Bradley Manning Sentenced to 35 Years in Prison

government sought 60

US Army

Bradley Manning, the private first class who was convicted on 19 counts related to the leak of State Department memos and video to Wikileaks, was sentenced to 35 years in prison. He faced up to 136 years in prison, with government prosecutors seeking a 60 year sentence. Manning had been previously given 112 days off his sentence for his treatment while in pre-trial detention at Quantico. During the sentencing hearing, Manning apologized that his actions "hurt" people and said he believed it would help.

Reason TV had a discussion with three journalists covering the Manning trial on aspects including how much damage the leaks may have caused. Watch below:

More Reason on Bradley Manning here.

Comments

[m11_9]

Can they still torture him or is he finally off the hook to live out his sentence in peace?

[Xenocles]

Now it's up to his fellow inmates, like a normal criminal.

[Harvey_birdman]

Apparently he wants to become a woman.

He won't have an easy time in prison. And by "won't have an easy time" I mean he will be raped on a regular basis.

[sove739]

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[Joe M]

Wow, that's actually pretty great, considering. There's also this deep in the article:

The 1,182 days he has already spent in confinement since he was arrested in May 2010 will be applied toward his term, and the military's extensive credits for good behavior, along with parole opportunities, could mean that he serves fewer years than his stated sentence.

[Drake]

I'm guessing he'll do 5 to 7 years before they quietly let him out. Clayton Lonetree did far worse at the height of the Cold War and served 9 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_J._Lonetree

[Robert]

Maybe he'll get out under another identity as in The Broker.

[a better weapon]

OT but this "Stand up against 'Stand Your Ground'" PSA reenactment of Trayvon's death just hit my FB. It's extremely well done too (production wise).

http://news.yahoo.com/psa-reen.....10511.html

[a better weapon]

#1, they show Zimmerman reaching for his gun before engaging Trayvon (Trayvon is down the street, looking in a different direction, totally unaware of George's presence)

#2 they use the real 911 call of a witness as the background, but at the end it switches out to a re-enactment recording of a hysterical witness saying "that poor, young boy is dead!"

Pretty infuriating, and more so knowing it will be very effective in capturing the hearts of morons.

[Pro Libertate]

It's always a good practice to understand that if you have to lie to tell your story, then your story may be bullshit to begin with.

[Paul.]

I prefer ellipses(...) to fill in my facts...

[KPres]

Meh, at this point it's just preaching to the converted. Feeding themselves misinformation is good, though, because when they go spout that nonsense on public forums they get embarrassed by people that know what actually happened, and everybody who's on the fence sees it happen.

[Pro Libertate]

I think some of this is about making it a future narrative. Make enough noise, then people will remember, years from now, that that Nazi white supremacist lynched President Obama's son.

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, Obama's remaining sons run free:

Three Oklahoma teens murder exchange student because they were bored

Three teenage boys were charged on Tuesday in the killing of an Australian university student in Oklahoma, in what police said might have been a thrill killing.

Christopher Lane, 23, of Melbourne, was found dead of a gunshot wound on Friday, according to police in Duncan, Oklahoma, about 80 miles south of Oklahoma City.

Charged with first-degree murder are Chancey Allen Luna, 16, and James Francis Edwards Jr., 15, according to the Stephens County District Attorney's office. Michael Dewayne Jones, 17, who allegedly drove the vehicle carrying the other suspects, was charged with use of a vehicle in the discharge of a weapon and accessory to murder after the fact, the office said.

According to police, Jones said that the teens decided to kill someone "for the fun of it."

[Mike M.]

Nothing yet from Jackson, Sharpton, Holder, or any of the other usual suspects in the outrage manufacturing industry? What a shocker.

[Eduard van Haalen]

"According to police, Jones said that the teens decided to kill someone "for the fun of it."

Sounds like Leopold and Loeb. Are they University of Chicago graduates, too?

[PS]

So his groveling apology to the State knocked off 100 from his sentence?

[Andrew S.]

55 (the judge had already knocked it down to a max of 90 years), but yeah.

They've had him in Room 101 for a long while. He was bound to profess his love for Big Brother eventually.

[PS]

Amazing how few people actually would understand this reference. But then how many people have actually read, much less understand the relatively simple ideas behind 1984 these days?

[Paul.]

1984 is so 20 years ago...

[thom]

1984 is so 20 years ago...

More like 30. Maybe everybody thinks since we got past that year we're in the clear.

[Curtisls87]

I remember a rising sense of dread with respect to the coming of 1984, and then a sense of relief that most of the tenets of Big Brother had not come to pass. I realize now, that Orwell simply had the year wrong.

