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Comment by zeteo | Hacker News Reader

>when enough members of the military decide to do what's better for the country against the lawful orders of the elected government that they serve, we call it a coup

I'm not disputing that Manning broke the laws of the military. But calling his actions an incipient coup is laughable. In a world in which the worst offenders at Abu Ghraib got ten years (and were released much sooner), sentencing him to 35 years (as a deterrent!) is a disgrace. I don't see how you can defend the laws and regulations of an organization where it's much better to commit a crime against humanity than to publicize one and err on the side of too much info.

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> In a world in which the worst offenders at Abu Ghraib got ten years (and were released much sooner), sentencing him to 35 years (as a deterrent!) is a disgrace.

Does that mean that Manning doesn't deserve his sentence? If so, how?

> I don't see how you can defend the laws and regulations of an organization where it's much better to commit a crime against humanity than to publicize one and err on the side of too much info.

I hate this about Manning's supporters. He exposed a small amount of wrongdoing with his leaking. The majority of the stuff he leaked didn't show any kind of criminal behavior, and instead exposed internal communications by US govt officials for no legitimate purpose. These leaks damaged relationships with foreign governments and jeopardized the lives of people in foreign nations employed by or cooperating with the US.

Stop pretending that he was a selfless warrior for truth and justice.

> Does that mean that Manning doesn't deserve his sentence? If so, how?

Because it is immoral to remove a fellow human's freedom for lengthy periods of time unless absolutely necessary, when there is no other way to protect the public from their future actions. For example, in the case of unreformable violent criminals, who must be physically restrained lest they injure others if unrestrained, there may be no other option than multiyear or even (in rare cases) multi-decade imprisonment. But that does not happen often, and even most people who committed violent crimes pose much less risk once they grow older.

There is no way you would be sentenced to 35 years for a nonviolent crime here (Denmark), because the idea is preposterous. Not even if you leaked something that offended the fairly influential and US/NATO-loving military. Sentences longer than 2 years are rare, reserved only for extreme crimes (murder, rape, etc.), which seems quite correct.

Americans seems somewhat vengeful, even sadistic on the subject, rather than rational. Somehow absurdly long sentences like confining someone in a cage for 5 years or even 10 years is seen as a "short" sentence, I guess because compared to locking people in a cage for 30 or 50 years or outright killing them, it seems lenient in comparison. You even hear people joking gleefully about prison rape. Not sure how you could approach fixing that culture.

>He exposed a small amount of wrongdoing with his leaking. [...] These leaks damaged relationships with foreign governments and jeopardized the lives of people

Abu Ghraib also damaged international relations and placed American lives at increased risk from terrorism. Plus, you know, it involved physically torturing people, not chatting online with Julian Assange.

Yet it is only Manning's crime that's judged worthy of deterrence (by a 3.5 times larger punishment). That's because his real fault is that of exposing the inner workings of a style of policy making that can only function effectively as long as the public is kept ignorant. Only this kind of a crime can "undermine the entire system", as the prosecutor very frankly put it.

Abu Ghraib may have embarrassed America, but the real no-no is exposing its government.

No, Manning's real crime to the military is disregarding orders and showing his own judgement.

Abu Ghraib was horrific, but it was close enough to what was ordered to be done by Mi, by the CIA, by special forces (water boarding, walling, stress positions, sleep deprivation) that no one thinks the soldiers really disregarded the chain of command (aside from the standing orders against prisoner treatment which others were by direct order ignoring), they just got out of hand. So from the military's point of view, it's not a discipline problem.

Abu Ghraib, as a systemic thing, is deterred by simple never issuing orders to do that kind of thing again and making it explicitly clear that it's prohibited. After all, non of the soldiers involved thought they were explicitly disobeying their superiors, they thought they were doing what everyone else did. If ordered not to torture people, they would not torture people.

Manning, on the other head, disregarded lawful orders stemming from the civilian command authority to protect information. He didn't do it because what he leaked exposed crimes against humanity(he leaked far more than leak the "collateral murder" video), he did it because he thought he knew what was best.

Soldiers don't get to decide what they think is best with in the context of lawful orders. If they could, they might decide they know what is best for the country and stage a coup, or frag their commanding officer, or any number of other things.

That's what they needed to deter.

> and jeopardized the lives of people in foreign nations employed by or cooperating with the US.

