You are Breanna Manning, not me
More low information BS from Hollywood;
For one thing, you cretins, Manning told his company commander that he’d prefer that everyone call him Breanna, and people on this blog seem to be the only folks in the world willing to fulfill that wish. For another thing, there’s a difference between “whistleblowing” and “treason”. SEALs who raided the bin Laden compound testified that Manning’s “whistleblowing” product turned up in that compound, so obviously it was of interest to the enemy, if we’re still calling bin Laden an enemy, that is. That product is still considered classified by the government.
If you all want to be Breanna Manning, then you can stand up with him for the firing squad, which would take more courage than you can muster, I’m sure. If you’re saying that you would turn on this country and endanger the people who are fighting for you, that’s where you belong anyway.
Category: Terror War
Hold on to your hats boys and girls … here comes a rant
@Isanova I have to digress, I truly believe that any country that goes into war thinking they will be able to execute everything in a “civilized” manner is going to lose the war, will there be causalities? Yes, will there be civilians? Well since they stand and use them as shield sometimes well it happens, is it horrible? Yes it is Should you randomly go and expose half of the damn operatives in Europe? Only if you are an idiot.
I can asure you that WL did not have any military experienced person, and even more Assange has shown to be an A$$ and try to use it for his political agenda, again I’m not big on “big daddy government” but you can’t shoot your own foot and call yourself a damn smart person!!!
@33 PintoNag: a good cross referencing software like SAS would probably be able to analise that info and project when is the next shipment due or so I guess
Feelings are easy. Even morons have them. Clever manipulators appeal to feelings. Madison Ave knows this. Obamaman knows this. Goebbels certainly knew this. It’s that thinking –that reasoning–business that is sometimes difficult. In the land of law, feelings don’t cut the mustard. There are charges that are either supported by evidence or they’re not. No two defendants are identical. But both are treated identically through application of the same process. And that’s where the fairness is rooted, never in the result.
@51 You lost me. What “shipment”?
@45 I to am not sure of the overall effects of his leaks, but I can tell you that me finding the complete personnel and equipment list for my Military Transition Team in Iraq and the status reports we wrote each month tracking our Iraqi Brigades progress felt like a major violation to me and my team. It honestly put a pit in my stomach to know my personal information was on that sight. It was published a year after I left so I wasn’t in any immediate danger but it still hurt.
I think some people are confused on how security clearances work. He needed to have a security clearance equal to or greater than the material being used/viewed (so far so good). He needed to have a current, signed nondisclosure agreement on file (which he violated). He needed to have a “need to know”. A need to know means that just because you have a clearance does not mean you get to peruse swaths of classified, secret and top secret material looking for whatever…you need to require the material for viewing (clear violation here).
Furthermore, the argument that he found “something” his conscience could not bear to keep secret any longer does not hold water given his actions. He didn’t just take some files which he viewed as “questionable”…he took over 700,000 files which he neither had the time nor authority to vet and gave them to Wikileaks to reveal to the world at their discretion (the world here including terrorists…go figure).
He didn’t even try to use his chain of command.
Supervisor->
Supervisor’s supervisor->
NCOIC->
OIC->
First Sergeant->
(Possibly the equal opportunity office or commander here depending on the trouble)->
Chaplin (his/her confidence is sacrosanct)->
IG->
Anonymous submission to the IG->
Get a lawyer at this point
As an aside…if a document is listed under a certain classification category and should be a different classification (or not have a classification at all), there’s a process to get that reclassified…he didn’t do that either…go figure.
I am not fu@king Breanna Manning!
Any questions?
Don’t really like playing “what if” games, but will stoop to that level just this once.
Let’s assume for a couple of moments that Breanna actually saw some war crimes out there somewhere. (We all know that he didn’t, but that is beside the point for this moment in time.) All of us who have served in the military understand our obligation to report having witnessed any war crimes. He didn’t, but let’s pretend that he did.
How would releasing classified information about things unrelated to the mythical “war crime” improve anything? Two wrongs make a right, maybe??
