[sparky_z]

To be fair, it's pretty standard for crimes to have differing punishments depending on whether they were accidental or purposeful. Sometimes they're even considered different crimes entirely (i.e., murder vs manslaughter).

(I'm not defending Chelsea's treatment here. I just think it's odd that grizzles has singled out this particular aspect of the situation as worthy of outrage.)

[grizzles]

Petraeus did it for sex. He got a fine, and no prison time.

[gozur88]

He also leaked far less data and had an idea of what he was leaking. Manning did far, far more damage to national security interests the law was designed to protect.

[ricksplat]

He was also in the military, which carries different expectations of behaviour, and a tougher system of account.

[DanielBMarkham]

The system of account should be stricter the higher you go up, no?

Otherwise you seem to be making the case for civilian leaders to not have access at all to sensitive information.

(Sidebar: Because of the way this played out, this is probably going to be an impossible topic to talk about for many years. And the system is going to suffer for it.)

[gozur88]

>The system of account should be stricter the higher you go up, no?

There's more than one dimension here. The "system of account", as you call it, should be stricter the higher up you go, and it should also be stricter if you're uniformed military.

[ricksplat]

Yeah but Hillary and the Petraeus are civilians no? Or at the very least not subject to military jurisdiction and standards.

[anonu]

It also ended his career...