Posted on 07/26/2013 11:34:54 AM PDT by Olog-hai
U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is a whistleblower who wanted to inform the American public about the troubling things he saw in the war zone, and the soldier is willing to pay the price for giving secrets to WikiLeaks, his defense attorney said Friday.
During closing arguments, attorney David Coombs disputed what prosecutors said a day earlier, that Manning was a traitor whose only mission as an intelligence analyst was to give classified information to the anti-secrecy website and bask in the attention.
“He’s not seeking attention. He saying he’s willing to accept the price” for what he has done, Coombs said.
Manning, 25, is charged with 21 offenses, but the most serious is aiding the enemy. A conviction on that could land him in prison for the rest of his life. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
yes, I agree
A whistleblower. If the whistle comes out of the front of a mans pants.
The only whistle this guy has ever blown was the skin type.
Whistle-blower, traitor, same thing depending on what information the “whistleblower” is delivering to the enemy.
This is NOT Snowden...Manning did this while wearing the uniform. I have a diffrerent attitude towards Manning.
Oh, he’s a blower alright. He’s just more fond of other items than whistles.
Bradley Manning, an E-5 in the Army, was mad about the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy because he is a homosexual. His response wasn't to advocate, protest, march, write his congressman, or get kicked out of the Army. His response was to download every bit of classified material he could get his hands on, regardless of its content, and give it to a foreign party. He did this to cause as much damage as possible, not to highlight any wrongdoing.
The first problem here is that there is no way an E-5 needs access to most of the material he released, among which was diplomatic traffic. The people that set his access to such material need to be relieved of their jobs, permanently.
The second is that if Manning had just waiting 18 months he could have skipped his hissy fit and I am sure he would have never divulged that material.
The third is the huge question of how a barely in the closet homosexual got a security clearance for that material. It seems under DADT the investigators must have been told to not dig into that type of information.
Not a whistleblower. Just a blower.
Exactly. Nothing Snowden has revealed comes close to a soldier in uniform leaking info on battlefield tactics and raw diplomatic communications. The two should not be mentioned in the same sentence.
Ok, so what I’ve learned from this thread is that Manning is a traitor and Snowden is not, because Manning is gay and Snowden is not.
Gotcha.
I totally agree; what Snowden did is much worse.
I have had clearances both as military and civilian. When you place you signature on a security form, your signature should mean your honor. A citizen of the U.S. should be no less honor bound than a soldier.
Thats real cute, but I’m afraid we don’t agree in the least.
Gay or not Manning was in uniform and that alone makes this a whole different ballgame.
Or, more accurately, a skinflute.
Is his defense sure it was a whistle he was blowing?
Yeah, like Benedict Arnold was a whistleblower.
Manning did what he did because he threw a hissyfit over Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (a policy he knew was in place when he took the job).
Snowden did what he did because he threw a hissyfit that Obama wasn’t living up to some of his promises to leftists (he took the job to exact his revenge).
Both sound queer to me.
It's about the information revealed.
Manning revealed massive amounts of general war-time information, that included information helpful to our enemies, and very little content that indicated inappropriate behavior by the military.
Snowden on the other hand is a mixed bag.
>>Snowden on the other hand is a mixed bag.
Several bags actually - containing laptops that are presently within the purview of the KGB/GRU/Oprichniki alphabet soup.
Where did Super Genius Snowden go? He went Russia - where the Oligarchs once built a wall to keep their state-property contained, and where they listened to and recorded everything their property said, just like what comrade Snowden is whining about NSA doing.
Snowden is a monumentally ignorant Generation XBox dirt bag — just the kind of Useful Idiot product Yuri Bezmenov predicted.
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