Allow me to rephrase slightly. I said, 'He wanted to, "start a debate." He was in neither the position nor the authority to do so.'
Perhaps that would be better said, "He wanted to "start a debate." Given his rank (PFC), active duty military status and the channels through which he decided to utilize he should have realized that his efforts would be doomed from the start. On my podcast we once interviewed former Navy SEAL SO1 Carl Higbie (, who was forced to leave the service after a politicized chain of command worked him through the wringer on a book he had written (one critical of the decisions of the Obama administration). Higbie tried to follow the appropriate channels and has seen some dangerous repercussions, including a post-exit change in his discharge status from Honorable to General without the UCMJ-mandated hearing. (Found a good write-up on it at http://rhinoden.rangerup.com/citizen-seal/) In both cases the military took a dim view of members taking a public route to express their views. The major difference is that where Higbie published a book containing only his views and maintained OPSEC, Manning took documents marked as classified and pushed them out to a website. Had Manning gone the same route as Higbie we probably wouldn't be talking about this. Until Later! C. Hatton Humphrey http://www.eastcoastconservative.com Every cloud does have a silver lining. Sometimes you just have to do some smelting to find it. On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 2:30 AM, Judah McAuley <[email protected]> wrote: > > The only people who "have the authority" to start a debate are those that > have already decided, privately, to pass on it. That is a fundamental > conundrum. These things are not debated in the open. I do believe that, in > some cases, they ought not to. But I fundamentally believe that we should > have more debate and that the genesis of that debate will not come from > within the ruling circles that have already bought into the current > framework. > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:366149 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
