Look at it this way perhaps:

If you only keep operational, security-related secrets, you can rightly complain that someone wrongfully made them public, and I suppose it may be appropriate but irrelevant to speculate on their bad motives.

But if you have secrets that are kept not for any valid security reason but to conceal your own bad conduct, then I say: you run the risk of being found out, and you DON’T GET TO WHINE ABOUT IT.

Bofors’ most famous owner was Alfred Nobel, who owned the company from 1894 until his death in December 1896. Nobel played the key role in reshaping the former iron and steel producer to a modern cannon manufacturer and chemical industry participant.

Not that that makes Tchoutoye’s dismissal sensible, just thought you’d like to know.

This is truly a poorly thought out comment.

Guess what? At some point, there will be an R in the White House again, and the whole ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’ can start all over again.

Greenwald…

The impropriety of Obama’s public pre-trial declaration of Manning’s guilt (“He broke the law”) is both gross and manifest. How can Manning possibly expect to receive a fair hearing from military officers when their Commander-in-Chief has already decreed his guilt? Numerous commentators have noted how egregiously wrong was Obama’s condemnation. Michael Whitney wrote: “the President of the United States of America and a self-described Constitutional scholar does not care that Manning has yet to be tried or convicted for any crime.” BoingBoing’s Rob Beschizza interpreted Obama’s declaration of guilt this way: “Just so you know, jurors subordinate judging officers!” And Politico quoted legal experts explaining why Obama’s remarks are so obviously inappropriate.

It may be that Obama spoke extemporaneously and without sufficient forethought, but it is — at best — reckless in the extreme for him to go around decreeing people guilty who have not been tried: especially members of the military who are under his command and who will be adjudged by other members of the military under his command. Moreover, as a self-proclaimed Constitutional Law professor, he ought to have an instinctive aversion when speaking as a public official to assuming someone’s guilt who has been convicted of nothing.

From the Politico article mentioned…

“The comment was not appropriate because it assumes that Manning is guilty,” Steven Aftergood, a classified information expert at the Federation of American Scientists, told POLITICO. “The president got carried away and misspoke. No one should mistake a charge for a conviction — especially the nation’s highest official.”
Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice and military law expert, predicted that before the end of the day, the White House will have issued a corrective statement.
“Commenting on Manning’s conditions of confinement is one thing — I would have strongly advised him to not comment about Manning’s guilt,” Fidell told POLITICO.

Want to honor Bradley Manning? Do it some other way.

But of course, that would hang on us pretending we don’t know the difference between a position (Manning is guilty) and some kind of imperial decree (Manning is hereby made guilty).

You’re right: Obama can’t make Manning guilty by declaration, nor has he tried to. But he must not believe that prosecution is unwarranted, which means he cannot believe in Manning’s innocence. And there is absolutely nothing wrong, legally or otherwise, with saying so.

Nixon v. Manson, you may recall, was a *slightly* different situation than what’s implied by your quote. Manson wasn’t up on federal charges (where Nixon’s opinion would have been germane). Manson himself deliberately held up the newspaper for the jury to see, and the judge allowed the trial to continue when the jurors themselves swore it wouldn’t affect their decisions. Minor details like that do tend to matter.

As for the belief that the officers sitting on a jury will simply follow the implied instructions of their commander-in-chief (or that the judge will, or so forth), you either have it or you don’t. Much like the question of whether we already live in some kind of dystopian oligarchy controlled by shadowy forces and their puppet president, it’s not the kind of thing that really lends itself to debate.

If one is starting from the position that Manning is innocent regardless of the outcome of a trial, then any trial is illegitimate, and any attempt at prosecution is itself evidence of a criminal conspiracy, and any statement to the effect that Manning is guilty or possibly guilty furthers that conspiracy. Again, if that’s where a person is coming from, I don’t think there’s any talking them out of it.

What does one have to say to be a “thoughtful advocate for peace?”  Everything he said at his trial about why he did what he did struck me as quite thoughtful, indeed.  And brave.  He’s taken full responsibility for it.

What has he said that implied that he wanted “fame and financial support?”

Everything he said about why he did what he did is consistent to what he said when he didn’t know other people were listening.

Seems pretty noble to me.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/28/bradley-manning-heroism-pleads-guilty

Call it People’s Peace Prize or whatever, it would become instantly more relevant.

