
Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison - rdl
https://zyan.scripts.mit.edu/blog/xychelsea/
======
hendersoon
I find it very sad that the bulk of comments on this matter are about Manning
being trans rather than the injustice of jailing a kid for 30 years for
blowing the whistle on war crimes.

~~~
phaus
I don't think Manning should spend 30 years in jail, but she wasn't convicted
for whistleblowing.

She was acquitted for leaking the few files related to war crimes; she was
convicted of leaking 750000 unrelated documents.

~~~
EdHominem
Uh yeah. The charge is whatever will stick. Military courts will never uphold
the law as written if they feel the need to punish a soldier for being non-
soldierly. (The judge, Col. Denise Lind, intentionally came to an illegal
ruling to punish someone she didn't like. She's a traitor.)

The law is very clear that it's your _duty_ to stop illegal actions, not
merely report them and carry on. Chelsea tried just reporting the problems but
that didn't do anything and she was given direct orders to continue the
illegal activities. The guilty party (us, our government) doesn't really have
a leg to stand on when complaining about the measures she was forced to take.

Imagine a convicted kiddy fiddler complaining that their legal business files
got examined in court with their illegal files. Nobody would case, It's the
price of crime...

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chinathrow
> She hopes that the world hasn’t forgotten about her.

No, we haven't. And we also haven't forgotten about the war crimes she
published.

~~~
gambiting
Hmm I'm not sure. I'm not from US, and while I am very familiar with Edward
Snowden, I have never heard of Chelsea Manning, I had to do a wiki search to
read a bit about her. I guess the international coverage just wasn't the same
in her case.

~~~
CiPHPerCoder
She was more famous under "Bradley" before she came out as trans. Maybe that
rings a bell?

~~~
riprowan
Unfortunately you are pointing directly at a major reason why the world forgot
about Bradley Manning the war crimes exposer: she changed her name to Chelsea
Manning and the media story changed to transgenderism / trans rights.

So, basically the media story and the name changed / got more complex, and a
lot of people got left behind / quit caring.

~~~
rhino369
Also, it's harder to make the case that Manning was a whistleblower. Manning
just dumped as much classified intel info wikileaks as she could. More of a
disgruntled employee than freedom crusader IMO.

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arca_vorago
For those people who are curious about the act of disseminating information
like Manning did, allow me to summarize.

When you get a clearance, and often even when just working with confidential
documents, the DoD has you sign an SF312, which is a classified information
non-disclosure.

When you join the military, one of your first acts is to be sworn in, and you
swear an oath, "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend
the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and
domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. That I will
obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the
officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of
Military Justice. So help me God."

Now let me say this as clearly as possible:

The Constitutional oath outranks the NDA. Period. If in doubt, the oath wins,
every single time.

That being said though, there is more room for nuance in the stories,
primarily due to what kind of information is revealed, what it's intended
purpose was, and who is was distributed to.

In my opinion Snowden was more aware of this than Manning, because he did due
diligence to review the documents before sharing them, and then making sure to
limit damaging information that was actually vital to _actual_ national
security, and was very specific with the organizations he shared the
information with about these requirements.

Manning did a huge document dump, which I think was well intentioned and had
the right reasons behind it, but he didn't think it through in detail enough
or take the time to redact the information.

So even if the constitutional oath outweighs the SF312 NDA, it's still
breaking the law, but we need to draw very clear distinctions between breaking
an NDA and the too oft-cited charges of "treason", which by definition is
aiding and abetting the enemy during times of war.

I would also like to point out the hypocrisy of the establishment when it
comes to classified leaking, because people in the White House and on the Hill
leak all kinds of classified material whenever it happens to be expedient to
them politically. A good example of this is the Cheney leak that outed Valerie
Plame. Where are the cries about treason against Cheney? (whom I personally
think is demonstratively more of a _traitor_ than any of the aforementioned
names...)

To me, one of the primary problems DoD faces these days is that there is
little to no punishment for being openly unconstitutional, and people have not
only forgotten their oaths and their importance, but have failed to call out
others who have acted against theirs. To me, an oath still means something,
but I want to know... if I could prove someone broke their oath with
knowledge, what is the legal punishment offered?

