At risk of what? What was already happening to both soldiers and civilians? You can't mean torture, death, or imprisonment. Hell, the Taliban and the like were doing far, far worse already.
So, I'm honestly curious, what was the increased risk?
> so maybe you made some good points later on.
The OP made mention of how Manning's leak directly led to intelligence sources imprisonment and death.
I wonder if there is anything other than suspicious backing up your claims here?
Gee, I dunno. I'm no great military strategist or anything, but it seems like allowing the Taliban to establish the ground rules isn't the best approach.
For one thing, not all of the US's potential adversaries are radical Islamists. In future conventional wars, we will need the moral authority to demand that our prisoners be treated in accordance with international laws and treaty obligations. Debacles like Abu Ghraib -- to say nothing of the Iraq war in general -- rob us of that moral authority, in much the same way that the Roman Catholic Church loses some of its moral authority every time another child sex abuse case comes to light. To occupy the high ground, you must first take it.
The OP made mention of how Manning's leak directly led to intelligence sources imprisonment and death.
No, orchestrating a bogus public health campaign led to Afridi's imprisonment. As far as I'm concerned, Afridi can take his place next to Mengele in medical infamy.
Manning did an unalloyed good thing in bringing the CIA's tactic to light [1]. I want foreign operatives to tell the Agency to fuck off when they come up with ideas like, "Hey, let's start a vaccination program so we can subvert the local populace and find our bad guy."
You seem to think that the ends justify the means. That's great, as long as you have perfect knowledge of future consequences. In that sense, both the US government and Bradley Manning made the same logical error. The difference is, his actions had some positive consequences as well as negative ones.
[1]: If, in fact, he did. There seems to be some disagreement with briandear's (lack of a) citation on this.
>>>> In future conventional wars, we will need the moral authority to demand that our prisoners be treated in accordance with international laws and treaty obligations.
A little wrinkle here is that most US adversaries in recent wars didn't give a flying duck about US moral authority. And there's no reason why that would change - it's not like US is going to war with Sweden or Canada. Not that supposedly civilized countries aren't capable of mass atrocities - look at what Germans did in 20th century. Did they care for the moral authority of the Jews they mass-murdered? I highly doubt so.
Moral authority is important only for US and only because winning the war while destroying one's society may not be worth it.
>>>> The difference is, his actions had some positive consequences as well as negative ones.
You mean, actions of US government don't have positive consequences? I think you're getting way ahead of the facts here.
For you, maybe. Some would think removal of homicidal maniac dictator that openly paid terrorists, invaded neighboring countries, used chemical weapons, mass-murdered his own population and bribed top functionaries of the UN[1] to look other way is some upside. But I guess who cares what foreigners do to foreigners, there are billions of them anyway.
Changing the topic, are you? I take it as an implicit admission you were wrong implying there were no positive effects of US policy at all. It is good that you realize now you overreached, hopefully next time you'd use less hyperbole and recognize that you can't just ignore facts you don't like.
In the specific case of soldiers in Iraq, at risk of radicalisation of that part of the population which, prior to the events at Abu Ghraib and them becoming known in Iraq (which occurred before they were leaked in the West), had been supportive (or at least tolerant) of the occupation.
For the rest of the military, a greater risk of hostile populations and bigger psyops advantages for adversaries in foreign operations.
At risk of what? What was already happening to both soldiers and civilians? You can't mean torture, death, or imprisonment. Hell, the Taliban and the like were doing far, far worse already.
So, I'm honestly curious, what was the increased risk?
> so maybe you made some good points later on.
The OP made mention of how Manning's leak directly led to intelligence sources imprisonment and death.
I wonder if there is anything other than suspicious backing up your claims here?