I’m pretty sure that would end up going to Bob Mugabe, Kim Jong-un and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In response to the controversy created by Obama’s declaration of Manning’s guilt, the White House now says that the President merely was “making a general statement that did not go specifically to the charges against Manning: ‘The president was emphasizing that, in general, the unauthorized release of classified information is not a lawful act,’ [a White House spokesman said] Friday night. ‘He was not expressing a view as to the guilt or innocence of Pfc. Manning specifically’.”

http://www.salon.com/2011/04/23/manning_10/

Even Nixon’s White House recognized that the President doesn’t get to say who is guilty when they haven’t been convicted of a crime.

http://my.firedoglake.com/teddysanfran/2011/04/22/on-bradley-manning-who-will-be-barack-obamas-john-mitchell/

Jurors, already sequestered in the Los Angeles, were protected from the next day’s four-inch headlines by papering over the windows of the courthouse: “MANSON GUILTY, NIXON DECLARES.” And, it should be noted, these jurors were not in a directly subordinate relationship to the commander-in-chief, as any jurors in a possible Bradley Manning court-martial would be. Even so, the judge recognized that the influence of a direct statement of guilt by the President of the United States of America would corrupt any jury.

If Obama harbored any doubt whatsoever about Manning’s guilt, it would be absolutely unconscionable for prosecution to go forward. The only difference between this and some random guy being brought up on, say, federal kidnapping charges is that Obama has actually heard of Manning.

Must be quite the dream world you’re living in.  Here in the real USA we prosecute when we know the person is innocent.

Or are you just jealous that Manning did more good in 5 minutes of file transfers than you’ve done in your entire life?

Manning wanted revenge, and Wikileaks wanted fame and financial support.

Revenge for what? You really seem to be cooking up some kind of yellow journalism bullshit. Even if it was true how would you know?

If you want to get your sense of self-righteousness up over a chemist look into Fritz Haber. Where Nobel was contrite about the wartime applications of his work Haber was a passionate advocate of chemical warfare.

And without the Haber process there would probably be billions fewer human beings on earth because it allowed the manufacture of synthetic fertilizers and thus the agricultural revolution of the early and mid 20th century. This could be good or bad depending on your views of overpopulation and morality.

As the nominating letter points out, Obama has already publicly announced his belief that Manning is guilty, which makes rather a mockery of a fair trial.

Nonsense. The executive branch is not the judicial branch. It would be a mockery of justice if Obama sent Manning to a “fair trial” when he wasn’t convinced of Manning’s guilt.

Manning is being prosecuted for federal crimes. Obama is, by virtue of his office, the chief federal law enforcement officer. He’s the boss of the Justice Dept., and he’s the boss of the military prosecutor. When Obama says he thinks that Manning is guilty of crimes that Obama’s government is bringing against him, he’s not saying anything that the charging document hasn’t already said in his name.

If Obama harbored any doubt whatsoever about Manning’s guilt, it would be absolutely unconscionable for prosecution to go forward. The only difference between this and some random guy being brought up on, say, federal kidnapping charges is that Obama has actually heard of Manning. 

A prosecutor who went before a judge and said, “Well, judge, we don’t really know for sure if he’s guilty, but we figured we’d have a trial and let a jury suss it out” would be sanctioned within an inch of her life, and for good reason. So would anyone higher up the chain of command who knowingly let it happen. 

The only way that critique of Obama makes any sense is if you know for a fact that Obama knows for a fact that Manning isn’t guilty. In which case I’m sure Manning’s lawyers would love to know about the exculpatory evidence you’ve found. Actually, come to think of it, so would the House Judiciary Committee, because that would be grounds for impeachment.

I don’t know to what degree the release motivated the Arab Spring, but there were lots of scoops, lots of very embarrassing information about some of the most powerful people in the world. It’s certainly true that they had an impact on whether or not we would stay in Iraq.  And, contrary to Obama’s wishes, we did not.

The only way they could have an impact is if people see the information and act on it.  For instance, if people decide not to give Hillary Clinton the Democratic nomination in 2016 because they don’t want someone who ordered illegal spying on UN colleagues in the office, that could count as an impact. Or if she does get the nomination and the Republicans use that fact against her, that could certainly be an impact.  (I know it’s not likely, but hypothetically…)

Lots of other scoops here:

http://www.salon.com/2010/12/24/wikileaks_23/

Details here:

Alfred Nobel’s Thoughts about War and Peace – http://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/biographical/articles/tagil/