Just a Question....Are you Personally Interested in Bradley Manning's Court Case?

[KoKo]

Are any of you here on DU following Bradley Mannings Trial?

I don't see much here about it. I wondered if its important to any of you and if so WHY....and if it Isn't then WHY....

Or, is it just not important in the scheme of things to bother about it and to just "Let it Go."

DISCLOSURE: I read everything I can get my hands on about Bradley Manning because I'm from the Vietnam Generation and have never gotten over what happened then. But, I feel times have changed with the Youth of America and Bradley Manning and why he did what he did is not longer considered "Democratic" but, a kid who should be prosecuted to the full letter or the US Law...because he aided terrorists.

I think there might be a Generational Shift in attitudes about sending our youth into War since "9/11 Attacks" and that many Americans (who aren't part of the Vietnam Generation) might feel so differently about how far we need to go to protect our interests as Americans both here and abroad.

ON EDIT:

If you have an opinion about Manning from your own view please post as to why you might feel he endangered USA and might be considered a terrorist ..to you...from your experience and views about him and the charges against him.

[Democracyinkind]

1. Yes but I stopped discussing it on DU - just like OWS

I've made a decision to (mostly) not publish opinions on DU that antagonize most members.

Manning is one subject where there's simply no middle ground for me. (Have donated alot to the people that looked after him all those years - truly great people). I was really impressed by his recent conduct in court. To me, he's positively Ellsbergerian. Most people here (at least in the threads I saw) strongly disagree.

[99th_Monkey]

3. I don't think people so much "disagree" Manning's a latter day Ellsberg,

It's that they can't bring themselves to look at yet one more place
where Obama's administration is totally on the WRONG side of history,
and anything but "progressive" <--this is the trigger.

[Recursion]

5. I certainly disagree that he's a latter-day Ellsberg

Ellsberg leaked specific, vetted documents. Ellsberg was a civilian. Two huge differences.

[99th_Monkey]

8. I'll bet they wear TOTALLY different kinds of underwear too

Gee I stand corrected.

They are SO very different.
What was I thinking?

[Recursion]

9. Dumping 60 Gigabytes of cables with no vetting isn't whistleblowing

He put lives at risk and seriously hampered our ability to conduct diplomacy. What worries me is that so many people on this board seem to think that's a good thing.

[99th_Monkey]

10. If our government weren't so blinded by it's Imperialistic presumptions,

this World would be a much better place.

Actually Manning testified that he was concerned that some
of the stuff might be problematic, and WITHHELD disclosing
those documents because of that concern.

"Vetted" by whom? His "superiors" repeatedly ignored Manning's
concerns about war crimes going on in my name, with my
tax dollars. <--which apparently does not concern you in the least.

[Recursion]

12. It wasn't vetted *BY HIM*. He says he didn't even read the cables.

But, yes, he stuck it to the man, so he's a lot of people's hero here.

[99th_Monkey]

16. Manning testified otherwise

and did not appear to trigger any prosecution blow-back,
or if there was it was censored by our "Liberal Media".

If it were patently untrue, that Manning was selective in
what he released, you'd think the prosecution might have
a wee objection or something?

[MNBrewer]

21. He put lives at risk, so you say

which lives, how?

[Democracyinkind]

13. This thread exemplifies what I pointed out...

Not that I don't like discussing things.

But I just don't have the nerves to point out how Ellsberg and Manning converge but for different circumstances for the 100000th time.

Some subjects, I tire of going over them repeatedly. I appreciate anyone who has the nerves to post Maning updates.

[99th_Monkey]

20. I feel your pain bro.

but sometimes I just can't resist, still.

You'd think i'd have learned to walk around
open man-holes by now.

[riderinthestorm]

17. +1. I've said my piece on him numerous times. I'm done responding.

I do read anything that's put up as a thread about Manning, when I see a news story online elsewhere I read it. I am interested.

Just here on DU its counterproductive anymore when the hive mentality swarms in on some topics - Manning being one of them....

[HiPointDem]

31. "not publish opinions that antagonize most members." = the bad guys always win. not speaking

only of du, but the world as a whole.

[Recursion]

2. My fiancee wrote some of the cables he leaked

and had to deal with some of the fallout (arrests and exiles) in Sri Lanka and the Maldives from the info that got out, so I'm "personally interested" in a legal sense (e.g. I couldn't be on his jury).

