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Chelsea Manning brought us video footage of Baghdad airstrikes with civilian and press casualties. The motive was clear-cut: she wanted to expose hidden truths

Chelsea Manning brought us video footage of Baghdad airstrikes with civilian and press casualties. The motive was clear-cut: she wanted to expose hidden truths about the war in Iraq that might convince the American people it was no longer worth the cost. That's the definition of a whistleblower. "[She] didn’t like that people were being killed, particularly the citizens, innocent people," Campbell said. "I remember us specifically talking about how we were having a hard time getting information on how many people were being killed." "On one of [her] last visits to Boston, Manning told Keith Rose, a friend [she] had met at Brandeis, of [her] misgivings about Iraq because of what [she] was learning as an intelligence analyst. "[She] expressed a feeling to me like how messed up the situation is," Rose said. "[She] said things like, 'If more people knew what was going on over there, they would not support the war.'" Manning: “The thing that got me most was discovering that 15 detainees taken by the Iraqi Federal Police for printing ‘anti-Iraqi’ literature” had in truth printed a “benign political critique” against the corruption in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s cabinet. Her conscience could not bear to keep these human rights abuses secret, and she revealed them to a world that needed to know about them. I am getting very tired of a narrative in which Manning's actions are mischaracterized as a "vendetta against the US Army" and a "cowardly act." It's an insidious and despicable way to shift attention away from civilian deaths in war and the mistreatment of detainees, the latter of which Manning continues to experience even today. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/who-is-wikileaks-suspect-bradley-manning/2011/04/16/AFMwBmrF_print.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/who-is-wik...

hackinthebochs 10y ago
>Her conscience could not bear to keep these human rights abuses secret Manning had no idea what was in any of the information being leaked. This is not the actions of a conscientious objector. The amount of re-writing history going on here is absurd.
- etjossem 10y ago
  > no idea what was in any of the information being leaked After watching journalists get annihilated by an Apache missile strike, there is not a lot of room for confusion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0
  - hackinthebochs 10y ago
    So because there happened to be something bad among the 250k documents, the act itself is completely absolved? If I were to murder 100 people randomly should I be absolved because it turned out one of them was a child molester?
    - etjossem 10y ago
      > If I were to murder 100 people randomly should I be absolved because it turned out one of them was a child molester? You sound ridiculous. Let's get to the real question. > So because there happened to be something bad among the 250k documents, the act itself is completely absolved? In short, yes. Her 7-year sentence has already been quite enough. I will concede that the outlet through which the leaks were published didn't meet the standards to which we usually hold investigative reporting. Manning chose to disclose all cables in confidence to a team she felt could sift through them for evidence of wrongdoing. That team then proved themselves irresponsible by publishing everything. They should have been far more selective about what they disclosed to the public. I don't blame the source here. I absolutely do blame the coverage.
      - hackinthebochs 10y ago
        >You sound ridiculous. Let's get to the real question. It's not ridiculous, its a reductio ad absurdum of the principle you seem to be employing, that a chance positive result of an action justifies the original action. Or are you just making things up as you go along to reach the conclusion you prefer? >In short, yes. OK, here's a more down to earth scenario. Say I'm a high level administration official and I have access to all classified information. Should I release literally all of it because surely somewhere in the dump will be some wrongdoing by somebody? Surely your answer to this must be no?
        etjossem 10y ago
        That's more like it! Naturally, the answer's no - there's plenty of material the public doesn't need to know about, and which could compromise ongoing operations if it were completely transparent. Sources who want to ethically be whistleblowers need to work with reputable press outlets, releasing only what is necessary to people they know will further trim the leak - until the final product does only good for the public. Here's a quote from Snowden on just that: "I never published a single document on my own because I believe that the model, the ideal of American government is actually quite a shrewd one,” he said. “I tried to emulate the model of checks and balance. Instead of making a unilateral decision, that ‘The world must know,’ I worked with the free press, institutions that we trust, American journalists.” Could Chelsea Manning have chosen a better way to release the documents than WikiLeaks? Absolutely. Do I still consider her a whistleblower? Yes - though I would never claim she was as responsible about it as someone like Snowden.

hackinthebochs 10y ago

>Her conscience could not bear to keep these human rights abuses secret Manning had no idea what was in any of the information being leaked. This is not the actions of a conscientious objector. The amount of re-writing history going on here is absurd.

etjossem 10y ago
> no idea what was in any of the information being leaked After watching journalists get annihilated by an Apache missile strike, there is not a lot of room for confusion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0
- hackinthebochs 10y ago
  So because there happened to be something bad among the 250k documents, the act itself is completely absolved? If I were to murder 100 people randomly should I be absolved because it turned out one of them was a child molester?
  - etjossem 10y ago
    > If I were to murder 100 people randomly should I be absolved because it turned out one of them was a child molester? You sound ridiculous. Let's get to the real question. > So because there happened to be something bad among the 250k documents, the act itself is completely absolved? In short, yes. Her 7-year sentence has already been quite enough. I will concede that the outlet through which the leaks were published didn't meet the standards to which we usually hold investigative reporting. Manning chose to disclose all cables in confidence to a team she felt could sift through them for evidence of wrongdoing. That team then proved themselves irresponsible by publishing everything. They should have been far more selective about what they disclosed to the public. I don't blame the source here. I absolutely do blame the coverage.
    - hackinthebochs 10y ago
      >You sound ridiculous. Let's get to the real question. It's not ridiculous, its a reductio ad absurdum of the principle you seem to be employing, that a chance positive result of an action justifies the original action. Or are you just making things up as you go along to reach the conclusion you prefer? >In short, yes. OK, here's a more down to earth scenario. Say I'm a high level administration official and I have access to all classified information. Should I release literally all of it because surely somewhere in the dump will be some wrongdoing by somebody? Surely your answer to this must be no?
      - etjossem 10y ago
        That's more like it! Naturally, the answer's no - there's plenty of material the public doesn't need to know about, and which could compromise ongoing operations if it were completely transparent. Sources who want to ethically be whistleblowers need to work with reputable press outlets, releasing only what is necessary to people they know will further trim the leak - until the final product does only good for the public. Here's a quote from Snowden on just that: "I never published a single document on my own because I believe that the model, the ideal of American government is actually quite a shrewd one,” he said. “I tried to emulate the model of checks and balance. Instead of making a unilateral decision, that ‘The world must know,’ I worked with the free press, institutions that we trust, American journalists.” Could Chelsea Manning have chosen a better way to release the documents than WikiLeaks? Absolutely. Do I still consider her a whistleblower? Yes - though I would never claim she was as responsible about it as someone like Snowden.