Video: I AM BRADLEY MANNING

reply to post by Bob Sholtz


You're confusing what he'd first done by leaking limited and very much (in my view) criminal activity, like gunning down the Reuters team and what he did next.

I'd call him a very different thing if he'd done like others and kept to what he KNEW the content of. He didn't though. He burned the whole house down with everyone still in it. So I call him a criminal.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


With all due respect, please don't talk about shutting up until our troops come home. They aren't ever coming home. To try to discourage the discussion of why we're there in the first place, by using them as a tool is just plain blasphemy. That is not gonna fly. That is just cowardice and an excuse. Don't stand in front of those brave men and women and denounce any discussion about why we are there. Shame on you. Shame on you.




On edit: curious you didn't bring up the civilian casualties in Afghanistan. How many of those have taken place this month?

What about Iraq? The shambles it has been left in and the daily civilian casualties are just disgusting.

Yeah, what I said before. Shame.

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

Do you mind if we might just hold that discussion until after our combat troops are HOME and not still dying in the field?

i understand your position, but consider that perhaps they may never come home if we do not have this discussion. it is not wise to perform a morally questionable action only to discuss whether it should be done AFTER tens of thousands of innocents on both sides have died.

far more death could be prevented by questioning our base actions and motives overseas than will be caused by the questioning itself.

You can say the damage he did was worth the gains he brought ..if you believe he actually changed anything

i disagree. the consequences of speaking out against wrongdoing (specifically mass murder) cannot be known in advance, but attempting to end it by raising awareness through leaked information is a damn sight nicer than passively accepting it.

edit on 10-6-2013 by Bob Sholtz because: (no reason given)

Sorry... My last was before I saw your reply here. Consider them unrelated replies, please.

Now you have one way of seeing it..and they MAY come home sooner by the fact we have this discussion. However, when did you start believing the President and Military Leadership care what we discuss? They never have before. Why start now? That's a mighty assumption to make in the effort to justify his criminal action.

In reality, as I noted, the world started really spinning down hard about the time he let loose with his data dump. In fact, if you recall the reports, that was the POINT. Not the world, but the U.S., oh indeed. The calls were all over to encourage the fall of U.S. Policy and more power by the leaks to do it.

Well.. Okay. U.S. Policy has failed. The Arab Spring has Sprung and places like Libya are in anarchy with others like Syria in open and seemingly endless warfare. Did he do that? No...but the lack of ANY respect or credibility left to people like Kerry (however much I dislike him) have insured there is no way the US will slow or stop it, short of military force. Our diplomacy kinda got shot across world newspapers and blown to hell, eh?

Originally posted by GrantedBail
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

With all due respect, please don't talk about shutting up until our troops come home. They aren't ever coming home. To try to discourage the discussion of why we're there in the first place, by using them as a tool is just plain blasphemy. That is not gonna fly. That is just cowardice and an excuse. Don't stand in front of those brave men and women and denounce any discussion about why we are there. Shame on you. Shame on you.

edit on 10-6-2013 by GrantedBail because: (no reason given)

Don't start a fight or get outraged when there is no basis for it. I asked if we might hold that discussion, as you termed it, until we weren't flying body bags into Dover AFB every other day. It's not asking that much, actually.

The time ti dissect the fine details and inner workings of a war in the public square is after the shooting has stopped. Not during it, when one side or the other calls your discussion points tactical intelligence to use in combat.

* Oh... and your selective outrage is rather interesting. The civilian deaths by drone are a cause for rage (and they are, I agree) but the naming of cooperative civilians to U.S. patrols in both nations..so the enemy might hunt them down and kill them? Oh, well, that's just "furthering the public discussion"

I've never contradicted myself in what I'm outraged at. I've been as furious, publicly, about the misconduct of U.S. Soldiers as I have the scum of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Not quite equally..and people can deal with it if they don't like that. I AM American and will NEVER apologize or make excuses for that. However. to condemn the civilian deaths by ongoing war while brushing past the hunting of people who worked with us? That's a shame.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by Bob Sholtz

 

You're confusing what he'd first done by leaking limited and very much (in my view) criminal activity, like gunning down the Reuters team and what he did next.