Didn't independent studies/orgs show that this wasn't true, and was just a phrase paraded around by the government to get the public against Manning?

I'd be interested in seeing such studies, especially the methodology. The Taliban themselves were quite clear that they would be on the hunt for any and all collaborators, and there are eyewitness accounts of foreign service agents who had to be rapidly withdrawn from their post (sometimes in the middle of the night while literally out in a field) due to their name being revealed in these leaks.

And no offense, but what is the simplest explanation here? That a bunch of collaborator names were leaked and not a single person was put into harm's way as a result of that? Keep in mind that we're not talking about some random subdivision of the IRS, we're talking about the organization that gunned down Malala and detonated a bomb in the middle of a policeman's funeral.

Yes.

> These leaks damaged relationships with foreign governments.

If truth hurts it's not a good sign.

Hint: you don't really want to hear everything your friends might think of you, much less your frenemies, acquaintances, or coworkers.

The very fact that lowly private Manning had access to this stuff should tell you that the intelligence services of literally any country in the world have access to this.

The system is only effective at hiding information from citiziens, who are not able to access the very information that politicians use to guide their decisions. That is, of course, why they happily go on record with blatant lies, at no risk of being exposed. Contrast this with their complete non-statements in this current NSA situation; they would rather make no statement at all than be exposed as a liar, for no one knows what else Snowden/Greenwald will release that could make previous statements look like disinformation.

You'd be surprised but I really do want to know that and I believe it would benefit me greatly.

But would I get angry at my friend, or the person who told me what my friend secretly thinks of me?

The latter, of course. Humans are imperfect. Humans know that they are imperfect. Humans know that other people recognize their imperfections. Life goes on because we don't rub in each others' faces what we think of each others' imperfections. Sometimes it's necessary in cases where a particular imperfection is becoming a serious issue either in the persons life or in the friendship, but generally the best policy is to leave things be.

I love every single one of my friends dearly and would go to great lengths for them. But for any one I can point to a list of things that are flawed about them, and I'm sure every one of them could put together a long list of things flawed about me. I'd be pissed at someone who told one of my friends that, e.g. I thought they had unrealistic expectations about potential mates given their own looks, because the only reason someone would do that would be to either hurt my friend or to hurt me.

Human relationships are very often about delicacy, and part and parcel of delicacy is knowing what thoughts to share and what not to share. When someone takes away that discretion and makes that decision for you, you are entitled to get mad.

I find your opinion utterly bizarre.

Read some Eric Berne books. Human interactions are practically built on pretense and games (and it is not always bad - actually, unless you are caught up in a self-destructive game, it often is good). Unless you're communicating with robots all day, truth is not exactly the primary factor here. Otherwise morning greeting would look like:

- I notice you! Here's some meaningless words acknowledging the fact. - I noticed you too. Please don't tell me anything about your life unless it's exciting but not making me envy you in any way. - Same to you, and please don't waste my time anymore now unless you are going to benefit me in some way. - I'm going to depart now, and I don't care how the rest of you day goes. - Neither do I for you.

I would submit a world like this would be perceived as utterly bizarre by most of us.

Are you married? Do you tell your wife every thing you think of her all the time?

I'm not married, but I doubt that I would tell her everything. That's not what I have an issue with. My issue is with the idea that society is some brittle construct that's reliant on honesty, and especially the idea that you would be angry at the person who leaked a secret rather than the person holding the secret.

>My issue is with the idea that society is some brittle construct that's reliant on (dis)honesty, and especially the idea that you would be angry at the person who leaked a secret rather than the person holding the secret.

Well, I am sorry to say that in fact society is that brittle and you are being lied to in one fashion or another most of the time.

I do want to clarify what I mean by lying though because it would be easy to interpret what I am saying as conspiratorial. In fact what I mean is that your information diet is nearly completely full with selective information, weasel words, legalese and implied trust. The constructs between nations and even within our nation are the same and often worse than interpersonal relations. So the reason that you trust any entity is not because they are moral pillars, its because they don't show you the questionable things that people do on a day to day basis that make little difference. This is exactly the argument against the widespread intelligence gathering - everyone is doing something illegal at pretty much any time. Similarly everyone, whether they know it or not lies to others on a daily basis (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/201111...)

So yes, it really is that fragile and it is insanely magnified at the global politics level way beyond you would even imagine.

