I’m sure this will piss some of y’all off, but maybe it was the right thing to do. Manning seems like a lost soul, vulnerable to the manipulation of unscrupulous people (i.e., the scumbag Assange). She’ll get out next May instead of 2045. Via the NYT:
In recent days, the White House had signaled that Mr. Obama was seriously considering granting Ms. Manning’s commutation application, in contrast to a pardon application submitted on behalf of the other large scale leaker of the era, Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who disclosed archives of top secret surveillance files and is living as a fugitive in Russia.
Asked about the two clemency applications on Friday, the White House spokesman, Joshua Earnest, discussed the “pretty stark difference” between Ms. Manning’s case for mercy with Mr. Snowden’s. While their offenses were similar, he said, there were “some important differences.”
“Chelsea Manning is somebody who went through the military criminal justice process, was exposed to due process, was found guilty, was sentenced for her crimes, and she acknowledged wrongdoing,” he said. “Mr. Snowden fled into the arms of an adversary, and has sought refuge in a country that most recently made a concerted effort to undermine confidence in our democracy.”
In other words, don’t hold yer breath, Eddie. What do y’all think?
Major Major Major Major
I think Chelsea was basically a victim of Assange et al., who used a confused and weak young person for their own ends. Her treatment has certainly been dreadful, even though it’s my understanding that it’s all according to the rules. Obama can’t change the rules, but he can commute her sentence.
ETA: And, yes, she went through the system as one is supposed to. It is not the President’s job to interpret those laws, so he doesn’t get to pick which rules to enforce. But this is something he can do, and it’s what I would have done.
Fuck Snowden, though.
Denali
I think he did the right thing.
Elizabelle
I’m good with it. Chelsea seems especially fragile, so it was humane.
Lizzy L
I’m down with it, not the least because (I assume and hope) there is nothing the incoming shitweasel can do to prevent it, and it will totally piss him off. Thanks, Obama!
Edited for invective.
A Ghost to Most
I’m good; after all, the jaundice jackass will pardon Snowden.
Elizabelle
Now i want to see Assange dumped out of the Ecuadorean Embassy. Like, today or tomorrow.
randy khan
Apparently Snowden said on Twitter last week that if it was a choice between him and Manning, Manning should be the one who got clemency. I give him credit for that. (I don’t think Trump will pardon Snowden, although I will admit to the possibility that I will be surprised on that one.)
SciNY
Conflicted. On the one hand the hit to US intelligence was quite severe, affecting sources and methods. On the other hand, 45 years seems excessive (will be 7 years). Also true that military prison is not a good place for developing compassionate treatment of transgender people. Basically I trust Obama to have weighed these things appropriately. I definitely cannot say the same about his successor on any topic, including what he’s having for lunch.
guachi
I’m OK with this. Seven years isn’t nothing.
Nothing was above SECRET and, to me, what makes a difference.
Brachiator
Seems like a wise and compassionate decision by our wise and compassionate president.
JGabriel
Besides, Trump will probably pardon Snowden once he gets the command from Putin.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Fuck Snowjob. Fuck Assange. Let the two of them share a very small cell bay with Trump, Kushner, Cohen, Flynn, Manafort and Page, where they can all argue about whose fault their downfall was. We can have cameras on it and run it as reality TV, occasionally throwing a baseball bat into the room for some extra drama.
The Pay-Per-View rights should go a long way to restoring national solvency, paying whatever foreign reparations are due and rebuilding whatever gets destroyed. Once those are paid back, we transport them all to Beijing for an extra special double episode of the show.
A Ghost to Most
@SciNY:
He wants to drink your milkshake.
Timurid
So… about 72 hours of Obama in total IDGAF mode? Tell me more…
Kristin D
I wanted him to do it. Seven years is plenty, and her treatment was inhumane.
gene108
She did the crime, she did some time. So I’m good with it.
SiubhanDuinne
The “pretty stark difference” is what makes me comfortable with this humane and compassionate decision. That, and my confidence in Obama to do the right thing. Wingnut heads asplodin is a lagniappe.
skerry
Tweeted 5 days ago
Believe it when I see it
DesertFriar
You now have Trump’s attention!
Bobby Thomson
In the don’t hold your breath category.
Major Major Major Major
@skerry: @Bobby Thomson: That’s some quality bluff-calling right there.
Bobby Thomson
Well that first link blows. Try this one.
Cacti
@skerry:
Just more grandstanding from ASSange.
He isn’t charged with a crime in the United States, ergo there is no basis for him to be extradited.
Now Sweden, OTOH.
