Wikileaks Hiring Lawyers to Defend Alleged Army Source?

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Wikileaks claims to have hired a lawyer for the guy that leaked all that classified Army material. Wikileaks’ founder is also out in high gear trying to manage the way people talk about / refer to the guy that is in trouble for stealing the 260,000+ classified documents.

In addition, it would be helpful if you described Mr. Manning, as a “whistleblower”, who had already lost his access over an unrelated issue, held no data, and was of no meaningful threat to anyone. In particular Mr. Manning was not an “alleged spy”, and it is wrong for you to describe him as such, or to suggest that there were no other approaches to resolving the situation. It would also be helpful to all concerned if you stopped trying to justify your behavior by whipping up sentiment against Mr. Manning in other ways.
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Animal Mother said:
Hopefully he dies a proper traitors death, with his neck around a noose.
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Sure, he's the bad guy. /s

The US army attempts to cover up the murder of civilians, this guy gives the video to the media, and HE'S the bad guy? He wouldn't have had to do this if the US didn't try to cover up the accidental killing of civilians.

He did not attack the US and he did not give intel to the enemy that endangered our troops. He is not a traitor.

He should not be jailed any more than the man who exposed Nixon should have been jailed.
 
Animal Mother said:
Hopefully he dies a proper traitors death, with his neck around a noose.
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That would be "noose around his neck".

What he leaked is merely embarrassing to the military. So, I am not sure spy or traitor fits properly.
 
Animal Mother said:
Hopefully he dies a proper traitors death, with his neck around a noose.
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Remember, if your military murders innocent civilians and someone exposes it, they are a traitor and should be murdered as well.

You'd think this kind of fascist nationalism would have died out after the world saw what it could do with Germany, but apparently it's alive and well.
 
meeh dude outed himself. It's one thing to do whats right and its another to seek attention for it.
 
IRSmurf said:
Sure, he's the bad guy. /s

The US army attempts to cover up the murder of civilians, this guy gives the video to the media, and HE'S the bad guy? He wouldn't have had to do this if the US didn't try to cover up the accidental killing of civilians.

He did not attack the US and he did not give intel to the enemy that endangered our troops. He is not a traitor.

He should not be jailed any more than the man who exposed Nixon should have been jailed.
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The rat fuck should be slowly tortured to death. It's exactly what that kind of steaming piece of shit deserves. He broke up with his girlfriend, then got pissed off after he got demoted for hitting another soldier, so the steaming human shitpile stabs his own country in the back,

There is no torture too cruel for him.
 
Any of you who are actually defending this soldier: have you ever served even ONE day in the military? Rules, regulations and classifications of material are all very serious matters. I only had a Secret clearance and handled very few classified documents, but took each and every one of them very seriously. The penalties for leaking or abusing classified information are harsh and just. Classified is classified, even if you feel it's not earth-shattering. Same thing in the corporate world.

Can't believe any of you would defend this turd. I'm ashamed to have been in the Army, when you have people like this.
 
Nemesis999 said:
The rat fuck should be slowly tortured to death. It's exactly what that kind of steaming piece of shit deserves. He broke up with his girlfriend, then got pissed off after he got demoted for hitting another soldier, so the steaming human shitpile stabs his own country in the back,

There is no torture too cruel for him.
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Yes, every time our government kills non-combatants, we should remember the people are have betrayed america are not the ones covering it up, but the ones who expose it. :eek:

I'm not a limp dick flower child, you're just an extreme nationalist. You are cancer.
 
The military deems that videos documenting its murder of innocent civilians should not be seen by the public it's supposed to be beholden to?

What a novel idea.

And you think those kind of secrets should be kept?

I can't believe I'm reading this. I honestly cannot believe this kind of undiluted evil exists.
 
ir0nw0lf said:
Any of you who are actually defending this soldier: have you ever served even ONE day in the military? Rules, regulations and classifications of material are all very serious matters. I only had a Secret clearance and handled very few classified documents, but took each and every one of them very seriously. The penalties for leaking or abusing classified information are harsh and just. Classified is classified, even if you feel it's not earth-shattering. Same thing in the corporate world.

