President Obama Has Commuted Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

In one way or another, Chelsea Manning has spent most of her life in a prison. Thanks to our President, that’s about to change.

This is yet another reason Barack Obama will be missed by many. And for those that won’t be missing him, this is likely to piss them off something ‘UGE.

As just reported in The Verge, “While not technically a pardon, the order reduces Manning’s sentence from 35 years to just over seven years, the majority of which Manning has already served.”

Born Bradley Manning, Chelsea announced her gender transition the day after the verdict was handed down. “I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female,” she said in a statement. “Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible.”

After a lawsuit to receive medical treatment, Manning was approved for hormone therapy in 2015. In September 2016, she launched a hunger strike, demanding access to gender reassignment surgery; the military complied five days later.

“Now, under the terms of Mr. Obama’s commutation announced by the White House on Tuesday,” adds The NYTimes, Ms. Manning is set to be freed in five months, on May 17 of this year, rather than in 2045. The commutation also relieved the Department of Defense of the difficult responsibility of her incarceration as she pushes for treatment for her gender dysphoria — including sex reassignment surgery — that the military has no experience providing.

The decision by Mr. Obama rescued Ms. Manning, who twice tried to commit suicide last year, from an uncertain future as a transgender woman incarcerated at the male military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. She has been jailed for nearly seven years, and her 35 sentence was by far the longest punishment ever imposed in the United States for a leak conviction

While serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, Manning leaked more than 700,000 documents to Wikileaks, including video of a 2007 airstrike in Baghdad that killed two Reuters employees. In 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for her role in the leak and has been held at the US Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth for the past three years.

Julian Assange, who has long been sought by US and EU authorities for extradition on Swedish rape charges, had previously pledged to surrender himself to US authorities if Manning was pardoned.

And plenty of us non-political types have a few bones to pick to Assange as well.

But for now, thank you, Mr. President, and Chelsea Manning, let freedom ring.

 
 
And now, back to our regularly scheduled pornography.

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