continuing proofs America is wacko [2]

Eldorion wrote:

Pettytyrant101 wrote:So wouldn't it make more sense for the judge to pass the sentence- then everyone to work out if some is consecutive ect then announce the final actual number- with the usual margin for potential good behaviour?

When the sentence is final we should have more precise figures for how long Manning will have to serve in prison.  My understand is that 154 years is the theoretical maximum for the crimes he was convicted of.  He won't necessarily receive the maximum sentence, though.

Manning's sentence seems to be 35 years with possibility of parole in about 10 years. I'm curious how fair that sounds to all of you.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bradley-manning-sentenced-35-years-leaking-secrets/story?id=20021288

I think the poor lad has been screwed, had his life destroyed, and in reality no one will even remember it in two months time what it as about or where they heard his name- but he will still have 30+ years in jail before him.
He is no threat to the public, represents no threat to the populace- so the sentence is purely made as punishment and warning to others.

Yeah it's pretty obvious that this sentence is intended to deter future potential whistleblowers.

I understand why the Army doesn't tolerate whistleblowers but it's a shame given Obama's promises to do that and also given that the Army turns a blind eye to so many abuses in its ranks (especially during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan).  Even when they are shamed into court-martialing people who massacre civilians, they never hand down 35 year sentences for that.  The worst any of the Abu Ghraib people got for torture and murder was 10 years, and none of them served that long in the end.

I hope Manning will be allowed out on parole sooner rather than later but I don't really expect it.

He seems very much the victim of circumstances- there has been a spate of high level intelligence leaks and he's the only poor bastard they've actually got and can punish- so they have made an example out of him.
It is interesting that the army views this as a considerably worse crime, judging on the sentences, than the physical abuse and mental abuse of prisoners of war.

ditto.

Ten years with possibility of parole in 3 would have been about right if it was truly critical information with no lives directly jeopardized. But was it? I've already forgotten exactly what he leaked...

Manning didn't leak things in an especially responsible way, no. I don't think he's the sharpest knife in the drawer, and that's part of the reason he got caught (he definitely shouldn't have confessed to someone he'd never met via IM). But I do feel sorry for him, definitely, because I think his heart was in the right place and he was trying to take a stand against abuse.

Also, the Pentagon has admitted that no one died as a result of the leaks, despite all the fearmongering over that.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/bradley-manning-sentencing-hearing-pentagon

'I think his heart was in the right place and he was trying to take a stand against abuse'- Eldo

I completely agree Eldo, he seems more naive and easily manipulated more than anything else (perfect army recruiting material in fact) and he clearly represents no further threat to anything.

Yeah, it seems excessive, especially because, as his defense pointed out,  all the stuff he leaked will be public record in 25 years or less.  I'd say in the eyes of the military his guilt is compounded by the fact that he broke the code and in effect ratted out fellow soldiers.

Now this soldier on the other hand deserves everything he gets and more.
JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. (AP) — Two Afghan villagers who traveled about 7,000 miles to testify against a U.S. soldier who massacred their relatives didn't get to say everything they wanted to in court Wednesday.

Haji Mohammad Wazir took the witness stand during the sentencing of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales to describe the impact of losing 11 family members in the attack, including his mother, wife and six of his seven children.

Jurors at Joint Base Lewis-McChord south of Seattle will determine whether Bales, who pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, is sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole or without it.

Wazir and a cousin answered a prosecutor's questions, describing the horror they found when they arrived at the village and how the attacks affected them.

When the questions were over, each asked if he could say anything more.
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"There are things I'd like to speak about if I have the chance," Wazir said.

"You can only answer questions," the judge, Col. Jeffery Nance, replied.

"Does anyone have any more questions?" the villager asked.

No one did.

The two were among nine victims and relatives flown from Kandahar Province to testify at the hearing — affording them their first chance to confront Bales in person. Seven testified Tuesday, including children who talked of being shot and losing their parents, and a farmer who was shot in the neck.
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"This bastard stood right in front of me!" the farmer, Haji Mohammad Naim, testified Tuesday. "I wanted to ask him, 'What did I do? What have I done to you?' ... and he shot me!"

Bales' attorneys didn't cross-examine any of them.