Back to reality: It doesn’t matter what caused him to release the classified information. It was a crime for him to do it, and that is why he is being tried.
Oh, and in the real world, the enemy always wants details about military members for all sorts of reasons, none of them good. So, yeah, knowing that, Breanna releasing personal information to the enemy is treason. Doesn’t matter who the traitor is, who he knows, or who adopts him as their pet.
I wonder how they rounded up so many. Did the conversation begin with “So, how’s that acting career going?”
@#50, PintoNag, the Afghan president recently asked for the withdrawal of all US Special Forces troops from a particular Province in Afghanistan over reports and allegations that they were kidnapping people there and torturing them. People said they just “disappeared.” Sometimes we’re just as much of a bad guy as the guys we are “fighting” against. And I don’t believe it’s justified. Torturing indiscriminately as a means to an end isn’t right.
@59: with all the respect he is due, and remembering we put him there, Karzai is a pathological liar, kleptocrat and all-around shitbag. There is a greater chance he wanted us out of the area so HE could move in and disappear some of his own people. If he told us the sky is blue, I would go outside and check.
Jax, I think you trust the Afghans more than you trust your own common sense. Do you really think that it was US Special Forces making people disappear. You’ve served with American soldiers – do you really think your friends are capable of doing what they’re being accused of by Karzai? Seriously?
@59: And of course you have evidence that backs up Karzai’s allegations? Of course not. It just fits your ideas about how the Armed Forces are acting out there so you believe him without any reservations.
As for Manning, no sympathy. He’s a gay drama queen who felt that he wasn’t being treated as a special little snowflake and he acted out because of that. Bury him under Leavenworth and let him be forgotten.
@59 How many SF soldiers have you ever known, Jax? I’ve personally known three of them. For them, for their honor, integrity, and sheer guts, I’ll tell you to go f*ck yourself.
@59: You’re assuming the US forces actually did that, and Karzai isn’t just making stuff up. Generally speaking, we don’t magically ‘disappear’ people without very good reason, and we don’t ‘torture’ (avoiding a debate on that word!) without very good reason. You don’t need to believe that out of a feeling that we’re the warm, fuzzy sorts, but rather because it’s simply unnecessary and counterproductive to the mission at hand.
There are ocassional people who are .. well, bad. Rarely are they as bad as the bad guys we’re fighting, but I digress – sure, we have bad people slip through the cracks, it’s hard not to when you put many tens of thousands in tense situations far away from home without much supervision. But we don’t tend to do ‘institutional-badness’, like disappearing people for no cause whatsoever.
My guess is, much like in US politics, fear spreads faster than fact and people reported ‘disappearings’ at an alarming rate devoid of much fact of it. And, since it provides a convenient bargaining chip for Karzai, he wielded it.
What in the world makes you think we torture indiscriminately?
@53 PintoNag well you said you have info on medicines right? I was just making the point that by having historical data a good cross reference software will be able to see the trend and pretty much nail everything else, as one of the Manning supporters was saying that it was historical data and not that bad (Although well I haven’t changed my name so I still have the same address, birthday and name than 4 years ago so …)
Again I’m sorry to make the parallel again but is just so damn direct! … If I remember correctly some north Vietnam officials said they were ready to give up until they saw the clashes and “hanoi jane” singing .. then they knew they were going to win… Same here, believe me all the bad guys are happy happy, as long as people here go full r1tard and try to make a hero out of an idiot they won’t understand how it works.
I’ve never been in ‘stan, I can’t say or not say if people look at you funny or not, but if 80% of the ppl that come back do say they bad dudes you find there they’ll have no problem using civilians as a shield and have no problem using the media to their advantage, why isn’t the media or the people half smart enough to understand that? There is a mexican saying: “La ropa sucia se lava en casa” I express how much I dislike this person for what he did, but I in no way would try to sentence him at all .. because is not MY job, I do not fully understand the rules, regulations, etc. and until everyone else realizes they can’t go and put the white dress and dance around as the saviors without getting that white dress stained, sorry, but if they use ppl as shield and shoot at you, what the heck are you supposed to do? Anyway, last post of the day, have to go eat!
