WikiLeaks guy wants a sex change?

If he wants to live as a woman. Awesome for him and good luck. That is a tough long hard road from what I gather from "steph" at work.

I ain't paying for it though.

novaderik, about the German and Russian defectors: how about Robert Hanssen, Aldrich Ames, etc? Those people sold out for money. Do you feel they were justified?

Also the German and Russian soldiers who defected wound up on the winning side. Had things gone the other way and the Axis powers won WWII or the Cold War have ended with the collapse of NATO, well they would not have been viewed as heroes. Like it or not, the winning side makes the rules.

1) When a secret is actually a war crime, it's not a secret it's evidence.

2) When you risk everything to expose a war crime you are not a traitor. you are a confused woman trapped in a man's body.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: 1) When a secret is actually a war crime, it's not a secret it's evidence. 2) When you risk everything to expose a war crime you are not a traitor. you are a confused woman trapped in a man's body.

What war crimes?

Every report I hear of the information leaked is quite generic in nature. His defense is claiming that most of the info had already been released to the public. What crimes was he trying to correct?

I'm not being argumentative. I am genuinely interested and have not been able to find any info.

It kind of sounds like he is trying to play both sides of the fence. When he speaks to the media, there has been this tremendous injustice he is righting. When his ass is on the line, it's no big deal because the info was already public.

That's the way his attorney would play it, always spin things to put Manning in the best possible light. In short, he'll do anything to save his own ass.

To me he's a traitor and an attention whore, not to mention an opportunistic little jerk. He's taking the attention he's gotten and trying to squeeze free surgery out of it.

It's bad enough I have to help pay to house feed and clothe his traitorous corpus, but now I'm expected to help pay for this surgery so his wittel feewings don't get hurt? Please. Ask me how little I care about his feelings.

At some point Assange will have to answer for his part in this as well, can't wait.

By the way, according to some sources it appears some of the Reuters brass were shown the infamous chopper attack video in 2008 in an off the record viewing before Manning made it public.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/36182383/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/us-pilot-seen-firing-people-iraq/#.UhoJttI3vVo

SVreX wrote: What war crimes?

Gotta call you out on not being able to find it... type 'manning war crime' into google and you can get about 300k responses from established news sources all the way to idiot FB commentary on every blog in the world.

The "Collateral Murder" video shows a US Apache helicopter killing 12 civilians and wounding two children on the ground in Baghdad in 2007. The helicopter then fired on and killed the people trying to rescue the wounded. Finally, a US tank drove over one of the bodies. These acts constitute three separate war crimes according to his attorney and or defense.

There is no mention of how turning his penis inside out to form a vagina of sorts will be used in this case but I can see several ways that his incarceration will be made more unpleasant due to having mentioned it out loud.

In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker:

Allegedly. All that stuff is alleged, my friend.

The video shows firing on people. It does not show they are civilians, or that they were killed, or unarmed, or children.

You are parroting what you've been told. Just like Mr. Manning.

I am asking if there is any confirmation. Ant war tribunals? Convictions? Charges from other sovereign nations? UN sanctions?

Crap posted on the internet from some guy's smart phone hardly counts as evidence. And the title "Collateral Murder" betrays WikiLeaks' real purpose and intent, so I can't count them either.

And yes, I know how to Google too.

SVreX wrote: You are parroting what you've been told. Just like Mr. Manning.

I am not parroting anything. You asked what war crimes and I told you to save you the apparent herculean effort of looking for yourself. I have not offered my own opinion at all (except the whole sex change thing is icky).

If you asked for my opine, I'd have said:

He was convicted so he will do time for his actions. Some will say his time in prison is a service to his countrymen. Some will say it was the price for betrayal of his government. I would say it was possibly both.

Calling this guy a hero is crapping on the graves of all the men and women who died doing their job and fighting honorably over the last decade.....

There were two Reuters reporters killed in that skirmish. The Apache crew thought that they were carrying weapons and asked for permission to fire.

In the chatter during the video, one crew member says 'That's a weapon. Yeah. ' when in fact it was a camera. A horrible mistake.

That permission was granted and they acted on it.

From their viewpoint, it could have easily been someone with a shoulder fired weapon that would have taken the Apache out, killing its crew. I suppose Manning would have considered that to be an acceptable outcome.

Another angle: the Reuters reporters were not easily identifiable, they were dressed in civilian clothing the same as al Qaeda and insurgent militia members did. Had they been wearing something (perhaps a vest?) with markings identifying them as reporters then all this would never have happened.

There have been something like 150 reporters killed in Iraq.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/iraq-war-killed-journalists_n_2907550.html

From that article:

'In Syria, and to a lesser extent Afghanistan, combat-related crossfire has accounted for a large proportion of deaths. But in Iraq, at least 92 journalists, or nearly two out of every three killed, did not die in airstrikes, checkpoint shootings, suicide bombings, sniper fire, or the detonation of improvised explosive devices. They were instead murdered in targeted assassinations in direct reprisal for their reporting. Many were targeted because of their affiliations with U.S. or Western news organizations, or their connections to news outlets seen as having sectarian connections.'

So where is Manning's outrage at Iraqi insurgents and al Qaeda militants killing reporters? I suppose he thinks that's OK, but a case of horribly mistaken identity is cause for releasing information detrimental to his country?

I'm not buying that. I can't begin to describe my revulsion at this guy's cynical cherry picking.

The best comment I've heard so far regarding this situation:

So when this guy leaked all of this information, everybody screamed that they wanted to cut off his balls, and now that he wants the same thing, you all are complaining about the cost?

914Driver wrote: Removed by me to avoid the train wreck three pages from now. Move along, nothing to see here.

I saw this thread last week and avoided it as my blood pressure rise was to be saved for car maintenance over the weekend.

This update made me laugh heartily.

novaderrik wrote: yeah, nothing bad ever happens when soldiers are "just following orders". how did that work out in Europe in the last half of the 1930's and first half of the 1940's? what is your opinion of the German soldiers and officers that defected to the enemy and told us what they knew about what was going on- they did what they had to do to help stop the things that they were ordered to do for their country, knowing full well that if they got caught they would have probably been shot on sight. how about the people that defected from the Soviet Union during the cold war to tell us what they were up to?.. do you have the same negative view of them as you do of Private Manning?

Those people took a risk, and the people who were caught faced a far worse punishment than Mr. Manning. He has been convicted and needs to do his time. I will say at least believed in his side enough that he stayed and fought the charges instead of moving on to an airport somewhere.

Along with the everyone gets a trophy mentality we also seem to have lost sight the you actions have consequences and just because you think you are justified in doing something doesn't mean the rules don't apply to you.

Wally's right. For instance there are many cases where someone has killed another in self defense (thus feeling that it was justified) yet still had to stand trial.

As far as Russian etc defectors and traitors, they have a different method of handling it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko

'Subsequent investigations by British authorities into the circumstances of Litvinenko's death led to serious diplomatic difficulties between the British and Russian governments. Unofficially, British authorities asserted that "we are 100% sure who administered the poison, where and how", but they did not disclose their evidence in the interest of a future trial. The main suspect in the case, a former officer of the Russian Federal Protective Service (FSO), Andrei Lugovoy, remains in Russia. As a member of the Duma, he now enjoys immunity from prosecution. Before he was elected to the Duma, the British government tried to extradite him without success.'