Whatever it is, that is what we need to be doing against those in positions of
power who spend more effort undermining the constitution than defending it.
(and personally, I think the true enemies of the constitution wear business
suits and ties, not thwabs...looking at you wallstreet)

~~~
hendersoon
I completely agree. Manning was clearly well-intentioned, but she leaked
information including diplomatic cables that was not relevant to war crimes or
any such malfeasance. The only effect of those leaks was to hurt the interests
of the United States.

Her case is certainly much less clear-cut than Snowden's, as she was not a
contractor and was more likely to be covered by whistleblower protection going
through channels.

But realistically, we all know that the US government was never, ever, going
to release that "Collateral Murder" video.

The great shame of all this is that whistleblower protections and mandatory
escalations haven't been expanded so the next generation of do-gooders can
work within the system to right these wrongs.

~~~
EdHominem
> I completely agree. Manning was clearly well-intentioned, but she leaked
> information including diplomatic cables that was not relevant to war crimes
> or any such malfeasance.

Documents of illegal behavior were intermingled with the rest. It's not a
whistleblower's responsibility to sort through the data, nor would we want it
to be. They aren't qualified to know if those other files contribute to the
understanding of the situation

Imagine if someone leaked documents of child molestation but didn't leak all
of them, allowing the culprits to escape justice because of a weak case.

> The only effect of those leaks was to hurt the interests of the United
> States.

That's our fault for letting our soldiers break the law, and for not having
_any_ procedures in place to stop this before it got this far. (ie, a
whistleblower hotline that actually got stuff done.)

Chelsea witnessed people in the US Armed Forces faking (and cooperating with
external faking of) evidence, knowingly sending innocent people to US military
prisons where we now know (and she and they knew at the time) they being were
tortured and murdered. Any delay in whistleblowing to sort through thousands
of files would simply get more people killed.

Delaying for even a minute would have been the morally irresponsible answer.

~~~
hendersoon
I disagree. Delaying would have been much smarter.

Snowden did it right, working with journalists to release his information in a
way that did not hurt US and allied interests without _benefit_.

~~~
EdHominem
Yes, you, sitting coddled in comfort, think we should have given your paid
killers more time to hide the evidence.

The "benefit" as you phrase it is not murdering innocent people, and for them,
not being murdered. That's pretty huge!

You're condoning allowing ongoing murder because you don't like the reputation
damage that comes from being proven to be a murderer.

Can't take the time, don't do the crime.

~~~
hendersoon
Your username seems appropriate. You deliberately misconstrued my post.

I'm all for blowing the whistle on warcrimes. Manning released information
that was not criminal by any definition, like diplomatic cables.

Snowden's responsible disclosure method was more effective, too. Spread out
over a year, every news cycle contained a new headline from him. He had far
greater impact.

~~~
EdHominem
> Manning released information that was not criminal by any definition, like
> diplomatic cables.

Which was intermixed with all the evidence of warcrimes. It's not the
whistleblower's job to clean up the criminal's papers before reporting them.

And who's to say (are you a judge?) what's relevant to the crimes? You'd have
to read every document, in the context of all the others, to begin to know.
It'd be wrong to try to pare the archive down, even if it was remotely
possible.

Also, we learned a lot of other things that didn't rise to the level of
warcrimes themselves but are a lot better exposed.

> I'm all for blowing the whistle on warcrimes.

Obviously not _all_ for it. More like, mostly, or kinda, for it. Well, like,
not totally against. Like, you're for it, but only if it's done in ways you
approve of. Otherwise, fuck the victims...

> Snowden's responsible disclosure method was more effective, too.

Oh I see, you are totally for whistleblowers, you're even offering advice to
Manning on how to make a bigger splash. Well why didn't you say so?

> in a way that did not hurt US and allied interests without benefit.

Yeah, you're clearly just upset that Manning leaked our shit but you've got to
realize that nobody cares what the criminals want. We lost the right to
complain when we let our soldiers murder people and covered it up.

> Your username seems appropriate. You deliberately misconstrued my post.

No Ad Hominem needed. (Do you even know what that is?) Your point was stupid
on it own.

------
okoksowhatis
David House here. Still parsing the past. If people can keep the wolves off my
back for a second maybe I can update you guys on some truth.

