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

[bemildred]

168. But Manning is not trying to get away, he is not trying to avoid accountability.

That he violated the law is not in dispute, even by Manning. So that being the case, who gives a shit what random people on the internet say about it?

The questions being asked are about the law, whether it is good law or bad law, not whether Manning violated the law. Should a democracy be keeping all this public business secret? Is that likely to work out democratically? What happens in other countries when they have secret police and all that good stuff?

Should politicians be allowed to use secrecy for cynical political purposes? Are our democratic princples really served by this sort of public show trial whose obvious real purpose is to intimidate potential Manning imitators?? Why beshit ourselves in public like this?

As to your other question, we have a situation where people disagree about whether war crimes were committed. That is the point in dispute. I consider it obvious that the Iraq war itself was an aggressive war of choice, and therefore it was itself a war crime, according to the standards used to judge the Nazis and Japanese after WWII (they made it quite clear at the time what those guys were hung for: aggressive war). But I realize the government is not going to admit that, then they would have to hold themselves accountable, and as you know quite well, we have a great deal to be accountable for, and we are not good at that self-accountability sort of thing at all.