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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
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(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.
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