Wazir received $550,000 in condolence payments from the U.S. government, out of $980,000 paid in all. He told the six-member jury that the attacks destroyed what had been a happy life. He was in another village with his youngest son, now 5-year-old Habib Shah, during the attack.

"If someone loses one child, you can imagine how devastated their life would be," he said. His son "misses everyone. He hasn't forgotten any of them."

"I've gone through very hard times," he added. "If anybody speaks to me about the incident ... I feel the same, like it's happening right now."
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Khamal Adin described arriving at his cousin's mud-walled home to find his aunt dead outside and a pile of burning bodies, including young children, within. Bales acknowledged setting the bodies alight with a kerosene lantern.

Two military doctors testified Wednesday, describing the treatment of Bales' victims, including a young girl who had been shot in the head and who spent three months undergoing surgeries and rehabilitation at a naval hospital in San Diego, relearning how to walk.

Bales, a 39-year-old Ohio native and father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., was serving his fourth combat deployment when he left the outpost at Camp Belambay in the pre-dawn darkness. He first attacked one village, returning to Belambay only when he realized he was low on ammunition, said prosecutor Lt. Col. Jay Morse.

Bales then left to attack another village.

The massacre prompted such angry protests that the U.S. temporarily halted combat operations, and it was three weeks before Army investigators could reach the crime scene.
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A former brigade commander in Afghanistan, Col. Todd Wood, told the jury about arriving at Belambay the morning of the attack to find an angry crowd outside, with four makeshift trucks carrying 13 of the bodies.

He said halting combat operations in the area allowed Taliban personnel to openly carry weapons and lay roadside bombs. Clearing those bombs eventually set the U.S. mission there back about three weeks.

At the time of the killings, Bales had been under heavy personal, professional and financial stress, Morse said. He had complained to other soldiers that his wife was fat and unattractive and said he'd divorce her except that her father had money. He had stopped paying the mortgage on one of his houses because it was assessed at $60,000 less than he paid for it, and he was upset that he had not been promoted.

During his plea hearing in June, Bales couldn't explain to a judge why he committed the killings. "There's not a good reason in this world for why I did the horrible things I did," he said.

He did not say he was sorry, but his lawyers hinted an apology might come at sentencing.
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Bales' attorneys have said they plan to present evidence that could warrant leniency, including his previous deployments and what they describe as his history of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.

If he is sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, Bales would be eligible in 20 years, but there's no guarantee he would receive it.

So this guy could end up serving less time than the young lad that leaked some documents?

In theory, yes. I don't think they would dare, but still..... 

I recall reading a bunch of reports that survivors of the attack said there were multiple American soldiers involved in that massacre, but apparently no solid evidence of that ever surfaced. There's reportedly video evidence showing that Bales was the only soldier involved that was shown to Afghan authorities. With that in mind, I'm just glad that he's being prosecuted and this isn't completely swept under the rug.

Eldorion wrote: I'm just glad that he's being prosecuted and this isn't completely swept under the rug.

Agreed.
And I think Manning deserves some credit for that.
If it weren't for the fear of whistleblowers, the temptation to sweep such things under the rug to minimize the backlash would be almost irresistible.

This is rich, not in the least bit surprising, but I'm sure the reporter had fun writing it:

http://news.yahoo.com/national-rifle-association-keeps-database-of-gun-owners-and-potential-members--194327840.html

NRA keeps database of gun owners and potential members: Report
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Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo! News

A new investigative report says that the National Rifle Association collects and maintains an expansive database of information on gun owners.
BuzzFeed contributor Steve Friess reports that the NRA keeps the stockpile of information at its national headquarters in Virginia and that it goes well beyond the group’s estimated 3 million members.

“That database has been built through years of acquiring gun permit registration lists from state and county offices, gathering names of new owners from the thousands of gun-safety classes taught by NRA-certified instructors and by buying lists of attendees of gun shows, subscribers to gun magazines, and more,” Friess writes.

Defenders of the policy note that the NRA is a private organization and therefore its efforts to collect information on gun owners is not a contradiction to its opposition to a government mandated gun ownership registry.

“It’s probably partially true that people don’t know the information is being collected,” former NRA lobbyist Richard Feldman told BuzzFeed. “But even if they don’t know it, they probably won’t care because the NRA is not part of the government.”