Not to go all Freudian, but it seems to me what tends to get ignored is that Manning’s ulterior motive in all this was about revenge, and not about seizing the moral high ground; he was annoyed about not being kicked out of the Army fast enough to deal with his transgender crisis and wanted payback. All of the moral high ground stuff was a later-stage rationale for why he really did what he did.
The indicators for such a conclusion, although I could be wrong, aren’t that difficult to pull out if you start connecting the dots between what was said in chat logs with Adrian Lamo and purportedly Julian Assange, and comments made by people in Manning’s unit at the time he was arrested.
This has been mentioned on TAH before, but might bear repeating: In chat conversations with who was evidently Assange, Manning actively sought help in cracking passwords that would have allowed him access to higher levels of classified material. Given that help, and he wasn’t turned down, Manning could have gone on to cause far more damage than what was ultimately done.
The argument that Wikileaks was somehow capable of filtering the released material is also spurious. At the time of release, Wikileaks went through a big fight internally over that exact issue with one faction wanting names redacted so that those individuals wouldn’t be put in harms way. Assange turned them down.
@65 Ah. Thank you. Somehow, the first time I read it, I couldn’t get there from here with what you said. I understand now.
@59 AJax
Karzai? You’re quoting KARZAI !!?? That paragon of Virtue, Justice and Truth?? ROTFLMBO !!!!!
He could tell me that the sky was blue … and I’d have to step outside and check.
Of course, YMMV …
@66: any credibility Bradass’s moral arguments might’ve had got blown out when he told his fan clubs (thru his lawyer) that he wants to run for office after he’s released (good luck running from inside your pine box, bitch). It’s simpler than his transgender crisis, and far tawdrier: it’s all about his sense of entitled self-importance and his need to feed that. As others have noted, he’s mad that the Army didn’t recognize what a special little snowflake he was. If only they had, and shown him the door sooner.
The fact that this cum stain dropped a metric shit ton of files instead of one or two that supposedly bothered his conscience is a dead giveaway that he was not acting as a whistle blower.
clear and simple by releasing the files he broke the law, and the contents of what he released makes him a traitor.
I am NOT Breanna fucking Manning.
Me thinks Jax may have hung around Veterans for Peace a bit too long. And while we’re on the subject, if Breanna’s conduct would have endangered you and your team, you would be the very first on top of the highest mountain you could find and raising holy farhking hell about it.
Matter of fact, if you were close to being killed you would be in here singing an entirely different tune, demanding “justice”, thats how pissed off you’d be. Shit and wipe your butt or get off the toilet.
Getting back to this elitist POS trailer that will not play well anywhere outside Hollywood, Manhattan and Berkeley: can anyone tell me what direct knowledge does Oliver Effing Stone have of what is hard for a lower-ranking soldier to do? Because he directed Platoon? Sitting there pontificating like a sage. He has as much subject matter expertise as I do, for Chrissakes.
As I understand it the material that Manning released was not within is job description. He had no operational ‘Need to Know” any of it. He wandered around in files he had no right to be in to do his job. He was in truth, Spying. I say strap his ass to a 2000 lb JDAM and drop in on the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
He is a terrorist, Assange aided and abetted Manning and the Ecuadorians are sheltering Assange. That makes them co-conspirators . As George Bush said,”if you not with us, you are against us.
And screw anyone who complains. Stop their checks, as it seems that half the world is on our dole. Offer to pay for the clean up of the crater. Then stiff um.
@69 ExHack:
Can’t say I disagree with your comment that entitled self-importance was a factor. Still, I’ll stand by the idea that Manning’s main motive was revenge because he was mad at the Army for whatever reason, or combination of reasons that might have come into play. Yet another reason, for example, might be that from some accounts Manning was considered an hysterical drama queen and nobody liked him.