LAC
Snowden can go fuck himself with a fistful of Russian snow. He was never in the running to be pardoned, so his noble stance can also take a fucking leap. Manning at least acknowledged her acts.
Emma
@skerry: Arrogant sod. US doesn’t really want him, except maybe to hand him over to the Swedish cops.
ETA: I’m good with her getting out sooner.
Greenergood
So glad!! Manning deserves clemency – now the cherry on the political prisoners’ cake is if PBO will grant clemency to Peltier – please, please, fingers crossed
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Brachiator:
QFT.
Leonard Peltier next, please Mr. President.
John Cole
Manning exposed war crimes. She should be free.
? Martin
I agree this was the right decision. That’s amplified by the illustration Manning has provided of how inadequate our nation is to safely and humanely incarcerating LGBTQ.
What Manning did was still wrong and I agree with the above that 7 years is adequate for the act.
It will be fun watching the Trump folks step on their dicks for the next few days while they try to express outrage at this while avoiding their own praise for russian hacking and wikileaks.
RareSanity
@skerry:
@Bobby Thomson:
That weasel Assange will probably say, “He commuted her sentence, I said I would do it if he granted her clemency.”
Schlemazel
What chance does the kid have in the real world? She would have been fragile as an unknown nobody trying to figure out where she was and what she was doing. This summer she is going to be on her own with a million people who love or hate her and 250,000 more just looking to cash in and/or pull her apart for their own ends. She is fucked.
Elizabelle
O/T: Frontline, on PBS, doing a show on divided America tonight. Guests include Michael Erik Dyson and Frank Fucking Luntz.
Should we come up with a drinking game? Or safe words?
? Martin
@John Cole: There are right and wrong ways to do it, though. That Manning revealed a lot more than war crimes hurts her case.
Nick
Man, people here don’t like Snowden — my understanding is that he revealed the government was sucking up all of your metadata and analyzing it. When did that make him trash? His actions have informed the debate on national security for the better.
JPL
@Elizabelle: I suggest changing the channel.
Barbara
I think he did the right thing here. I understand that Obama plans to grant clemency to hundreds of additional drug offenders. I represent one of these and I hope he is a recipient of this mercy.
? Martin
@Elizabelle: Frank Luntz could be interesting:
I don’t think Luntz is that much of a true believer. He knows where his paycheck comes from, and he delivers, but I get the sense the thinks that the GOP are mostly a bunch of lunatics at this stage.
Major Major Major Major
@John Cole: @? Martin: Yep. Not the only thing she exposed.
Timurid
@Elizabelle:
Our elites want to watch the world burn. The ones who donate to PBS just want the screams to be accompanied by a classy violin concerto.
Elizabelle
@JPL: Yeah. The question is, how long can one last? Wondering if it will be world class false equivalency.
john b
@Nick: well he fled to Russia and likely provided lots of intel to them as well, I would imagine is a large source of the hate.
Keith P.
Right calls for the right reasons – Manning’s sentence was overly harsh (35 years for leaking video of US contractors massacring civilians) but accepted by Manning, whereas Snowden fled *to Russia*.
Elizabelle
@? Martin: Interesting.
@Timurid: Yeah. Dog forbid Frontline treats us to Totebaggin’ David Brooks too.
The Moar You Know
Not ok with it but I’m not going to stroke out over it either. Manning knew what the punishment would be for what she did and did it anyway.
Now, If he’d pardoned/commuted that shitpile Snowden’s offenses I’d be loading up the car with pitchforks and torches. That fucker has been spending his post-US life trying to take the nation down and has succeeded pretty well at it.
@Nick: Common knowledge long before he stole his info and fled with it to the Russian government.
Kind of the opposite, actually.
? Martin
@Nick:
He lied about a lot of that as well. One of the programs he described as giving the feds unfettered access to your social media information is actually a mechanism that the tech companies developed to comply with subpoenas. The feds never had the access that he described. And he burned a number of US agents that had nothing to do with those programs. And rather than stand up and take responsibility he ran off to Russia.
His intentions may have been good, but his results are mixed at best, and his intentions are questionable given where he currently resides.
Major Major Major Major
@Nick: Your understanding is incorrect/incomplete.
Villago Delenda Est
Manning has a much better case than Snowden. Snowden should hang for what he’s done. And Assmunch needs to be hunted down and done away with, along with all his associates. Russian agents.
O. Felix Culpa
@Brachiator:
Co-signed.
A Ghost to Most
@O. Felix Culpa:
We won’t be seeing that set of words for awhile.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve been wondering if he would pardon or grant some kind of protection to Bergdhal, who Trump has said should be executed.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Schlemazel: I’m very excited that the community will have a new hero and spokesperson. That said, I’m sure a book deal will be forthcoming, and she’ll earn $$ from that.
