Thursday, August 22, 2013

"As the late Howard Zinn once said,

"There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people." "
He was doing so well too in his pedantry and his tautology until he mentioned Howard Zinn and gave it all away.

Bradley Maning's Letter To President

AP, which president? Come now, why so coy? The president of Germany? Ex-president Bush, no doubt.

Manning is actually more wearisome than I had imagined. I wasn't expecting much, but this is less than that.  It is obvious he had no business, no business, being where he was. And I thought I was misplaced at the FRB, this guy is really in the entirely wrong element. One look at him among others tells you that.

Bleh. Reading the letter, whatever sympathy I had evaporated.

28 comments:

rcocean said...


Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy - the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, and the Japanese-American internment camps - to mention a few. I am confident that many of the actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light."

What, and no Trayvon Martin?

edutcher said...

The little creep is looking for excuses for what he did.

Ain't none.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I had Howard Zinn completely wrong because I thought he was the English guy with the hat over his eyes who was always in the pub but that turned out to be Andy Capp.

KCFleming said...

She's Chelsea Manning now, so it's all good.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

LOL - How to get a presidential pardon. Flash your leftwing freak flag.

KCFleming said...

Zinn should be exhumed and killed a second time just to be sure.

KCFleming said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
KCFleming said...

I don't want to go to Chelsea.

edutcher said...

AprilApple said...

LOL - How to get a presidential pardon. Flash your leftwing freak flag.

You just won the bonus round!

Johnny, what do we have for Miss April?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Funny how you never hear an American progressive lament what the Japanese did to their captors during WWII.

Our interment camps were a cake walk in comparison. The American educational system was in part ruined by Howard Zinn.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Woke up, and he was Chelsea Manning, and the first thing that I heard . . .

Paco Wové said...

"Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, and the Japanese-American internment"

Probably all he ever learned about in history class.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

In all fairness to the little fruit, he would have turned out okay if he'd had the opportunity to become a gymnast.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

yay I won. Do I get to pick a prize? How about a biscuit or a peach pie!

ndspinelli said...

He won't be wearing a dress and wig @ Fort Leavenworth, but the guys packing his shit wish that he could.

Michael Haz said...

Thank goodness Chelsea Manning didn't have to endure the misery of being asked his sexual identity at the time he enlisted. That DADT thing worked out great.

ricpic said...

The top of the heap in America is now totally communist. True horror dead ahead.

ndspinelli said...

Haz, You insensitive homophobe. You are banned from Madison!!!

vza said...

"It is obvious he had no business, no business, being where he was."

I have never felt so pessimistic about our country as I do now. The gross incompetence and negligence that seems to be the norm for government officials is disgusting. All the warning signs were there for Manning...just as they were there for Nidal Hasan, 9-11, the fiasco of the invasion of Iraq, the disgrace of Abu Ghraib, the loss of our people at Benghazi,and too many other tragedies to mention. The precious lives of Americans and others have been sacrificed, billions of taxpayer monies have been willfully squandered,and America's prestige and credibility are lost. Read any of the Inspector General reports on Iraq and Afghanistan and be prepared to be sick. AMERICAN companies cheating and gouging our government in a time of war, not only getting away with it, but also getting NEW contracts!
I do not want to hear about American Exceptionalism, anymore. It's gone.
Sorry for the rant.

JAL said...

I am also mystified how he got through basic (apparently temper tantrums and other behaviors that would have gotten my PJ bound airman recruit canned in a heart beat).

But beyond that, how he got assigned anywhere except as a low level paper pusher working for the food service is what blows my mind.

Same as Nidal Hasan ... the flaunting of the ideology is graphic and our military is so PC it looks at the sky and hums.

What a disciple of Zinn's doing in the military anyway? (Thanks Matt and Ben for your continued support for your former neighbor.)

YoungHegelian said...

I'll tell you what's really scary in the stories of both Manning & Snowden. If these two indiscreet losers had such access to so many classified documents, doesn't that open up the very real possibility that there's a number of much more discreet & efficient spies in our intelligence agencies who are funneling documents right & left to hostile states?

I suspect that we are only now starting to get a glimpse of what damage the post 9/11 bureaucratic re-org under Homeland Security did to our intelligence services.

JAL said...

I think I mentioned this, but when my husband joined the Peace Corps a gazillion years ago the government went and looked up his old neighbors (asked a Jewish neighbor if he was a "bigot") and even an old girlfriend.

He already HAD secret clearance for his job with Northrup, and had already filled out exactly the same form years before, but was never aware of any questions being asked of neighbors or girlfriends.

Apparently handling military intelligence doesn't require what a peace corps or military R&D do.

Some heads should have rolled.

Aridog said...

YoungHegelian said...

I'll tell you what's really scary ... doesn't that open up the very real possibility that there's a number of much more discreet & efficient spies in our intelligence agencies ... I suspect that we are only now starting to get a glimpse of what damage ...

Ding Ding Ding! Young H for the win!

You should be scared. In the digital age virtually half or more of intelligence security is handled by lowest bid contractors or no-experience cronies who hire even lower bidders to do the actual work.

Enemies are sneaking up on you every moment. And no one is keeping the gate. It is not paranoid if there really are people out there trying to "get you." Do you have any doubt about that?

Worse...we have a President who imagines he heard car door locks click shut when he walked by ... but never wondering why that might be or that it might be out of fear. Never wondering what he, or people like him, might be doing to generate that fear?

He never spent any time working with foreign civilians half a world away and indigenous soldiers where-ever, to learn what it might be that one is doing that generates fear and how to change that to engender trust ... and from there support. He has had no real experience so he can live in his imagination. That should scare you too.

Aridog said...

To clarify why I added the POTUS to my remark above...it is because he and his kind of progressive are forever all about being understood by others and never about understanding themselves. He will not throw up security barriers to our enemies, quite the opposite ... because he really thinks that it is his mission to be understood, and obeyed, rather than understand himself or anyone else.

virgil xenophon said...

The Manning and Snowden affair demonstrate just what double-edged swords the digital age and the internet are regarding vital secrets/info. All this could have never happened in the pre-internet analog age.

Trooper York said...

Hey if the operation worked for Chelsea Clinton.....why not?

Revenant said...

Funny how you never hear an American progressive lament what the Japanese did to their captors during WWII.

Ah, the sweet taste of moral relativism. The evil we've done isn't worth talking about, as others have done worse.

Revenant said...

If these two indiscreet losers had such access to so many classified documents, doesn't that open up the very real possibility that there's a number of much more discreet & efficient spies in our intelligence agencies who are funneling documents right & left to hostile states?

A bigger concern is the information being funneled to people here in the United States.

The NSA's collection of data on Americans' phone and internet use is of little to no use against foreign threats or terrorism. It is of enormous use to American political partisans and government officials. Given the number of people who have access to the data, how could it NOT be being abused for political ends?