I'm following it as well as I can, but mostly avoiding DU threads, for the same reasons Democracyinkind mentioned above, though from the other side.

[graham4anything]

4. Manning is NOT Ellsberg and this is not the 1960s

He is a criminal.

And in 2000, 9-11 happened, and just about 100% of the country wanted Afghanastan and going after any and all terrrorist including OBL whereever they were

There are no borders now.

In the 50s/60s,with the engagement that Eisenhower started, there was NO direct threat to the USA itself.

A better comparison would be WW2 and the attack of Pearl Harbor and Hitler.
And how something like this back then WAS considered treason.

Iraq is different than Afghanastan, but just about 100% wanted Afghanastan.

He is guilty and should be lucky that he is not back in the WW2 days.
They had far worst punishments for treason back then

IMHO

and I am sure those other opinions will strongly be coming shortly.

[99th_Monkey]

6. Yeah, while completely ignoring what Mr. Ellsberg HIMSELF thinks. <-- kookoo n/t

[graham4anything]

11. Ellsberg is happy with his new 15 minutes of fame. The two have NOTHING to do with each other.

This punk knowingly put many peoples lives in danger, same as the leak of Valerie Plame put her and her husbands lives in danger.

I am 100% against anarchy and chaos.
Crime is crime.

And it was premeditated as he knew what he was doing.

The hypocrites are the ones in the media that wanted justice for Valerie Plame and hide their eyes for other leaker/hackers. To me, Karl Rove is now a talking head, which is what Ellsberg is.(same with John Dean and Bob Woodward,etc.)
Two wrongs are still two wrongs.


But most people won't argue against manning here, because they don't want to be called
names and all that.

And this issue is hardly worth losing capital on. So IMHO most won't argue against it debate style.

He will be in jail 20 years minimum so far, plus possibly many more for the charges still to come.

[99th_Monkey]

14. Repeating untruths & distortions over and over again can be comforting

if looking at the truth is sufficiently painful,
which is apparently the case here.

[KoKo]

15. I appreciate your comments...and thanks for replying...

but I don't want to start a Flame War here.....I hope you will understand this.

You commented and folks can read to get your opinion...but, please try to think more before you reply again so that you don't seem to be
Co-Opting the thread.

Thanks for your comments, though.

[MadHound]

7. Oy.

[KoKo]

18. It's still good...I am trying to understand either a Generational Gap

or What Else....



We Dems on the "Lean Left" (FDR New Deal Politics) need to understand..and we Dems who applaud Lyndon Johnson for his Poverty Program (but NOT His VIETNAM ESCALATION) but were so proud of him for pushing forward with CIVIL RIGHTS LEGISLATION at the same time become disturbed with our NEW DEMOCRATS...

I was a huge Jimmy Carter Supporter also....

See...it becomes very confusing......

[mike_c]

19. disagree strongly...

...and I hope that if I were in his place, I'd have had the courage to blow the whistle on corruption in U.S. foreign policy, just as Manning did.

To the OP: yes, I'm following this closely. I stand with Manning and Wikileaks. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

[KoKo]

22. Think Manning should have a good case..Kid was 22 or 23? Idealist?

I was totally like that when I was that age.. I grew up with Patriotism...and Tomas Paine and stuff.

whatever.......

[Frosty1]

28. Dick Cheney was a criminal too

yet we don't see him sitting in jail now do we?

No sh1t Sherlock "Iraq is different than Afghanastan" I guarantee you just about 100% of the country didn't want Afghanastan.

[HiPointDem]

32. "just about 100% wanted Afghanastan" -- in what alternative universe?

[NRaleighLiberal]

23. All I will say is that I am philosophically very supportive of whistle blowers.

[KoKo]

24. without them.....where would we be today..

is what I think...but, I didn't really want to post it..because it's biased...but, yeah. "Truth Out...or What?

[KoKo]

25. "Truth Out!" ...has a very good ring to it...we thought our country

broke away from the BRITS...verified this.....

It gets lost somehow...Or...it GOT LOST somewhere in the scheme of things in our evolution of the political..


How to deal with this "New Reality" is the problem....it's like a "Train Wreck" to some of us who mouth off here on DU...not YOU but others of us who feel it's all gone "OTT."

[upi402]

26. Democracy Now! covers it

I listen religiously to that show.

Is the mainstream media covering it at all?

