The 35-year sentence a military judge imposed on Pfc. Bradley Manning
Wednesday morning
was in some sense a vindication of his defense: following his
conviction last month on charges of violating the Espionage Act, Private
Manning faced up to 90 years in prison. He had previously pleaded
guilty to lesser versions of those crimes that exposed him to 20 years
behind bars. For a defense lawyer, a sentence of one-third the potential
maximum is usually not a bad outcome. But from where we sit, it is
still too much, given his stated desire not to betray his country but to
encourage debate on American aims and shed light on the “day to day”
realities of the American war effort.
Certainly, Private Manning faced punishment.
In providing more than 700,000 government files to WikiLeaks — extensive
excerpts of which were published in The New York Times and other
publications — he broke the law and breached his responsibility as a
military intelligence analyst to protect those files. It was by far the
biggest leak of classified documents in U.S. history, and thus it is not
surprising that the punishment would be the longest ever on record for
leaking such information.
This is a New York Times editorial. Tom
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