WikiLeaker Bradley Manning found not guilty of 'aiding the enemy'

Re: No great surprise...

thats an unbeliveable statement to make. At the time 06-07 in Baghdad, there were something like 3000 bodies turning up a month with many extra holes in them and you can't quite figure out why they are walking around with AKs' and RPGs.

Sometimes you have to sacrifice what you hold dear for what you see as a greater good. Soldiers agree to make the ultimate sacrifice, as a desk-bound officer you could say he's made the next greatest sacrifice to lose probably the next 40 years of his liberty to ensure people started talking rather than simply swallowing our leaders so called version of the truth.

If you think mordern warfare is simply about one army fighting another over territory or resources you're sadly mistaken, head over to Vimeo and watch John Pilger's documentary "The War You Don't See".

Should be quite safe on length of sentence

It's alright, the war criminals responsible for the torture in Abu Ghraib only got 5-7 years, others guilty of killing innocent civilians have received less. Surely there is no way Manning's crimes were remotely as serious or harmful to US interests than any of those, so presumably he'll get a way shorter sentence.

Re: AC Re: LOL @ the sheeple!

".....Are you suggesting Assange (tm) is complicit in the crime?

You have a reference for some evidence that might support this assertion?" In court it was shown that Manning had been in communication with A$$nut for a considerable period during which the material was collected (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/manning-assange-laptop/). It seems neither A$$nut or Manning were as good at covering their tracks as their egos thought they were. So it does look like Manning did not just collect it all and then, on a whim, drop it on Dickileaks, as claimed by the sheeple, A$$nut was in on it from the start. And when A$$nut gets his turn in court, it will be very hard for him to avoid the charge of aiding the enemy given his documented comments on not redacting the identities of informers. Enjoy!

Re: BlueGreen Re: LOL @ the sheeple!

".....And providing more of your "facts"? ....." And yet you cannot counter them, again. Yet again. Instead, we get more of the typical shrieking and bleating from a true member of The Faithful, completely void of any form of reasoned argument. Not really a surprise.

".....Whereas most others are interested in discovering some underlying aspect of reality...." Oh, that did make me laugh! The Crazyhorse chopper attacks on July 12th 2007 had been previously reported in the press, indeed it was the US local command that announced the news that two Reuters journos had got caught up in the attack on the very day it happened, so the claim that the US tried to hide it all away is simply male bovine manure. Reuters had a very public and noisy go at the US for killing their journos, neatly avoiding the question of why their journos were working with active "militia", were not wearing their Press vests, and had not notified the US that they would be in the area, and were on such friendly terms with said "militia" that they accompanied them to film attacks on US personnel. The events were even covered in another journo's book, Dave Finkel's "The Good Soldiers", long before the "Collateral Murder" edit made its appearance. So it seems your "interest in discovering some underlying aspect of reality" simply means you knew SFA about the copious and varied sources of information already out there, you just waited for Dickileaks to spoonfed you a highly edited and misleading point of view and want to claim that makes you "informed". Truly sad.

".....From you who wants more electronic state surveillance because it makes you feel more secure?...." Having travelled the World, especially the Middle East, I'd have to answer yes. You very obviously speak from a position of zero experience and knowledge, and your "thinking" amounts to nothing more than parroting whatever someone else tells you is "cool".

".....Because you have real trouble distinguishing what's morally right from what's legally prescribed?...." That's hilarious when your only criteria for "moral" seems to be what you hear thirdhand from some wannabe Net celebrity 2.0. Enjoy your naive ignorance, just don't be surprised when others point at you and laugh.

Re: S4qFBxkFFg Re: LOL @ the sheeple!

".....Maybe the Arab Spring would have happened anyway....." Sorry, where you maybe waiting on Dickileaks to give you their abridged version of Middle Eastern history, as edited and approved by A$$nut? The Arab Spring has been happening for decades, the real final trigger was the lack of support given by the superpowers to prop up their dictators of choice. For decades, dictators in the area have had the US or USSR and the Cold War to help them oppress their people. The USSR no longer exists, the Russians now having very limited active input into the Middle East compared to before the Berlin Wall came down (the one exception being Syria, where they are actively keeping Assad in power). Other factors like the rise in food prices in the 2007-2008 period could have been countered by a bit of superpower interference. In Tunisia itself, protests had been accelerating since Ghafsa in 2008. Without the need to balance the Soviet threat, the US backed off on their own dictators, with Obambi making truly silly and popularist statements like the hogwash he spouted in his famous Cairo speech in 2009, which effectively gave groups like the Muslim Brotherhood the green-light to take on the dictators like Hosni Mubarek. Without the support of the West, and with China and the Russians unwilling to step in openly, the field was clear for the Islamists to push for "democracy". And all this happened long before Manning leaked anything, so the claim that Dickileaks started the Arab Spring is just something A$$nut manufactured to boost his ego and feed the sheeple.