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That's silly. Motive is taken into account for everything else. If you kill someone by accident it's different than if you commit premeditated murder. The perso

That's silly. Motive is taken into account for everything else. If you kill someone by accident it's different than if you commit premeditated murder. The person planning to maliciously use classified secrets should expect a stiffer response than a whistleblower like manning. Edit: Intent, not motive is what I meant to say. Thanks. Point remains though. You can argue that he did deserve something for the reasons rayiner mentions, but you can't argue that he deserves something to make a point to people with malicious intent. If you don't think he had malicious intent, he shouldn't get as much penalty. They should still expect to get the bigger penalty.

deleted 13y ago
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rayiner 13y ago
Motive isn't taken into account, intent is taken into account, which is a narrower concept. "Intent" goes to whether you did something by accident or on purpose (or something in-between). "Motive" goes to the "why." So killing a person with your car may be no crime at all if you were driving carefully and he jumped out of nowhere, if you do run over someone on purpose than it doesn't matter why you did so. Maybe he's a doctor who performs abortions and you believe that you're saving babies from being murdered by killing him.[1] That doesn't make it any lesser degree of murder. [1] I purposefully use that controversial example to make the point that not everyone agrees on the purity of Manning's conduct, just as not everyone agrees on whether abortion is murder or not. Many people believe that indiscriminately leaking hundreds of thousands of documents goes far beyond "whistle-blowing" into conduct intended to maliciously embarrass the United States in diplomatic relations.