Obama to Free Chelsea Manning

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For the past month, Democrats have screamed about the danger of WikiLeaks and Russian hackers. But when it comes to a guy who damaged US military and intelligence assets instead of the DNC, Obama has decided even massive leaks are unimportant. From the New York Times:

President Obama on Tuesday largely commuted the remaining prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the army intelligence analyst convicted of an enormous 2010 leak that revealed American military and diplomatic activities across the world, disrupted the administration, and made WikiLeaks, the recipient of those disclosures, famous.

The decision by Mr. Obama rescued Ms. Manning, who twice tried to commit suicide last year, from an uncertain future as a transgender woman incarcerated at the male military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. She has been jailed for nearly seven years, and her 35-year sentence was by far the longest punishment ever imposed in the United States for a leak conviction.

Now, under the terms of Mr. Obama’s commutation announced by the White House on Tuesday, Ms. Manning is set to be freed in five months, on May 17 of this year, rather than in 2045.

The commutation also relieved the Department of Defense of the difficult responsibility of her incarceration as she pushes for treatment for her gender dysphoria — including sex reassignment surgery — that the military has no experience providing.

Here’s a reminder of Manning’s crimes:

Ms. Manning was still known as Bradley Manning when she deployed with her unit to Iraq in late 2009. There, she worked as a low-level intelligence analyst helping her unit assess insurgent activity in the area it was patrolling, a role that gave her access to a classified computer network.

She copied hundreds of thousands of military incident logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which, among other things, exposed abuses of detainees by Iraqi military officers working with American forces and showed that civilian deaths in the Iraq war were likely much higher than official estimates.

The files she copied also included about 250,000 diplomatic cables from American embassies around the world showing sensitive deals and conversations, dossiers detailing intelligence assessments of Guantánamo detainees held without trial, and a video of an American helicopter attack in Baghdad in two Reuters journalists were killed, among others.

She decided to make all these files public, as she wrote at the time, in the hope that they would incite “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms.” WikiLeaks’ disclosed them — working with traditional news organizations including The New York Times — bringing notoriety to the group and its founder, Julian Assange.

Perhaps if Mr. Putin began identifying as a woman, Obama would overlook his actions in the 2016 election.

Published in Law, Military

There are 57 comments

  1. Vance Richards
    Vance Richards
    @VanceRichards

    So does this mean he’ll have to pay for his own sex change surgery now?

    • #1
  2. Richard Fulmer
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    Hey, he only hacked the U.S. Military, not the DNC.  Where’s your sense of priority?

    • #2
  3. Richard Fulmer
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    Vance Richards (View Comment):
    So does this mean he’ll have to pay for his own sex change surgery now?

    Exactly.  Obama is trying to reduce the budget deficit.  What a guy.

    • #3
  4. EDISONPARKS
    EDISONPARKS
    @user_54742

    Weird undeserved Politically Correct Presidential pardons & commutations, are entirely predictable with this strange Lefty Obama gang.

    The highlight of this post is:

    “Perhaps if Mr. Putin began identifying as a woman, Obama would overlook his actions in the 2016 election.”

    Comedy Gold Mr. Gabriel!

    • #4
  5. Jon Gabriel, Ed.
    Jon Gabriel, Ed.
    @jon

    Vance Richards (View Comment):
    So does this mean he’ll have to pay for his own sex change surgery now?

    No, I’m sure ObamaCare will cover it.

    • #5

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