So by your thinking.... if the military wanted to pull a coup to take over gov't, subverting the constitution, without the will of the people, it is their right?

Maj Gen Smedley Butler, USMC, was once approached with such an offer. He reported it to the congress and heads rolled.

The UCMJ does not trump the constitution. It is the Supreme law of the land.

It is the duty of EVERY citizen, whether in the military or not, to protect and defend the constitution.

Manning witnessed atrocities being condoned in the name of the American people by his superiors. The chain of command was NOT an option!

He performed his duty as a subject/citizen/representitive under that constitution which supercedes any supposed authority by the military, which was the authority commiting those acts or atrocities!

That in and of itself released him from his promise of secrecy!

He's a hero!

His is the assassination of another whistleblower under this admin of acts or atrocities, against or carried out in the name of its people!

It's not hard for me to understand at all!

he's not a hero, nor will he ever be... for someone thats been in the military, you just don't get it... where does it say in the constitution that being a traitor is ok? do you have any idea what it means to have a secret clearance?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_United_States
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Classified_information

I had one... but to witness such atrocities and not report them is AGAINST the code of military conduct.

He was released from any promise of secrecy as soon as he witnessed the acts being condoned by his superiors....war crimes....

It was his duty to report them! His superiors were the guilty party, he used the only tool available to him to exercize his obligation to his oath of defending the constitution AGAINST ALL ENEMIES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC

The treason here is not on his part! It is on the part of those who committed these acts in the name of the American people!

This administration thinks killing innocent civilians is an acceptable act!

When it's done in my name, I, as a citizen, have a right to disagree!

A 23 yr old private with more guts than the entire power elite that sits the guilded chairs in DC sacrificing our children and the children of others for corporate gain and profit shares!

umm, your right, but let me point out one last thing... me, you, bradly manning, bestinshow, anyone on this website are not qualified to make that call about anything being war crimes. you might think they are, but it is still not yours, mine or bradleys to call it. he had the proper channels he could have taken, but he choose to break the law in doing it. doesn't matter what was released, it wasn't released through the proper code of conduct for someone in the military. just because you see a film of something doesn't make it what it is, anyone from bradley down could have edited it to make it look differently than what really happened... we just don't know... bradley screwed up, and any info he released went sour the minute he released it...

I can agree in part, but you also must admit, the chain of command was not an option here given the examples of intolerance and sacrifice of whistleblowers in the last few administarations.

Why must there be such a veil of secrecy if there is nothing to hide, and why is so much classified as such when it is implemented in the name of the American people and our safety?

Seems to me we would be better served knowing why or how we are at risk, making us better able to "protect and defend" ourselves and our country.

They work for us, in our name (supposedly) but we are left in the dark for our protection? Rather hard to trust a body of strangers, far out of your income level or class, who have been proven time and again to be corrupt and self serving.

Hard to play a game when you are not involved in it

We OWN the team but have no say in the way the game is played or who is calling those plays for OUR team

Poor Guy was set up!
Just too easy how he got hold of all that Data!

I don’t see how this is even a debate. Classified and Top Secret information is restricted from the public for a reason. As a member of the United States military, a crucial part of Manning's duty was to keep this classified information classified. When an individual is given a security clearance, it’s not a suggestion “oh hey, try not to talk about this, ok?” it’s a legally binding vow that you will not breathe a word about the information you're given. Manning is absolutely guilty of violating that.

I have had two good Male friends in the Military. And, they informed me that Classified means restricted.

National Security means against enemies both foreign and domestic....

Read my posts above explaining my position and it may help clarify...at least my position.... on this matter.

If the military angle is the only one pursued, Manning is cooked, but the case needs to be viewed from ALL angles for a proper and legitimate defense on his case.

To me, he's a hero, for the reasons I stated, who did what he did to protect us from the true domestic terrorists...the military industrial complex!

SS made this statement and nobody has addressed it.

The treason here is not on his part! It is on the part of those who committed these acts in the name of the American people!

Address the atrocities carried out by men taking orders from men higher up the ladder. People are being murdered in your names and mine on a daily basis. I say no to murder, what say you.

President Eisenhowers warning on The Military Industrial Complex

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZbinufz3t4

My fellow Americans:

Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.

My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.

In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

II.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

III.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

IV.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present

and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

V.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

VI.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

VII.

So -- in this my last good night to you as your President -- I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I -- my fellow citizens -- need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

thats called an opinion, and it doesn't really matter... are you a lawyer that deals in war crimes? what makes you such an expert on what war crimes or not by looking at a 15 year old piece of footage, and you decide they are war crimes...

your looking at footage that you don't know if it has been edited or not, and then you make judgement calls... the treason was solely on him, and only him...

everything your saying is just your opinion, and means very little to the USMC, people that are experts on what is and what is not war crimes...

And from the late Great President Kennedy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces

That is not the best reply on the matter.

Reuters filed charges based on the video, but the actions were dismissed due to "matters of Nat. Security".... the video was never denied as an accurate account of events... Manning was arrested as a result of it. The military and the WH just put a label on it so it would or could never be used against them in any court they have control over.

The best reply would be to have his trial, and all the evidence, brought to the public light..... but we all know that will never happen (again, Nat Security), so yet again, any "opinion" other than the "official" release will be regarded as CT.

Business as usual!

Dude you are so wrong and misinformed on so many levels its hardly worth the words. The Geneva convention and Terms of Nuremburg binds this country to certain standards and if it makes you feel better our entire government Dems amd repubs are both guilty as hell. Lets not leave out our so called media watchdogs, what a wretched joke this country has become.

agian, another OPINION....

amazing how you refuse to understand the difference between an opinion and fact

Its a fact we signed at Nuremburg, its a fact we signed the Geneva conventions and its a fact the military operates under the Military code of Justice. Read them......

I


Men of conscience have opinions.

read them... what for? i'm not qualified to say what is a war crime and what isn't... plus, i have faith that some who are qualified to make that call would do it as it is necessary... none of you seem to have that faith, and you also seem to know everything about war crimes... go figure there would be so many people in here that are so well versed in what war crimes are...or aren't