> Well, I am sorry to say that in fact society is that brittle and you are being lied to in one fashion or another most of the time.

And you don't believe bit more honesty might be in order?

I would love to see that happen, but I don't think we can handle it from a biological perspective. We are too emotional, vain and have too muddled an understanding of our own goals and volition to be able to be honest even with ourselves let alone the rest of the world. It just doesn't seem feasible without some kind of widespread cognitive change.

In Europe we used to think that killing each other over some differences is a good idea. Two wars later, around 10% population lost and look how well we get along.

We used to like having slaves. All people used to hate gays and atheists. Women used to be perceived as incapable of having public lives.

At some point we might reach the conclusion that being lied to is not all that convenient because truth eventually comes out and if it's too far from perception it leads to shitstorms.

People can change. But they do not change by themselves. There is always some kind of technological advancement that forces people to change their ways. I sincerely hope that internet will lead us to more honest lives.

To wit, from the front page of HN right now: "Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23779561

Indeed you are correct that the truth will come out and I am the first person to support full transparency. I do know however that in this example, if the Japanese said they don't know what they are doing, please help - the people in charge would lose their jobs immediately. So it's not just a one way street with people being honest, it is also the public and everyone who has a voice understanding that there is a difference between incompetence, hostile intent and accidents.

People at the basic level demand perfection from people in power - so those in power do everything that they can to make it look like they are either infallible, or are victims. In one way or another how we as a society respond to failure that will determine how truthful we can be. If we continue to have the zero fault mindset for those in power, they will continue to lie.

^ I meant "reliant on dishonesty"

"If you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear"

Or I forget how the quote goes, but anyways I thought we supported the concept of privacy in general on this site. Governments need privacy to serve the interests of their people for the same reason people need privacy to serve their own interest.

Yeah. And corporations are people too. /sarcasm

Government should operate in the open. I might understand need for military secrecy of government of a small country in unfriendly region, but not for a broad secrecy of the government that has has largest military force in the world at its disposal. Unless you think that all this NSA thing is all good because government needs to have its privacy when it's spying you.

Don't be absurd. Of course I want to know these things. They don't stop thinking them because you don't find out, you know!

This comment is so remarkably naive and juvenile, I have to assume it's parody.

Well it wasn't a parody.

From what I heard relationships with foreign governments were damaged by the fact that foreign governments found out that friendly diplomacy called them chumps behind their backs. When the truth about this talk and how american diplomats understand words "friend" or "ally" leaked out it did hurt. As I said, if revealing what you really think about others hurts you, that's not a good sign. It's a sign that you might be kind of an asshole.

It's quite the opposite of naive and juvenile.

Are you sure you want everybody know all the truth about you? Every fine detail, including your bathroom routine, your most secret thoughts, your dreams and your secret wishes? Does the word "privacy" mean anything to you? Yes, knowing the whole truth sometimes hurts. Some truths are not meant to be known by everybody.

What did manning release that was an actual war crime?

I imagine they'r referring to the video of a helicopter shooting someone in Iraq who turned out to be holding a camera rather than a rocket launcher, which Wikileaks released under the title 'Collateral murder.'

If you ask me the real war crime is that the administration we had at the time went to war in Iraq in the first place, based on an apparent mixture of personal animus between Presidents Bush & Hussein and an alarmingly thin piece of social engineering by an Iraqi criminal/defector known as 'Curveball' who wanted to (at best) destabilize the Saddam Hussein regime or (at worst, but quite understandably) evade prison in Iraq. This entirely optional conflict led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, or by some counts >1 million, while (IMHO) significantly prolonging the war in Afghanistan by turning that theater into a sideshow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB234/index.htm

I don't think Manning's information releases revealed very much about the war in Iraq other than to shed light on this particular helicopter incident which I think falls rather short of being a war crime, although I do think it was worth bringing to public attention.

On the other hand, I see no public benefit whatsoever in teh release of all the State Department cables, and as far as I can make out Manning took them and Assange released them just because they were classified by default. When their full contents became available because of carelessness with the crypto key outcome was some diplomatic red faces but there sure wasn't any big reveal of criminal activity.

Had he stopped at just the video I would be on his side. He didn't. He let loose 700,000 pages of documents that he shouldn't have and didn't need to do. He deserves the jail time.

