I'm not sure that handing a bunch of undifferentiated mountain of info over to some shady characters for immediate, unfiltered publication to everywhere out of the hazy notion that he could do some good with his life counts as a heroism-quality action. Daniel Ellsberg she's not. In nefarious it pales to what Assange did later, but I kinda wish that Chelsea would get a job in an insurance office and politely go away forever.

Manning witnessed evidence of secret war crimes; Illegal and reprehensible acts. She leaked them so the world could be informed, and so the US population could see what deeds their government had been commiting in their name.
She used wikileaks as it was a platform designed to for leaking information to the public safely.
Two of the big leaks (imo) were.
1. Footage and information of airstrikes by the US military intentionally killing journalists and civilians.
2. Information about Guantanamo bay where dozens of people were being illegally held without charge, and also being tortured.

Yes, but she didn't follow the proper protocol, therefore: inexcusable criminal.

"I'm not sure that handing a bunch of undifferentiated mountain of info over to some shady characters for immediate, unfiltered publication to everywhere out of the hazy notion that he could do some good with his life counts as a heroism-quality action."

You are confusing Chelsea Manning with Edward Snowden. Manning specifically was a whistleblower in the cover up of friendly fire incidents as well as other over-steps of authority being made by the US military in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. She had a specific focus and purpose, unlike Snowden/Assange/Greenwald traitor brigade et al who were literally data mercenaries leaking anything to anyone they could get their hands on for political collateral, favors, and to engage in petty grudges, regardless of the real world consequences this would have for the United States (i.e. actually putting Americans' lives at risk).
Manning is a hero. Snowden is a fucking wanna-be hacker figure con man whose political philosophy seems to have been gleaned from comic books.

I'm referring mostly to her (at the time, his) decision to leak a mountain of diplomatic cables involving consulates and embassies in just about every country on earth, most of which had nothing to do with Iraq or Afghanistan or anything. A foreign service can't function without a basic level of informational security, and the whole thing caused a major headache for US diplomats, even though a lot of the info contained therein was probably the sort of stuff that could have been speculated about anyway. Even so, that sort of thing deserves a good deal of jailtime. I'd have left her in a while longer.

I'm not saying that some of the information that came out (especially about presumed civilian body counts in Iraq) wasn't useful, but everyone involved could have been more careful about what got out. There are bigger villains out there, but I'm not too sympathetic to Ms. Manning.

TL;DR America spends over half a trillion dollars a year so teenagers and 20-something can live out their power/glory fantasies while a bunch of former war LARPers steal as mcuh of that money as they can.

Wrong pronouns.

She's been doing more than you will ever do with your sad pathetic life.

lording the edge fantastic

@Cena: What?

@Binro: You don't know shit about my life, internet tough guy.

@Oxygen: What did I say that's even remotely edgy? He's both transitioned and attempted suicide. That's literally all I've heard about him since he was released from prison. Is stating mundane facts about a public figure considered edgy now?

You're referring to Chelsea manning as a "he", when it is a approriate to use the pronounds for their current gender, not the past one.

Damn. That's some Pizzagate level Wingnuttery. Or in this case Moonbattery.

Sadly, many in the Democratic Party are in some weird rehash of the Red Scare in which any enemy is an agent of the Kremlin.

And with Wikileaks, Dems loved it when it was uncovering collateral murder shit that was going on under George W, but the minute they started releasing NSA secrets that Obama was cool with, it was high treason.

I hope Manning wins and works to bring more government wrong-doing to light.