Bradley/Chelsea Manning stole documents that got people killed by the Taliban but Obama thinks he/she deserves to be given a lighter sentence…What a crock!
Paul Ryan and other Republicans spoke out immediately to express their displeasure with the move by Obama:
“This is just outrageous,” Ryan said in a statement. “Chelsea Manning’s treachery put American lives at risk and exposed some of our nation’s most sensitive secrets. President Obama now leaves in place a dangerous precedent that those who compromise our national security won’t be held accountable for their crimes.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, a veteran, also criticized Obama’s decision.
“When I was leading soldiers in Afghanistan, Private Manning was undermining us by leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks,” he said in a statement. “I don’t understand why the president would feel special compassion for someone who endangered the lives of our troops, diplomats, intelligence officers, and allies. We ought not treat a traitor like a martyr.”
Sen. John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the commutation a “grave mistake.”
Here’s why this is a BIG deal:
The leak was one of the largest breaches of classified material in US history.
Private First Class Bradley Manning stole 251,000 State Department documents, many of them secret international embassy reports. Manning smuggled the security documents out on a CD labeled “Lady Gaga.” Manning was bitter after a breakup with his boyfriend.
Manning, smuggled the information out of a secure facility on a CD. Never before had a superpower lost control of such vast amounts of sensitive information.
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