I'd call him a very different thing if he'd done like others and kept to what he KNEW the content of. He didn't though. He burned the whole house down with everyone still in it. So I call him a criminal.

i'm not saying he knew all the contents of what he leaked, but we're not going to get anywhere without airing out the dirty laundry.

i don't view american lives as worth more than any other human's life.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


OK. Tell me why we are there in the first place. And why have we remained there for 12 years.

Don't hide behind dead American soldiers whom we all have the deepest respect for. That is why I want to have the discussion. How many more have to die, how many more innocents have to die, and for what exactly???

Break it down for me.

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
i don't view american lives as worth more than any other human's life.

I agree 100%. I don't either. In fact, I don't believe he cost the life of a single American or allied trooper. Not 1. He burned Iraqi and Afghani civilians, not American troops. Naming OUR people didn't mean anything, either way. They weren't major secrets anyway and they all have a name tag to see for any Jihadi to play nice nice for the time it takes to get up and look.

If I thought American lives were superior...I wouldn't be outraged about the physical damage he did at all. Why should I? They were Arab and Afghani's he got murdered. .....except I DO care because, as you note, it's not right to make a distinction when it's non-combatant lives. Soldiers? They pay their money and take their chances....but civilians? He had *NO* right to data dump databases which contained names of people who just happened to help a patrol on a given day or work with allies to do what they thought helped their province, neighborhood or village.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

our "diplomacy" has been nonexistent for decades upon decades. just look at how the panama canal was built, the country objected, so we funded a rebel group to overthrow the leadership in a bloody coup resulting in thousands to tens of thousands of deaths in exchange for the rights to put through the canal.

that has been the state of our diplomacy for a long time.

He had *NO* right to data dump databases which contained names of people who just happened to help a patrol on a given day or work with allies to do what they thought helped their province, neighborhood or village.

and yet the very act of civilians being involved in military events is due to the military presence. if the basis for deciding whether to invade or not was based on saving lives, there would have been no invasion in the first place.

Originally posted by GrantedBail
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

OK. Tell me why we are there in the first place. And why have we remained there for 12 years.

Don't hide behind dead American soldiers whom we all have the deepest respect for. That is why I want to have the discussion. How many more have to die, how many more innocents have to die, and for what exactly???

Break it down for me.

You're taking this so far off topic at this point I don't even know how to respond. You're trying to turn the discussion of one Private, data dumping classified databases into a full and broad debate of the entire U.S. Policy since 2001. Those are wildly different threads and while tangentially related, there is no direct connection in topics. Sorry, I'm not taking that piece of cheese. It's a bit old and stinky.

reply to post by Bob Sholtz

The State Department seems to have been functioning pretty well for a department heading a broken effort, world wide.

Odd how you would characterize it that way. American diplomacy wasn't even all that BAD under Clinton and even prior to him...depending on which period and leader we're talking about. They've all had their moments, both good and bad...but it didn't go ALL bad until fairly recently. Now Kerry gets left waiting for hours like a common punk in the Russian capital. Oh.. That really DOES hurt to see how far it's all fallen and how fast it's gotten there.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


She's saying that in conjunction as to why we're there to begin with, Brad did the right thing.

I can see that little correlation.

The war on 'terror' is a bunch of bullshi.......

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Wrabbit, you wish to couch the discussion of the war logs based upon the fact that we still have Americans coming home in body bags.

Mannings leakage was all about what the heck is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Damnit that is what we should be discussing.

Yet we are not. Why is that? The way I see it, people want to take us off to chase red herrings.

I know one when I see one.

Goodnight Wrabbit

reply to post by Mizzijr


Perhaps it is....so is violating an oath, freely taken and burning the lives of civilians you've never met and obviously, don't care a thing about. I don't mean you caring, I meant him.

