I agree with Anonymous about this... Do you?

[ljm2002]

65. "Leaking isn't declassification"...

...condescending much? As if the rest of us simply don't understand that "fine point". Puhleeze.

Anyway. Clearly you assume that anyone taking the side of Bradley Manning in this mess just doesn't understand how these things work. WRONG.

Your initial statement was an unequivocal, unambiguous assertion that "people died". Now you have amended your position to "it's reasonable to believe" that is the case. And the fact that other people were murdered, that a war crime was documented right there on tape, that seems to hold little weight with you.

I know, I know, but you were talking about all the REST of the leaks. And why we must punish Bradley Manning for revealing them. Personally I am glad he revealed the information. The so-called security in that outfit was a joke to begin with, by the way. And we know for a fact that a lot of the classified material should never have been classified in the first place. Or at least it should have had the lowest classification of CONFIDENTIAL, not SECRET or TOP SECRET.

The boys and girls who play with this stuff really get into it. They love making jokes like "I'd tell you but then I'd have to kill you". They enjoy being in the "in group" who know about cover stories ("that airplane flying to Iraq is loaded up with tons of frozen hamburgers", yep, that's the ticket). Like any other human system, eventually it becomes corrupt. Who will watch the watchers? It is an age-old question and one that directly applies in this case.

What I never hear from the folks like you who want to see Manning punished to the hilt is: I never see calls for prosecuting the war crimes that have been revealed. I never see calls for at least administrative discipline for those who classify information only because it reveals embarrassing facts or even war crimes, rather than because it truly should be classified.

It is clear that his regimen when first incarcerated was an attempt by the government to get him to implicate Julian Assange as having solicited the information or assisting him with obtaining it.

What do you do when faced with a moral choice: break the rules or ignore your conscience?