Should Army Pfc. Bradley Manning Be Executed If Found Guilty Of Treason?

[SammyJr]

Yeah, just forget the rule of law as long as it suits you.

Bad laws should be broken and changed. Laws that allow preemptive wars and war profiteering and that cause American troops to needlessly die and tax dollars to be wasted are bad laws.

 

[ayabe]

He has earned execution as countless NATO and Afghan lives will be lost due to the information he intentionally gave to the hostiles.

That's pure speculation and hyperbole.

 

[bfdd]

That's pure speculation and hyperbole.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/02/taliban-seeks-vengeance-in-wake-of-wikileaks.html

After WikiLeaks published a trove of U.S. intelligence documents—some of which listed the names and villages of Afghans who had been secretly cooperating with the American military—it didn’t take long for the Taliban to react. A spokesman for the group quickly threatened to “punish” any Afghan listed as having “collaborated” with the U.S. and the Kabul authorities against the growing Taliban insurgency. In recent days, the Taliban has demonstrated how seriously those threats should be considered. Late last week, just four days after the documents were published, death threats began arriving at the homes of key tribal elders in southern Afghanistan. And over the weekend one tribal elder, Khalifa Abdullah, who the Taliban believed had been in close contact with the Americans, was taken from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province’s embattled Arghandab district, and executed by insurgent gunmen.

 

[dfuze]

Execution? Not for this. But he certainly deserves jail time for releasing confidential information

 

[shira]

Liz Cheney is his daughter!!!

Dick Cheney married his daughter???? OMG

 

[ayabe]

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/02/taliban-seeks-vengeance-in-wake-of-wikileaks.html

Collaborators are killed everyday you cannot prove he was killed due to document #83445 being released.

 

[Moonbeam]

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

 

[bfdd]

Collaborators are killed everyday you cannot prove he was killed due to document #83445 being released.

did you read the article? they sent death threats to this guy and others over the documents then killed him. so even if the documents had nothing to do with this and they're just using it as an excuse to kill this guy, releasing the documents gave them the excuse needed to kill this guy. anyway you look at it you're wrong sorry please insert 25 cents to play again.

 

[BoberFett]

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/03/awlaki/index.html

I'm disappointed. I thought it was going to be about Credence.

Seriously though, Hope and Change. Democrats are nothing like Republicans. Really.

 

[werepossum]

A conservative's delusion. What major social change has ever occurred with people quietly following the law? Because I can think of plenty of others: Civil rights, prohobition, labour/union movements, suffrage, independence movements in many countries etc etc.

This man if guilty has already gotten people murdered. By your standards I should have carte blanche to murder abortion doctors because I'm "pursuing major social change." There's an enormous difference between refusing to go to the back of the bus, or peaceful protests, and releasing classified military secrets and getting killed the people who are trying to help us make Afghanistan a place that dos not support terrorists or mutilating women or burning homosexuals. While you are evidently very far gone on your America-hating and Taliban-loving, that does not justify not following military and civilian law.

 

[SammyJr]

I'm disappointed. I thought it was going to be about Credence.

Seriously though, Hope and Change. Democrats are nothing like Republicans. Really.

Meh. The only real difference is that the Democrats (lately) don't start wars. They just pick up and make worse the Republican quagmires. Either way, the Middle Class is getting fucked of existance.

 

[SammyJr]

This man if guilty has already gotten people murdered. By your standards I should have carte blanche to murder abortion doctors because I'm "pursuing major social change." There's an enormous difference between refusing to go to the back of the bus, or peaceful protests, and releasing classified military secrets and getting killed the people who are trying to help us make Afghanistan a place that dos not support terrorists or mutilating women or burning homosexuals. While you are evidently very far gone on your America-hating and Taliban-loving, that does not justify not following military and civilian law.

Manning didn't kill anyone. He simply exposed our efforts for what they really are and for that, he deserves our thanks. Afghanistan is a lost cause. The Soviets knew it and we're making the same blunders. The Afghani people will evolve as a society on their own time table and it could be never. Unless you're willing to continue to spend billions a week indefinitely, and I suspect you are, violence will increase tremendously and those people you're so worried about will die anyway. They'll probably die regardless of what we do - that's what happens in a country like that - you kill your enemies.

What in Afghanistan is worth my tax dollars? Why should my neighbor be risking his life?

 

[BoberFett]

Meh. The only real difference is that the Democrats (lately) don't start wars. They just pick up and make worse the Republican quagmires. Either way, the Middle Class is getting fucked of existance.

Pretty much.

 

[shira]

I agree completely, but while they are in force they should be followed. Otherwise we end up with the rule of men rather than the rule of law.

