One rundown on this situation is provided by this Der Spiegal article.
In the end, all the efforts at confidentiality came to naught. Everyone who knows a bit about computers can now have a look into the 250,000 US diplomatic dispatches that WikiLeaks made available to select news outlets late last year. All of them. What's more, they are the unedited, unredacted versions complete with the names of US diplomats' informants -- sensitive names from Iran, China, Afghanistan, the Arab world and elsewhere.Could this have been foreseen? Absolutely. One suspects that Private Manning was just too immature to handle this sort of thing.
But, perhaps the same thing can be said of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
Regards — Cliff
7 comments:
I would not associate "immature" with either Manning or Assange. To allow them that excuse is tantamount to declaring that bank robbers "just needed the money" or murderers "just did it because their victim needed killing." Or perhaps, Flip Wilson's immortal declaration.."The Devil made me do it."
Manning is a service member who went through Army basic training and was training in the matters of protecting classified information...and the penalties for failing to do so.
Assange is simply a very sick person with a Messiah complex.
Both men should be summarily executed for murder and high crimes against the United States.......and the execution should be made public.
We are a nation of wimps...and because we are a nation of wimps....people such as these two lives without any purpose know in their hearts that they are going to "get away with it" because there are enough bleeding hearts to forestall anything drastic.
I am against the death penalty. Not because it is more expensive than incarceration, but because it is the easy way out for the perp. And, because I believe in redemption—part of that non-Calvinist steak in my Christianity. Let them live on and try to reconstruct their lives. And then we will see.
Regards — Cliff
OK...I'll give in. Life in a super-max cell.....4 X 8 concrete cell....no windows.....23 hours per day with one hour of solitary "exercise"
Works for me.
Regards — Cliff
Someone(s) authorized Mr. Manning his access, and my bet is that any such guilty party will skate unpunished, despite that (ill-advised personnel decisions) being the bigger problem in the long run. Like Feds prosecuting banks whose guilty bankers have long since pocketed their ill-gotten bonuses, it's rarely those who most need correction that actually receive it.
Too big to punish?
I don't know that granting access after an acceptable background investigation and clearance is punishable when the holder of that access later violates the trust. As one who has held a TS SCI clearance, I feel comfortable that the preclearance investigation is pretty thorough...and yet...in my career...I have been involved in the prosecution of several hapless folks who violated the rules.
I agree on the bank comment but only to a point. The banks who are now about to be sued by DOJ for creating the bad loans that "brought down the entire mortgage industry." Lets see, wasn't it the Federal government in the persona of the Federal Home Loan Agency who along with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd browbeat those banks into giving loans that they would otherwise not have even considered????
The buck will ALWAYS stop just short of the guy who put it all into motion. ALWAYS.
Barney Frank is doing quite well financially and politically. Chris Dodd will never work another day in his life..not that he did up to the point of his retirement......and Fannie and Freddie are about to be given new life by the very agencies that caused the horrible mess to begin with. But...hey.....we can hang a bunch of folks to make it all look good.
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