Mirrored from DemocracyNow!
Accused U.S. Army whistleblower Bradley Manning has offered to submit a partial guilty plea on charges of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks in return for the government agreeing to pursue lesser charges. Manning’s attorney David Coombs says he is prepared to plead guilty to some of the charges, but not the entire case as a whole. Manning is reportedly ready to admit to leaking the documents to WikiLeaks but is refusing to plead guilty to the charges of espionage or aiding the enemy. He has been held in military custody since May 2010, following his arrest while serving in Iraq. We are joined by Denver Nicks, author of the book, "Private: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History." [includes rush transcript]
It will be interesting to see what type of punishment would be imposed by the judge at sentencing.
Lately these whistleblowers are getting easy sentences.
Actual whistleblowers have been getting relatively light sentences.
Dumping half a million documents you haven’t read isn’t whistle-blowing. Any actual uncovering of wrongdoing that happens through such a process is purely coincidental.
More like dumping the documents you haven’t read onto a site that has edited video (and probably released documents) to fit their narrative isn’t whistle-blowing.
Manning isn’t Daniel Ellsberg and Wiki-Leaks isn’t the New York Times.
Oh? Remember Benghazi? What about the higher up who denied funding for security for the post? If you see someone get cited, chances are you see a tip of the iceberg and a twisted story only for public consumption. No one higher than GS 13 ever gets held accountable, especially political appointees from the neo cons still in government and who are very interested in protecting their legacy, not their country, and still don’t want dirt to be aired
Without making any value judgements whatsoever, especially under these circumstances isn’t any such coerced confession/cop going to produce the modern, All-American version of a show try? To a degree far more than with more common prosecutions, the real purpose here really is to send a message…
What “coerced confession?”
How is this different from every other plea bargain?