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A week ago Friday, when asked about the Pentagon's treatment of Bradley Manning, President Obama made
this astonishing statement:
With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are. I can’t go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Private Manning’s safety as well.
As emptywheel tweeted:
Of COURSE Manning's treatment meets DOD's standards. Using nudity to force helplessness has been standard 4 9 years now
The president's statement also was creepily reminiscent of Bush:
So I ask what tools are available for us to find information from him and they gave me a list of tools, and I said are these tools deemed to be legal? And so we got legal opinions before any decision was made.
As Glenn Greenwald pointed out, even some of this nation's most powerful voices in the traditional media disagree with President Obama's assessment.
The New York Times editorial board:
Private Manning is not an enemy combatant, and there is no indication that the military is trying to extract information from him. Many military and government officials remain furious at the huge dump of classified materials to WikiLeaks. But if this treatment is someone’s way of expressing that emotion, it would be useful to revisit the presumption of innocence and the Constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
The Los Angeles Times editorial board:
Undercutting the argument that Manning needs to be protected from himself is the fact that he is not on suicide watch, which requires a recommendation from a brig mental health official. According to Manning's attorney, a brig psychiatrist said that Manning's comment about the elastic in his underwear was in no way prompted by his psychiatric state. It's unclear whether President Obama knew these details when he told reporters last week that the conditions in which Manning was held were "appropriate" and that "some of this has to do with Private Manning's safety."
It's hard to resist the conclusion that punishment, not protection, is the purpose of these degrading measures. Punishment may be in Manning's future; he was charged last week with an additional 22 offenses, including aiding the enemy. But Manning's treatment should reflect the fact that he remains innocent until proven guilty.
Even the warmongering editorial board of the Washington Post:
The episodes of forced nudity are particularly disturbing. In both instances, nudity was imposed after, according to Mr. Manning, he had run-ins with brig personnel, leading to questions about whether it was payback for mouthing off. And Mr. Manning’s treatment comes uncomfortably close to the kind of intimidating and humiliating tactics disavowed after the abuses at the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons that eroded the country’s standing in the world.
And as Greenwald notes, Manning's treatment also is being condemned by leading media overseas.
On Tuesday, professors Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law School and Yochai Benkler of Harvard Law School began circulating a petition to their colleagues around the country. Among the petition's statements:
If Manning is guilty of a crime, let him be tried, convicted, and punished according to law. But his treatment must be consistent with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. There is no excuse for his degrading and inhumane pre-trial punishment. As the State Department’s PJ Crowly put it recently, they are “counterproductive and stupid.” And yet Crowley has now been forced to resign for speaking the plain truth.
The Wikileaks disclosures have touched every corner of the world. Now the whole world watches America and observes what it does; not what it says.
President Obama was once a professor of constitutional law, and entered the national stage as an eloquent moral leader. The question now, however, is whether his conduct as Commander in Chief meets fundamental standards of decency. He should not merely assert that Manning’s confinement is “appropriate and meet[s] our basic standards,” as he did recently. He should require the Pentagon publicly to document the grounds for its extraordinary actions --and immediately end those which cannot withstand the light of day.
Three days later, as of 7:30 a.m. on March 19, 218 law professors and other members of the academic legal community have signed on. Click the above link for the complete list.