Off By Five

My prediction of a 30 year sentence for Bradley Manning was off by five years:

A military judge on Wednesday morning sentenced Army Pfc. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

Manning, 25, was convicted last month of multiple charges, including violations of the Espionage Act for copying and disseminating the documents while serving as an intelligence analyst at a forward operating base in Iraq. He faced up to 90 years in prison.

The article goes on to say that Manning must serve 8 years before he is eligible for parole. 

I suspect that might as well be 800 years. As I've noted before, Manning does not strike me as the type who can handle prison, as in Leavenworth type prison. He could barely handle the brig at Ft. Meade. His handlers will have to mind their Ps and Qs for awhile until things settle down, but at some point in the not so distant future they will begin to make sure that Manning serves hard, hard time. Eventually, when they've tormented him enough to use his story to scare the hell out of every enlistee for the next 50 years, they'll snap him like a twig and turn their back while he kills himself.

Sorry for the brutal assessment, and I don't applaud it even though I think Manning deserves prison time for what he did. I just think that's the likely final chapter to this sorry story.