Whatever the cause, Manning wanted payback. That’s the correct stone-simple Occam’s Razor explanation for all of this, and not one that fits the later narrative about making the world a better place with a so-called noble effort to expose the sins of the Army or State Department. All of the later stuff is a justification based on a false assumption about Manning’s main original motive.
There’s also no doubt that there’s a faction desperate to have Manning’s case fit the later narrative. Among other things, for example, they trot out Daniel Ellsberg’s sorry old ass, and demand that the rest of us pretend that Manning and Ellsberg are birds of a feather when they’re not.
It’s a political theater construct to add a smoke-screen around facts and circumstances.
#72 as far as direct knowldge I don’t know. However, being a Vietnam vet, he should have known better than to be a part of this pure, unadulterated horse shit.
@74 Perry – One simple narrative is as good as the other, I guess.
The transgender smokescreen (which I believe it for the most part is, to suck in a few more leftish suckers) pisses me off though. I know a few trans people. Two of them work for my agency – they show up every day and quietly do their jobs, fight the fight. Another is a high school friend of mine who’s now a brilliant attorney (and sad to say, she’s been sucked in by Bradass’s BS, we’ve had to agree to disagree – she’s a civil libertarian and other than sticking up for one she believes is a trans sista, she and I also disagree on whether Bradass’s actions were whistleblowing or aiding the enemy.)
All of these trans people I know are good, decent, hardworking Americans. I hate to see them tarred with the same feces-covered brush Bradass has so richly earned with his treasonous actions. IMVHO, this has nothing to do with transgender and everything to do with an emotionally disturbed narcissistic child who wants things his way, and is learning the hard way that the world doesn’t revolve around him.
@75. Don’t sell Oliver Stone short. He has a lengthy history of drug and alcohol-related abuse and arrests, has been in jail a few times, has torn through a few marriages, and was almost singlehandedly responsible for the popular image of the Vietnam Vet as a drug-crazed murderer. He is buds with Michael Moore, another millionaire who despises capitalism, and the two fully support Assange who, as we know, is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, hiding from extradition to Sweden where he is charged with sex crimes. (No easy accomplishment, given Sweden’s reputation for free loving.)
I’m really sick of people calling Manning a “whistleblower.” He is not. The military has very specific procedures for being a whistleblower. If he thought the helicopter attack was illegal, he could report his concerns to the command, IG, or Congress. Doing that would protect him from retaliation. However, sneaking files off of SIPR, burning them to a CD, and sending it to a website for publication is not whistleblowing. That’s illegal.
A Judge Advocate named Diaz a few years ago at GTMO took some coded info and placed it in a Valentines card for a lefty lawyer he had a crush on, claiming whistleblower. Diaz was convicted, sent to Levenworth, and lost his law license. That was nothing compared to the self-serving, illegal action of Manning. Or another way to view it. Pollard got life for stealing secrets and giving to to Israel, our friends. Manning did the same but effectively gave it to bin Laden and AQ, a group in a shooting war with us. A real whistleblower would get the info to the right officials without passing thousands of secrets to AQ.
@75 Redacted – I did not know until now (or had forgotten) that Stone served in Vietnam – and with distinction, if you believe his Wikipedia profile. My deep apologies to him on that point and that one only.
I’m glad I waited for somebody else to mention Oliver Stone. Oliver did serve in Vietnam as a grunt (506th INF I believe) and was regarded as a troublemaker by his CO and platoon. He managed to catch more NJP’s and ART15’s than any other troop in the unit. He is also one of the men that got the “indiscriminate killing of water buffalo and villagers livestock” by door gunners of the AHC’s assigned as air support for that battalion. US Army & CID grounded several AHC companies to count beans and bullets. CID investigated as thoroughly as possible under the circumstances and determined the “war crimes” Stone and several others spoke of, were non-existant. The CO had to ship him out on first available bird to Long Bihn (LBJ) and then stateside for discharge and his own safety.
@57.
The only war crimes this clown saw was on the Nintendo or DVD’s he brought with him.
Fucking Fobbitt sack of shit.
