Chelsea Manning completes six years in military custody for whistleblowing

CPT Aaron Kletzing, According to the article, she's claiming her sentence is too severe. She points to the 2 years probation that David Patraeus received for passing classified material to his biographer/lover. I would call that a weak argument as the amount of material Patraeus passed to his lover was miniscual in comparison and though she didn't have a need to know, at least she had a clearance. That amounts to a practice dangerous to security, not a compromise. Manning passing 700,000 secret documents that could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to our national security to wikileaks to be accessed by the whole world is a compromise of previously unheard of proportions!

I'm not sure why you posted this in the transgendered group. In my humble opinion, her being transgendered isn't a factor in her sentencing or appeal. If she claimed during her trial that she did it because she was distressed because she was transgendered or a whistleblower who felt compelled to expose illegal activity, that is no excuse. She should have used the inspector general to make her complaint and then an investigator with an appropriate clearance and need to know could have looked at the files.

Then she could have requested a discharge because she was transgendered which I'm sure would have been granted...

Accordingly, I think the 35 year sentence is appropriate.

Whistleblowing? Mmmm. Don't think so. PFC Manning was mad at the Army because he felt his seniors weren't treating him with the respect a person of his capabilities and intelligence ought to merit. He leaked the classified to poke the Army in the eye for not treating him like he felt he deserved to be treated, and also to get his seniors in trouble for their lax supervision of him.

As I see it, his primary purpose was pure retribution, and his secondary purpose was to highlight the plight of the LGBT community in the military. I can think of better ways to do that... Leaking classified and getting sources killed is not the preferred method.

Whose bathroom does she use?