That's roughly where I stand, though I don't think he deserves as much jail time, will get early parole, and was mistreated during his pretrial detention.

I'd grant him the information relating to the Granai airstrike as well. But on the other hand he wasn't facing jail time for that anyways; the judge had found him not guilty of that one.

> I don't see how you can defend the laws and regulations of an organization where it's much better to commit a crime against humanity than to publicize one and err on the side of too much info.

Abu Ghraib was a war crime, not a crime against humanity.

Abu Ghraib a crime against humanity? Yes, that's similar to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. That's nearly exactly the same thing as the genocide in Rwawanda. That's definitely on the same level as Pol Pot.

The difference however is Abu Ghraib didn't put intelligence sources at risk, it didn't endanger the lives of people. How many people died in Abu Ghraib from being photographed with underwear on their head? How many innocent lives were put at risk because of Abu Ghraib? I am certainly not defending the soldiers involved in that situation but to try and draw some moral relativism between the two cases is absurd. You likely have no idea how Americans are treated by the Taliban and Al Q when they're captured.

Ask Daniel Pearl: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pearl

By the way, the guys in Abu were fighting on the same side as the guys that beheaded Daniel Pearl. They were combatants. They weren't innocent little girls walking to school. The irony is if the US soldiers at Abu had shot those prisoners on the battlefield, nobody would have complained, but they put underwear on their heads and the world freaks the hell out, yet quietly forgetting about cases like Daniel Pearl. We could argue Geneva convention all day long, but until the Taliban is a signatory to that convention or wears uniforms declaring themselves as part of a legitimate military force, the Geneva Conventions never applied, though of course we (meaning the US military) still follow those rules. And those that didn't -- were punished.

While we're so busy being outraged, let's get outraged about the Taliban stoning women to death. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15688354 Bradley Manning helped the Taliban find informants. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/taliban-study-wi...

One specific and direct result of Manning is the case of Shakil Afridi, the doctor in Pakistan that helped find Bin Laden. He's in a Pakistan prison for 30 years after ostensibly being tortured.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18175964

Since Mr. Manning directly made his discovery possible, what punishment should Manning receive? There are dozens and dozens of intelligence sources and relationships that were significantly harmed because of Manning.

If you have ever spent any time with a security clearance, you'd know that there are countless unintended consequences that result from revealing a source or a collection method. Being morally outraged over Bradley Manning puts you in the same shoes as a Taliban sympathizer because not only was Manning a soldier, sworn to uphold the Constitution, the lives of his fellow soldiers, allies and others were in his hands. He was given a position of public trust and the responsibility that goes with it. Yet because he had emotional and personal problems he chose to do what he did.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/psychologist-wikile...

A raw information dump isn't "blowing the whistle," it's an intent to inflict harm on the United States and allies. If you wanted to expose a security hole in Gmail, for example, you wouldn't expose every single gmail user's information. You'd expose the amount necessary to reveal the problem. The simple truth is that Manning is a kid, he's intelligent to some degree, but he certainly isn't an Edward Snowden. Manning had no idea what he was doing. By his own words he said he didn't intend to harm the United States. Either he's a liar or a complete fool.

There are countless intelligence and diplomatic relationships that have been harmed, in addition to people who have been directly killed, captured or targeted as a result of Manning.

Snowden on the other hand, released information about illegal activities against US citizens that were in direct violation of the law. The Snowden releases, while potentially compromising national security from a strategic standpoint, didn't put any lives at direct risk. Manning's releases however put dozens of people directly in the line of fire. I am not going to defend Snowden, however a better case could be made for him than Manning and certainly no comparison could be made to Abu Ghraib. That's just tomfoolery.

>You likely have no idea how Americans are treated by the Taliban and Al Q when they're captured [... T]he guys in Abu were fighting on the same side as the guys that beheaded Daniel Pearl. [... I]f the US soldiers at Abu had shot those prisoners on the battlefield, nobody would have complained, but they put underwear on their heads and the world freaks the hell out

Your obsession with terrorists' lack of scruples is causing you to become what you hate. You think it's OK to humiliate and torture them because they're terrorists, they think it's OK to behead us because of religion and nationality. How about a little show of strength and dealing with them without lowering to their level?