I also love the stoned-looking hippie in the “teaser”.
Where is Hart Viges when you need him? You know?
Dude only shows up at the urinal stall next to you, know what I mean?
I am surprised Hart and the boys (IVAW) are not knee deep in this…
Point taken AC, looks like a lot of shit is (conveniently) left out of his bio.
1- Manning leaked classified information.
2- Leaking classified information is illegal. Why he leaked it is irrelevant.
3- Lawbreakers get punished.
It’s really that simple.
“…then you can stand up with him for the firing squad…”
Actually, I think the military uses hanging for non-wartime executions.
Flagwaver: nope. Military executions are by lethal injection now. See AR 190-55, para 3-1.
I am wondering how many Hollywood celebrities have their employees sign non-disclosure agreements as a condition for being hired. Maybe if a few of Michael Jackson’s personal assistants “wanted to start a discussion”, it could have prevented some of those molestations.
@87 Hack, it’s the liberal hypocrisy striking again….they want everything exposed that hurts America while using NDAs to cover their own infidelity and drug/alcohol abuse…they want to restrict your right to firearms while making movies that glorify the criminal use of firearms and having their body guards heavily armed to keep you away from them….
If the United States population had any sensibility left at all a stamp of approval from anyone associated with the cess pool that is our movie industry would be an automatic fail on all counts…..but our population has become obsessed with celebrity.
When being a drug addicted, cheating liar elicits nothing but sympathy and support as opposed to disgust and derision your culture is no longer cultured but diseased. That is the state of culture in America….
So #84, I can turn the same argument that was used on me to respond to you. If a woman steals a loaf of bread to feed her hungry children, is it wrong? Technically she is breaking the law, but she’s doing it to feed her children. So yes, he broke the law, but does that mean we should just convict him and lock him up, no questions asked? The reason I ask that is because I personally don’t like how our government has handled the conflicts in Iraq OR Afghanistan. And the fact that our government is now collecting phone records on pretty much all of us, regardless of whether they are international or domestic, and regardless of whether there is a reasonable amount of suspicion, only proves to me that they are not to be trusted.
http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/05/18781930-exclusive-cia-didnt-always-know-who-it-was-killing-in-drone-strikes-classified-documents-show?lite
Yup, go ahead and trust them if you want to. But according to this, our government is just drone-striking and killing people without really even knowing who they are killing.
Now don’t write me off as some crazy hippie who has just been hanging out with VVAW or Veterans for Peace, or whoever the hell you said I’ve been hanging out with too much. Because I can tell you I wouldn’t have done what Manning did.
And to answer PintoNag’s question, one of my close friends is an SF soldier who just retired after 20+ years in the service. And I’ve talked to him quite extensively about my opinions and my thoughts about this and other topics related to Iraq and Afghanistan because I also wanted to hear what he thought since he’s had more deployments than I can even count.
@86. See, I completely did not know that. I never really looked it up and my Sergeant told me it was hanging back whan that dipshit rolled the grenade into the TOC in ’05. It’s good to be up on these kinds of thing, just in case it ever came up in conversation.
@89. WTF are you talking about? Is it last word syndrome that’s at play here? Is that what this is about? You want to equate Manning’s crimes with bread theft? Jeez. Let me know if I really have to parse this out for you b/c, quite frankly, I had enough of you BEFORE this Manning thing.
Obviously, what Manning did isn’t quite on the same level. I’m simply saying that just because it’s against the law doesn’t mean that we should just convict him, lock him up, and never think about it again. That particular example was simply on my mind because someone else just used it, I believe in this thread. With regards to Manning, I just think that this has opened up some questions about how our gov’t has been handling things in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I’m sorry to hear that you’ve had enough of me
2/17 Air Cav: apparently Anonymous in Jax does equate the two. But she (I think) is also inconsistent. In a previous comment above, she justifies Manning’s acts as “reporting immoral acts”. Yet theft is also an unquestionably immoral act, and as she indicates immediately above she’s willing to give at least some thieves a pass.
