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In one of his last moves in office, President Obama has commuted the 35-year prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the Army private who leaked a massive trove of military secrets to WikiLeaks.
The former intelligence analyst's prison sentence has been shortened to expire on May 17, 2017, according to a statement from the White House.
Her lawyers at the ACLU expressed relief after the decision, saying that Manning has already served more time behind bars than any other whistleblower in U.S. history, and under difficult conditions.
Also at the BBC and the New York Times.
Previously: Chelsea Manning Reportedly on Obama's Short List for Commutation; Assange Offers Himself in Trade
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:36AM
This is good. Why not give Snowden a full, free, and absolute pardon? And how about not granting the intelligence agencies even more access to our unconstitutionally-collected data before leaving office, you scumbag?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @11:59AM
You took the words right out of my mouth. Failure to pardon Snowden is the ultimate indictment of Obama's term in office. Many things he could not do because the Republican-controlled Congress stonewalled him. That is, he could at least claim he could not do them because of congressional stonewalling, when there is indication that worked as well for him politically as for them.
This, though, he can do unilaterally and there's really nothing anyone could say or do to stop him, including the NSA and CIA or the Deep State. But he demurred, and we know him without a doubt for the worthless mercenary he is.
We know you did it for the lulz and the sweet, sweet ride after the presidency, Barack, but something tells me you will not have long to enjoy it Nor will any of us.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday January 18 2017, @12:26PM
I don't know. There are several other indictments that may be worse:
1. That Gitmo is still open. Especially as we now know that many of the people who were imprisoned there were completely innocent and had no connection with terrorism whatsoever (at least, before they went in - if they join ISIS or something afterwords, I won't blame them for hating us). And no, Republicans didn't stop him from closing it, they stopped him from closing it in a way that allowed him to keep some of the prisoners stuck in jail for life without trial.
2. That nobody was prosecuted or jailed for war crimes, even in cases when the perpetrators of said war crimes announced their involvement on national TV news, even though we are required by treaty to do so.
3. That no person was prosecuted or went to jail for Wall Street fraud perpetrated on a scale we haven't seen in almost a century. In the 1980's S&L crash, a bunch of people went to jail for doing the same kinds of things bankers totally got away with doing in the early 2000's.
4. That he ordered drone strikes against US citizens without anything remotely resembling due process of law. In one case, the target was 16 years old (the CIA claimed that somebody else was the target, but the alleged target was nowhere near the US citizen they killed, and they had just killed the kid's father a couple of weeks earlier, so the CIA is lying about that).
5. That he boosted rather than stopped the surveillance state.
I should also mention that many of these things were the exact opposite of promises Obama made on the campaign trail.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jdavidb on Wednesday January 18 2017, @02:27PM
Republicans didn't stop him from closing it, they stopped him from closing it in a way that allowed him to keep some of the prisoners stuck in jail for life without trial.
Thank you, I need to save and reuse this short simple explanation.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 18 2017, @03:04PM
I agree that all these things are bad, and should have been avoided if possible - but hijacking airliners and suicide bombing them into skyscrapers and political target buildings is also bad and avoiding that in the future is probably worth some collateral damage. In the past, collateral damage of war included the deaths of thousands of our citizens, thousands more of their citizens, destruction of property on a vast scale rendering dozens of cities destroyed beyond the point of sheltering even half their former inhabitants, and perpetration of atrocities that left millions of survivors physically and/or emotionally scarred for life.
So, while I agree with and support all the criticisms of how the "war on Terror" was wound down, all in all, I think we're making progress - orders of magnitude progress as compared to how things were handled in, say, Vietnam and Korea. I'd call the relatively small number of victims collateral damage, unfortunate, and we should strive to do better in the future - reducing collateral damage casualties from the hundreds down to as close to zero as possible, but when the opening act of a war kills thousands - containing and ending it with mere hundreds in collateral damage would seem to be a measured, proportionate response to ensure that it won't happen again, soon at least.
Now, the invasion of Iraq on the pretense of WMD - leaves me speechless and ashamed, that is something I cannot justify or support from any perspective. But, then, my family doesn't derive fortunes from the petroleum industry.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Wednesday January 18 2017, @03:33PM
absolutely correct, mr mercenary, er, merchant of death, er, merchant...
of course the correct and right ratio is 1,000,000 barbarians killed for every twue bwue 'merikan killed...
it is only right and proportional, in a 1,000,000:1 way...
perfectly understandable...
totally not vengeful or predicated on korporate/money issues at all...
well, maybe a little bit, but, c'mon, we gotta pay for these wars to start these wars to pay for these wars to start the wars to pay for the wars ad infinitum...
