Obama commutes sentence of Chelsea Manning

[quade 3]

Quote

Washington (CNN)President Barack Obama on Tuesday commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of stealing and disseminating 750,000 pages of documents and videos to WikiLeaks.

The President also pardoned James Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who pleaded guilty in October to a single charge of making false statements to federal investigators in 2012 when he was questioned about leaking top secret information on US efforts to cripple Iran's nuclear program to two journalists.

Source and more:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/17/politics/chelsea-manning-sentence-commuted/index.html

I'm not 100% certain this was the right move. I get it though.

I wish Obama would pardon Snowden too in order to remove him as a bargaining chip to be played by Trump against Putin.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[kallend 1,623]

quade

Quote

Washington (CNN)President Barack Obama on Tuesday commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of stealing and disseminating 750,000 pages of documents and videos to WikiLeaks.

The President also pardoned James Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who pleaded guilty in October to a single charge of making false statements to federal investigators in 2012 when he was questioned about leaking top secret information on US efforts to cripple Iran's nuclear program to two journalists.

Source and more:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/17/politics/chelsea-manning-sentence-commuted/index.html

I'm not 100% certain this was the right move. I get it though.

I wish Obama would pardon Snowden too in order to remove him as a bargaining chip to be played by Trump against Putin.

How about a pre-emptive pardon of Trump against all future charges of sexual assault and fraud?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[SkyDekker 1,122]

Wonder if Assange will allow himself to be extradited now.

He promised as much if Manning was shown clemency.

Probably also means the tax payer doesn't have to fund the sex-change operation any more.

Lastly, this doesn't take affect until May. Could Trump overturn this?

[ryoder 1,384]

SkyDekker

Wonder if Assange will allow himself to be extradited now.

He promised as much if Manning was shown clemency.

I was wondering the same thing;
About now I'm thinking Assange is saying to himself:

"OH SHIT! I never thought he would actually do it!!!"

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[quade 3]

SkyDekker

Wonder if Assange will allow himself to be extradited now.

He promised as much if Manning was shown clemency.

Probably also means the tax payer doesn't have to fund the sex-change operation any more.

Lastly, this doesn't take affect until May. Could Trump overturn this?

Yes, that was the deal, but I'm sure Assange is going to make some excuse now to not leave the embassy. Assange has gone a bit wacky in the last few years. Even his long time friends no longer talk about him the way they used to. Greenwald is convinced Assange has turned into a "burn it all down" kind of guy.

The deal . . .
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/819630102787059713

Screen shot attached.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[JerryBaumchen 1,048]

Hi Paul,

Quote

I wish Obama would pardon Snowden

Just the other night ( via emal to the White House ) I asked him to do just this. IMO Snowden is not a criminal.

I hope that he does it just before he leaves office.

We can only hope,

Jerry Baumchen

PS) You could write to him also.

[quade 3]

JerryBaumchen

PS) You could write to him also.

What makes you think I haven't? Several times.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[yoink 321]

quade

I'm not 100% certain this was the right move. I get it though.

Snitches get stitches... Unless they get a presidential pardon apparently.

I think Obama's got this one badly wrong.

[JohnyCrawford 0]

Isn't funny after all the fury Obama made about the Russians stealing our political secrets and giving them to Wikileaks to reveal them to the public, that now he's letting a guy out of prison who stole military secrets and gave them to Wikileaks, to reveal them to the enemy? I guess democratic party secrets are more important than national security.

[SkyDekker 1,122]

Quote

Isn't funny after all the fury Obama made about the Russians stealing our political secrets and giving them to Wikileaks to reveal them to the public, that now he's letting a guy out of prison who stole military secrets and gave them to Wikileaks, to reveal them to the enemy?

The Russians didn't steal political secrets. It stole Democratic Party secrets. One sided. It did so to influence the US Political system.

So different intent and different circumstances. Really not similar to what Manning did. I am not saying that I necessarily agree with the commutation, but the situation is vastly different.

I agree with not pardoning Snowden. manning faced trial etc, Snowden just ran. There is a significant difference again.

[ryoder 1,384]

Assange goes full weasel:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/assange-weasels-out-of-pledge-to-surrender-if-manning-received-clemency/

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[yoink 321]

ryoder

Assange goes full weasel:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/assange-weasels-out-of-pledge-to-surrender-if-manning-received-clemency/

What a fucking surprise... Assange is not a good guy. He's a cowardly weasel and deserves no sympathy or clemency.

[quade 3]

yoink

***Assange goes full weasel:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/assange-weasels-out-of-pledge-to-surrender-if-manning-received-clemency/

What a fucking surprise... Assange is not a good guy. He's a cowardly weasel and deserves no sympathy or clemency.

Assange wasn't asking for sympathy or clemency -- specifically not. He was making a noble offer and now he's backed out.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[BartsDaddy 4]

No he was making some effort to help out Bradely Manning. That helped him out.

Handguns are only used to fight your way to a good rifle

[quade 3]

BartsDaddy

No he was making some effort to help out Bradely Manning.

That was the noble offer I was talking about.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[yoink 321]

Which makes him a cretinous weasel.

On top of being a coward for running away.

[DJL 232]

quade

Quote

Washington (CNN)President Barack Obama on Tuesday commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of stealing and disseminating 750,000 pages of documents and videos to WikiLeaks.

The President also pardoned James Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who pleaded guilty in October to a single charge of making false statements to federal investigators in 2012 when he was questioned about leaking top secret information on US efforts to cripple Iran's nuclear program to two journalists.

