Manning gets slapped with 35 years in prison!

[quote=MrCuddowls]Bradley Manning was 25 years old when he was sentenced. He did manage to avoid the biggest violation that said he helped the enemies of the united states and one other charge which I'm not sure what it is. He was sentenced for 20 other charges and got 35 years instead of 90 had he been charged for the remaining 2. The reason why Manning was sentenced was because he revealed some secret war crimes attributed to the USA to wikileaks. If you would like to read and watch some of the stuff check in the spoiler below: [spoiler] [embed=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9sxRfU-ik] Manning released this graphic video of a U.S. Apache helicopter attack on a group of people gathered in Baghdad. Two were employees of the Reuters news agency. A member of the helicopter crew refers to the "dead bastards" he killed, and the crew lights up a passing van that stopped to help victims of the first round of gunfire. Reuters unsuccessfully requested a copy of the video under the Freedom of Information Act, but only Manning revealed it to the world. An Army investigation into the attack, released only after Manning's leak was published, concluded that the helicopter crew had followed the rules of engagement. 2. The Reykjavik-13 cable Far less known than the Apache video was [url=https://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Classified_cable_from_US_Embassy_Reykjavik_on_Icesave,_13_Jan_2010]this classified 2010 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik[/url] released on Feb. 18, 2010. The first of Manning's leaks to be published, it caused an immediate sensation in Iceland for its frank discussion of U.S. indifference toward problems in the small island nation's banking sector. The cable's release energized [url=http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all]the activists in Iceland[/url] who edited "Collateral Murder." 3. The Iraq War Logs As part of his work as an Army intelligence analyst, Manning had access to a wealth of sensitive Army documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Called SIGACTS (significant activities), in military parlance, they detailed nighttime raids and improvised explosives attacks with intimate on-the-ground reports from U.S. troops. Manning gave WikiLeaks nearly 400,000 SIGACTS from Iraq. They were published in October 2010. The Pentagon had always maintained that it did not keep track of civilian casualties in Iraq, but the independent Iraq Body Count website used the SIGACTS to confirm and update its count of deaths in the conflict. As of this month, the [url=http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/bradley-manning-verdict/]Iraq Body Count's Josh Dougherty related[/url], the organization had added 4,000 deaths to its database as a result of Manning's leaks and was likely to add another 10,000. "These and thousands of others like them are known to the world today only because Bradley Manning could no longer in good conscience collude with an official policy of the Bush and Obama administrations to abuse secrecy and 'national security' to erase them from history," Dougherty wrote on the group's website. "If Manning deserves any punishment at all for this, certainly his three years already served, and the disgraceful abuse he was made to suffer during it, is more than enough." 4. The Afghanistan War Logs On July 25, 2010, just a month after Manning was arrested, WikiLeaks published 75,000 SIGACTS from the Afghanistan battlefield. The New York Times, which participated in their publication, [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26warlogs.html?_r=1&]said[/url] they offered "an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal." 5. Detention, abuse and torture Manning's leaks included more than 700 Guantanamo detainee files, many [url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-lift-lid-prison]revealing[/url] that the U.S. had little reason to continue holding its prisoners. The 250,000 State Department cables he [url=http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/28/world/20101128-cables-viewer.html#report/cables-07BERLIN242]leaked[/url] detailed U.S. diplomatic pressure on foreign countries to ignore or excuse extraordinary renditions carried out by the CIA in apparent violation of international law. They also showed that the U.S. [url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/22/iraq-war-logs-military-leaks]routinely failed[/url] to investigate reports of prisoner abuse and summary execution by the Iraqi military. "It brought this issue back into public consciousness again, which is a great thing," Shane Kadidal, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights who represents Guantanamo detainees, told HuffPost in June. "And then with everything that Manning released, to some extent the volume of the material is part of the story," Kadidal said. "It's one thing to tell a few anecdotes based on a few items being leaked, but to be able to say across the board that most of the men who are there shouldn't be there, were people that could be safely released … that is pretty staggering." 6. U.S. complicity with repressive Arab regimes It was no surprise to many living in the Arab world that the United States routinely collaborated with Arab dictators behind closed doors while proclaiming its commitment to democracy in public. Manning's leaks of sensitive State Department cables, however, laid bare the American hypocrisy in the Middle East. By some accounts, they served as a catalyst for the regime changes around the region that would come to be known as the Arab Spring. In particular, the cables highlighted corruption within the regime of former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The first batch of cables about Tunisia was released in November 2010, two months before Ben Ali fled the country. "Whether it's cash, services, land, property, or yes, even your yacht, President Ben Ali's family is rumored to covet it and reportedly gets what it wants," the U.S. embassy reported in a [url=http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2008/06/08TUNIS679.html]June 2008 cable classified secret[/url]. "With Tunisians facing rising inflation and high unemployment, the conspicuous displays of wealth and persistent rumors of corruption have added fuel to the fire. [/spoiler] You know the justice system in your country is bullshit when someone who revealed some secrets gets 35 years, but actual war criminals like Dick Cheney get nothing.[/quote]

