It should now be perfectly clear to everyone that what the Obama administration is doing to Private Bradley Manning is absolutely despicable. According to his lawyer, the Government has stripped PFC Manning of all of his clothing for the past three nights, and they intend to continue this practice indefinitely. Each night, Brig guards force PFC Manning to relinquish all of his clothing. He then lies in a cold jail cell naked until the following morning, when he is required to endure the humiliation of standing naked at attention for the morning roll call. According to Marine spokesperson, First Lieutenant Brian Villiard, the decision to strip him naked every night is for PFC Manning's own protection.
And what is the rationale for this? Well it seems that Manning has been trying to determine the cause for his retention under "maximum custody and prevention of injury" (POI) watch for a long time now. Even Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell has stated that PFC Manning has been nothing short of "exemplary" as a detainee. Additionally, government forensic psychiatrists have consistently maintained that there is no mental health justification for the POI Watch imposed on PFC Manning.
When Manning asked what he needed to do in order to be downgraded from Maximum custody and POI, he was told that there was nothing he could do to downgrade his detainee status and that officials simply considered him a risk of self-harm. PFC Manning then remarked that the POI restrictions were "absurd" and sarcastically stated that if he wanted to harm himself, he could conceivably do so with the elastic waistband of his underwear.
True to bureaucratic fashion, that was the excuse Chief Warrant Officer Denise Barnes needed to abuse Manning further. Without consulting any health officials, she used PFC Manning's sarcastic quip as justification to increase the restrictions imposed upon him under the guise of being concerned that PFC Manning was a suicide risk. PFC Manning was not, however, placed under the official designation of Suicide Risk Watch. This is because Suicide Risk Watch would have required a Brig mental health provider's recommendation, which the government wishes to avoid in order to continue their abuse/torture of Manning.
The treatment of Manning is now so repulsive that it even lies beyond what at least some of the most devoted Obama admirers are willing to defend. So now it comes to this-- punishment for whistle-blowers is borderline torture. Let's not forget that-- Manning's alleged "crime" is whistleblowing (a practice that Obama extolled during his campaign and said deserved protection). As many have pointed out, one of the goals of torture is to elicit a false confession. If this were happening under Bush's watch, the world would be in an uproar.
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