Bradley Manning confesses.

[~Spectre]

"At his court-martial proceeding this afternoon in Fort Meade, Manning, as the Guaridan's Ed Pilkington reports, pleaded guilty to having been the source of the most significant leaks to WikiLeaks. He also pleaded not guilty to 12 of the 22 counts, including the most serious - the capital offense of "aiding and abetting the enemy", which could send him to prison for life - on the ground that nothing he did was intended to nor did it result in harm to US national security. The US government will now almost certainly proceed with its attempt to prosecute him on those remaining counts."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...-pleads-guilty

[~Spectre]

""Wearing his Army dress uniform, a composed, intense and articulate Pfc. Bradley Manning took 'full responsibility' Thursday for providing the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks with a trove of classified and sensitive military, diplomatic and intelligence cables, videos and documents. . . .

"Manning's motivations in leaking, he said, was to 'spark a domestic debate of the role of the military and foreign policy in general', he said, and 'cause society to reevaluate the need and even desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore their effect on people who live in that environment every day.'

"Manning explain[ed] his actions that drove him to disclose what he said he 'believed, and still believe . . . are some of the most significant documents of our time' . . . .

"He came to view much of what the Army told him — and the public — to be false, such as the suggestion the military had destroyed a graphic video of an aerial assault in Iraq that killed civilians, or that WikiLeaks was a nefarious entity. . . .

"Manning said he often found himself frustrated by attempts to get his chain of command to investigate apparent abuses detailed in the documents Manning accessed. . . .""

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Bradley Manning: My non-revolutionary hero.

[Lord Hargreaves]

Let's hope he is found not guilty on the serious charges, especially the utterly farcical Orwellian charge of "aiding and abetting the enemy," which sounds like something that would have existed in Nazi Germany. I do expect he will be convicted though.

[Skyhilist]

Let's hope he is found not guilty on the serious charges, especially the utterly farcical Orwellian charge of "aiding and abetting the enemy," which sounds like something that would have existed in Nazi Germany. I do expect he will be convicted though.

When you're the U.S. military, the truth is the enemy.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Let's hope he is found not guilty on the serious charges, especially the utterly farcical Orwellian charge of "aiding and abetting the enemy," which sounds like something that would have existed in Nazi Germany. I do expect he will be convicted though.

I'm pretty sure it exists as a crime for every country with a military.
I for sure sympathize with Manning tho.

[The Intransigent Faction]

After he was tortured for months, I'm not surprised, but definitely saddened.
Hope somehow things work out for him in the end. Of course, whatever they do to Bradley Manning, they can't unleak the leaks.