[Fire Walk With Me]

27. At over 1,000 days in prison/solitary, I'd say every single American needs to know about him.

There are some who are stuck on the letter of the law without taking into consideration the spirit of the law, which is critical. He revealed WAR CRIMES our government was covering up and enabling. Little things which could inspire people in other countries to wish to strike back at unjustified acts and murder. It effects me directly and I will not have it. Especially as they are due to Bush and friends!

[patrice]

29. I have reached the practical limitations on my ability to advocate. What would help me to support

the principled justice issues manifested in Manning's case would be synergy between issue advocates who prioritize Manning's case first, or relatively high in their order of priorities, with a network of other more or less related issues.

I understand the perspective that says something such as: Regardless of whether we can assume that Bradley Manning did due diligence on the act of raising your hand and choosing to subject yourself to the chain-of-command defined and implemented by UCMJ before he did so, with full knowledge of what it is that is done to the military and what it is that military does, we may credit the principled nature of his behavior after that fact, after that raising of his hand and taking an oath otherwise. We may accept his own principled identification of his "after the fact" actions "for the lives of the troops and their enemy combatants and all collateral damage" whether breaking the chain of command, without actually destroying the entire MIC, resulted in any reduction (or perhaps even an increase) of those death tolls or not. If he actually intended that his actions should subtract from the body counts, that is creditable, though in somewhat of a different way than had they actually accomplished that objective, so I am willing to support in a manner commensurate with this, his complete (from due diligence, through oath, to epiphany, to repudiation of oath), his chosen, action.

What I'm having trouble with is, though we may support Bradley Manning as a whistle-blower for justice, I don't understand how that is support if his action was somehow divorced from its authentic context and that includes consequences, consequences that should have been part of one's original chain-reaction decisions to act . . . or not to act if they, the consequences, were not an acceptable price for a principled action. That is, I don't understand saying, TTE, "That's what I intended to do, but minus the consequences of doing it." To me that would be deciding to do some other thing that (minus consequences he had to have known were there before he ever came to consider what he did) was not relevant to the context that the rest of us are being told WAS part of what he did. What would such a no consequences "principle" make of whistleblowing? It wouldn't be whistleblowing would it? Couldn't it become just another form of exploitation? What makes the revealed information more valuable is the price that is risked for it. What should happen is that such persons should not be caught.

However anyone comes down on the questions about this issue as I have sketched them, I have another issue with this issue that, for me, outranks at least some of my positions relative to these questions and that is: to some extent, I feel that justice for Bradley Manning is dependent on a larger and more broadly relevant set of issues having to do with media, internet in this case, exploitation of vulnerable others. It's necessary, but unfortunate, that Manning's defense must avoid ancillary facts concerning his case, most specifically, questions about a certain folk-hero named Julian Assange, who was instrumental in what Manning decided to do and, therefore, in what happened to him. My personal frustrations with how the wistleblower Bradley Manning, whatever moral valence one assigns to his own "free" actions, have at least as much to do with how he was exploited and apparently tossed aside by a cult figure who apparently profited from the relationship and, yet, for perfectly rational reasons that fact is not part of Manning's defense case, but for less rational reasons Assange is not being prosecuted for his part in what Manning did.

[KoKo]

30. Undersand much of what you say..but he was a Kid! Patriot..Altruist!

This is the key paragraph out of your post that I wanted to point out...(and believe me..I understood much of what you were saying in your post..but..THIS is where we differ)

What I'm having trouble with is, though we may support Bradley Manning as a whistle-blower for justice, I don't understand how that is support if his action was somehow divorced from its authentic context and that includes consequences, consequences that should have been part of one's decision to act . . . or not to act if they, the consequences, were not an acceptable price for a principled action. That is, I don't understand saying, TTE, "That's what I intended to do, but minus the consequences of doing it." What would such a "principle" make of whistleblowing?

TO BE CLEAR:

When I was 22 bordering on 23 years old I was VERY Altruistic and Patriotic and if I'd had access (what was an early 20 Something doing having access to Classified Info that would cause him "Life in Prison" or "Death" in the FIRST PLACE... if it was so important to our National Security?

The QUESTION SHOULD BE...where was the LAX SECURITY that allowed a very young IDEALIST Low Ranking Service Member to GAIN ACCESS to the very INFORMATION he now faces such OUTRAGEOUS CONSEQUENCES FOR?

Help me here as to how this can be?