Shouldn't the whistleblowers be also.

The whistleblowers were ostensibly imprisoned (and/or charged) for deliberately releasing top secret information.

The torturers have not been charged because they were acting under a Woo-style interpretation of the law that found torture to be legal and appropriate given the circumstances. That is, at the time of the incidents, what we're now calling "torture" was found to be all fine and dandy. And the torturers who exceeded the acceptable boundaries were just a few bad apples who acted without malice and therefore will be scolded without any actual repercussions.


I find it intolerable and vile, and the fuckers who practiced, endorsed & authoritzed torture should be dragged in front of The Hague like any other war criminal. But the summary above is more or less the response I've been hearing/reading.

If he wanted to, he could figure out how to get this done too.

He doesn't want to.

Cops, judges, politicians, CEOs, etc. are usually given special consideration. Country of Law my ass! And this group actually struts around like they've got lots to be proud of! They're turds in top hats.

foolish enough to think that we actually created a democracy there and were simply demonstrating, using their newfound 'freedom'. The US Trained Police were arresting and torturing them so Manning THOUGHT the Government who sent her there would want to know and do something about it.

She found out that was not the case, but could not get those poor people our of her mind. So she became a Whistle Blower. Then she learned that the people of this country don't much care either.

It is a crime that Whistle Blowers are being persecuted here while War Criminals walk free.

Kiriakou spoke about waterboard in 2007 actually didn't speak, gave information to a reporter. Get on the wrong side of cheney and bad things happened in that admin to lots of people.

All 4 of them are adults and knew what would happen to them when they broke the law.

With Manning, I think they should go after the management who let an emotionally unstable person play video games & surf around/download whatever he wanted. Same with Snowden, someone got him those jobs. They both were used by whoever placed them in those jobs in the first place.

to know the difference between right and wrong.

You can address the character of the person that convicted her before you sit in a comfortable chair and pontificate what Chelsea Manning should have, would have or could have - in the end, she did the same inconvenient things Snowden did - she called a wrong "wrong". Even if it was done by the United States.

And she unfortunately called it while President Obama was in office, because otherwise you and the rest of the krewe would be celebrating her as a hero instead of dancing around calling her a menace - because you know in your hearts she isn't, but she slighted the President, so you just MUST get any jab in you can.

person who turned her in. She's not a menace, but did admit to a habit of 'helping friends' and for sure knew the difference between right and wrong. You can read how Manning poured out her soul, her life story just to one person on an internet chat. That person was the one who turned her in.

http://www.wired.com/2011/07/manning-lamo-logs/

and would get away with it.

And that shows how fucked up and profoundly corrupt our system is.

for outing a CIA undercover agent (two actually, but he was only charged with one count because the reporter never gave the name of the second agent to the public). He also got the same sentence as Scooter Libby (30 months). Scooter Libby got his sentence commuted, but that doesn't change the fact that both did the same thing and both got the same sentences.

Kiriakou is a d-bag. He lied to the CIA about the book he wrote and then laughed about it in an email to a friend (great spycraft, huh?). In fact, Kiriakou was interviewed in 2007. Nothing happened after he confirmed the use of waterboarding. It wasn't until around 2011, when the gov't started investigating the leak of the CIA agent's name that they found out it was Kiriakou. The initial TV appearance had nothing to do with it. Even Kiriakou didn't dispute this until after he was sentenced and decided to become a mouthpiece for the whistleblower movement.

Stop spreading misinformation. If you were truly concerned about "whistleblowers" you would have done a minimal amount of research and would know this already.

He made a glorious speech about opening the US up to trade with Cuba and people have tears in their eyes over it, despite there being no mention of closing down Guantanamo Bay, either.

I know - we expect him to do the things he promised and campaigned on, and it's a bit cold-hearted to expect him to actually DO them, since no one ever asked the same of any politician before THIS President, who is black, and I'd like to remind you ...

And once again, we are back to square one.

Posters on DU were excited about the gender of those asking the questions today but not the content of the questions.

Apparently that's more important than what was (or wasn't) discussed.