Manning trial to set precedent on what "aid to the enemy" means.

[Left]

I expect illiteracy from the general public, ranging from "Texas" to "Semi-Literate",

AR YEW IMPLINING I CAIN'T SPEL RAIGHT?

@ CPD...military culture...
I'm sure the military would have been happy to kill him for revealing  possibly illegal activities, and certainly unethical activities, of our current government...

*Mutters something about defending the constitution against enemies foreign and domestic*

Thing is, the military doesn't care.  It's a big stupid beast, with a rulebook for a brain.  There is no "happy" to do ANYTHING.  Just things get done.  Because.

Yep. The military is a bureaucracy. it does what Policy and Rules tell it to do.

Agreed...

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I also just realized that the united states has given me- as either a citizen or otherwise legal resident- my own serial number.

Twid
Has a social security number

Did you just get one?

No, it's just that I remembered that I have one and that also counts as a form of serial number.

Yeah, that was for a while a source of great paranoia and agitation about social security numbers, especially when they started linking them to your everything. Which has only occurred within my lifetime.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I also just realized that the united states has given me- as either a citizen or otherwise legal resident- my own serial number.

Twid
Has a social security number

Did you just get one?

No, it's just that I remembered that I have one and that also counts as a form of serial number.

Yeah, that was for a while a source of great paranoia and agitation about social security numbers, especially when they started linking them to your everything. Which has only occurred within my lifetime.

It's something I only really think about when I'm doing my taxes or something of that sort, and even then only for a moment.

[Cain]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/us/bradley-manning-verdict.html

The government's theory was that providing defense-related information to an entity that published it for the world to see constituted aiding the enemy because the world includes adversaries, like members of Al Qaeda, who could read the documents online.

Alternatively, this could be interpreted that the government is conceding the world and/or truth is the enemy.

Also http://www.salon.com/2013/07/30/manning_verdict_what_you_need_to_know/

There is one more significant detail in Lind's ruling today. In addition to aiding the enemy, the one other charge she found Manning innocent of involved leaking a video of a civilian massacre in Garani, Afghanstan. While Manning admitted accessing the video, the government insisted he had leaked it months before Manning admitted to accessing the video (and before forensic evidence showed he had). This claim — one Lind said they did not prove — was key to their claims that Manning had planned to leak to WikiLeaks from the start of his deployment to Iraq.