Oh, and as for that “no one was killed” claim – here’s what the Ass Assange had to say about those Afghan informants he helped Manning out: “They’re informants… if they get killed, they deserve it.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1351927/WikiLeaks-Julian-Assange-new-book-Afghan-informants-deserve-killed.html
I’m guessing we weren’t able to protect all of those that later “disappeared”. And yes, we did try:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/07/31/wikileaks-fallout-pentagons-rush-to-save-afghan-informants.html
Okay so pardon me, the exact example that was given was by Hondo in #38- Jean Valjean’s sentence to years in the galleys for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving sister and her children (see Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables). After all, theft is an immoral act – right?
What I’m saying is that yes, Manning did break the law by releasing the documents. But then there’s this news story stating that the CIA drone-striked people without even really knowing who they were killing. I’m sorry if you disagree, but I don’t feel that is just a necessary evil of war. That is just plain wrong. So Manning released some documents and deserves to be punished? Who is going to be punished for murdering innocent people? That’s what I want to know.
And I’m sure that this post will make you hate me even more so I apologize in advance. Maybe Jonn can attest that I’m not just some lunatic nutjob. But then again, maybe he’ll side with you!
No Hondo, I don’t believe theft to just strictly be an immoral act. I don’t think it’s that black and white. If a person is stealing bread to feed their hungry family, I don’t think it’s stricly immoral. As a mother, I know you’d do whatever necessary to feed your children. And yes, I am a female.
@89 wrote: I personally don’t like how our government has handled the conflicts in Iraq OR Afghanistan.
Ajax, you are well within your rights to hold that opinion.
Manning will get his day in court, but his defense about greater good does not and will not hold water regardless of your opinion about the war or any Hollywood liberal opinions on the war.
Had Manning only released the single incident report and information regarding the collateral damage investigation he might have some credibility. The sheer volume of work he released puts the lie to his defense.
This is no loaf of bread for hungry kids theft, this is hundreds of thousands of records that had he taken time to read each one using a single minute for each record he would have needed a year and a half just to read them, never mind categorize and determine which were pertinent to crimes and which were not….
He’s a full of shit liar who violated his signed clearance agreement. His day in court will reveal his true nature, I doubt there will be much sympathy for him after his conviction.
A debate over those other issues might be appropriate in a different venue under different conditions. As private citizens we are always free to debate the need to use combat actions to resolve foreign policy. We are always free to debate the conduct of troops in those combat actions.
However, those in the military are not private citizens and are not free to release records they have agreed to protect and hold secret. That’s a crime, and the sheer volume of records released make any claim to the contrary disingenuous at best.
I’ll side with anyone who clicks the ads. I’m only a capitalist pig after all is said and done. I never agree with JAX, but I like her just fine, the IVAW refugee that she is.
@94: There’s a difference between releasing classified information that gets our assets and troops killed, because you’re butthurt that your commanding officer won’t call you Loretta, and policy set by a political administration. One can be dealt with through the existing laws and the other can be dealt with through the ballot box. You know all this. One is actionable, because of physical evidence, and the other is philisophical based on your perception.
@94 Drone strikes are and should be a serious debate, those drone strikes don’t negate Manning’s guilt or crimes. The two are not related, people who commit crimes are punished when they are caught not when all of them are caught.
Let’s suppose your CIA drone story results in an investigation and criminal complaint being filed for murder, you are not suggesting that Manning is somehow less guilty because someone else committed a different more horrific crime are you?
Suppose I rob a bank but I witness a murder and I call 911 to report the murder, you’re not suggesting I go free on the bank robbery charge because I helped catch a murderer are you?
Even if Manning’s current revisionist history had merit (which as will be seen it does not) the 749,000 other documents he released having nothing to do with drone strikes make him a criminal who faces execution….
@97 me too, I like counterpoint….we don’t want to become the conservative version of the DU with a bunch of like minded tools constantly reinforcing each others world view free of contentious debate….
I’m getting crotchety in my old age, I like being roused to defend an opinion.