Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Yesterday Abu Ghraib, today Bradley Manning: who tomorrow?

Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking a massive trove of classified material to WikiLeaks, has been imprisoned since May 2010. The treatment to which he has been subjected, including protracted isolation, systematic humiliations and routinised sleep deprivation, got more extreme last week when the commander of the brig at Quantico, Virginia, imposed on him a regime of forced nakedness at night and during an inspection of his cell every morning until his clothing is returned.

These types of abusive tactics were authorised by the Bush administration for use on foreign detainees captured in the war on terror, on the theory that causing "debilitation, disorientation and dread" would produce "learned helplessness" and make them more susceptible and responsive to interrogators' questioning.

(...)

The subjection of Manning to tactics originally authorised for foreign terror suspects proves that torture opponents were correct about the slippery slope, as they were about everything else. Putting Manning through the "learned helplessness" regimen makes president Barack Obama's day-one promise to "end torture" and "restore the rule of law" even more of a mockery than the "looking forward, not backward" commitment to unaccountability for crimes perpetrated by officials of the previous administration. The torturous treatment of soldier/citizen Manning is even occurring on the Nobel Peace Prize-winning no-to-torture-president's watch. Full story...

Don't miss:
  1. Bradley Manning's treatment by US condemned as 'stupid'
  2. American youth returns home after being tortured in Kuwait...
  3. Did Obama block torture photos because they show guards raping children?
  4. Here are some of the torture photos that Obama does not want you to see... 
  5. A 48-year-old Afghan citizen dies at Guantanamo after 9 years in a cage and no charges filed against him... 

No comments:

Post a Comment