Can't believe any of you would defend this turd. I'm ashamed to have been in the Army, when you have people like this.
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Lets say you work for DOW chemical and you come across a classified report that your company is dumping toxic chemicals into a small towns water supply and it's causing death, birth defects, etc, and instead of coming clean and fixing it, are just covering it up. Are you a company man who leaves it alone or do you have the courage to do what is right and expose the company, forcing them to take responsibility for their actions?

The traitors are the men and women who covered the accident up, not the man who exposed it.

And if you're ashamed to have been in the army because we're discussing our personal opinions, I don't know why you were a soldier to begin with.
 
These leaks don't include our Army doing anything "illegal". It's a warzone, and innocents die in warzones all the time. They are "covered up" because our press and general population is easily turned anti-military by such collateral damage and it is extremely difficult to turn them back. The wars were are in right now are as much PR exercises as they are military. Covering up collateral damage is an important part of being successful in these wars. Privates shouldn't be given the authority to decide what should be leaked and what shouldn't, so this man should be punished.

Not tortured and killed, of course. Those mentioning such things are idiots.
 
IRSmurf said:
Yes, every time our government kills non-combatants, we should remember the people are have betrayed america are not the ones covering it up, but the ones who expose it. :eek:
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Because arbitrarily stealing massive quantities of unrelated documents then bragging about it is somehow related to that, right? :rolleyes: Let the fucker burn.

Though... I guess you may be right... Growing up in Canada tends to turn people into hardcore American nationalists... Oh wait, I just hate rats.
 
IRSmurf said:
Lets say you work for DOW chemical and you come across a classified report that your company is dumping toxic chemicals into a small towns water supply and it's causing death, birth defects, etc, and instead of coming clean and fixing it, are just covering it up. Are you a company man who leaves it alone or do you have the courage to do what is right and expose the company, forcing them to take responsibility for their actions?
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So the "right" action is not to just release the reports, but instead to steal every classified document you can find and give them over to your countries enemies?
 
Vryce said:
These leaks don't include our Army doing anything "illegal". It's a warzone, and innocents die in warzones all the time. They are "covered up" because our press and general population is easily turned anti-military by such collateral damage and it is extremely difficult to turn them back. The wars were are in right now are as much PR exercises as they are military. Covering up collateral damage is an important part of being successful in these wars. Privates shouldn't be given the authority to decide what should be leaked and what shouldn't, so this man should be punished.

Not tortured and killed, of course. Those mentioning such things are idiots.
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pretty much agree on this one.. if were going to bring this up how about the millions of innocient people we carpet bombed day and night in WWII.. did anyone really care then? no because that was war.. its the same thing now except the public is controlled by the media and live and die by what they see on tv or read on the internet or in a news paper instead of living in reality..
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
pretty much agree on this one.. if were going to bring this up how about the millions of innocient people we carpet bombed day and night in WWII.. did anyone really care then? no because that was war.. its the same thing now except the public is controlled by the media and live and die by what they see on tv or read on the internet or in a news paper instead of living in reality..
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But we know about Dresden and the bombings. This is different.

No one is arguing that civilians die in war, especially in guerrilla warfare. The situation is this, if we kill civilians, we have zero motivation to lie to the victims families or stop compensation. It is reported that we kill civilians every week, why cover this one up, specifically?

Also, it is ridiculous to compare this war to WWII. WWII was a struggle for the survival of our allies, and would could have been a struggle for our own survival. Today's war was fought with the intention of spreading democracy. I support the war, because I believe spreading democracy is the right thing to do when the theocracy / totalitarian regime / etc unnecessarily causes its people utter misery.

The military reports to civilian authority. Sure, that's not the public, just our elected leaders, but if any accidental killing is covered up before being reported to the civilian authority, the traitors are the persons responsible for the cover-ups. I don't know if that's what has happened here, but it doesn't seem like a stretch.
 