The story has also sparked a reaction from NRA supporters who argue that the NRA’s database is more of a marketing tool than an actual “gun registry." The conservative Ace of Spades blog writes, “There's a world of difference. The ‘gun owner’ classification is mostly assumed, based on interests and behavior. It's not even particularly important to the NRA whether they are gun owners, so long as they have an interest in gun rights and the second amendment.”

Information obtained for the report shows that the NRA has purchased lists of gun owners from state governments in Virginia and Iowa, and uses its own relationship with states through licensed gun safety instructors to collect the information, often without the knowledge or consent of those on the lists.

Other states including Arkansas, Louisiana, Oregon and Tennessee have received similar information requests from the NRA.

“There’s nothing that prevents them from mailing those people,” Feldman said. “The more you know about people, the more targeted the message you can communicate with them, the more the message will resonate with them.”

Feldman says he estimates the NRA has files on “tens of millions” of individuals.

In February, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said gun background checks were tantamount to creating a national gun registry. The website FactCheck.org said that was a false claim, noting that current federal law prohibits the government from creating a national gun registry.

A 2009 email obtained by BuzzFeed shows a representative from a private firm hired by the NRA reaching out to Virginia government officials for access to lists containing the names of concealed carry permit owners.

“Can you please let me know if you offer 2008 and/or 2009 names?” Preferred Communications' Michele Wood wrote to the Virginia State Police on behalf of the NRA. “Can you please let me know the address to send the check to and also whom to make it payable to?”

In a separate email, NRA lobbyist Christopher Rager wrote to the Iowa Department of Public Safety making a similar request.

“If the NRA wanted to collect data from DPS’ permit holder files, is there a specific process or any rules for us to acquire the records?” Rager reportedly wrote. “Can we pay to have the files copied or sent to us?”

When BuzzFeed reached out to the NRA about its information gathering policies, spokesman Andrew Arulanandam reportedly declined, saying, “That’s not any of your business.”

 

Pettytyrant101 wrote:So this guy could end up serving less time than the young lad that leaked some documents?

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. (AP) -- The U.S. soldier who massacred 16 Afghan civilians last year in one of the worst atrocities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was sentenced Friday to life in prison with no chance of parole - the most severe sentence possible, but one that left surviving victims and relatives of the dead deeply unsatisfied.

"We wanted this murderer to be executed," said Hajji Mohammad Wazir, who lost 11 family members in the attack by Staff Sgt. Robert Bales. "We were brought all the way from Afghanistan to see if justice would be served. Not our way - justice was served the American way."

I'm picking up that "the American way" may not be a compliment.  

Morality must be upheld. What exactly is the confusion here?

Why do I envision a bunch of perverts putting their pets on diets to achieve number 10!  

Thankfully the laws against oral and anal sex are no longer enforced (as of a US Supreme Court decision in 2003), but yeah.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Why do I envision a bunch of perverts putting their pets on diets to achieve number 10!  

I'm not so sure about that one.  If my memory serves me, Washington state didn't have any laws against bestiality until about 2005 because they either hadn't seen the need for it and didn't want to have to talk about in the legislature.  That changed when there was a high-profile case of someone dying of a ruptured colon after he snuck into a neighbor's farm and got a horse to start fucking him in the ass.  They wanted to charge his accomplice, who also had sex with the horse (nicknamed "Big Dick", and no I am not making this up), but as there was no injuries to the horse they couldn't bring animal cruelty charges.  Instead the guy got slapped with a trespassing charge and the Washington state legislature had to write a bill explicitly banning bestiality.

Edit: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-animal-in-you/Content?oid=30811

I was already shaking my head in disbelief but I nearly choked when I go to 'his accomplice'!

'as there was no injuries to the horse they couldn't bring animal cruelty charges.'

Rape charges?

Washington state rape laws are written with the assumption that everyone is human. I think the Washington state legislature just hadn't considered bestiality that serious of a problem. Or maybe no one wanted to be the one to bring it up.

Horses and porcupines  .... you'd think it would be obvious, wouldn't you?

Connorsville coitus guneruptus  

Bloody hell, how many cops does it take ?