Bradley Manning has pleaded guilty to "10 lesser charges", and will read out a 35-page statement on the leak of diplomatic cables to Wikileaks and the motivations behind it, according to The Guardian's Ed Pilkington. Pilkington reports that the charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years, "but #BradleyManning pleads NOT guilty to the big government charge - 'aiding the enemy' - that could see him jailed for life."

  • http://twitter.com/amanicdroid Dr. Chronobiologist

    Sigh.

    • http://twitter.com/amanicdroid Dr. Chronobiologist

       [vomits]

  • showme

    This is actually not as bad as I had expected. It’s still a travesty, of course, but look who you’re dealing with.

    • http://twitter.com/strugglngwriter strugglngwriter

      This doesn’t mean that the Army won’t pursue those other charges, though, right? I doubt they accepted any type of plea.

  • Andrew Singleton

    That he had to plead anything at all is a damned shame.

    • jandrese

      Good cause or not, violating the terms of your security clearance is something the government cares about.

      • chellberty

        No they don’t IE the Bush admin leaked like a sieve.

        • jandrese

          There’s a big difference between the White House “leaking” stuff to the press to make themselves look better, and a random guy with a clearance exfiltrating enormous amounts of classified data. 

          • nowimnothing

            So that’s what Scooter Libby was doing huh?

          • Daemonworks

             True. The latter is the one that should be encouraged.

          • aikimoe

            Not legally, there isn’t. When the White House leaks stuff to the press to make themselves look better, they are, by definition, “violating the terms of their security clearance.”

          • jandrese

            That depends.  They are the authority on those leaks, so it’s possible that they internally declassified the material before releasing it. 

          • aikimoe

            It’s possible, jandrese, but, so far, there’s zero evidence for it.  And if there were, it would simply further illustrate how broken the system for classifying documents is.

  • Daemonworks

    The US government does more every day to aid it’s enemies than Manning could ever have done.

  • soylent_plaid

    Hmmm, so three straight years of torture, abuse and inhuman treatment get you a plea bargain.  See?  Totally worth it guys!  Stop being such bleeding hearts about “human rights” all the time!

  • http://www.jeremiahblatz.com/ Jeremiah Blatz

    Wow. I was just struck how this is EXACTLY like the kangaroo courts and ham-fisted forced confessions that we in the US so roundly condemned. They tortured him* until they got a confession, end of story.

    * Extended solitary confinement is torture: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1898