what do you think is the most damning thing he released?
Posted on 01/18/2017 11:34:09 AM PST by deplorableindc
Adrian Lamo, the former recreational hacker who reported Chelsea Manning to authorities, says he’s glad the WikiLeaks source will get a second chance.
Lamo elicited a confession from Manning and gave it to military investigators in 2010, resulting in a 35-year prison sentence for the leaker who embarrassed the U.S. government by disclosing a massive number of military and diplomatic documents.
The informant says “it was not my most honorable moment,” though he says he made peace with the effects of his decision, even before President Barack Obama on Tuesday granted clemency to Manning, who will be released in May rather than in the 2040s.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
Weird.
Actually, it was.
The nation still exists where you can be so wrong, publicly and freely.
Manning’s actions were against that.
That’s what treason is all about.
There is no point to talking about “honor” when you are dealing with spies.
“The informant says “it was not my most honorable moment,” though he says he made peace with the effects of his decision”
I’m sure he’ll think of ways he can make up for it.
...the leaker who embarrassed the U.S. government by disclosing a massive number of military and diplomatic documents....
***
Well, of course, it’s the embarrassment that hurt. The killings that occurred, the covers that were blown, and the strategic problems presented to our warriors were of no importance.
“Truth is treason in an empire of lies.”
Just curious, which do you find more disturbing, the contents of the Manning leak, or the fact that he leaked it?
If a person signs on for a job that handles classified materials, they are bound to honor the status of those materials and keep them secret.
Could a justifiable argument be made that at times these documents should be made public? I do think there are times like that.
I also believe that if our clandestine network operatives are all given a free pass to do just that, we would cease to function as a nation in short order.
Our enemies would know our most secret information, and could devise ways to exploit that information to take our nation down.
If we’re talking about a government program that focuses on citizens to eliminate them or some such, fine. I do not want a free pass for folks like Manning.
> Could a justifiable argument be made that at times these documents should be made public? I do think there are times like that.
Given the contents of the documents released, there’s a strong argument that this was one of those times. The motive was clearly to inform the public - of information we have a need to know in order to make informed choices at the voting booth. We did need to know this material, just like we needed to know the contents of the DNC emails or the Podesta emails.
An bureaucracy that can launch secret wars on its own authority cannot be reasonably argued to be compatible with a representative form of government.
My disturbed level is composed 0.1% of Manning’s crimes, 99.9% of the government’s crimes. A government that does what those documents prove our government does is not being faithful to our Constitution or the rule of law or the ideals by which it was brought into being. Fundamental legitimacy issues arise when decisions of war and peace are made without even a proxy for citizen participation.
Those powers have not been delegated to the federal government under our Constitution. Can these activities truly be lawfully cloaked by classification at all? If so, is this really a republican form of government?
I disagree.
Manning got what he deserved.
I’d be more convinced if I saw indications of awareness of the contents.
There’s seriously disturbing stuff in there.
Please, review the contents and get back to me. I think you will agree, after understanding what exactly was released, that the moral argument for their release is compelling.
That’s a reasoned suggestion.
Sounds like one of those “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country” types.
what do you think is the most damning thing he released?
Hard to decide between the secret war in Yemen or the policy of fostering child rape in Afghanistan to get along with the locals.
Of course the problem with leakers is they are always by nature/dfinition cherry pickers...but the material they leak, true or not, is always received as if it is representative of the whole.
They never leak anything positive.
Who would risk their job to do that? Or risk exposing sources, methods or assets to do that?
They also never leak what we have discovered about our opponents and enemies, things so awful our press dos not report on either, because a story about a puppy rescue is worth more in ratings than one about American bodies strung up on a bridge or on about a few hundred Nigerian Christians being slaughtered by a bunch of muslim radicals...
And of course our enemies don’t have similar whistlebowers or leakers because the odds of being caught and killed are astronomical under their rule. But these same enemies don’t mind financing American media to smear opponents here, and don’t mind lobbying American pacifist politicians, or sponsoring protests and protestors here.
And of course leakers don’t leak about complaints that actually do get addressed. They don’t leak all the times
the system works and justice is served or there is success which does frequently happen in covert activity. Not everyone who fired up enough to do something about what they see as corruption is objective, not everyone is without and agenda or profit motive, and in cases where an agenda is present, which is frequent, or emotion is involved, which is always, the leaker can and will cherrypick to support their claims, discarding or intentionally overlooking evidence that is contrary to their desired outcomes. They can and will leak selectively, editing out video or text or simply failing to bring it up knowing the press is too lazy to question it or follow the money or the motivation of the leaker.
So our media, fed by leakers with unexpored agendas of their own, piles only on America, leading viewers and listeners to assume -since there is no balance whatsoever- that the corruption, real or not, is always endemic never sporadic, always endorsed from the top, even in cases where it is not but is done by rogues on their own.
In a world where only one country- ours- allows any of its dirty laundry to be aired, where only one country has such broad freedom of speech, and all of our enemies pay anarchists and malcontents to dig for as much of it as possible while their state-owned press reveals none of their own, is it no wonder we have children and young adults hating their own nation while embracing nations where corruption isn’t just on the part of the occasional deviant but is built in as a matter of policy and state endorsed?
Imagine trying to win WW2 under these conditions. Impossible.
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