[Paul.]

*head in hands*

Jesus I'm old... can I pretend it's 20 years ago?

[?J?? de ?guila]

Might as well have been the American Lubankya.

[Sam Grove]

So his groveling apology to the State knocked off 100 from his sentence?

That was part of his unofficial plea deal.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

I bet Manning is sincerely sorry that he allowed Julian Assange to use him and feed him delusions of grandeur. He also has to be sorry that his revelations seem to have made little difference with the Status Quo, other than making the government even more paranoid about leaks.

[John]

More than I thought. I was guessing 15 or so. But the military can be a real hammer on sentencing. They still have good time in the military system. So he will do around 25 of that.

[Pro Libertate]

Unless he gets pardoned by Obama.

Stop laughing. It could happen. Obama could accidentally pardon him instead on some guy who gave him lots of money or something.

[wareagle]

and how does Obama pardon Manning but not Snowden? Other than it's Obama and most things he does come from bizzaro world.

[Paul.]

and how does Obama pardon Manning but not Snowden?

Manning has himself remained very quiet. In addition, Manning's defense was never "I did to stick it to my government", it was an amalgam of "I did it because I was under stress and gay".

Snowden is essentially giving the middle finger to the Obama administration and remains defiant.

[John]

I won't laugh. If things got disparate enough for Obama, he would pardon Bradley as a make up gift to the anti-war left.

[Andrew S.]

There's an anti-war left?

[wareagle]

you'll see it again when a Repub is POTUS.

[Paul.]

Chris Christie?

[?J?? de ?guila]

Oh fuck no, he'll be on the Hillary War Wagon as VP candidate!!!!!!!

[thom]

Code Pink?

[?J?? de ?guila]

Yes, CP would qualify but there are so few of them.

[Pro Libertate]

No. That was a rhetorical reference.

[hamilton]

The likelihood of things getting desperate for Obama after all that's happened to date is nada.

[Hyperion]

Fuck, that is way too long. It's a bullshit sentence.

I thought he would get 15-20 and maybe serve 3-4.

He's likely to be in there for 15-20 now. Enough to ruin his life forever.

[Hyperion]

The only luck that he could have now, is a Libertarian POTUS who would pardon him.

Good luck, Bradley, really mean that.

[TheZeitgeist]

Manning committed crimes, he wasn't some conscientious whistle-blower. The guy dumped a huge pile of data he had not read himself, to people he never met in person. That's not brave, that's stupid.

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

Prediction: Robert Bales will receive less years for his massacre of 17 Afghani men women and children than Bradley Manning did for showing us the truth about how depraved, bloodthirsty, and mendacious our military has become.

[wareagle]

Manning embarrassed the political class and did so from within. That sort of thing does not go unpunished.

[Anonymous Coward]

Taking bets now.

Who will get the heftier sentence?

Bradley Manning? Or Whitey Bulger?

[Paul.]

If convicted, Whitey.

[Paul.]

Prediction: Robert Bales will receive less years for his massacre of 17 Afghani men women and children than Bradley Manning did for showing us the truth about how depraved, bloodthirsty, and mendacious our military has become.

Nah, I think Bales is going away for life.

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

From the Guardian:

"As a military jury is selected, the US soldier who admits killing 16 civilians is expected to fight for a chance of parole"

http://www.theguardian.com/wor.....fghanistan

Fucking Parole!

[Swiss Servator - past LTC(ret)]

You can "fight" for parole, but that doesn't mean jack squat to the judge. Frankly, he should be hung.

[albo]

Exactly. And I think military prisons still have you break big rocks into little ones. So it's dumb to do felonies while in uniform.

[Andrew S.]

He committed lese-majeste. For some reason, to people like you, it's the worst crime that can be committed.

[TheZeitgeist]

Embarrassing the sovereign is not the crime, its the utter stupidity in not knowing what you're doing. Daniel Ellsburg knew what the Pentagon Papers were for example, knew what was in them.

Ditto for this Snowden guy; he was aware of the information he had, contacted people he could himself verify, you know...due diligence.

Manning did none of those things. He had no idea what was in the data-dump, and no idea (really) of who he gave it to. Sorry, that's just stupidity committing crimes. How can you be a conscientious whistle-blower when you have no idea what you're blowing the whistle about? If you want to stick it to the man so-to-speak, you at least should aim.

And why would anyone want to help an organization like Wikileaks out? Look at the clown who runs it. Yikes.

[Nazdrakke]

And why would anyone want to help an organization like Wikileaks out?

