Why is Bradley Manning in prison whilst war criminals run free?

[Gandalf]

The soldiers have not been punished for their actions. If Manning had not released the video it would have all been swept under the carpet and random killings would continue. It is obvious that there is little accountability for war crimes in the present day US military. If there was, then the soldiers would have been punished. However, this hasn't happened.

Manning broke an oath, but in doing so did an extremely noble and courageous thing. I salute the man and regard him as a modern American hero. A true patriot who tried to show how his nation was abusing its power. This is what patriots do. They don't make empty promises to a flag, they stand by their righteous and humanitarian convictions.

The thing Miles is that the guy didn't release only footage of soldiers doing wrong things. If it would be only that, things would be fare less intricated (even if he did violate the military rules). THe guy just sent tons of gigs of material without regard on the content, he just sent it all, which is kind of dumb. You just can't send tons of hot data to guys you don't even know and without taking time to separate what is relevevant so the wrongdoers are punished but nobody else at risk. VanChilld has quite a fair point here I think.

Which one?

And let's not be idiots, the Iraq war itself was a war crime.

[Nameless]

The soldiers have not been punished for their actions. If Manning had not released the video it would have all been swept under the carpet and random killings would continue. It is obvious that there is little accountability for war crimes in the present day US military. If there was, then the soldiers would have been punished. However, this hasn't happened.

Manning broke an oath, but in doing so did an extremely noble and courageous thing. I salute the man and regard him as a modern American hero. A true patriot who tried to show how his nation was abusing its power. This is what patriots do. They don't make empty promises to a flag, they stand by their righteous and humanitarian convictions.

The thing Miles is that the guy didn't release only footage of soldiers doing wrong things. If it would be only that, things would be fare less intricated (even if he did violate the military rules). THe guy just sent tons of gigs of material without regard on the content, he just sent it all, which is kind of dumb. You just can't send tons of hot data to guys you don't even know and without taking time to separate what is relevevant so the wrongdoers are punished but nobody else at risk. VanChilld has quite a fair point here I think.

Which one?

And let's not be idiots, the Iraq war itself was a war crime.

The iraq war was just wrongly handled from beginning to end (including its reasons). As for the documents that Manning sent, I didn't skim the whole X gigs of data for reasons you can imagine but if I am correct, he did send, among othere things, names of military in charge of some places as well as some detailed equipment listing. The guy just sent everything he had under hand and you can't do that.

[Ghost]

Bigger question is why he has not be tried for treason and executed yet?