O. Felix Culpa
@A Ghost to Most:
True. Sigh.
NR
@Nick: You don’t understand. He embarrassed Obama, which people here think is a crime deserving of imprisonment and torture.
Elizabelle
Just read some reviews of Frontline. Sounds like a potential tongue bath of Sarah Palin and the tea party. You know, those authentic Americans.
O. Felix Culpa
The troll. Do not feed.
Edited for the heck of it.
Major Major Major Major
@O. Felix Culpa: He must have Snowden on his Google Alerts too.
RinaX
@randy khan:
I don’t give Snowden credit for shit. He said it after the rumors of the pardon leaked out.
And yes, fuck Edward Snowden. I hope he rots in Russia.
I’m cool with Chelsea Manning’s pardon, though.
NR
Oh, and by the way, good for Obama on this move.
Chris
@Nick:
Here’s what I never understood about all this:
I knew the NSA was wiretapping its people without a warrant long before this happened. Not because I’m a cynic, but because the New York Times broke the story all the way back in 2005. Since the reaction of the entire Washington establishment and government at the time was to grunt, roll over, and go back to sleep, I always assumed that it had continued to do so.
I understand that we now know a hell of a lot more about the technology behind government surveillance than we did before, which I admit I will probably never understand most of. But given that DOD has always been deeply involved in the development of information technology (including, I believe, the Internet itself) and the resources at their disposal, I’ve pretty much always assumed that they could, if they wanted to, listen to any conversation I’d ever had or read any email I’d ever sent. The only question was whether they would, and the NYTimes story in 2005 was all I needed to confirm that, yeah, sure, of course they would.
In other words, my reaction when all this came out and still today was basically “okay, but do I need to know here that I didn’t already know?”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
How? One of the few electeds on either side who actually cared about surveillance issues was Mark Udall. He lost re-election in a state with no small libertarian presence because the good people of Colorado, collectively, decided that Cory Gardner could stop ISIS from lopping their heads off.
Baud
Seems just.
Josie
I’m okay with it.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: As we’re about to find out again, libertarians only care if it’s Dems doing it.
maryQ
Works for me.
laura
Thrilled!
Great good news.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: It’s almost like they’re Republicans who get embarrassed around their gay friends.
Chris
@Major Major Major Major:
“Libertarians are what Republicans call themselves when they’re trying to get laid.”
No, I will never get tired of that one.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: It’s the gays’ fault for being their friends.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: My libertarian (can you really own a libertarian?) is a professional contact…
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: Now that’s must NOT watch TV. Can’t abide either of those self-important gasbags.
Chris
@Major Major Major Major:
They would certainly say yes!
Mnemosyne
@Nick:
When he took all that information to Vladimir Putin. Or do you really still believe the fairy tale that Snowden didn’t give any of that information to the Russians?
geg6
I’m fine with this. Chelsea faced up to her crimes and has paid a very heavy price, especially in the face of all her issues. Plus, I think she was a dupe for Assange. Mercy is the right thing to do and I’m glad Obama showed mercy.
Snowden can just go fuck himself. He’s lucky if all he faces is for eezing his ass off, lol belt and trapped, in Moscow. He should hang.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
She exposed war crimes. Good. Also, some other shit she shouldn’t have. Bad. She stood trial and was doing her bid. I’m good with her getting out, because she’s going to need way more help than Leavenworth was capable of providing.
Snowden should swing, but will settle for life under Putin’s “protection.” As far as I’m concerned, he’s getting off easy.
Larryb
@John Cole:
This. She was a whistle blower.
Gravenstone
@Cacti: Once he’s on the plane, he’d have no idea where it’s heading. So he thinks he’s heading for NYC and ends up in Zurich …
Eta: fixed a brain cramp.
Betty Cracker
RE: Snowden — in another age, he’d be a Lee Harvey Oswald, a sniveling, self-important, pencil-necked nobody with delusions of grandeur. Luckily for us, he parlayed his sysadmin gig into notoriety instead of shooting someone who’s actually important.
Did his stunt kick off a long overdue conversation on privacy? Yes. That’s a good thing. But spare me the paeans to his noble sacrifice, and good riddance to Snowden — Russia can have the peckerwood.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, anyone who still has stars in their eyes about Brave Edward Snowden should probably read this 2014 post from Arms Control Wonk.
Snowden was a Russian operative. Period. I fully expect Trump to pardon him for his services to the Motherland, and for idiots on the left to still champion him.
