Bradley Manning's lawyers rested their case on Wednesday. The defense built its case for a shorter amount of time than expected, but argued exactly what most anticipated it would: Manning did not intend to harm the United States and aid the enemy when he passed thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks.
The government has argued that by passing information to WikiLeaks, Manning should have known that enemies of the United States, such as Al Qaeda, would read it.
But the defense, with the testimony of Benkler, argued that WikiLeaks was simply a journalistic organization, like The New York Times.
"Both the government and other media had no similar critique of the other organizations, of The New York Times, The Guardian, of the Der Spiegel for reporting on and making available some of the war logs," Benkler said, referring to the different treatment that those outlets received for publishing the same documents WikiLeaks received from Manning. "The wrath was reserved purely for WikiLeaks."
The prosecutors requested a rebuttal hearing to respond to the defense. The judge will rule on whether to hold that hearing, as well as on the defense's four motions, on Monday. There is no date yet set for a ruling in the case.
http://mashable.com/2013/07/10/bradley-manning-trial-defense-rest/
So Monday will be crucial day in this trial. It will basically be the difference between Bradley Manning has a small chance of spending life in prison or whatever the punishment will be... or have a bigger chance of spending life in prison or whatever the punishment would be.
All this because he released documents showing the fact that in Iraq, the US army had no problem with collateral damage at times.
Nobody talks about it. Nobody cares. The media didn't talk about this, they decided to talk about trayvon martin. The population sure didn't give a rats ass because they too didn't care about this.
Knowing what the army does and how it does is important. You wonder why people hate america? Collateral damage is one of them.
Knowing is the first step on solving the problem.
Anyway, how do you stand on the Bradley manning case? Should be free or not? He will be discharged dishonorably either way, if he wasn't already, but yeah.
Collateral damage is sometimes unavoidable in wartime situations. If you haven't done so already, you should read Sun Tzu The Art of War. Great book, and you learn a LOT about war and what it takes to win one.
If you prefer to watch it on television, it's been on the History Channel multiple times. You could probably go to YouTube and even watch it there. Here, I found a link to the program for you. It's really quite interesting, and I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
So while I appreciate the lessons of war from a long-time-dead chinesse warlord, I wouldn't take him up on anything. it's not that he has nothing useful to teach, it's that most of what he has to teach is fitting of a more barbaric society.
The problem here isn't the fact that there were collateral damages, is that collateral casualties were considered ok. And it's not like "oh we didn't know what we did is bad" sort of thing. They knew that what they were doing was bad and they did anyway, and then they tried to conceal it so you, the citizen, won't know about it.
The difference between "us" and "them" should be that we value human life. We don't consider it cheap. We don't consider it meaningless. If we stop holding up these principles, what are we? are we western society? Are we civilized? Do we accomplish or goals? because the terrorists and al qaeda and the talibans sure as hell don't give a rats ass about human life. That's why they send kids to die as suicide bombers and send young men, untrained and unequipped to die, and use their death as a recruiting platform for more people. "martyrs".
Turning a blind eye to this and then asking "why do they hate us?" is stupid. Instead we should demand better from our leaders if they decide to throw the people under the bus and go to war.
This guy understood war. He was a genius when it came to this subject. Our country still used his methods up until WWII, then we seemed to abandon this due to PC police. Just recently did we abandon his theories and since then, we have not been able to win a war.
Of course they conceal things from us citizens, to avoid the outrage that is displayed here. Everyday citizens do not understand what governments have to do to remain functional, powerful, etc. Obviously, these aren't the only secrets our government keeps, and I'm quite sure they have always done this.
I agree with your sentiment, but these are things that cannot be avoided sometimes. Also, I think the hate runs very deep and even if the Iraq/Afghanistan wars never happened, I believe the hate would still exist. Some of it is due to what you stated above, but there are also other more nefarious reasons for the hatred IMHO.
This isn't WW2 where several superpowers went into all out total war. You could make allowances for "inhumane" behavior during war and disrepecting several conventions then but that eventually comes out to bite you in the ass, we we saw. So we don't make allowances even then, in the end.
this is one superpower, the only superpower in the world, along with many other nations in a coalition, against 2 small and minor nations and some terrorists. I personally don't see the same scenario relativist to today's standard. And PC police isn't as much PC police as it is international treaties that the USA signed and promoted.
http://mashable.com/2013/07/10/bradley-manning-trial-defense-rest/
So Monday will be crucial day in this trial. It will basically be the difference between Bradley Manning has a small chance of spending life in prison or whatever the punishment will be... or have a bigger chance of spending life in prison or whatever the punishment would be.
All this because he released documents showing the fact that in Iraq, the US army had no problem with collateral damage at times.
Nobody talks about it. Nobody cares. The media didn't talk about this, they decided to talk about trayvon martin. The population sure didn't give a rats ass because they too didn't care about this.
Knowing what the army does and how it does is important. You wonder why people hate america? Collateral damage is one of them.
Knowing is the first step on solving the problem.
Anyway, how do you stand on the Bradley manning case? Should be free or not? He will be discharged dishonorably either way, if he wasn't already, but yeah.
Collateral damage is sometimes unavoidable in wartime situations. If you haven't done so already, you should read Sun Tzu The Art of War. Great book, and you learn a LOT about war and what it takes to win one.
If you prefer to watch it on television, it's been on the History Channel multiple times. You could probably go to YouTube and even watch it there. Here, I found a link to the program for you. It's really quite interesting, and I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
Sun Tzu states that one must think about and measure the costs of any military action be it in money, your men, or civilian casualties. By utilizing rational indirect warfare, fewer of your men are lost and fewer civilians are killed. The United States has yet to learn this lesson.
Indeed. Even with our technological superiority, we have been fighting two Vietnams for the last decade and it has cost us money, lives, and countless lives of innocents.
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