So you think the federal government should be vigorously enforcing anti-marijuana laws, even though everyone and his mother knows they're crap, and that the only reason they stay on the books is that Congress is too chicken-shit to actually legalize a drug everyone knows is much less harmful than alcohol and tobacco?

 

[Fern]

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/03/awlaki/index.html

Wow. Wild stuff.

Never heard of these "Treasury Reugulations" (Why the heck would these type regulations fall under the Dept of Treasury?)

Sounds blatantly unconstitutional.

Fern

 

[Generator]

Kill him. But remember him a hero who ended this absurd war.

 

[Throckmorton]

He and the Wikileaks guys should be in prison for the rest of their lives. They directly caused the deaths of people who took a great risk to help us save their country.

What reason could they possibly have to leak the villages and individuals collaborating with us? It defies all common sense and decency.

 

[BoberFett]

He and the Wikileaks guys should be in prison for the rest of their lives. They directly caused the deaths of people who took a great risk to help us save their country.

What reason could they possibly have to leak the villages and individuals collaborating with us? It defies all common sense and decency.

1) We haven't saved anything. Afghanistan is a loss.

2) I'm pretty sure people have been dying long before we were there, and will be dying long after we leave.

3) Cry more.

 

[FuzzyBee]

I guess there were Americans loyal to the Crown that thought Benedict Arnold was a hero, too.

 

[OutHouse]

Should Army Pfc. Bradley Manning be executed if found guilty of treason?

Simple question.
Is execution the appropriate punishment for treason in a time a war.

yes

 

[OutHouse]

He and the Wikileaks guys should be in prison for the rest of their lives. They directly caused the deaths of people who took a great risk to help us save their country.

What reason could they possibly have to leak the villages and individuals collaborating with us? It defies all common sense and decency.

for a flaming liberal im actually shocked you feel that way.

 

[ayabe]

did you read the article? they sent death threats to this guy and others over the documents then killed him. so even if the documents had nothing to do with this and they're just using it as an excuse to kill this guy, releasing the documents gave them the excuse needed to kill this guy. anyway you look at it you're wrong sorry please insert 25 cents to play again.

I challenged a bogus assertion and surely every collaborator who gets their head chopped off from here on out will be blamed on this incident, that is just flawed sorry.

 

[ayabe]

He and the Wikileaks guys should be in prison for the rest of their lives. They directly caused the deaths of people who took a great risk to help us save their country.

What reason could they possibly have to leak the villages and individuals collaborating with us? It defies all common sense and decency.

It was a dump of hundreds of thousands of documents, no one including the Wikileaks guy has read it all and I'm fairly certain he can't be prosecuted.

Afghans don't give a flying fuck about Afghanistan, the only people on our side over there are people who've received a pallet full of US taxpayer cash dropped onto their front yard, or maybe their tribal leaders' yard, either way it's about the almighty dollar and tribal loyalties, no more, no less.

 

[Craig234]

I guess there were Americans loyal to the Crown that thought Benedict Arnold was a hero, too.

Actually, what there were were people who do the same thing most do today - people who ignored the real problem that happened for a simple story instead.

Benedict Arnold was a hell of a good general, and he was wrong by incompetent politicians over and over for crass political favoritism, if memory serves.

That's not saying his switch was tolerable by the US - a switch that seemed driven by his romance with a young British woman - but the thing to note is that the wrongs done by the leaders over him are ignored and forgotten, in favor of only looking at his wrong, with no lesson learned. That's too bad. Had our government done better, he'd have been a strong general for our side.

It's a little like the point I made in the Afghanistan thread, where our role just before the Soviet invasion is utterly ignore - there's no interest in it and any lessons on the war topic.

Even things like Custer and the Alamo tend to have similar myopia - that poor innocent unit was slaughtered by the Indians for no reason, the Alamo was attacked for no reason.

There's a whole lot of interest in 'remember the incident' and using it to justify war, but very little in the actual history of the Alamo as a place for Americans who mostly were defenders of slavery moving to Mexico and challenging the Mexican government, or Custer's unit's role in the massacre of Indians (until recent years at least, when a few pointed it out).

Benedict Arnold is America's most famous 'traitor', and the story has almost no blame for the 'real problem' that led to it.

 

[Fern]

I challenged a bogus assertion and surely every collaborator who gets their head chopped off from here on out will be blamed on this incident, that is just flawed sorry.

If those people executed were identified in the leaked documents, yes, he should be blamed.

It was incredibly irresponsible not to have redacted out those peoples' names and villages prior to publication.

Fern