Mnemosyne
Oh, and to get back on topic, I am very glad that Manning is going to be freed. I think she was used by some very unscrupulous people and that she has paid her debt to society for that naïveté.
geg6
@geg6:
That should be “freezing his ass off, alone and trapped”. Fuck auto correct.
Bobby D
If I did what Manning did, I’d rot in prison for life. I don’t agree with the solitary confinement, or the way Manning is treated in custody.
All my colleagues here (I am intentionally vague about my specific position, base,and branch of mil) who I’ve head talk about it, feel the same. And we are all in positions with clearances, most at the top secret level, and routinely handle classified. Commuting is bullshit, a reduction of the sentence and transfer to a humane facility, I can get on board with, commutation, no way.
Kathleen
@Timurid: And the screaming to be sedate.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Kind of what I’ve been thinking, but I have no military experience and am unsure of the details of the case, so I didn’t want to spout off.
jonas
Commuting a sentence just reduces time served. It’s not a pardon, which legally wipes your record clean. Manning will still have a prison record, a dishonorable discharge, and all the baggage that comes with that to deal with. I think Obama weighed that, along with the time served (a lot of it in solitary) against the crimes committed when commuting the sentence. All in all, a humane, sagacious decision.
WaterGirl
Good move, President Obama. Justice tempered with mercy. I think she’s gotten inhumane treatment, no matter how they try to justify it as coloring inside the lines, inhumane treatment is wrong. I wondered why May and not now, but that gives her time to not be part of the shitshow that will be the next few months.
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker:
Well put.
debbie
Okay, since it’s an open thread, does anyone know what “WP” stands for in this TrumpieTweet?
hovercraft
This is why I love Obama he did the humane thing, She faced the charges was rightly convicted, and now she is getting the mercy she deserves.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@NR: The two of you should get hotel rooms together and write slash fiction of Trump and Puting going bear ridding together you can add Snowden and his Russian Russian intelligence handler into it.
Roger Moore
@JGabriel:
Why would Putin want Snowden pardoned? If he stays around in Russia, Putin can continue to use him as a propaganda puppet and a hostage against the good behavior of Assange, Greenwald, and Poitras. If Snowden is pardoned, he can go back to the US and will be free to tell American intelligence agencies everything he did.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
The thing I’ve always found ridiculous about this is that what he claims soured him on the CIA’s methods was being asked to spy on a Swiss banker. Not being asked to overthrow a democracy, not running arms to terrorists, not violating congressional embargos, not spying on Americans. He joined a spy agencies and then was shocked when it asked him to spy on a foreign target (who was a member of the fraternity that’s kept everyone’s dirty money since times immemorial, because why would you ever want to keep an eye on those guys).
I’ve never been able to take him seriously since. Whether he’s full of shit and knows he has enough useful idiot followers who hate the IC as a first principle that they’ll swallow it, or is simply an absolute idiot of mind-boggling proportions, I can’t say, but it’s one of those two.
ruckus
I agree with my president.
The two cases are different in what the two people did after the crimes. Manning stood up for what he did. Es ran away. Manning has paid a pretty harsh price while ES has paid nothing and looks to have helped the wrong people.
To those who complain about him having a TS clearance and breaking that trust, he seems to feel that he was being a whistle blower, and trying to do something that needed to be done. We need that, it is one of protections that citizens should have in a democracy. That he may have been wrong in this case, remember he’s paid a pretty harsh price.
Eta SHE, she paid…
nutella
I think this was well done. Manning’s sentence was way too long.
Major Major Major Major
@Chris: And then he goes and tweets about how much he hates Goldman Sachs. Because that’s consistent.
NR
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Well. Thank you for that rather disturbing look at what’s in your head. I have to go stand over there now.
Roger Moore
@skerry:
Notice that he’s agreeing to nonexistent (or at least non-public) US extradition requests rather than the very real and obviously legitimate Swedish requests related to the rape accusations.
Adam L Silverman
@skerry: Assange is not charged with any crime in the US. He is facing rape charges in Sweden. He currently faces no charges in the United States. That Wikileaks tweet is simply stupid. In fact, if twitter gave you 144 characters it would be gross stupidity!
Shalimar
@Elizabelle: I’m beginning to wonder if Assange being dumped out of the Ecuadorian embassy would have any negative consequences. The Trump Justice Department will never prosecute him for anything, and I’m guessing they will put pressure on May’s British government to keep Assange from facing justice in Sweden.
