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| Chelsea Manning formerly Bradley Manning. |
President Obama on Tuesday commuted all but four months of the remaining prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the army intelligence analyst convicted of a 2010 leak that revealed American military and diplomatic activities across the world, disrupted his administration and brought global prominence to WikiLeaks, the recipient of those disclosures.
The decision by Mr. Obama rescued Ms. Manning, who twice tried to kill herself last year, from an uncertain future as a transgender woman incarcerated at the men’s 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.
There has been quite a lot of pressure for President Obama to do this and clearly he wants to make some things right before he hands power over to the giant tangerine toddler.
Manning has been punished far more extensively than many that came before him, and quite a lot of what he leaked to the public helped to open the eyes of the American people to the atrocities being carried out in their name in Afghanistan and Iraq.
He has suffered enough and it is time to end that suffering.
Besides anything that gets Paul Ryan this upset can hardly be called a bad thing:
Speaker Paul D. Ryan called it “outrageous.” “President Obama now leaves in place a dangerous precedent that those who compromise our national security won’t be held accountable for their crimes,” he said in a statement.
Interesting, so I guess when the Russians hack our election to help hand power to their puppet that does NOT compromise our national security.
So now we wait to see if a certain Julian Assange is a man of his word.
Already starting to hedge his bets.If Obama grants Manning clemency Assange will agree to US extradition despite clear unconstitutionality of DoJ case https://t.co/MZU30SlfGK— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 12, 2017
Personally I would imagine that if Assange WERE to surrender to the American authorities that he would wait to do so until the man who he helped undermine our democracy had taken power.Assange is still happy to come to the US provided all his rights are guarenteed despite White House now saying Manning was not quid-quo-pro.— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 18, 2017
Hell, I imagine that in a Trump America that Julian Assange would be a contender for the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Source http://ift.tt/2jzHS1h
