In favor of Bradley Manning

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I'd have been impressed if he had released information about the incidents before they happened. That's the sort of whistleblower we need.

I believe this is what you wanted to quote me for, right?

If you wanted to say that the incidents had received attention before Manning released information, you could have done better. Your wording leaves the timing of media attention ambiguous.

How could I have done better? By linking to specific media attention to one of the incidents taking place before Manning was deployed to Iraq?

... Oh wait... I already did that in my post just above the sentence you (mis)quoted.

I'm a programmer, wikileaks had its own staff that handled the leaks, it goes through a single domain. Talk to people that knew him.



Wrong, you are rewriting history. He was a spokesperson for his organization way before all this controversy.

He is stuck in the Ecuadorian Embassy, because he is claiming something I don't think he actually believes, and even if he does I think he is wrong. Although I think the rape charge seem to be quite weak, as time goes on I think he is trying to evade due process.

People like Bianca Jagger bang on about his rights and his privacy, yet as a public figure he doesn't think the same of others. He is a hypocrite.

Given he used Sweden specially as a legal safe haven, why is he all of a sudden behaving as if Sweden is in toe with the US?

The irony is the Ecuadorian President, has put journalists in prison for saying he is a dictator, he has also been complicit in sending foreign citizen back to their country for similar charges. This is the sort of thing that Assange should be naturally against.

Basically I feel sorry for the real whistle blowers, he failed them really.

I went back, and you are right, there was this:

I got too focused on what I found funny and misread you. Sorry.

Autism should not be an automatic Get Out of Jail Free card. A crime is a crime, no matter who commits it.

Let the courts decide.

He exposed the truth behind "Collateral Murder", which until that time had received small amounts of press coverage and was a bit shady but hadn't been exposed as the monstrosity it was. He has also exposed some of the worst practices at Guantanamo. Yes, we all knew Guantanamo was (and is) terrible, but we now have extra evidence against that. I agree that perhaps he should have exercised more caution, and WikiLeaks should have redacted certain names rather than being open for openness' sake.

Your desire to protect the establishment for the sake of the establishment is an obvious demonstration of your cynicism.

Well, how about this. We assume the establishment is a given, and we make it work with perhaps just a medium amount of additional transparency. And in some cases, different incentives.

I mean, what are we doing. Why aren't we rebuilding Iraq in a positive way?

There's a sad truth that many of our fellow citizens are actually in favor of torture. In my view, as a result of both intellectual and moral laziness, and what seems like an easy way out. I read an essay by John McCain against torture I think in Newsweek in 2005. Sadly, when he ran for president in 2008, I think he felt he had to downplay and softpedal this oppositon, because many of our fellow citizens, in the glib and facile hypothetical cases which are typically presented when this topic comes up, do agree with using torture.

As citizens of a free country we can do so much better

The "Collateral Murder" incident involved the deaths of somewhere between 12 and <20 individuals, most of which died in the initial attack on personnel. Even Assange *himself* said that the group was probably in possession of an AK and an RPG, so the only part of the video which is really controversial is the attack on the van *after* the initial air strike, and the latter attack only killed 2 people...

Wow, big deal in a war with 100,000+ civilian casualties.

How does this justify leaking 100,000+ classified documents which had nothing to do with the "Collateral Murder" incident?



Notice your own words in bold...

How does this justify leaking 100,000+ classified documents which had nothing to do with Guantanamo?

And you seem to forget that Manning also exposed classified Guantanamo information about the ability of the US to track key Al Qaeda members in Pakistan. I provided a *specific* example earlier in this thread...



WikiLeaks wasn't open for "openness sake"... Did you even read *how* the cables got released in full? WikiLeaks uploaded them in full to the internet for blackmail purposes and then *gave* the password to a reporter from The Guardian...


I am not fond of flattery.

Now, if you're done been spoon-fed by Julian Assange while wearing your Che Guevara shirt, perhaps you'll start paying attention to the full scope of the Cablegate leak and not just a few cherry-picked anecdotes...

Oh, and in case you did not notice:

How does [X] justify leaking 100,000+ classified documents which had nothing to do with [X]?

This is sad. This is disappointing every time it happens. But, there is nothing particularly surprising about this. This is how bureaucracies and institutions typically respond. It takes a middle manager who is engaged and active to do anything differently. A better officer might have said to Bradley, these kind of cases are difficult, as I'm sure you can well imagine, I'll see what we can do, but understand, I cannot make any guarantees.

Institutions typically focus on what is convenient to them, in a narrow sense, and what is embarrassing to them, in a narrow sense. It's quite a bit different from Gen. David Patraeus when he was in Afghanistan putting up a sign saying, What have you and your unit done today to help win the hearts and minds of the people?

Nothing to do with Guantanomo? So a serial killer has a dungeon of torture and so dirt on his other activities are not fair game?

Bradley Manning is the hero of heroes today. He is dealing with a true monster and is at its mercy. The astounding qualities required for that will astound for years to come.

Ahem...

My statement:


Number of documents leaked in Cablegate: 251,287
Number of classified documents leaked in Cablegate: ≈ 115,000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta ... ables_leak

Number of documents leaked from Guantanamo: 779
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_files_leak

Do the math.


Sorry, although I try *really, really* hard, I have a hard time respecting the opinion of someone who considers 911 an Israeli plot 50 years in the making ...

Just to reiterate, I see this situation as the state violating the law, and then making it a crime to point out that they're doing so. If no one is allowed to know that crimes are being committed, what legal remedy is there? An illegal leak is the only way we'd have know about any of this conduct in our lifetime, and frankly I care more about preserving our rights and values than I do about killing terrorists or embarrassing diplomats. I'm not going to argue that laws were not broken, I'm arguing that the law in question is inherently wrong, wrong enough to justify the action taken.

And how does a few incidents involving (alleged) violations of the law justify leaking 100,000+ classified documents which had nothing to do with these incidents?

... Sorry for being on repeat, but if people keep posting the same argument in favour of Bradley Manning, I'll keep posting the same reply...