(um, excepting we ain't weally at 'war'-war with anyone, just -you know- defending 'our' (sic) democracy fucking EVERYWHERE on the planet but HERE...)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday January 18 2017, @04:57PM
How exactly does imprisoning and torturing people who had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 hijackings or suicide bombings do anything useful to battle terrorism? Bear in mind that every serious study on the subject has determined that torture does not yield anything resembling useful intelligence [theweek.com], so even if you have the bad guys you'll learn exactly nothing from torturing them.
The pro-torture crowd generally likes to portray themselves as Tough Guys who are the only ones willing to do what is necessary, unlike the rest of us pansies. But the reality is that they are actually mostly idiots and sadists putting other people through the worst possible treatments imaginable for the fun of it. When civilians do that to their fellow citizens, we lock them up for a very long time. When these guys do that to what amount to randomly selected foreigners, we protect them from criminal prosecution and give them whatever equipment they want, and pay them handsomely for the job.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @05:34PM
You have to wonder where the CIA recruits torturers. They recruit heavily from the military and law enforcement, but institutionalized torture is not part of the culture at those places. Do they pull serial killers and such out of supermax prisons and give them the job? I would think that if you tell any normal person to torture others (despite the Milgram experiments) that eventually they would figure out what's happening and become very angry and likely to turn on the ones giving the orders. Even when the Nazis were murdering thousands of undesireables in Eastern Europe the officers in charge were constantly going crazy or committing suicide when confronted with the enormity of their crimes, and that was with the full faith and backing of the Nazi state telling them what they were doing was good.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:51PM
It isn't? OK, maybe not the "institutionalized" part, as in no commander is going to be caught giving orders for it to happen, but it definitely happens a lot. Also, those are the kinds of organizations and professions that attract those who want to cause pain and injury and death to others - I mean, what career would you choose if your primary skill is pushing nerds into the lockers?
And I should point out, in your Nazi comparison, that (a) the Milgram experiments were inspired by the behavior of Adolf Eichmann, and (b) the US torturers had the full faith and backing of the US government telling them what they were doing was good or at least necessary.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:12PM
I'd say that you recruit from the guys that apply for law enforcement jobs and fail the psych profiles in those specific areas. There are plenty of people in this world "looking for payback," it's more or less an animal instinct response to abuse, and plenty of people are abused as children in all sorts of ways.
Still, at the end of the day, why exactly do you torture? It's not to obtain accurate or useful information, I think it's more to strike fear in the minds of the enemy.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:26PM
I think you're probably right.
On the subject of torture it is one of the most repugnant developments of the last 20 years in the United States that people seriously discuss the efficacy of torture, as if it's a legitimate, normal practice. It's not. It's a war crime and utterly abhorrent. It is a profound disgrace and shame on a people who think they live in "the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave," that they contemplate having anything to do with torture beyond shooting torturers dead on the spot.
Bringing the CIA and other 3-letter agencies to justice for their depravity is at the top of the list when the revolution comes.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:43PM
I normally don't credit our chief executive with much, but I will give W credit for this particular move. The lawyers he chose to back up his position should be taken out and shot in front of him, one by one, until he confesses that it was a bad idea to coerce them into rendering their opinion approving the operation.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:08PM
imprisoning and torturing people who had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 hijackings or suicide bombings
It's an easy criticism to level now. At the time they were imprisoned, the captors believed that they were preventing future attacks - I do believe that. Now, even if they were mistaken and got the wrong guys, I don't see any difference between that and bombing a village that's suspected of harboring an enemy sniper unit, killing innocents in the process of attempting to get the bad guys.
Torture, in my opinion, is always a mistake - but nobody asked me. Unfortunately, after capturing the wrong guys and torturing them, it appears that our guys weren't man enough to own up to the mistake and do what they could to make amends (never enough, but better than continued limbo...)
For the future, if we can accidentally capture and interrogate (not torture) one or two "wrong guys" instead of killing a dozen innocent people to attempt to meet the same goal, which is often to stop an attack that could kill thousands - I'd call that progress.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:53PM
That could easily have been avoided.
Within a few months following 9/11, every door to every airliner's cockpit was replaced with a secure one.
The "penny-pinching" airline industry had spend millions of dollars fighting this tooth and nail for years and years.
All the long lines and groping and all that shit are completely unnecessary.
Daddy was a military pilot.
Whenever we would be watching a (dumb) TV movie where there was an aircraft with a situation on board, Daddy would say, "GET THE AIRCRAFT ON THE GROUND AND LET THE EXPERTS HANDLE THE PROBLEM."
Secure cockpit doors make that totally possible.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:22AM
All the long lines and groping and all that shit are completely unnecessary.
Only if you believe that the point is airplane security. They are a necessary part of delaying the realization that productivity has advance to the point that we have more people willing to work than we have demand to be working. So they create a bunch of TSA jobs which reduce worker productivity for business travelers and cuts into private citizens' free time. So now the TSA agents have jobs, companies hire more people to offset company time lost in airport lines, and we have to pay someone to do the things around the house we couldn't get to because we added 4 hours of airport time to our holiday.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:26AM
Within a few months following 9/11, every door to every airliner's cockpit was replaced with a secure one.