Source and more:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/17/politics/chelsea-manning-sentence-commuted/index.html

I'm not 100% certain this was the right move. I get it though.

I wish Obama would pardon Snowden too in order to remove him as a bargaining chip to be played by Trump against Putin.

I'm 100% certain it was the wrong move. Manning had other paths to take to achieve her end which was supposedly motivated by her view that civilians were being unjustly targeted. The famous video shows an egregious error on the part of pilots and spotters in the middle of a combat scenario, not a premeditated attempt to kill civilians.

Morality comes at a cost and even if she had gone to a civilian human rights group with the information she would be court marshaled but she could have kept it private and still pursued the result she intended. This was nothing more that Manning lashing out and in her own words she took the wrong path much because of the emotional state she was in. She needs to take her medicine and stay in jail.

"I encourage all awesome dangerous behavior." - Jeffro Fincher

[kallend 1,623]

quade

******Assange goes full weasel:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/assange-weasels-out-of-pledge-to-surrender-if-manning-received-clemency/

What a fucking surprise... Assange is not a good guy. He's a cowardly weasel and deserves no sympathy or clemency.



Assange wasn't asking for sympathy or clemency -- specifically not. He was making a noble offer and now he's backed out.

He offered a deal, and when the other party delivered he reneged on it. No wonder Trump likes Wikileaks.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[normiss 622]

It seems the leadership mindset on this is changing.
I still cannot understand why Petraeus didn't have a significantly harsher sentence - or really any for that matter.

[TriGirl 268]

DJL

I'm 100% certain it was the wrong move. Manning had other paths to take to achieve her end which was supposedly motivated by her view that civilians were being unjustly targeted. The famous video shows an egregious error on the part of pilots and spotters in the middle of a combat scenario, not a premeditated attempt to kill civilians.

Morality comes at a cost and even if she had gone to a civilian human rights group with the information she would be court marshaled but she could have kept it private and still pursued the result she intended. This was nothing more that Manning lashing out and in her own words she took the wrong path much because of the emotional state she was in. She needs to take her medicine and stay in jail.

The difference being that she admitted as such, took responsibility for her actions and expressed regret/remorse. She's served seven years, and will always be a convicted felon (she had her sentence commuted, not pardoned). She's paid a price -- whether it was harsh enough at seven years is certainly debatable -- and will continue to do so with the felony conviction.

See the upside, and always wear your parachute! -- Christopher Titus

Shut Up & Jump!

[jakee 1,255]

kallend

He offered a deal, and when the other party delivered he reneged on it. No wonder Trump likes Wikileaks.

Boom!

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[dpreguy 14]

Not here to give my opinion whether the commutation was justified. Or not. Make up your own mind; but all should know Bradley Manning's release of the emails to WikiLeaks had consequences. He violated his oath to his country, an oath given and taken by all members of our uniformed services. An oath administered for good reasons. I get it that he is sorry for what he did. Or at least he, now she, says so.
Manning, through his lawyer, insisted that at the time of the theft of over 92,000 communications, (some sources say 150,000) that Manning had, in his own mind a lofty moral motivation. To wit: same as Assange's statement: "...any risk to informants’ lives was outweighed by the overall importance of publishing the information." What follows is a criticism of Julian Assange, (And by implication, of course, Manning.)

Reprint of the article follows:
Mr Assange said: “No one has been harmed, but should anyone come to harm of course that would be a matter of deep regret — our goal is justice to innocents, not to harm them. That said, if we were forced into a position of publishing all of the archives or none of the archives we would publish all of the archives because it’s extremely important to the history of this war.”

...Assange is giving us a wonderful lesson in why things are classified during war. His cavalier attitude toward the safety of the people he exposes to mortal danger, as if a really terrible context like a war provides justification for adding further risk to their lives (and his repeated, and thus far unsupported, accusations that Afghans who help us are criminals), is beyond immaturity and callousness, though—it is monstrous.

Julian Assange is the worst sort of moralist, one whose sense of justice is so selective (secrecy is of utmost concern for Wikileaks’ sources and employees, but not the government), and his comprehension of consequences so short-sighted and defined by ideology rather than fact, that he doesn’t care who he has to offer up to murderous bastards to satisfy his sense of moral outrage. ...

Anyway, so the Taliban are doing exactly what I said they would do, in my pieces for PBS and CJR: they are vowing to hunt down and murder anyone who is identified in the Wikileaks archive as having worked for the U.S.

Exclusive: The Taliban has issued a chilling warning to Afghans, alleged in secret US military files leaked on the internet to have worked as informers for the Nato-led coalition, telling Channel 4 News “US spies” will be hunted down and punished.

Speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location, Zabihullah Mujahid told Channel 4 News that the insurgent group will investigate the named individuals before deciding on their fate.

“We are studying the report,” he said, confirming that the insurgent group already has access to the 92,000 intelligence documents and field reports.

I hope Julian Assange sleeps well at night. His victims certainly won’t.
End of article.

If one googles this subject it is revealed that the Al Queda zealots actually did read these emails/communications and did in fact ,"Go on a killing spree" and cold bloodedly murdered, in fantastically cruel ways many many Afghans who they believe cooperated with the Americans/coalition forces, or even anyone who they suspected-justified or not.

A few days ago I recall Manning's lawyer said that no one was harmed, and that other then embarrassing some US Embassy officials what he did was harmless, or words to that effect.

We will never know how many Afghans were tortured and butchered by Al Queda, and will continue to be hunted down, for but know that Manning has Afghan blood on his hands. Probably a lot of it.