If Bradley Manning is guilty, he doesn't deserve sympathy.

[ljm2002]

33. Whatever Manning is...

...he is most certainly NOT "simply a criminal".

A criminal does things for his/her own gain (theft, burglary, blackmail, extortion, etc.) or destroys things for no reason (arson, vandalism, etc.) or hurts or kills other people.

Manning, on the other hand, released classified materials in order to expose criminal wrongdoing. He did not do so for personal gain. Now one can argue about his judgment in doing that, and one can argue that no matter what his reasons were, it was still against the law. But to say he is "simply a criminal" is to misrepresent what he did.

Note, also, that with all that training people receive about classified information, it seems they are not trained very well about what should be classified and what should not be classified. Classifying information because it might embarrass the unit, or because the information shows criminal behavior -- that is not a good reason to classify information. In fact, there are laws against classifying information for reasons like that. Yet what we have now is mountains and mountains of classified information that is classified for reasons like that.

So yes, I'm sure he knew what he was doing was a punishable offense. My questions are, what about the crimes he exposed? Will anyone be held to account for those? And, will anyone be held to account for mis-classifying information?

Of course we already know the answers to those questions.