When the house is burning down I am not going to turn away a guy that shows up in a propeller hat and clown shoes as long as he is also carrying a pail of water with him.

[TheZeitgeist]

If anything, Assange amply demonstrates there is a 'market opportunity' in the Sovereign Secrets clearinghouse business.

[MJGreen]

So the offense is not committing a crime, but committing a crime stupidly.

[TheZeitgeist]

Its the stupidity that makes it a crime. You can't express a moral defense when you have no idea what you're actually doing.

Manning was a tool manipulated by people via computer socializing. He's hapless and gullible as a bank teller handing over account #'s to a Nigerian prince. Yes, that's a crime.

[Hyperion]

So, what you are saying is that he did something stupid, not with malicious intent? And that gets you 35 years?

Did he kill anyone? I can't see a 35 year sentence without having done grievous harm to other human beings.

Fuck the government, they are out of control.

[TheZeitgeist]

So, what you are saying is that he did something stupid, not with malicious intent? And that gets you 35 years?

His intent was to be a whistle-blower (I think). Good intentions doesn't excuse reckless negligence - and yes I know government clowns get away with that every day, double-standards, etc. But that's not the point.

Did he kill anyone? I can't see a 35 year sentence without having done grievous harm to other human beings.

That's actually a good question about people getting killed because of what he did.

Fuck the government, they are out of control.

Two wrongs don't make a right, and the more wrongs 'our' side does in pulling Manning-dumps the more the government has an excuse in the wider discourse to explain their burgeoning police-state. Its completely counterproductive long-term.

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

"That's actually a good question about people getting killed because of what he did."

A question which you failed to address.

[wareagle]

he broke the club's rules and the club does not like that. No one forced Manning to join the military, take its oath, agree to its ways of doing things. He made a choice that history will ultimately judge.

[Anders]

The military is pretty serious about Chain Of Command.

There was an almighty failure of military leadership here in

- Allowing a confused homosexual (his defesnse) TS Clearance
- Allowing him to carry in CDRs-DVDRs
- Having TS-adjunct computers with RW drives (wtf?)
- A seemingly total failure of security audit procedures (which are typically semi-automated to begin with)

And the list goes on.

Where is the accountability in all this?

[Xenocles]

"No new lessons were learned."

The treatment of classified information is all relative. For me two tours ago everything TS had a serial number and was inventoried yearly. Last tour people thought nothing of printing more copies of SCI material than they needed for their next meeting and leaving it on the printer while they got coffee. I suppose the really secret stuff would have been treated more carefully, but that only highlights the overclassification problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Other people's money, brah. When you can spend millions on the latest war toys and computers with no financial risk, who cares what your seemingly loyal minions do with it?

[John]

Good question. The whole thing was a disgrace. And no one but Manning will ever be held accountable.

[MWG]

This^.

Wow, John summed it up pretty damn well.

[Hyperion]

Where is the accountability in all this?

At this point, does it really matter?

[[e-mail]]

This is a very sad day for the cause of liberty. This young man has been thrown into the bowels of America's CRIMINAL criminal justice system having been given an absurd and savagely long sentence which is not at all unusual in this formerly great country.

Bradley Manning has been thrown to the wolves for giving us, America's citizens, as well as the world's citizens, a tremendous gift of truth. He has sacrificed himself - utterly - for the cause of liberty and I would like to thank him for his sacrifice.

What a wonderful thing it would be for us to recognize his contribution through our words and our actions.

Further, how marvelous it would be if the Nobel Committee were to award him and Edward Snowden - jointly - their coveted Prize - for actual courage and sacrifice - while revoking that Prize mistakenly, and prematurely, extended to what would prove a most undeserving and despotic American President.

Three cheers for Bradley Manning!!!

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

^This a million times.

[Tarrou]

Nobody forced this guy to swear an oath not to do what he did. Aren't libertarians all about freedom of contract? This guy contracted with the US military to (among a host of other things) not hand their secrets out to the entire intarwubs. He broke that, and now the UCMJ, not the civilian courts, have assessed his punishment for this. The military is not the civilian world, it has different rules, and no one is forced to go live by them, we choose it.

[darlajtyson]

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[?J?? de ?guila]

Dylan: "So I remember every face
Of every man who put me here."

I hope Manning will be released. I will remember the faces of the evil criminals who put him there.

[Tarrou]

The man violated his oath. 35 years is light.

[?J?? de ?guila]

Sock Puppet has lost moral compass. Bradley exposed WAR CRIMES! That's what all the grotesquely twisted punishment-freak "war-shippers" ignore or forget. Drone on, Drone on.

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