It really looks like the new world order for the next 4 years will be the United States, Great Britain and Russia against the rest of Europe and China. Assange will become a U.S. ally in this conflict.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman:
I see what you did there.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@NR:
Yes, along with a box of Kleenex and I know what you mean, but one must be philosophical NR; after all, you are the one who voted for a man who’s into underage girls and watersports. Shirtless bear wrestling is a step up after that.
dm
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ask Eric Holder, who said last may that Snowden basically performed a public service.
Since we’re tossing around links, here’s one from Lawfare (generally not pro-Snowden) assessing Holder’s comments: https://www.lawfareblog.com/three-years-later-how-snowden-helped-us-intelligence-community
It’s been three years. It’s a little easier to assess the impact of what Snowden did, but much of that impact remains concealed from us by secrecy. MI6 publicly worried that what he revealed could be used to deduce the identities of agents, so there’s that, but I’m afraid they’ve cried wolf pretty often, too. I’m thinking there will be some pretty interesting books come out in about thirty years as a lot of classification of the relevant materials expires.
NR
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I voted for Hillary. Stop lying. And stop sharing your disturbing sexual fantasies with us.
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: The pretty stark difference is that Manning displayed erratic behavior that should have clued the chain of command in not to deploy (then) him to Iraq. Once there, and working in a Military Intelligence billet at FOB Hammer, the behavior got worse. Instead of removing Manning from any position where he could have had access and locking him out of the Secret and Top Secret systems, the chain of command failed again. Moreover, and despite the fact that the unit occupying Hammer was not large, for some reason they kept the Tactical Operating Center (TOC) Annex building up and running, which from the reporting was where Manning gained unauthorized access and stole the information. I lived on FOB Hammer for almost a year well before Manning was assigned there. And I was there with a full combat brigade. My office/the Team Room, as well as Civil Affairs’ and the embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team’s, was in the TOC Annex, though there was a small office I almost never used set aside for me as a special staff officer in the TOC. Manning stole the information and then provided it to Wikileaks. People’s lives were put at risk as a result. But this was all preventable had Manning’s superiors been looking out for him as a Soldier and as a person. Manning is guilty. The crime was preventable had his fellow Soldiers and superiors been paying attention. The punishment was disproportionate given the circumstances I indicated above, hence the eligible for parole in 8 years. This was what the military would have used to get Manning punished, but not have to serve the full 35 year sentence. Given the facts of the crime, all the mitigating and extenuating circumstances, the commutation was a good decision.
Adam L Silverman
@dm: Snowden’s actions, including flight to safety in Russia, did incalculable damage. If you want to know how bad, ask the people of Crimea.
Mnemosyne
@dm:
Do they have a post-election re-assessment? Because claiming that bringing all of that information to the Russians had no impact on the Russians being able to meddle in our election as they did seems a little naive, to say the least.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Exposed a friend and colleague of mine from the State Department to great risk. When that person’s name was erroneously mentioned in one of the pieces of correspondence that was part of what Manning stole.
Betty Cracker
@Adam L Silverman: And besides, it’s not like Assange faces any danger in Trump’s ‘Merica anyway. After Friday, the albino sewer rat will be in danger of receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom, a prime-time show on Fox and a tuggie from Hannity if he shows up.
Karen
@debbie: Well Played?
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker: He and Hugh Hewitt can do the Twin Brothers from Other Mothers Tour of college campuses. They can open for Milo!
AxelFoley
@Nick: Snowden didn’t have a problem with that when Bush was in office. I wonder what changed?
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: You’re really testing my belief that political violence is wrong here, man…
Aleta
Glad of this. I wish for Leonard Peltier to be freed.
Chris
@AxelFoley:
Yeah, piggybacking onto this, a lot of the freakout that happened around 2013 when all that information was leaked disgusted me because of how much of it was coming from people who had either cheerfully endorsed it, or stayed silent and tried to shush its critics, from 2000 to 2008. (Not anyone on this blog, to be clear. But the entire Official Washington/mainstream media discussions).
Doubly so because very early on, Obama made a real effort to reign in the security state on an even worse abuse (Guantanamo) and found himself shut down by a wall of bipartisan bedwetting hysteria. Given that, I really couldn’t fault him for concluding “fine, taking on war-on-terror abuses is a dead end issue, let me spend my political capital on stuff that might actually pass.”
J R in WV
I’m glad President Obama has once again shown us his compassion, mixed with good common sense. I’m glad Ms Chelsea Manning will be getting out relatively soon, and will be able to get the health care she obviously needs and would never get in Leavenworth.
I can’t imagine spending my life in that military prison.
She should move to a solid blue zone to recover her civilian headspace, get her medical issues settled, get a chance to be calm and at peace with friends and supporters.
Baud
@Chris: I feel the same way. Reminded me a little of deficient hysteria. And I’m someone who would typically choose privacy over security in a policy debate.