Which was then proven to be an effective way of locking the pilot out of the cockpit, so you can crash the plane without being disturbed.
Unfortunately that happened in Germany, so nothing game of it. Had it happened in the US, those secure doors would have been outlawed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:29AM
Your sample of 1 is completely unimpressive.
You also failed to mention that it was a cockpit crew member who went bananas.
...and that Malaysian guy appears to have augered -his- aircraft into the sea with the cockpit crew still in the cockpit.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @05:20PM
I meant "ultimate" in the sense of "final," as in "the last thing he does before leaving office." It was one last chance for a small bit of redemption, but he took a pass.
Your list of course is a strong one. Among the many ways to consider what it means, a few that occur to me are 1) Obama is an evil corrupt POS like all the rest of them and was always in it for the payday, or 2) He didn't do those things because the President doesn't actually have the power to do any of those things, unlike what the rest of us believe, or 3) The government and system has run amok because the bandwidth of any one President, no matter who, is limited and is easily sidetracked and frustrated by self-interested cronies and bureaucrats who are in charge of minutely scheduling your day.
The last I offer for consideration to those who think Trump is going to fix everything, because he has surrounded himself with those same cronies and insiders who surround every other President before him, and who always make sure that the needs of the country go unmet and unheard.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:00PM
... are idiots. Even if Trump could fix everything, he won't, because he will benefit from the very system he's decrying. For example, like all presidents since at least Richard Nixon have been he will be completely immune from criminal prosecution forever, and we can be reasonably certain that somebody with his checkered history would not want to give that up.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:55PM
1. That Gitmo is still open.
Wasn't it one of his campaign promises, closing it? Maybe even the first time he ran for President?
How do you tell when a politician is lying
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:48PM
1. You didn't mention specifically that closing that place was one of his campaign promises.
This demonstrates that, in several ways, O'Bummer and Donnie Tiny Hands are quite similar.
It seems that it's impossible to get the top gig without being a two-faced lying bastard.
O'Bummer also expanded both of Dubya's wars after campaigning as a "peace" candidate.
Again: Two-faced.
...and he went on to drop bombs on several more places.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 18 2017, @11:06PM
Oh, yeah?! Well, uh... at least Trump was transparent about being a liar!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by jdavidb on Wednesday January 18 2017, @02:26PM
This, though, he can do unilaterally and there's really nothing anyone could say or do to stop him, including the NSA and CIA or the Deep State.
Well, since you put it that way, I suppose they could assassinate him.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @04:57PM
Assassinate him, with, what, 5 days left in his term? Yeah, that makes sense.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:38PM
Not that I'm a fan of bob but you're being a little naive. Yes, it is well within his power to pardon Snowden without any official or legal recourse for folks to stop him, but keep in mind he is soon to be an ex-head of state with much much reduced power and influence, there's always the threat that if he pisses of folks too much, he and his own is not going to get a smooth ride.
People keep saying he has nothing to lose since it is his last term so he should do the right thing... I would disagree, he has a lot of to lose personally if he did the wrong thing that pisses of the wrong folks. Even in the normal course of the daily rat race, there's a lot of bridges one would never go down, but burning them would not be smart.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @11:47PM
Oh, please. Even if I assume that risk exists, he should do it anyway for the good of the country.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @12:59PM
Why not give Snowden a full, free, and absolute pardon?
The story around Snowden has been painted that rather than seeking asylum in Russia after his passport was revoked, he instead intentionally went there as a defector and brought vital US intelligence with him. I find it unlikely he'll be let off the hook any time soon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @02:51PM
Painted that way because it was mostly done that way. Don't forget, he ran to the Chinese first.
The story painted around here is that he walks on water and his shit doesn't stink. That in and of itself doesn't mean he should get off with no consequences. His revealing of sources and methods against foreign powers had nothing to do with domestic surveillance, and they should be treated and considered separate from his other actions. You can't always have the ends justifying the means only when it comes to the particular ends that you care about and not to others.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 18 2017, @03:23PM
His revealing of sources and methods against foreign powers had nothing to do with domestic surveillance, and they should be treated and considered separate from his other actions.
But it still revealed some relevant information, such as Obama vowing [usatoday.com] that the US wasn't spying on Merkel while such spying, authorized [telegraph.co.uk] by him, was going on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:52AM
Relevant to whom? The argument is about the US and US interests. Your comment is irrelevant to the argument.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:41AM
Relevant to whom? The argument is about the US and US interests. Your comment is irrelevant to the argument.