Some of these soilder fanboyism is like neo nazism going for the forth right. The whistle blower did humanity a great service and that bigger than any secret army. Oh and unless your a quad-trillianaire your pretty much a slave lap dog of war fore the real powers in charge. Hey lets kill all these people and you keep quite about it. Don't worry about losing your humanity.
 
The greatest threat to our nation is our own government and its military-industrial complex. Corruption and brutality such as this should be exposed so that all American citizens can see what their government is REALLY up to. Glad to see Wikileaks defending this true patriot.
 
Vryce said:
These leaks don't include our Army doing anything "illegal". It's a warzone, and innocents die in warzones all the time.
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The Hague Conventions (Laws and Customs of War on Land of 1899 and 1907) and Geneva Conventions make it quite clear. :confused:

I agree with IRSmurf and Mega2.

Bit dim to brag about leaking it, though.
 
Yossarian22 said:
The Hague Conventions (Laws and Customs of War on Land of 1899 and 1907) and Geneva Conventions make it quite clear. :confused:

I agree with IRSmurf and Mega2.

Bit dim to brag about leaking it, though.
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What do they make clear?
Reasonable measures are to be taken to reduce civilian casualties. Accidental killings are a shame, but not "illegal". Otherwise we need to round up a whole lot of veterans, from a whole lot of wars, from a whole lot of different countries, and hold the mother of all war crimes trials.


It seems the punk had access to more sensitive data, but merely went after the stuff that was embarrassing to the military rather than fatal to his fellow servicemen. For that I will not call him a spy or a traitor, but an ass that needs some jail time, but hardly a life sentence or execution imho.
 
While I will agree that this guy deserves a trial for having leaked sensitive information, I also believe that he deserves the best defense lawyers money can buy.

He leaked this believing that it was a public service -- and it was, to an extent.

He also had access so much more sensitive data that could have been fatal for the army, but he didn't take it.

The only harm done here was that it was an embarrassment to the army (well deserved too). Those of you wanting to have him killed, calling him a traitor, etc? You're no different than those in Iraq or Afghanistan calling for OUR blood.

Just think about that for a moment.
 
Vryce said:
They are "covered up" because our press and general population is easily turned anti-military by such collateral damage and it is extremely difficult to turn them back.
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And this is somehow a bad thing? Heaven forbid that the American people get the real taste of war and find out they do not like it to much? This kind of thought path really scares me, that someone could think this way. We have no reason nor place to "spread democracy", and the day the America people wake up to what we are really doing and what is going on around the world, I will be a happy man. Maybe then The People will be fed up or even mad enough to try and take our country back, that....That will be a great day.

This guy, how he is, or the reason for giving out these papers does not matter, what matters is whats in them. If a murderer rats out another murderer, does that some how make the others crimes any less? Sure, this guy could be a dick, but who cares. All this is doing is trying to side step whats going on here. Some people it seems just can't fathom their country could do something wrong and always try and make it right in their own minds, that the "other guy" is the bad guy.
 
BlueFireIce said:
And this is somehow a bad thing? Heaven forbid that the American people get the real taste of war and find out they do not like it to much? This kind of thought path really scares me, that someone could think this way. We have no reason nor place to "spread democracy",
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The horrible part here is that we're trying to "spread democracy" in other parts of the world the same way crusaders wanted to "spread catholocism", or what the spaniards did during the inquisition.

Anyone with a large enough military body will always abuse their power with the pretense of doing justice. No one is exempt of this. And the sooner we realize the horrors of war, or violence in general to try to force anyone's beliefs unto others, the better.
 
ir0nw0lf said:
Any of you who are actually defending this soldier: have you ever served even ONE day in the military? Rules, regulations and classifications of material are all very serious matters. I only had a Secret clearance and handled very few classified documents, but took each and every one of them very seriously. The penalties for leaking or abusing classified information are harsh and just. Classified is classified, even if you feel it's not earth-shattering. Same thing in the corporate world.
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Classified my ass. Classifying documents is done by higher ups to Cover Their Ass against things deemed too embarrassing to them. The Pentagon Papers were once Classified, too.
 
qdemn7 said:
Classified my ass. Classifying documents is done by higher ups to Cover Their Ass against things deemed too embarrassing to them. The Pentagon Papers were once Classified, too.
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I guess we should have handed copies of all the classified material leading up to and including Desert Shield/Storm to Saddam? Because that is what you seem to be intimating at...