Temporarily Max McGee (Until Death!)
@J R in WV:
Why assume she’s staying in the US rather than heading back to dear old Blighty?
debbie
@Karen:
Heh. I guess you’re right, but I can’t imagine hip Internet acronyms coming from Trump.
dm
@Adam L Silverman: I’m sorry, you’ll have to be more explicit for me to understand. How did Snowden’s revelations about high-grade wiretapping (revelations “we all knew about”) have any impact on the occupation of Crimea? The public relations disaster for the IC distracted people long enough for Putin’s tanks to roll in (I suppose?)? Snowden revealed how we eavesdropped on Russian tactical planning (I don’t think so?)? What am I missing?
@Mnemosyne:
Sorry. I don’t see it. The Russians didn’t do anything all that sophisticated — nor anything they hadn’t done for almost a century in other venues — to tinker with our election. They were able to take advantage of the same thing that keeps Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh afloat: the speed with which bullshit spreads and the slowness of the truth getting its boots on. What could a nebbish like Snowden have taught them about that?
And it’s not like the financial ties between Trump and the Russian oligarchs weren’t tangled and deep long before Snowden took his first job as a sysadmin.
Major Major Major Major
@dm:
Because that’s not the only thing that was in the documents.
Villago Delenda Est
@Major Major Major Major: The situation is deteriorating. It is not pleasant.
Mnemosyne
@dm:
As Major^4 said, the information about (alleged) civilian wiretapping was what Snowden released to the press. You really think that information filled up the two laptops and several hard drives he took to Moscow?
Snowden exposed our NSA’s overseas capabilities, and those of our allies. Remember the whole kerfuffle about the G8 summit being bugged by the UK?
Again, assuming that the only thing he gave the Russians was about what the US was (allegedly) doing domestically is dangerously naive.
Major Major Major Major
Balloon-Juice: come for the news, stay for the commenter hoping you watch your children get raped!
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: So Tuesday.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
It seems to me like the thing that calls for a banhammer.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: Though I don’t generally support the practice, I agree in this case.
Schlemazel
@Amanda in the South Bay:
So . . . chew toy it is. I feel worse for her now. It seems to me what she needs most is some time to figure out her life without having to be the symbol for any side.
amk
@Major Major Major Major: And the week has just begun.
Schlemazel
@Major Major Major Major:
He seems familiar somehow. My guess is he knows the sting of the banhammer already.
geg6
@Major Major Major Major:
He should be banned. I don’t often advocate banning, but that’s some deeply sick shit.
debbie
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m finishing up the third season of Game of Thrones, which now seems peaceful in comparison.
Shantanu Saha
I think Snowden will only be pardoned if Putin no longer finds him useful. Then he will get his poodle to pull the trigger, only to have Snowden have an accident on American soil and deflect the blame on the American IC.
Major Major Major Major
@debbie: George R.R. Martin kills too many characters. We get it, life is random and cruel, sheesh.
dm
@Mnemosyne: The G20 summit stuff falls under “high grade wiretapping”. I’m sure he could have stolen lots of stuff (more on this in a moment). I don’t know what he did steal beyond what he’s released publicly.
I found the Arms Control Wonk link above interesting (especially the Anna Montes analogy), but I agree with the commenters there who speculate that, had Snowden been an actual Russian asset, the Russians would have kept him in place (where he could steal yet more stuff), instead of him taking the dramatic world tour he did.
So, I see no particular reason to believe he exposed anything relevant to Putin’s invasion of Crimea. I’m still inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Johannes
I can’t believe that you can go too far wrong by showing mercy to someone who is in pain.
coin operated
@Mnemosyne: Thank you for posting that link up again. Snowden’s story never added up….
Peale
All this is reminding me that in a few days, we will be openly torturing again and adding to the population at Guantanamo with relish, this time with fools in charge who won’t care because torture is just filling an honest campaign promise.
debbie
@Major Major Major Major:
I know! He just killed off practically all the ones I could manage to remember!
Major Major Major Major
@debbie: I sort of petered out on watching around then. It wasn’t interesting any more. I don’t understand the people who celebrate his penchant for character death.
Temporarily Max McGee (Until Death!)
@dm:
Well…
chopper
@Larryb:
that one doc she offered up for publishing was whistleblowing, the other 700,000 were not necessarily.
Woodrowfan
@debbie: why does George R.R. Martin have problems with Twitter/ He keeps killing all 140 characters!