Well, it's quite relevant to my interests when my president readily lies to another head of state without first figuring whether the lie could be easily revealed. Look at the dates of the denial and the reveal that I linked in my previous post. A mere four days later, Obama was shown to be a crass liar. Even for the notorious amorality of international politics, that was quite incompetent and unprofessional.
And what are "US and US interests", if not the interests of its citizens? The US is a democracy for a reason.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:56AM
So, you're saying that we shouldn't be trying to get on friendly foot with our largest enemy, Europe, but keep focusing on our good old friend Russia?
Seems you elected the right guy for that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @11:07PM
The American people have no say in foreign policy!
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday January 18 2017, @11:53PM
Don't forget, he ran to the Chinese first.
You realize that he had an escape route that he was taking and that Russia wasn't his intended final destination, right? Buying into blatant propaganda--propaganda that has been debunked a billion times over--just makes you a moron.
His revealing of sources and methods against foreign powers had nothing to do with domestic surveillance
Guess what? Domestic surveillance wasn't the only important issue, you bootlicker. Revealing how they were conducting mass surveillance on foreign countries could also help us protect ourselves form the same exploits. Also, I think we should respect people's rights even if they are in other countries, so it's easily morally justifiable to leak that information. I would have liked to see everything leaked, as a punishment for conducting mass surveillance in the first place. If you don't like that possibility, then don't engage in heinous acts that necessitates it.
You can't always have the ends justifying the means only when it comes to the particular ends that you care about and not to others.
Then you can't justify mass surveillance, even against people in foreign countries. I for one believe that freedom is well worth the risks. It's when you're taking away people's freedoms that the 'the ends justify the means' argument doesn't work, and revealing what is happening is certainly not an unethical thing to do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:08AM
You shouldn't buy so much into Snowdens propaganda, hastily thrown together after dumping the data to foreign intel ("look, look, see, see, look at all this domestic surveillance! See, I'm doing this for you!!!!! (You don't mind if I hand over the remaining 99% of the info to these nice Chinese and Russians, do you?).
So he has this grand and carefully planned out escape plan. And it was almost foolproof as well, except for holding a press conference in Hong Kong in the middle of his "freedom escape". Geez, who's the fucking idiot? Perhaps you should extricate your nose from where it is buried (I think it is plenty brown enough) and look at what really happened from 30,000 feet and get out of your bobby soxer hero worship state.
LOL. Yeah, sure, we'll set up a github and gofundme to do our intel collections.
Bootlicker, huh. Ok, maybe I have erred in my opinion and it isn't Snowden's anus you have your face buried in, it is Putin's. Or are you one of those "there should be no secrets" idiots? You know, it is a VERY short step from "there should be no secrets" to "you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide."
Holy fuck. Hipster Intel. Maybe when you're president you can give out participation trophies to the CIA and NSA employees. "Great job guys! I know you weren't allowed to do anything, but I'm proud of you because you have so much spunk!"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:28AM
(You don't mind if I hand over the remaining 99% of the info to these nice Chinese and Russians, do you?).
More baseless assertions, unless you mean that the Chinese and Russians can see the leaks as well. But if that's what you mean, then of course they can; the information is being released publicly.
So he has this grand and carefully planned out escape plan.
It doesn't matter how good your plan is if you're up against a country as powerful as the US.
I don't know why we're still going over events that happened years ago that have long since been resolved. Maybe next you'll tell me that the NSA isn't "wittingly" collecting people's metadata, or repeat another lie straight from the intelligence agencies that have shown themselves to be generally untrustworthy. There are just so many lies and baseless assertions to choose from, and smearing and speculation is all too easy.
Or are you one of those "there should be no secrets" idiots?
I'm one of those rare "the government shouldn't do evil" people. I'm also one of those people who think there should be consequences if the government does do something evil, and one of those consequences may be that your secrets get revealed, and maybe more secrets get revealed than you would like. So be it.
You know, it is a VERY short step from "there should be no secrets" to "you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide."
There's a difference between violating individual rights and using 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' as an excuse and having a transparent government. Whistleblowers are sometimes necessary for transparency. Revealing a government's wrongdoing has absolutely nothing in common with a government violating individual liberties. The 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' argument is always used to trample upon liberties.
The intelligence agencies have not only repeatedly shown that they are filled almost entirely with unethical scumbags, but that they are untrustworthy as well. To me, anything they say is suspect, because it's just far too easy for them to smear whistleblowers while claiming that all the damning evidence is top secret.
At any rate, it's blatantly apparent that you're a gullible and/or disingenuous bootlicker.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:05AM
Snowden hasn't been charged or arrested or imprisoned. There's as of yet nothing for which Obama can pardon him.
Instruct the DOJ that they shall not prosecute him, but heeyyy there's a new guy in office this year! Bet the statute of limitations hasn't run out yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:38AM
Snowden hasn't been charged or arrested or imprisoned.
Never heard of Nixon, I take it?