.00?

Wow, I hope they still have enough money for bullets and boots and whatnot.

[markiv]

10. that's how i've felt about it also

if you're going to leak, the burdon of proof is on you for each and every classified document you leak

there's no way he could comprehend the volume of stuff he leaked, yet all of it will be pored over by foreign nationals

i'm not against whistleblowers per se (and i'm not against snowden, based on what i know so far), but you cant be careless about how you do it