I don't care for this war any more than anyone else. My own family has paid a price for it and by more than 1. It's enough. FAR overdue to bring 'em home. It's just a small matter of some criminals we have to deal with at the same time. Some killed people in war crimes ...and some caused damage in other crimes.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


That is not off topic. That is exactly on topic. But away from the area which deflectors want to discuss.

I got you. I get it.

reply to post by GrantedBail


Umm., Okay, start a new thread. Discuss the ENTIRE war policy and everything that has happened across two theaters of war and over the last 12+ years. I might even join in, depending on how it goes. I was under the distinct impression this thread was about a Private named Brad Manning, who document dumped 3 classified databases, in full to the extent he had access.

......and who had pled guilty for goodness sakes. You're still debating this the way you did BEFORE he pled. Are you suggesting he was just saying whatever he had to, to get off lighter? He didn't mean his guilty pleas? I'm taking him at this word and deed. For once, he owned up to his actions, instead of having to be forced into it. That guilty plea was the first honorable thing the kid did....and you'd gloss over it like a technicality.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

i would disagree. poor diplomacy and using the military to accomplish unassociated goals has been going on for a very long time.

i don't think kerry deserves respect any more than i think putin deserves respect. they deserve each other. trashing foreign ambassadors and officials behind their backs is hardly "good diplomacy".

the average person gets screwed over with all these wars, and i support raising awareness of corruption in the hope that this will end. you distinguish between our reputation pre and post leak, where i see it as very tarnished and blood stained on both sides.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


OK, i get that, that wasn't fair. The kid DID release documents that by the act were against the law but not against his oath as a soldier to "uphold the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic". He reported a crime and along with it some other dubious stuff. What Manning did was righteous and the right thing. Oh, he is gonna pay, I am sure you will be happy. But he served his country in the way I would hope all of our armed forces will.

We are gonna need them.



On edit:

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

limk

reply to post by Bob Sholtz


The thing is... What the U.S. State cables showed weren't at all unique to the U.S.. They showed that too. They just didn't show much outside the U.S. penchant to be rude and crude when out of the earshot of those it's said about. I'm willing to bet if we had docu-dumps of other nation's diplomatic services and embassy message traffic, we'd see the same petty B.S. said back and forth and the same crude comments made about our people as we made about them in U.S. communications.

It's like so much between nations. There is knowing and then there is KNOWING. Nations know all this goes on, and they tolerate it. Always have. The US does too. When it becomes public though, what was merely tolerated now must have something done about it. Saving face and 'honor', as some nations define that to a VERY serious degree, demand it.

The public has absolutely no right whatsoever to know what was in 250,000+ cables and the hundreds of thousands of action reports from two war zones. None. Should we have known about criminal stuff? Depends, I guess.. I say yes. Those in Uniform may well say no. The law isn't vague at all with a screaming No. That scream is what Manning's ears will be ringing with ...and nothing anyone can say or do will stop that now.

It kinda makes the whole debate here a rather secondary thing for amusement...since nothing said or achieved will change his fate. He's going down for 20 at least. Maybe life. ...well, probably life, the way this system works now.

20 he earned. Life is charging far too much in price for what was bought here.

reply to post by GrantedBail

What Manning did was righteous and the right thing.

Well, that would be the second statement you've made here that tells me we really need to agree to disagree. The first was about the 'poor people in gitmo'. Umm.. Indeed. Now, you have every right to your opinion, as do I. I think you're opinion is ill considered and wrong ...and you pretty much think the same of mine on this topic. Again, we both have the right to those opinions as well.

That's where I think the agreement to disagreement comes in ...so we don't remember things said here in future threads as hard feelings. Nothing said that far yet, that I see...but I can sure see that spot from here.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


No problem. Sorry I got emotional. Young men and women dying really bothers me as does holding people that have never been charged and depriving them of habeas. That bothers me as well.

That's cool. See ya around Wrabbit.