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
I think some of it is a reaction to other authors who refuse to kill off characters even when they really should. My step-niece said she could never really get into the Harry Potter books because she knew that no matter what else happened, Harry, Hermione, and Ron would come out OK, and having that level of safety made the books less exciting. I get her point; you can’t get as deeply involved in a story if you don’t feel there’s real risk to the characters. I think GRRM just goes too far in the other direction; after a while you want to avoid responding to the characters emotionally because you know they’re likely to die.
IMO, though, the real problem is the idea that the only risk worth thinking about is death. You can get plenty of emotional involvement with a book when a character is hurt in other ways, whether it’s physical or psychic damage. For some characters, non-deadly damage may be worse in some ways than death would be. Seeing a beloved character have to deal with injury, betrayal, or just their own stupidity can be much more emotionally involving than having them killed off.
NR
@Peale: I can’t wait until we have a Democratic president in office again who will refuse to prosecute the torturers because “we have to look forward and not backward” or something like that.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: Yay!
Major Major Major Major
Well, that’s my cue to leave.
debbie
@Major Major Major Major: @Roger Moore:
You must not have watched PBS’s The Hollow Crown,” three-parter on Shakespeare’s War of the Roses plays. Not only was everyone getting killed; their deaths were slow, bloody, and horrible.
Adam L Silverman
@napoleon: You’re banned. Don’t come back.
Peale
@NR: we’ll see. The good news is that all of the Dems who were compromised by voting with bush are pretty much gone. My guess is that if there is another transition, the state of the country will be worse than what Obama inherited.
J R in WV
PS:
I just hope no one is able to mess up this commutation between
nownext Friday at noon and Ms Manning’s release date. Nor the guards accusing her of bullshit offenses for which a new sentence could be rendered.The more I think of it, Obama should write a new commutation resulting in her release Thursday evening, no matter what happens between now and her release date. Because Trump isn’t the only threat to Ms Manning, perv transphobic prison guards, fellow prisoners, everyone in her environment is a threat to her well being and life!
If she is found dead somewhere, who will be able to establish if wasn’t suicide?
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: Unless there’s been a recent change of command, the Disciplinary Barracks Commander is a former student of mine. I cannot imagine she would allow that to happen to anyone under her supervision.
celticdragonchick
Rod Dreher is having a special snowflake meltdown that Obama is using his long, hard, black pardon power and shoving it down Dreher’s lily white virgin throat…particularly with regard to Chelsea Manning.
Of course, the last sentence is the real tell, since for Rod it is always about the transgender aspect of any story if a trans person is within a mile of it happening.
I wish to God Rod would just come out of the fucking closet and get some heels and a skirt at this point.
Special psychotic asshole comment award goes to perennial favorite Lord Karth:
Adam L Silverman
@celticdragonchick: I like this part of Dreher’s blather:
Exactly where does Dreher think Manning’s been since 2009? First, the Detainee Holding Area (DHA) at FOB Hammer. Then at the military brig in NC if I’m recalling correctly. Then at the Corrections Barracks at Leavenworth.
J R in WV
@Temporarily Max McGee (Until Death!):
Well, how about she only lived there a few years (4 or 5?) and didn’t have that good an experience with others her age in Wales. Left Blighty to return to the US at 17. Confused hurt, injured, needs help from a community full of support.
I know that in the US there are large cities where a confused and naive person can receive support and help. Hell, she would be better off in many medium sized cities in bluish rural areas. It doesn’t sound from her wiki bio that she knows of places in Blighty (by which I suppose you mean Wales) where that kind of support is readily available.
Do gangs still beat different looking people in jolly old England? I suspect they do…..
J R in WV
@Roger Moore:
Yes, that cell in the towering mountain with only 3 walls, the fourth being open to the mountain, with a floor that sloped out to the open wall. So fall asleep, slide towards that fall of thousands of feet. That could ruin someone’s mind, lack of sleep, constant fear, etc.
chopper
@dm:
you know that Snowden released much more information than that relating to wiretapping, right?
J R in WV
Sounds like I’m glad to missed Napoleon – glad it went away before I got there.
Sorry to those who were not so lucky. I’m gonna go read some fantasy fiction, volume 8 or 9, 800 pages each… Warships, truly evil bad guys, being slowly beaten by the really good guys.
And I just got a UPS delivery from our regular guy (the only guy who can find the place, mostly!) of books I ordered from Powell’s Books out west. Many more escapist novels to run away, run away into. I hope no one is too jealous! Bye now…
Sab
@Chris: Yikes.
That is my brother.
dm
@chopper: It depends on what you mean by “wiretapping”.