And for those bringing in strong opinions concerning classified documents, this soldier doesn't sound like he was in any kind of command position or figure of authority to be making decisions about the validity/morality of classified documents. Having a conscience, good or bad, doesn't excuse the mishandling of them. Why the hell do we even have such tight locks on secure stuff, might as well just put it up on Yahoo/CNN for the enemy/world to see... :rolleyes:

And declassification of documents is completely off topic and another issue altogether.
 
nowie said:
Civilians with weapons? That just happened to be in an area that American soldiers had just taken fire from?
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Well, if thugs with knives and pipes beating up soldiers counts as peace activists, then I guess they count as civilians too. ;)
 
DON'T FEED THE TROLLS.

Seriously. This guys in deep shit not for leaking a video. The video is the distraction from the giant pile of other classified stuff, unrelated to the video, that he leaked. He bragged about it and got pwn3d.

He's not some altruistic crusader for right. He's a stupid douche who just happened to do one right thing. Learn the difference.
 
IRSmurf said:
Sure, he's the bad guy. /s

The US army attempts to cover up the murder of civilians, this guy gives the video to the media, and HE'S the bad guy? He wouldn't have had to do this if the US didn't try to cover up the accidental killing of civilians.

He did not attack the US and he did not give intel to the enemy that endangered our troops. He is not a traitor.

He should not be jailed any more than the man who exposed Nixon should have been jailed.
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does anyone remember Daniel Ellsberg?
He released classified documents (the pentagon papers) during the vietnam war that clearly held Lyndon B Johnson and his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara responsible for the start of the war. The documents revealed several secret missions to test the defense capability of Vietnam and Laos, effectively provoking the Vietnamese to attack out of defense. They also described the Gulf of Tonkin incident in full detail, how it was orchestrated to provide justification for the start of the war. They also revealed that there Johnson had no exit strategy, and no plans on an end to the war.
Daniel Ellsberg was an analyst at RAND think-tank for the pentagon. He xeroxed some 500 pages of classified material and released it to the washington post. He was immediately sent to jail, and Johnson called him a communist to discredit him. Although his actions helped to fuel the strong public disapproval which eventually led to the wars end.
So I guess in a few ppl's minds he's a traitor, but to most he's a hero.
 
I'll wager that these accidental deaths are the lowest rate out of just about any rate in history.
 
He edited the video before it hit the media. I'm going to guess the original wasn't good enough for him so he had to make sure it showed what he wanted.

He should be on trail, he should be in jail. He's not a hero.
 
Today's war was fought with the intention of spreading democracy. I support the war, because I believe spreading democracy is the right thing to do when the theocracy / totalitarian regime / etc unnecessarily causes its people utter misery.
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You're either delusional or naiive if you think these terrible wars are about sowing the seeds of democratic freedom for the greater good of humanity.
What was the difference between Saddam Hussein and Robert Mugabe? Mugabe didn't have oil!

To fight a war with the intention of spreading 'democracy' is a perverted and grotesque crossing of terminology. With your line of thinking you'd need to invade more than half the globe to spread your democracy; including some of America's closest allies haha! (totalitarian? theocratic? Saudi Arabia I see you!)

Guess we'll just have to make do with Iraq and Afghanistan huh, they're really enjoying their new found freedom, democracy going down just a treat over there. All those soldiers sure fought for a good cause, y'know even if they came home in a body bag in the back of a C-17 or up deck with their sanity shattered or limbs blown off... we'll all look back in years to come and agree it was worth it, mhm.

Say, it's been a while since we've had a World War... better get to work on invading Iran, may aswell make a trilogy outta it!