>>> Your obsession with terrorists' lack of scruples is causing you to become what you hate

Did it? Did he already cut off people's heads, blow up markets and issued fatwas calling for murdering infidels? Or did he just express an opinion that maybe war prisoner abuse, while being undeniably bad, is not the same as murdering innocent people or perpetrating genocide? If in your eyes that makes one the same as terrorist, your priorities are seriously messed up.

They didn't say it was OK to humiliate or torture people, so stop drawing your own conclusion on that please. They said it was not morally equivalent to an actual war crime, especially the kind that got people put in the dock at Nürnberg.

> The difference however is Abu Ghraib didn't put intelligence sources at risk, it didn't endanger the lives of people.

Manadel al-Jamadi is a pretty compelling witness to the falsity of this claim.

The difference however is Abu Ghraib didn't put intelligence sources at risk

The hell it didn't. (I stopped reading there, so maybe you made some good points later on.)

By discarding any pretense of adherence to the Geneva Convention, Abu Ghraib put every US soldier at risk.

> Abu Ghraib put every US soldier at risk.

At risk of what? What was already happening to both soldiers and civilians? You can't mean torture, death, or imprisonment. Hell, the Taliban and the like were doing far, far worse already.

So, I'm honestly curious, what was the increased risk?

> so maybe you made some good points later on.

The OP made mention of how Manning's leak directly led to intelligence sources imprisonment and death.

I wonder if there is anything other than suspicious backing up your claims here?

Gee, I dunno. I'm no great military strategist or anything, but it seems like allowing the Taliban to establish the ground rules isn't the best approach.

For one thing, not all of the US's potential adversaries are radical Islamists. In future conventional wars, we will need the moral authority to demand that our prisoners be treated in accordance with international laws and treaty obligations. Debacles like Abu Ghraib -- to say nothing of the Iraq war in general -- rob us of that moral authority, in much the same way that the Roman Catholic Church loses some of its moral authority every time another child sex abuse case comes to light. To occupy the high ground, you must first take it.

The OP made mention of how Manning's leak directly led to intelligence sources imprisonment and death.

No, orchestrating a bogus public health campaign led to Afridi's imprisonment. As far as I'm concerned, Afridi can take his place next to Mengele in medical infamy.

Manning did an unalloyed good thing in bringing the CIA's tactic to light [1]. I want foreign operatives to tell the Agency to fuck off when they come up with ideas like, "Hey, let's start a vaccination program so we can subvert the local populace and find our bad guy."

You seem to think that the ends justify the means. That's great, as long as you have perfect knowledge of future consequences. In that sense, both the US government and Bradley Manning made the same logical error. The difference is, his actions had some positive consequences as well as negative ones.

[1]: If, in fact, he did. There seems to be some disagreement with briandear's (lack of a) citation on this.

>>>> In future conventional wars, we will need the moral authority to demand that our prisoners be treated in accordance with international laws and treaty obligations.

A little wrinkle here is that most US adversaries in recent wars didn't give a flying duck about US moral authority. And there's no reason why that would change - it's not like US is going to war with Sweden or Canada. Not that supposedly civilized countries aren't capable of mass atrocities - look at what Germans did in 20th century. Did they care for the moral authority of the Jews they mass-murdered? I highly doubt so.

Moral authority is important only for US and only because winning the war while destroying one's society may not be worth it.

>>>> The difference is, his actions had some positive consequences as well as negative ones.

You mean, actions of US government don't have positive consequences? I think you're getting way ahead of the facts here.

You mean, actions of US government don't have positive consequences? I think you're getting way ahead of the facts here.

(Shrug) Unless you owned a lot of HAL or another big contractor, the Iraq war didn't have a lot of upside.

For you, maybe. Some would think removal of homicidal maniac dictator that openly paid terrorists, invaded neighboring countries, used chemical weapons, mass-murdered his own population and bribed top functionaries of the UN[1] to look other way is some upside. But I guess who cares what foreigners do to foreigners, there are billions of them anyway.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/feb/04/iraq.unitednati...

I don't pay taxes to police the entire world. I can't afford to. Maybe you can.

Changing the topic, are you? I take it as an implicit admission you were wrong implying there were no positive effects of US policy at all. It is good that you realize now you overreached, hopefully next time you'd use less hyperbole and recognize that you can't just ignore facts you don't like.

Yep, sounds like you win this one. GG.

I don't think you can think of "The Taliban" as a single coherrent group that have a "policy" on torturing american soldiers.

