Chelsea Manning to Be Released Early as Obama Commutes Sentence

If someone could explain the logic of this decision to me, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Hm...

 

depends how you mean and what your initial response is

personally really really glad, she was high at-risk and being heavily mistreated

 

I could be mistaken, but wasn't she in talks of being switched to a female-only prison?

I just think the crime was a massive one, so I don't know what signal Obama is trying to send in terms of the seriousness of information leaks or other security-related crimes.

 

Obama's logic seems to be boiled down to: 7 years was long enough for the crime, more than most people get for similar things, she was being treated horrifically in prison, and commutation is more than anything described as an act of mercy.

A good way of quickly saying it:

 

the idea basically is she had already suffered enough for it to be representative of her actions, which Obama's administration still do not condone but believe the time's been served

 

I'm curious which cases where people have done similar things that received less than 7 years prison time. In my opinion Chelsea's actions were an act of treason and may have cost American lives.

 

Here:

Had Manning been a civilian, she probably would have been sentenced to a few years in jail. However, the military justice system is a very different beast. (In 1970, Robert Sherrill wrote a book titled Military Justice Is to Justice as Military Music Is to Music.) As a recent study of military justice by the Congressional Research Service put it (italics added):

In the [civilian] criminal law system, some basic objectives are to discover the truth, acquit the innocent without unnecessary delay or expense, punish the guilty proportionately with their crimes, and prevent and deter further crime, thereby providing for the public order. Military justice shares these objectives in part, but also serves to enhance discipline throughout the Armed Forces, serving the overall objective of providing an effective national defense.

By that standard, a member of the U.S. armed forces who violates military law is to be punished to the max, regardless of its consequences. Under Army sentencing guidelines (which are enforced with wide variation), the judge could have put Manning away for 90 years; Army prosecutors urged her to do so for 60 years. Manning’s lawyers pleaded for 20 years. In context, then, the sentence—35 years, with possible parole in 10—seemed a compromise.

35 years was an absurd sentence.

 

How so? I'm genuinely curious. People say this a lot but don't care to elaborate beyond "well, releasing classified info".

 

This is extremely good news

 

Thank you. This explains it perfectly:)

 

I heard that the info included the details of a lot of undercover operations. A lot of people had to be pulled put of undercover immediately after the leak. If the situation had been handled slower or less tactfully, then yes, the leak could have cost lives.

 

Doomsday commences Friday, but my new album is coming out! Who wants to party?

 

Very, very happy this happened.