Accused 'Wikileaks' Soldier's Extremely Harsh Jail Conditions

[rachel1]

"Private First Class Bradley Manning, the American soldier accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified and confidential military and diplomatic documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, took the stand in a military court today to make his first public statements since his arrest in 2010.

Manning appeared confident and animated at a pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade in Maryland as he described the mental breakdowns and extreme depression he suffered during his first year in detention, from cells in Iraq and Kuwait to the Marine base at Quantico in Virginia. Within weeks of his arrest, Manning said, he became convinced he was going to die in custody.

"I was just a mess. I was really starting to fall apart," the 24-year-old former Army intelligence analyst said. Manning said he didn't remember an incident while in Kuwait where he bashed his head into a wall or another where he fashioned a noose out of a bed sheet as his civilian attorney, David Coombs, said he had, but Manning did say he felt he was "going to die... [in] an animal cage."*

Bradley Manning, the solider accused of 'wikileaking' classified documents finally spoke publicly about his treatment while being detained. Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola (Host, TYT University), and Mark Thompson (TV Host) discuss the demeaning, maddening, and depressing treatment Manning says he received.

*Read more from Luis Martinez/ ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/accused-wikileaker-bradley-mannings-speaks-publicly-time/story?id=17841436#.ULlsIoX8aFQ


I suppose torture is 100% a-ok if it's being implemented in the name of security!

[fleabiscuit]

1. We don't know the whole story.

Can someone commit a heinous crime not because he has lost all reason, but because he has lost everything except his reason? Private Manning may be guilty, and may be nuttier than a pet raccoon.

[USMCMustang]

2. Solitary Confinement Is Not Fun

But have you seen the video of the murder of the journalists?

[roody]

3. No. What is the connection?

[pam4water]

4. There was no crime there and you are casting dispersions as unabashed shilling.

[JDPriestly]

11. But the fact that he has suffered so much sensory deprivation

and solitary confinement will prevent us from ever knowing what really happened or who he really is.

Perhaps he was quite rational, quite sane, and the military feared that the public would recognize that so they did what they could to render him irrational and insane?

That, in my view, is a more likely conclusion based on the facts we now know.

A very plausible theory: The military was doubly embarrassed. Here was a guy who had simply disclosed all kinds of diplomatic and military stuff that was confidential and classified. The guy was presentable and seemed sane. How could the military make him look bad?

By making the guy look crazy.

The military is full of psychologists who have studied the effects of solitary confinement and torture on soldiers when taken prisoners. These techniques are similar to those used by, for example, the North Vietnamese or the North Koreans and others to torture American soldiers. They put people in cages, confined them and subjected them to humiliation -- just like our military did to Manning.

That the military went to such extremes to apply the techniques of dehumanization and of the destruction of the ego and sanity of a human being, techniques with which the military is extremely familiar, to Manning suggests that they knew that Manning was healthy and did what he did as a rational person. All the more distressing to the military mind.

I also had thought that perhaps Manning did what he did because he was fragile and out of balance. But I don't think he would have been subjected to so much disorienting treatment if that had been the case. Was he emotional? Yes. But maybe he made a rational decision to reveal the extent of the injustice he saw around him in Iraq. Could be so even if he was capable of over-reacting to a superior officer on occasion.

[MrMickeysMom]

5. Looks like one of those threads in which mystery surrounds memory of this...

Regardless of what role anyone thinks Manning played - leaker who was tortured, or whistle blower who was tortured, he was tortured.

It is not tolerable to torture the leaking or whistle blowing of that information.

Shaking the slumber from you, you "Americans", tell me what the difference is between recent leaking by Paula What's Her Name, the dame who claims bedding Gen Petraus, and Bradley Manning, and I think you'll find a Cupie doll prize in there somewhere.

[newfie11]

6. Who released the My Lai info in Vietnam

Yes there were more people killed but was anyone prosecuted for releasing this info?

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

7. The slaughter at My Lai was not a classified mission objective ...

it was an unauthorized murderous spree.

It was no crime to release the details of that incident, to report it to authorities.

[MrMickeysMom]

8. Thank you for clarifying that...

Meanwhile, I suppose there is no rebuttal when it comes to Bradley Manning.

Cenk Uygur on Current's "The Young Turks" seems to be the only one examining that question.

Personally, I'm guessing that all manner of due process was broken in the way the military handled Manning, and maybe that's the point. They have no due process. For reasons all related to warnings of the military industrial complex, the main issue is an assurance that there WILL be an imbalance of due process.

[newfie11]

9. Wow

So if folks are murdered under a classified mission justice is thrown out the window.

That's just wrong.

[JDPriestly]

12. Are you suggesting that killing a reporter carrying a camera

in cold blood in Iraq was an authorized murderous spree and therefore appropriately classified? Do you think that the killing of the reporter in Iraq and the child in the truck was a classified mission objective and that it was a crime to release the details of the Iraq incident?

I'm a little confused by your post.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

13. No, I'm suggesting that the massacre at My Lai was not authorized ...

... not a mission objective, so it was not the result of a classified order.

Therefore, disclosing it to authorities, and subsequently to the press, was not a breach of security, not a crime.

I didn't intend to convey any opinion about any incident in Iraq.

[JDPriestly]

10. President Obama said there would be no more torture.

Bradley Manning wasn't waterboarded, but he was tortured during Obama's presidency.

President Obama needs to end the careers of those responsible for this torture.

This was wrong. And nothing Manning says after enduring that ordeal can be trusted one way or the other. The clarity of his thinking, his memory, his moral judgment may have been so undermined that he should not be called as a witness about anything.

This kind of treatment of any prisoner is about the stupidest thing I have every heard of. A lot of people become very confused due simply to the stress of being arrested. This kind of sensory deprivation and intentionally imposed confusion is counterproductive. It cannot result in justice.

Despicable, President Obama. And this happened on your watch. Please take corrective action.

A good way to start would to be to have some sort of channel created through which a disgruntled serviceman like Manning could air his doubts about the decisions of superior officers and about the potentially criminal behavior he sees happening before his eyes without going public.

In my experience, people need a response to their doubts and suspicions of wrongdoing by their superiors in organizations in which they work. Think of the woman at Enron who blew the whistle. Think of the fellow who worked for the tobacco company and blew the whistle. There should be some sort of alternative for people who witness something that is wrong in their workplace or in the military and want, without making themselves the ultimate judge of right or wrong, to bring it to the attention of the legal authorities.

A lot of times the suspicions and doubts are unwarranted, but in Manning's case for example, he had good reason to question the cover-up of possible war crimes. The employee at Enron had good reason to question as did the paralegal at the tobacco company.

We need some sort of safe place to which people can report corporate or institutional wrongs without necessarily ratting on a boss who may be completely innocent or unaware of the wrongdoing or in no position to change things.