@Rascalcat,
As far as I'm concerned,Manning, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and several others are all guilty of treason and should be shot dead on the White-house lawn...
@ritsuka,
Transparency of government is one thing, publishing military secrets during a war and publishing the names of informants to the Taliban is entirely different.
It's obvious that you have never fought in a war, and hopefully you never will...
But after you've seen you fellow soldiers blown to pieces by an IED planted by some "innocent civilian" or mother crying that her baby needs help while the whole time she's wearing an explosives vest or shot buy the little boy begging for food, you realize that these people have no boundaries, they will use women and children to fight for them. They will use your compassion and sympathy to get close enough to kill as many of you as possible.
You will quickly loose any compassion or sympathy for them, or you will die...
You will quickly see anyone who doesn't wear the same uniform as you, and some that do, as a potential threat and enemy, or you will die...
The bulk of the blood that has been spilled, lies not on the hands of the soldiers. It belongs to the extremest, the governments who have allowed them to go unchecked for so long that they are now capable of such acts, the governments who have supported their acts of terror, and the so called innocent civilians themselves, because they are guilty as well, they are guilty of cowardice and indifference, they allowed themselves to be ruled by fear and ignorance, they stood by and watched them gain power and did nothing.
If these people and their governments had been able contain their garbage instead of letting it spill over into the neighbors yard, then we wouldn't be taking out the trash.
But I do agree that our military forces need to leave...
If it were up to me we'd be out ASAP, and since when ever we do leave occupied territories, we leave all of our equipment behind, buildings, weapons, supplies, vehicles, etc. I've come up with a good use for that stuff...
I think we should empty out all the prisons of the murders, rapist, child molesters, career criminals, etc. all those with very little chance of reform, and send them over there, give it all to them and tell them to do their worst, just don't come back...
If they can't keep their trash off of our lawn, we should dump all of ours on theirs....
P.S. Stop and think before you criticize those soldiers and others like them, if it wasn't for them and those before them that have fought for freedom. If the Axis had won WWII, the Communist had gone unopposed, or if you were under Taliban rule, the very words you have written here, criticizing government policies, would land you in prison or dead....