Mankind is a cancer..
 
ianken said:
DON'T FEED THE TROLLS.

Seriously. This guys in deep shit not for leaking a video. The video is the distraction from the giant pile of other classified stuff, unrelated to the video, that he leaked. He bragged about it and got pwn3d.

He's not some altruistic crusader for right. He's a stupid douche who just happened to do one right thing. Learn the difference.
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Agreed, except for one thing: He confided in a known hacker and fellow contributor to Wikileaks, not to a bunch of guys at a bar. Lamo seems like a bit of a freak to me. I wouldn't be surprised if he was just trying to ingratiate himself with US authorities since his house arrest in 2004:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Lamo
 
Jack Hammer said:
He edited the video before it hit the media. I'm going to guess the original wasn't good enough for him so he had to make sure it showed what he wanted.

He should be on trail, he should be in jail. He's not a hero.
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Wikileaks edited that video. I've seen both versions - editorialized and raw feed. Violations of rules of engagement are pretty clear whichever version you review.

There's a middle ground between hero and traitor. As other's have pointed out, it's called "whisteblower".
 
All you mouth breathers who defend this piece of trash should never, ever breed.

Collateral damage will always be unavoidable. I don't care what you retards say, we do our best to avoid it. And trust me it's not easy when it does happen...even if you put on that bravado exterior...it kills all of us a little inside. But that is our burden to bear...something most of us do not take lightly. We classify videos such as these to keep them out of our adversaries hands so they can not use it as free propaganda.

Yes collateral damage makes the military (as an organization) look bad. But it also incites a great deal of hate against individual military members as well by the far left nut jobs who think that we live to kill innocents.

Have you ever been followed to work and home by someone...then have someone (or a group) vandalize your property periodically? Have you ever had someone spit in your face? Have you ever had your tires slashed and your car keyed (saying 'fuck you babykiller')? Have you ever had protesters outside your workplace throw objects at your car as you drive by? Do you frequently run into people treat you with general disgust?

In my 6 years in the military I have had all of these happen to me...I have heard of other things happening to others. It's all because I am in the US Military. Granted most of these are not very common, but it happens...and it gets more frequent the longer the wars go on (and the closer you get to California haha..).

Lets not forget that he supposedly leaked a quarter-million classified state department documents. That alone can seriously hinder our diplomatic efforts for YEARS.

The sad truth is that most people cannot handle the responsibility of keeping secrets. Even with all our efforts, not everyone that is granted a clearance will be up to the task. We classify things to keep them out of the hands of our adversaries. If you hold a clearance you are bound by law to keep that shit a secret, NO FUCKING EXCEPTIONS..PERIOD FUCKING DOT. You will come across things you may not personally agree with (most of us do), doesn't matter.... you signed your name on that dotted line and you know full and well what will happen to you if you are caught leaking classified material. You break the law, you pay the consequences.
 
srangara said:
Wikileaks edited that video. I've seen both versions - editorialized and raw feed. Violations of rules of engagement are pretty clear whichever version you review.

There's a middle ground between hero and traitor. As other's have pointed out, it's called "whisteblower".
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And how, exactly do you know the rules of engagement? Were you in that AO? Ill bet you weren't. So unless you were, you can stfu...ROE differs depending on situation. And in this case they were well within ROE for that AO and time period.

Were the crews unprofessional on the radio? Yes (but I challenge you to find anyone that de-sensitizes themselves in battle...its a coping mechanism)
Operated outside of thier ROE? No
 
IRSmurf said:
Lets say you work for DOW chemical and you come across a classified report that your company is dumping toxic chemicals into a small towns water supply and it's causing death, birth defects, etc, and instead of coming clean and fixing it, are just covering it up. Are you a company man who leaves it alone or do you have the courage to do what is right and expose the company, forcing them to take responsibility for their actions?

The traitors are the men and women who covered the accident up, not the man who exposed it.

And if you're ashamed to have been in the army because we're discussing our personal opinions, I don't know why you were a soldier to begin with.
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/thread
 
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