The sad part is his sentence. He earned his dishonorable discharge and some prison time for unilaterally releasing classified documents he had no authority to release, but I agree with the New York Times that his sentence of 35 years is excessive. I would have given him five years, less time served. His punishment is designed to fit not the crime, but the message the government wants to send to other leakers. Perhaps a future president will commute his sentence, but President Barack Obama, a rigid and moralistic man, will not.
The weird part is his announcement that he’s a woman trapped inside a man’s body. He wants to be called Chelsea, and to undergo “gender reassignment surgery” while in prison. That doesn’t convert his Y chromosomes to X chromosomes, so to my mind the surgery is mutilation, Frankenstein medicine. That he wants to undergo so horrific a procedure speaks volumes about his mental state. I can only shudder and hope he somehow survives his demons with a measure of happiness.
Two final questions: why did the Army ever allow him to enlist? And once in the service, why was he ever allowed to access such vast amounts of classified information? He seems to have been a walking red flag that his superiors didn’t recognize or ignored. It will be a travesty of justice if no one above the rank of private first class is penalized for this debacle.