for any other would-be whistleblowers who might get the idea to inconvenience the Empire.

That's crazy. I don't see why he would do that.

That is why he plead guilty. Being found guilty of the larger violations would have kept him in prison until the dust of his bones was old.

So, what does he gain by pleading guilty?

The stuff to which he admitted guilt were very clear violations of the law under which he was charged. He would have had extensive training in how to handle classified material. He would have known that showing them to anyone was a clear violation under the laws that governed him. He really has no defense on these charges, and accepting his guilt amounts to his taking responsibility for his actions. A military Court would have found him guilty of these violations. Arguing a defense of them would take time from his defense against the more serious and bogus charges.

There is zero legal protection in the military for whistle blowers.

The bigger charges, "espionage for aiding the enemy" can be argued as bogus, and since he did it in in wartime in a combat zone it makes it a very bad thing to be found guilty of. Wikileaks is hardly a defined enemy, though they they are certainly not friends. It really amounts to leaking information to the news media. I can think of very high political officials who did that with nothing more than a slap or the wrist, and others who were not even charged. His motives were also not to cause grave harm to the U.S or for personal gain.

I'm not a lawyer, much less a military lawyer, so I'm not familiar with the rules and strategies here. Maybe you can't plea bargain in a military trial.

I think he may have done it because (a) the charges to which he pled guilty are pretty incontrovertible, and (b) it may help him to avoid some of the more serious charges.

My question is whether the time he's served already will be applied to the sentence he gets for these first five charges.

But this sounds exactly like a plea bargain to me - accept responsibility for what is easily provable and less dangerous - then argue the more perilous charges that await.

For some reason Manning chose to not have a 'jury of his peers' but is allowing a trial by judge instead. That sounds like 'throwing yourself on the mercy of the court.'

But once again, I am not an attorney. Perhaps he or his attorney feels a jury of military members would be less sympathetic to his case. If he had a civilian jury, I feel there would be less bias.

When a person joins an organization like the service they sign agreements to not do certain things and to do other things. Not having served, and looking solely as a civilian, I wonder how many rights he signed away to enter the service.

He violated the trust of his peer group, not the world at large or victims of war. We get to going here over this case at DU, but this is merely the court of public, either well-informed or misinformed opinion. That is not the world that allows access to what he passed on to others.

I feel the fact that he did not profit financially as Pollard or others may have done - he was not employed nor did he have access to the millions of dollars that Wikileaks gained from making a feature film based on his information - should be a mitigating factor. But that's not what is being considered in the case.

However, I would not have joined and agreed to such oaths as he did. I think that is where the intense anger by some over the leak comes from - that if there was any harm, other service people see this as putting them in danger. People are so divided in their functions in organizations that they can't take the world into account. Just the tiny slice of their responsibilities.

Another guess - I feel sure that the time he has been incarcerated will be taken into account. The issue of his treatment on suicide watch has been taken into account already, IIRC.

ergo grand drama of arrest, incarceration, vilification, torture and trial.