All I know about (though I’d forgotten some of this) was stuff like PRISM and its access into corporate data, the fact that diplomatic meetings are wiretapped, NSA listened in on Google and Yahoo datacenter links, NSA deliberately weakening published encryption standards, metadata mining, …. I hadn’t known about his releasing info about the “Tailored Access Operations” (hacking) group, but it doesn’t seem too facetious to label all that as “glorified wiretapping”. (Nothing, apparently, that tied that group to things like Stuxnet.)
So, no, I don’t know that Snowden released anything other than info about “wiretapping”, broadly interpreted. I’m willing to be corrected: “no, it’s wrong to characterize some of that stuff as ‘wiredapping'”; or informed: “You don’t know about …. e.g., list of penetrated systems in the eastern bloc, say.
Of the things listed above, only the hacking group seems maybe something that might have an affect on the invasion of Crimea?
I’m still pretty much in the Holder camp: seems to me he did a public service. But I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.
Librarian
@J R in WV:@J R in WV: That’s what I was thinking. What’s to stop Trump from countermanding this after Friday? I wouldn’t put anything past him. Not a thing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Librarian: He can’t. It has already happened. If Trump and his goons try to stop it, Manning will have a slamdunk habeas corpus case.
FWIW, I think this was the right thing to do. Manning was trying to be a whistle blower about war crimes and to the extent that her actions did that, she deserves our thanks. For the other documents she released, she deserved punishment. She also clearly had problems, and, as Adam said, she was poorly served by her chain of command.
Another Scott
@dm:
It really sounds like you’re expecting people here to educate you, when you really need to do the work yourself. Thousands of words have been written about it – a few paragraphs here aren’t going to do it justice.
It’s not that hard…
Cheers,
Scott.
dm
(I had, in fact, done just that search before asking my previous question).
@Another Scott: “It really sounds like you’re expecting people here to educate you”
I am, but the subject of the education I’m seeking is why people believe the things they do. In particular, what aspect of Snowden’s revelations leads to the remark:
That’s a specific claim being made. I’m curious what justification there is for this claim (and I trust that Adam doesn’t say things like that without good reason to believe it), but I can pretty much assure you that googling “snowden revelations and crimea” (one whole hit!) while amusing, is not illuminating. I will note that a recent Foreign Policy article on the annexation of Crimea did not mention Snowden, but I didn’t look much beyond that.
And yes, a paragraph can do it justice. A paragraph like: in addition to the PRISM, etc., Snowden revealed X. X made it much easier for Putin to send his troops into Crimea. Go thou and read about X.
Or a even a sentence like: Snowden’s revelations pissed our allies off so much that it became politically infeasible for them to respond to Putin’s moves in Crimea.
No One You Know
@Roger Moore: Tell American Intel what his Russian handlers tell him to tell them. Otherwise, he gets his burn notice. Or just disappears.
Omnes Omnibus
@dm: Opinions are pretty fixed on Snowdon. The evidence that he took far more with him than he released to the media is circumstantial, but I think is is convincing. YMMV. You and I will likely be dead before the facts are declassified.
Another Scott
@dm: You’re asking lots of questions that you have to know involve things that are still classified even if they’re in the open press unless they’ve been declassified (and AFAIK, they haven’t), so people who do this sort of stuff for a living can’t talk about them.
You can dig around Wikileaks or the National Security Archive at GWU or look a little harder elsewhere if you really want to know what has been disclosed about Snowden’s activities.
E.g. Politico:
Nobody here can answer Rogers’ question, even if by chance they happen to know.
Again, if you want to know more about Snowden, you need to do your own research.
Personally, his actions and his statements never made sense to me as a whistle-blower, because he told so many easily checkable lies in his interview with the SCMP. You’re free to have a different opinion – I’m not interested in debating Snowden again.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Scott: Hey, we agree on something.
ETA: And your online mannerisms weren’t in the least annoying.
ETAA: Not meaning to be obnoxious. Just recognizing a situation.
Another Scott
@Omnes Omnibus: :-)
I annoy myself quite frequently, so I know I rub others the wrong way quite often, also too.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
NR
@Another Scott:
Okay, so that was a great big nothing.
Omnes Omnibus
@NR: Did you notice that people with contrary views were answered fairly – except for trolls like you?
Amanda in the South Bay
@celticdragonchick: in my experience as someone who, a long time ago also converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, Dreher isn’t alone amongst the more rigorous of that body in being closet cases.
Karmus
@O. Felix Culpa:
I will sign, too, at this very-late-for-the-Internet date.
NR
@Omnes Omnibus: The only answer given for how Snowden enabled Russia in Crimea was the unsupported word of a Republican Congressman. Not exactly the most compelling evidence of, well, anything.