When Abu Ghraib was publicised, a lot of moderate taliban would have become radicalised. That seems rather logical to me.

> At risk of what?

In the specific case of soldiers in Iraq, at risk of radicalisation of that part of the population which, prior to the events at Abu Ghraib and them becoming known in Iraq (which occurred before they were leaked in the West), had been supportive (or at least tolerant) of the occupation.

For the rest of the military, a greater risk of hostile populations and bigger psyops advantages for adversaries in foreign operations.

> The OP made mention of how Manning's leak directly led to intelligence sources imprisonment and death.

just because someone mentions something, does not make it true.

up is down.

Right because then the enemy might get really REALLY mad at US soldiers.

> Abu Ghraib a crime against humanity?

Depends on how you define such, your examples meet old UN definition, Abu Ghraib meets newer ICC definition.

> How many people died in Abu Ghraib..

at least one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisone... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Jamadi

> How many innocent lives were put at risk because of Abu Ghraib?

Depends on how you define innocent, but given WMD was a false pretence, and regime change the moral justification retreat position, torture and prisoner abuse at the same site as the former regime is pretty damning. I would say a lot of lives were put at risk by this change in 'optics'.

> let's get outraged about the Taliban..

No problem.

> By the way, the guys in Abu were fighting..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Jamadi was a suspect, not a combatant.

> One specific and direct result of Manning is the case of Shakil Afridi

There's absolutely nothing specific or direct about Manning and this, the link you provide makes no such suggestion.

> There are dozens and dozens of intelligence sources and relationships that were significantly harmed because of Manning.

This was not to the case according to military testimony: http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/07/31/59869.htm http://www.thenation.com/blog/174622/seven-myths-about-bradl... (see number five.)

EDIT: I misread, thinking you meant injured or killed. It just hurt relationships, I think that point is fairly hard to argue. Sure, it hurt relationships. I'd say Abu Ghraib looms larger in their consciousness than the leaks that took place though.

> Being morally outraged over Bradley Manning puts you in the same shoes as a Taliban sympathizer because not only was Manning a soldier

Echoes of GWB: you are either with us or against us. Most people have the maturity to rise above this simplistic level of thinking.

> How many innocent lives were put at risk because of Abu Ghraib?

further to what I wrote above:

On April 20, 2004 insurgents fired forty (40) mortar rounds into the prison. Twenty-two detainees were killed and 92 wounded. Commentators thought the attack was either as an attempt to incite a riot or retribution for detainees' cooperating with the United States.[6]

reasonable to surmise shelling was to stop or prevent information being given up under torture.

So wait, now US soldiers must take the blame for one set of terrorists killing other terrorists to prevent the latter from talking? Maybe also the police is to blame when Mafia is killing witnesses? Abu Ghraib abuses are bad, but it looks like you're losing perspective here and try to paint every wrong being done as US fault, no matter who did it or why.

Blame isn't as black and white as you are making out.

If the police have a duty of care to witnesses, and the Mafia kill them, then the police should take some blame. Not as much as the mafia. Think of a witness protection program, if they fail at their task then they are partially to blame.

So no, I am not trying to paint it all as being US' fault, you can tell that because I wrote "insurgents fired".

You wrote "insurgents fired" but also you wrote that "innocent lives" (supposedly talking about imprisoned terrorists) are at risk because of what happened in Abu Ghraib and brought other terrorists firing as an example. SO you laid the blame not on terrorists that fired but on US forces that captured the terrorists.

in my initial comment, which applies as much to the staff as the people you assume are terrorists:

> How many innocent lives were put at risk because of Abu Ghraib?

Depends on how you define innocent

"Abu Ghraib a crime against humanity? Yes, that's similar to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. That's nearly exactly the same thing as the genocide in Rwawanda. That's definitely on the same level as Pol Pot."

Right, then, so you're fine with me murdering you as long as I don't torture you first? Better than the worst is not good enough.

"Manning's releases however put dozens of people directly in the line of fire."

Everyone keeps saying this. Can you explain how it is that the Army and the Obama administration, who have unparalleled interest in seeing Manning discredited and have gone to great lengths to do so, have so far failed to uncover a single instance of Manning's releases actually harming a human being?

Do you have any source that would link arrest of Shakil Afridi to WikiLeaks and Manning documents?

I cannot find such a link.

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