[quote=Scrax]I like how rapists, serial killers and murderers get less. 'Murica.[/quote]

[quote=mastrer1000]^this[/quote]

[quote=MrCuddowls]I like how people who went crazy about the Zimmerman case which is in and of itself not something worth getting hung up and no one cared about this case. The government actually succeeded in trying to keep this case out of the spotlight.[/quote]

[quote=Toshabi][quote=Scrax] I like how rapists, serial killers and murderers get less. 'Murica. [/quote] Don't you know. People are charged based on the amount of crime they did? If you were to murder 2 people, you'd get charged on two accounts of murder. Same with rape. Mannings leaked THOUSANDS of top secret documents. He could've been charged for espionage for each document, meaning he should've gotten WAY more than what he got. Going by that logic, he should've gotten way more time than what he had. I see nothing wrong with this. Either or, Toshabi chooses not to involve himself in these topics, because he isn't knowledgeable on law. McCuddowls has the education of your average plebian, so any position he takes has a very good chance of being the wrong position, aka "The Tool opinion". Toshabi laughs at everyone's insta-reaction given by a very biased source.[/quote]

[quote=Searz][quote=Toshabi] People are charged based on the amount of crime they did? If you were to murder 2 people, you'd get charged on two accounts of murder. Same with rape. Mannings leaked THOUSANDS of top secret documents. He could've been charged for espionage for each document, meaning he should've gotten WAY more than what he got. Going by that logic, he should've gotten way more time than what he had. I see nothing wrong with this.[/quote] I see plenty wrong with this. People like Manning and Snowden are providing the public with a great service. It's not right for the US government to cover up things they don't want the public to know. The public DESERVES to know these things. These kinds of cover-ups only goes to further show how corrupt the American politics are. I'm all for transparency, of which the US goverment has next to none, despite their many claims otherwise. They claim transparency, but when companies like Google ask if they can release documents they flat out refuse. And all the secret rulings they try to get through without public knowledge.. (they tried that with ACTA, I think, but it was found out) The US government is constantly violating peoples' rights as human beings and I would happily support anybody that calls them out on their bullshit. Snowden and Manning and American heroes as far as I'm concerned.[/quote]

[quote=Toshabi]I can't say I see eye-to-eye with you. Either or, he broke the law and now he pays. Either or, Manning went looney. Now he's claiming that he's really a she! Egads! Either or is now my new favorite sentence starter.[/quote]

[quote=Toshabi][quote=SkidmarkD] Akshully, if u read respectable news sources, you'd know he already pointed this out to his commanding officer(s)/superiors in april 2010. You do know the America's were founded by ...... dun dun duuuuuuuuuuun, breaking the law? Ze government get it's powers from the consent of the governed, as stated in both the constitution and the UDHR, but if ze people don't know about it, does the government have the authority to do it? [/quote] English, please![/quote]

[quote=mastrer1000][quote=Toshabi] [quote=Scrax] I like how rapists, serial killers and murderers get less. 'Murica. [/quote] Don't you know. People are charged based on the amount of crime they did? If you were to murder 2 people, you'd get charged on two accounts of murder. Same with rape. Mannings leaked THOUSANDS of top secret documents. He could've been charged for espionage for each document, meaning he should've gotten WAY more than what he got. Going by that logic, he should've gotten way more time than what he had. I see nothing wrong with this. [/quote] i think that the american system of adding up time in prison like this is wrong. in my opinion, if you murder/rape someone, it should be punished way harder than making some files public(that deserve to be public, but that is another story). it does not matter if it were 5 or 5000 or 50000000 files. manning did not ruin/end the life of someone as far as i can tell, so why is he punished as if he did?[/quote]

[quote=XeresAce]LOL america I wonder when politicians will realize that their secrets are bound to be leaked someday...[/quote]