Althouse: "I’m sorry I hurt people. I’m sorry that I hurt the United States."

August 14, 2013

"I’m sorry I hurt people. I’m sorry that I hurt the United States."

"I’m apologizing for the unintended consequences of my actions. I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people."

21 comments:

Sam L. said...: Suuuuuuure he is.; 8/14/13, 7:31 PM
Anonymous said...: I don't buy it. It doesn't take a world class Intel Analyst to be able to make the great leaps from;

Foreigners tell our diplomats stuff. Letting their home countries know that is bad for them and bad for our ability to get more info

ditto for some poor village that rates out the Taliban...

20 years at least.; 8/14/13, 7:47 PM
Carl said...: The guy was pretty messed up. Sad fact is, the military is no longer a reasonable place to send someone to get straightened out. Nowhere is, really. The death of God has meant the gradual evaporation of there but for the grace of God Christian charity, since we all know the grace of God is a delusion of the bitter clingers, and a supportive therapist, SSRI and courses in gender identity sensitivity in middle school are far more reliable.

Which may be why we are approaching the weird mix of corrupt license for some and savagely punitive intolerance for others of late Imperial Rome.

Has its upsides: maybe we'll get gladiatorial games. I can think of a few I'd like to see in the arena. Come on down Mr. Holder! Fascina or laculum, chump?; 8/14/13, 8:17 PM
Amichel said...: He should have never had access to most of this stuff in the first place. As bad as the leak was, the real scandal is that someone of such questionable mental stability was allowed to access it with little to no safeguards or supervision.; 8/14/13, 8:21 PM
Anonymous said...: That such a low-level individual had access to that information and was able to download and burn it to a disk is the real crime. This is a basic element of end-point security that is not only specified but tested. Someone else was derelict.; 8/14/13, 8:27 PM
Henry said...: One of the wonderfully bracing things about the Althouse take is the derivation of intent from action. This is so very different from the populist-sop in which good intentions excuse destructive action.

Yea, a man may say , Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. - James 2:18

Yet I have a great deal of sympathy for the person who make mistakes he or she can't take back. Understanding is bedeviled by all manner of irrational impulse. Any one of us, or our friends or children, or relations, my make a disastrous decision under stress.

That doesn't mean that repentance can't be made from the legal and physical situation that acts demand as consequence. But I do think we can acknowledge the madness that happens in spite of our assumption of intention.; 8/14/13, 8:32 PM
Big Mike said...: Now if only liberals could learn how to say "I'm sorry for the unintended consequences of my actions."

Oh brave new world that would be!; 8/14/13, 8:35 PM
Kevin said...: In the current climate, I expected the quote to be from the rodeo clown.; 8/14/13, 8:47 PM
cubanbob said...: Another romantic who thought he was going to save the world is now contrite now that he realizes he is entering the Federal Archipelago and never to return. I almost feel sorry for him. It's too bad that those that enabled, aided and abetted him aren't going on this journey with him.; 8/14/13, 9:11 PM
Anonymous said...: I support him. The whole thing is too bad.

I'm glad Snowden got out.

There is still an underground of believers by the way. I run into them at critical times: hospice, some social workers (yes, social workers), the owners of a small business who helped a family member in a tough situation. This is in the bluest of the blue, by the way. Hispanics in general - even if it is a generation removed. If you make that connection, they will really help you out if they can, and believer or not, that's nice and provides an invisible netting within the foundation for the support.; 8/14/13, 9:57 PM
Cletus said...: Personally, I do NOT believe that he is sorry about this at all. He was pissed off and wanted to lash out. Rather than lash out at the people who were directly affecting him, he decided to take advantage of his position to become famous and screw as many people as he possibly could. If the death penalty is off the table in this case, this little troll needs to be stuck into the deepest darkest hole we have available. Every person with a clearance signs a non-disclosure agreement agreeing to protect the information which they are made privy to, and it outlines the penalties as well. Manning knew exactly what he was doing; he just decided that his personal issues mattered more than the nation he was supposed to be serving.; 8/14/13, 10:10 PM
madAsHell said...: It's been 15 years since I've had a security clearance, but there were no flamers with clearance. The were too easy to compromise. They had no skin in the game.; 8/14/13, 10:22 PM
Unknown said...: I too think it was a system failure to allow a private, much less an otherwise troubled person, access to that much classified information. Especially given where he was located. Why don't you just leave all you installations unguarded and your doors unlocked? Good grief, that itself is criminal.; 8/15/13, 12:20 AM
Robert Cook said...: I'm disappointed Manning apologized or felt he had to apologize for his brave and honorable act of revealing American war crimes, but I understand he is forced to grovel in hopes of receiving a sentence that might allow him hope of one day walking free.

Manning is a true hero, (as is Snowden), and he (and Snowden) deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, which, if given to them, might restore some legitimacy to the prize, tarnished as it has become by having been awarded in the past to such warmongering killers as Barack Obama and Henry Kissinger. That Manning must abase himself for his act of conscience shows to what a low and wretched state we've fallen.; 8/15/13, 6:55 AM
Wince said...: "...a reference to matters like his crisis over his gender identity, which he was confronting while on a military deployment in a combat zone."

"Not that there's anything wrong with that."; 8/15/13, 6:58 AM
raf said...: But he says he had good intentions. Doesn't that trump everything else?; 8/15/13, 10:50 AM
harkin said...: "It's too bad that those that enabled, aided and abetted him aren't going on this journey with him."

No kidding, the kid is a walking billboard of psychological issues and from what I heard was almost cashiered as unfit for service.....only to be saved by the PC crowd and given top security clearance.

In its own way it's as inept as the case of Maj Nidal "workplace violence" Hasan.; 8/15/13, 6:14 PM
Robert Cook said...: "No kidding, the kid is a walking billboard of psychological issues and from what I heard was almost cashiered as unfit for service.....only to be saved by the PC crowd and given top security clearance."

And yet, Manning was the one rightly horrified at the video of the war crime (which he recognized as such) of the helicopter psychopaths murdering the men walking down below, then firing on the man who came to help them, killing him and wounding his children, while the killers in the video laugh and make dismissive remarks about those they've just murdered.

If Manning is emotionally disturbed or unbalanced or unfit for service, how tragic that more of our military forces are not also disturbed as well...at the wanton, callous butchery that we commit and the lie about, claiming it is in service of "defending our freedom."

There are certainly many serving in our military who are unfit for service, but Manning has not demonstrated that he is among those.; 8/16/13, 10:33 AM
30yearProf said...: 1. I'd give him 40 years. He knew the rules, he DELIBERATLY broke the rules. He had NO defense, so he plead guilty.

2. The Army has to stop giving unrestricted access to soldiers with no experience. Waiting until the have a FULL TS Clearance and SSgt rank would allow the Army to clear out unsuitables like Manning during their initial enlistment.

Former Captain.; 8/17/13, 3:11 PM
30yearProf said...: BTW, Cletus has it spot on.; 8/17/13, 3:13 PM
30yearProf said...: 1. I'd give him 40 years. He knew the rules, he DELIBERATLY broke the rules. He had NO defense, so he plead guilty.

2. The Army has to stop giving unrestricted access to soldiers with no experience. Waiting until the have a FULL TS Clearance and SSgt rank would allow the Army to clear out unsuitables like Manning during their initial enlistment.

Former Captain.; 8/17/13, 3:13 PM