According to the Wall Street Journal presiding judge, Denise Lind, delivered a sentence that means the former intelligence analyst will likely spend at least eight more years behind bars before he is illegible for parole. Manning downloaded some 700,000 classified military and diplomatic documents that he sent to WikiLeaks and admitted doing it.
Manning's sentence was the longest for a would-be whistleblower. Central Intelligence Agency officer John Kiriakou only got 30-months after he told the world that the US waterboarding torture. To be fair to the Judge Mannings leak was one of the biggest ever. WikiLeaks released 250,000 diplomatic cables, nearly 400,000 military reports and video of a 2007 US airstrike in Baghdad that killed two Reuters employees.