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Comment by drblast | Hacker News Reader

When you join the military, you take an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies "foreign and domestic" (emphasis mine)

That's first. Obeying lawful orders is second.

It's debatable how this oath applies in Manning's case, but I think it's rather telling what order the things you are swearing to uphold come in.

When I was in the military my interpretation was that anything I was ordered to do that was contrary to the Constitution was an unlawful order. If I were taking the oath seriously, that would have required active dissent, not just ignoring the order.

http://usmilitary.about.com/od/joiningthemilitary/a/oathofen...

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What happens when every soldier feels within their rights to determine who the domestic enemies of the Constitution are, and takes unprecedented action against those enemies?

Did Manning reveal anything that was prima facie unconstitutional?

If the US wasn't breaking its own Constitution all the time, this wouldn't be even a problem. PRISM for that example breaks 4th, 5th and probably 9th Amendment. That's about a third of the Bill of Rights. Each and every NSA employee is under Oath to protect the Constitution. And then a person who tries just doing that (Snowden) is the one called traitor!

If not for things like PRISM the military and other branches of the Government wouldn't need to worry about soldiers/their employees reporting unconstitutional actions of the Government. Because it seems they break the law all the time, yes, that's a problem. The Governments problem not whistleblowers.

That was not the question. The question was if Manning specifically released ANY evidence of unconstitutional activity. The answer seems to be no.

Let me illustrate my point a little bit differently: you are a teacher at school. And there is this student Adam that constantly gets into trouble. On Monday he had a fight. On Tuesday he was absent on Math. On Wednesday he was calling names a younger girl from different class. Then on Thursday you find out that somebody broke window in a classroom. Are you surprised Adam is suspected?

Manning probably assumed that there must be some illegal stuff in the cables/documentation he revealed. And some documents show he was right.

So, the USG, similarly to Adam from my example has worked long and hard for its reputation. Don't blame some teachers/whistleblowers for suspecting usual suspects.

You are confusing wrongdoers here. All the wars are unconstitutional to begin with because Congress didn't declare them.

While you probably already know this, others may not: there is an organization called the Oath Keepers which is comprised of current and former uniformed members of military and civil services who affirm what you've stated - that the oath they took was first and foremost to defend the Constitution.

From their site (http://oathkeepers.org):

Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, reserves, National Guard, veterans, Peace Officers, and Fire Fighters who will fulfill the Oath we swore, with the support of like minded citizens who take an Oath to stand with us, to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help us God. Our Oath is to the Constitution.

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