NEW YORK, NY June 14 (DPI) – The New York Times Magazine published this week an interview with the newly freed Chelsea Manning, who as pre-sex-change Bradley Manning handed over a trove of national security data to Wikileaks in 2010.  And the sympathetic narrative, complete with airbrushed Art House photos of the pardoned spy, was met with mostly dismay from more than 750 readers commenting on the article, headlined “The Long, Lonely Road of Chelsea Manning.”

One of the six highest recommended posts came out supporting Manning, but the five others were decidedly critical, both of Manning and The Times for its strange and fawning coverage.  Five of the top six comments:

Manning still doesn’t seem to have the slightest clue as to the impact of her stealing of this classified material. When she’s drinking her Starbucks, does she ever think about the Afghan villagers, for example, whose life she put in danger by her disclosures? Yet we’re supposed to feel sorry for her for her time in prison.

Chelsea Manning’s actions still cause me professional headaches to this day, in ways she did not conceive or even care about. I could care less how ‘isolated’ she feels. I doubt she ever read the documents that quoted me and made no effort to evaluate whether publishing emails with my name was “disclosing vital classified information”. Rather, she sanctimoiously dumped everything into the public domain with not a care to that action’s effects on a fellow citizen. When she apologizes and admits it was wrong to indiscriminately publish the private conversations of private citizens, then she has some standing to ask me and the nation to ‘reconcile itself to what she did.’

Why are you giving such coverage to a traitor who divulged secret military documents? As a retired military officer, I am outraged he was even pardoned.

Chelsea Manning was a traitor to the United States. It’s not just that she leaked classified documents by the hundreds of thousands. It was that she was totally indiscriminate in doing so, taking no care to redact names to protect people’s lives, and including tens of thousands of State Department documents which had nothing to do with the Iraq War but simply because she happened to get her hands on them. (That said, as a former Foreign Service Officer, I think the documents put what the State Department does in a pretty good light for the public, even if their release did cause us some problems.)
She was rightfully sentenced to a very long jail term, then pardoned by Barrack Obama in his 11th hour exit which, alas, was hardly less dignified by this pardon than Bill Clinton’s pardon of a couple high-contributor convicted felons (Mark Rich comes to mind).
I saw a TV interview with her. And its ALL ABOUT ME: first Chelsea’s private moral code which led to her betrayal of our country. And then, asking that the US taxpayers while she was in jail pay to help her change sexual identity from boy to girl. Fine if she wishes that, but not on my nickel, thank you.
That we coddle and pardon such a person is a true signal of moral collapse and a refusal to set a standard (and yes, standards are tough) that members of our society obey if they are to be true to each other.
She may be free from jail, but hopefully she will never be free of the social
stigma of her deed.

The NYT should stop obsessing about a small minority within a minority. Most people care about jobs, the economy, their overall quality of life and many, many other things that are very frequently a non topic on the pages of the NYT. They don’t care about Manning, they really don’t. No wonder the east coast elite is clueless about normal life.

Glad the New York Times was not around 250 years ago, or you would be braying about “Benedict Arnold: Misunderstood Patriot.”

I am part of the progressive left and am appalled. What came across to me in this portrait was a total and horrifying solipsism. The author stresses how “isolated” Manning felt before and after dumping classified material, as if somehow feeling isolated and misunderstood is justification for her indiscriminate actions.. Feeling alienated is part of the human condition. Ever read philosophy? Ever go on facebook? Self awareness and acceptance doesn’t come from the outside in. It’s not society’s role to hold up a pretty mirror to nullify our insecurities. For all of Manning’s cleverness, she sought out mental health treatment pretty late in the game. And the military missed all this completely. How?? Guessing she doesn’t feel invisible anymore. This was a non-tactical, imprudent dump of secrets, no filter, no concern for any repercussions or danger that might arise. And dumped to the most incorrigible, disreputable anarchist on the global scene. Manning comes across here about as shallow as that “luscious” blond wig. And it comes as no surprise after all this time, much of it in solitary confinement, she seems to have reflected not at all on what she actually DID to have gotten herself there. She is no Snowden. She has no sense of accountability. Just pure self interest and a starving need for affirmation. Had she blacked out even one name, I might have felt differently.