At Mother Jones, James Ridgeway writes, Bradley Manning's Torturous Treatment Met By Growing Resistance:
The solitary confinement of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning in a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia, is now approaching its tenth month. In addition to sporadic on-the-ground protests, a growing chorus of media and activist voices is calling for an end to Manning’s appalling treatment. Implicitly or explicitly, they link the accused WikiLeaker’s fate to that of tens of thousands of other US prisoners held in solitary, and shed new light on a widespread and torturous practice.
Yesterday the ACLU sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, charging that the "gratuitously harsh treatment" of Manning "violates fundamental constitutional norms." The letter states:
The Supreme Court has long held that the government violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment whenever it “unnecessarily and wantonly inflicts pain.” No legitimate purpose is served by keeping Private Manning stripped naked; in prolonged isolated confinement and utter idleness; subjected to sleep deprivation through repeated physical inspections throughout the night; deprived of any meaningful opportunity to exercise, even in his cell; and stripped of his reading glasses so that he cannot read. Absent any evident justification, such treatment is clearly forbidden by our Constitution…
President Obama recently stated that Private Manning’s conditions comply with the Pentagon’s “basic standards.” Given that those standards apparently permit Private Manning to be subjected to plainly unconstitutional conditions, it is clear that the Department of Defense must adapt its standards to meet the demands of the Constitution.
Amnesty International sent a letter to Gates in January, and amplified its protests last week. Yesterday, Human Rights Watch issued a statement calling on the US government to "publicly explain the precise reasons behind extremely restrictive and possibly punitive and degrading treatment that Army Private First Class Bradley Manning alleges he has received while detained at the brig at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia."
NPR's On Point [Friday morning] spent a full hour on Manning, and the show includes a good rundown of the controversy over his confinement. Mainstream publications have joined progressive critics like Salon's Glenn Greenwald in decrying Manning’s treatment. Earlier this week they were joined by the conservative National Review, which declared that he "does not deserve arbitrary and pointless abuse."
For additional information about the practice of solitary confinement, visit Solitary Watch.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2008:
Barack Obama's passport file was breached without his consent, in violation of the Privacy Act, at least three times this year (on Jan. 9, Feb. 21, and Mar. 14). On Thursday night State Department spokesman Sean McCormack blamed the snooping on mere curiosity. Two of the three contract employees of the Bureau of Consular Affairs reportedly involved were fired, and the third disciplined. ...
There's clearly a concerted effort by the administration to portray the three breaches as trivial and coincidental. ...
It could well be that nothing much was afoot; there are fools at every level of this administration. Indeed, this government has failed terribly in maintaining the privacy of records, especially when it hires private contractors to do its work.
However the last time a Bush occupied the White House, in 1992, another Democratic presidential candidate had his passport files rifled. And just as today, the initial cover story floated by the White House to explain the snooping portrayed it as innocuous.