
Obama is seriously considering a pardon for Chelsea Manning - pera
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-considering-pardon-chelsea-manning-2017-1
======
Rotten194
If Obama only pardons one person (hopefully unlikely) Chelsea is by far the
correct choice imo. She did a great service to the world and has been horribly
mistreated by the prison system for it.

~~~
frozenport
I disagree, I think you can draw a straight line from him to the election of
Donald Trump.

The one sided, anti-us nature of WikiLeaks, including perhaps incomplete
content, hint at editorial digression with a clear motivation.

I can't come up with a single way this helped America, but it certainly hurt
our prestige around the world.

~~~
interNeds
There's a bit of cognitive dissonance in your claims.

America's prestige was destroyed by none other than George W. Bush, Dick
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Bremmer, Rupert Murdoch, Colin Powell,
Condoleeza Rice and several others, for a number of reasons, but most of all
the 2003 invasion of Iraq, from which you can draw a straight line to ISIS.

How you "connect the dots" and manage to wander your way from Manning and land
on Trump is beyond me. How you digress from WikiLeaks to Trump is curious.

Political influence may have elected Trump, but cones of silence, echo
chambers and hacker mudslinging isn't really what got Trump elected.

Republican incompetence permitted his candidacy in the first place. Republican
spite invoking a broad mistrust among suburbanites and rural America put him
in office. If the people who voted Trump, are so easily deceived by falsified
evidence and dubious non-journalism, then they were stupid enough to be
deceived by anything, but wanted to be spiteful and hate something, and would
have found something dubious to latch onto and excuse their shitty vote
anyway.

~~~
frozenport
I agree with most of your post, certainly the ideological bankruptcy of the
GOP left trump the best candidate, and no doubt America's "good guy" image was
harmed by Bush. Although as satire of the time ("Team America: World Police"),
the USA was certainly not seen as impotent. Just dumb, maybe evil.

>>How you digress from WikiLeaks to Trump is curious.

I think Wikileaks has become the avenue for unilateral anti-US sentiment. For
example,. Recent leaks like the DNC emails reinforced a sense of political
disenfranchisement that leading to shockingly poor voter turnout. Perhaps most
misleading was that the DNC emails were selective, possibly edited for maximum
impact. For a similar opinion see Edward Snowden's(!) comments:

[http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-
radar/2016/07/edward...](http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-
radar/2016/07/edward-snowden-wikileaks-dnc-226386)

There is an information/spin war going on, with the military agencies of
countries such as Russia directly participating. Wikileaks was the first shot
at the USA, and Manning was a traitor who gave the ammo.

------
PhilWright
The best use of pardons would be to release thousands of people that have been
convicted under the three strikes and your out schemes. Not all will deserve
to be released, but someone that used up there last strike with shop lifting
or stealing a car does not deserve to be put away for the rest of their life.

------
harry8
Presidential pardons are corrupt by definition. They transgress the rule of
law and equality before it. If you think someone needs a presidential pardon,
just back up and think "which law is horrible and unjust and must be
reformed." If not the law maybe the courts. Pardon at best is a fig leaf over
a gaping wound. At worst, well pick them out yourself - the best you can say
about it is that it looks really, really bad.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controvers...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controversy)

~~~
pera
The presidential pardon is defined by the constitution, therefore it can't be
"corrupt by definition".

~~~
harry8
Your understanding of what corruption is and mine are different.

------
oshoham
Chelsea Manning is a trans woman, please don't misgender her.

~~~
xyzzy4
Chelsea Manning isn't reading the HN thread, so why does it matter what gender
you use? It's like telling someone to use Kolkata instead of Calcutta.

~~~
toor2
Rude.

A trans person other than Chelsea could be reading this right now. If you do
not respect her identity then it could be (and should be imo) interpreted as
disregard for trans people in general

~~~
xyzzy4
It's possible to support transpeople without having to change the English
language.

------
rasz_pl
Yes, just after he closes Gitmo, like he promised _before_ getting elected.

~~~
lobster_johnson
You do realize that Obama has tried to find several ways to do this, and has
been shut down by the Republicans every time?

Congress ultimately decided to keep Guantanamo, and left zero room to find a
single solution; Obama had no choice but to negotiate transfers with other
countries (a long and problematic process) while at the same time let the
court system handle the remaining cases. Obama could perhaps have tried
harder, but he has had a _lot_ of resistance on many fronts from the GOP.

He has almost succeeded at this point, anyway; there are only about 40
prisoners left. [1]

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/with-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/with-final-detainee-transfer-obamas-guantanamo-policy-takes-its-last-
breath/2016/12/28/dfdf8cb2-cd0f-11e6-a747-d03044780a02_story.html)