Edit: While we fight, people are dying.

------
thr32989
> _I will be Chelsea’s first visitor since her sister in November._

> _I bring up her recent appeal to reduce her sentence from 35 years to 10
> years, and she seems worried that it didn’t receive enough coverage in the
> press. She hopes that the world hasn’t forgotten about her._

I am afraid world has already forgotten.

Google search for _" site:news.ycombinator.com Chelsea Manning"_ for past
month gives three results including this one. _" Manning"_ gives more results,
but only in reference to Snowden and Panama Papers, no prison.

And transgender rights activists are more busy with right gender pronouns then
with him/her.

~~~
rebeccaskinner
The correct pronoun is 'her', not 'him/her', and a lot of trans activists and
allies do spend an inordinate amount (which wouldn't be so necessary if people
made even a small effort to get them correct) of time correcting people on
pronouns, but there is a lot of work that transgender rights activists are
doing for people in prison in general, and I do know that they've been
involved with some of the work to help ensure that she is able to access
appropriate treatment while she's in prison.

It seems like it would be very difficult for any civil rights advocacy groups
to be able to do much for her though, since she's not a civilian or in a
civilian prison.

~~~
wtbob
> The correct pronoun is 'her', not 'him/her'

No, the correct pronoun is 'him.' Chelsea Manning, despite his self-perception
and despite his name change, is and always will be a man. Gender is an
objective, physical, biological fact, not a subjective experience.

There are people who believe that they are disfigured even though they are
perfectly normal looking; they are not disfigured, even though they believe
so. There are people who believe that their limbs are not their own; those
limbs are theirs, whatever their perception. There are people who believe that
they are the Messiah; they are not.

When talking _to_ someone, it may be therapeutic (or simply kind) to use the
words he prefers even if they are incorrect, but when talking _about_ someone,
there is no need to humour his error.

~~~
davidcollantes
I understand what you are saying--your comment will be out of sight soon, by
the way--but, does it hurts to "humour" someone? What do you lose or win? Why
not just be nice to others?

~~~
RankingMember
Agreed. The world is not this black and white place we might sometimes try to
make it. Rather than writing diatribes about how people are "objectively"
wrong about matters of no consequence, why not save the effort and call people
what they want to be called?

~~~
ythl
What's the point of titles, adjectives, pronouns if they can be manipulated by
the subject?

Statement:

"Dr. Smith ran across the street. She was terrified of what would happen next"

What actually happened:

"A burly transgender man who believes he is a doctor ran across the street."

~~~
RankingMember
This isn't a police report. In matters of consequence, I'd expect you would
call things by whatever is most conducive to the target audience understanding
what you're talking about.

------
mynameishere
Whatever sympathies you want to arouse for Pvt Manning for political purposes,
however wordily and clumsily expressed, try to keep in mind that throughout
all of history, in all contexts, regardless of rank, Manning would have been
summarily hanged as a spy and/or traitor rather than merely imprisoned.
Manning got off nice and easy.

That said, it was a total failure of the system to allow someone so mentally
unstable to have any kind of clearance. Manning's AFQT score was probably 99
at a time when the army had trouble getting anyone literate to join. And so
there wasn't a discharge. Here's an interesting interview about Manning's
(near) discharge:

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/28/bradley-
manning...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/28/bradley-manning-
video-transcript-wikileaks)

~~~
woodman
> ...at a time when the army had trouble getting anyone literate...

In 2007? Where are you getting that? For the USMC 01-09 were glory years when
it came to enlistment quality, so much so that they tightened requirements -
and practically banned recruits and reenlistees with visible tattoos... while
doubling in size. I'd be surprised to learn that the Army didn't enjoy the
same trend.

~~~
pc86
I enlisted in the USMC in 2007, there were a lot of recruits but the quality
was low and they had trouble getting the higher AFQTs joining them as opposed
to the Navy or Air Force.

~~~
woodman
Hmm, that is when I got out - two boot drops, both seemed fine. The infantry
is much less likely to draw underachievers though, so we'd be less likely to
see the low quality recruits.

~~~
pc86
The guys going infantry were the best of the platoon by far. With the
exception of one or two nobody seemed _bad_ or outright undesirable, just
slightly below what I had expected.

