Chelsea Manning Thread

[norton ash]

^^ Thanks for that, Mac. It says a lot.

[Nordic]

Something smells rotten about this whole thing. Including the Dad.

[2012 Countdown]

Bradley Manning being mistreated, says Hillary Clinton spokesman


PJ Crowley says Pentagon is being 'ridiculous and stupid' by subjecting WikiLeaks suspect to punitive conditions in jail

Ed Pilkington in New York

guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 March 2011 15.21 GMT

Hillary Clinton's spokesman has launched a public attack on the Pentagon for the way it is treating military prisoner Bradley Manning, the US soldier suspected of handing the US embassy cables to WikiLeaks.

PJ Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs at the US state department, said Manning was being "mistreated" in the military brig at Quantico, Virginia. "What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the department of defence," he said.

Crowley's comments signal a crack within the Obama administration over the handling of the WikiLeaks saga in which hundreds of thousands of confidential documents were handed to the website.

-----

Asked about the controversy at a White House press conference, Obama revealed he had 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."

Obama would not respond specifically to Crowley's comments, which are the first critical remarks from within the administration about the handling of Manning. The prisoner is being held for 23 hours in solitary confinement in his cell and stripped naked every night.




http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... y-comments

[Nordic]

I'm gonna put on my "conspiracy theorist" hat here and go out of the box.

Obviously Manning is being used as an "example". Here's what happens to you if you turn in documents to Wikileaks. You are fucked.

Now, we have many examples of "boogeymen" that we know are of questionable reality. Osama Bin Laden. "Al Queda in Iraq". All that bullshit.

Is Bradley Manning even real? Is his Dad real? Did Bradley Manning (if he is real) actually do what they said he did?

There's a "narrative" at work here, a la Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman. And it ain't Bradley Manning writing the narrative. He's been Gitmoed (yes, it's a new verb) so he's now another "Man in the Iron Mask", a political prisoner, we're never gonna get his point of view on what actually happened. He's gone, like Osama Bin Forgotten.

There are too many weird links to this. Lady Gaga. The gayness factor. The dad. The supposed fact that this one guy provided ALL THAT INFO to Wikileaks, which seems just stupidly unlikely.

He's the One Guy responsible for the leaks. I'd say that's completely bogus.

I would question whether he's even a real guy at this point, and I would need irrefutable proof to accept it.

And I would start from that point and work from there.

[lupercal]

Something smells rotten about this whole thing. Including the Dad.

Agree about the rotten smell, not about the dad, based solely on this interview, so here's my take: Manning is getting the disloyal-white-kid treatment, like the white Muslim kid from Marin, meaning he won't get the full Gitmo / Abu Ghraib ending in mental destruction or death, or the brown-guy treatment Jose Padilla got, but something sufficiently wretched to discourage disobedience generally.

As for his participation in wikileaks, yeah he's a patsy, but the Army had to facilitate the whole thing, like they did with the doctor who supposedly shot up his Houston Army base, so he's not being punished for anything he actually did, though his jailers don't know that.

The dad sounds like he's figured out his kid's been set up, but being a good sailor, is biting his tongue because loose lips sink ships etc, which he's pegged his whole life on, which puts him in a pickle and makes him sound unsympathetic, but the fact that he's talking at all means he's just about had it, and will probably do the trick before he starts showing up on Democracy Now and/or Alex Jones. JMHO.

[JackRiddler]

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Nordic pretty much that whole post is unanswerable insinuations and argument from personal incredulity, or claims that given details are "weird," but please, as to this:

He's the One Guy responsible for the leaks. I'd say that's completely bogus.

The leaks being attributed to him are of course not the hundreds of leaks from many countries published by Wikileaks during the last four years, but 1) the helicopter video, 2) the Iraq and 3) Afghanistan war logs, and 4) the State Department cables. All of these would have been accessible via SIPRNET, the State Department network to which Manning and 600,000 others had some kind of access. You can download all of these yourself by torrent (including the encrypted version of the full 250,000 cables) and tell us if you cannot burn them all to a single DVD, maybe two. Furthermore, you presumably are aware that whatever computer you're using to communicate with us right now can fit the text of literally thousands of books on it, if you were so inclined.

Personally, I'd find it much harder to believe if the claim was that each of these four big leaks coincidentally came from different sources than from the same one.

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[Nordic]

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Nordic pretty much that whole post is unanswerable insinuations and argument from personal incredulity, or claims that given details are "weird,"
.

Yes, I know. It's just my gut instinct on the thing, it just doesn't smell quite right. I could easily be completely wrong. Although I'm pretty sure about it being "off" somehow, but very few people actually know exactly how and why it's off.

I'm just not buying the official narrative here.

[JackRiddler]

.

Okay, okay, don't trust the "official narrative," I get it.

Besides which.


The name for this particular hell is...

Eternal Recurrence.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30362

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[Plutonia]

"Given the impact of my remarks, for which I take full responsibility, I have submitted my resignation" to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to a department statement attributed to the office of the spokesman.
more by Hillary Rodham Clinton - 8 minutes ago - The Associated Press (166 occurrences)

Obama Owns The Treatment Of Manning Now

13 Mar 2011 02:48 pm

By firing PJ Crowley for the offense of protesting against the sadistic military treatment of Bradley Manning, the president has now put his personal weight behind prisoner abuse. The man who once said that forced nudity was a form of torture, now takes the word of those enforcing it over a distinguished public servant. Money quote:

A little-known factor in Crowley's comments about Manning was revealed Saturday by April Ryan, a White House correspondent for American Urban Radio who covered Crowley in the Clinton White House. Ryan wrote on Twitter that Crowley "dislikes treatment of prisoners as his father was a Prisoner of War."

While it's true that Crowley's father was imprisoned during World War II, people close him downplay that as a major factor in his comments about Manning, saying the biggest factor is simply that Crowley believes what he said.

Yes. It is not necessary to have had a father as a prisoner of war to see the evil of prisoner abuse, and the stain it places on everyone enforcing it. And in the military, as with Bush, so with Obama. As commander-in-chief, Obama is directly responsible for the inhumane treatment of an American citizen. And Crowley's firing will make it even less likely in the future that decent public servants will speak out against such needless sadism.

I suspect that Crowley will now be unquestioningly embraced by Manning supporters.

[Plutonia]

Wikileaks & the Law
@WLLegal Wikileaks & the Law

Bush on prisoner treatment: I asked "most senior legal officers in US govt” if we tortured. “They assured me they did not.” http://3.ly/K3eT

14 minutes ago via web Favorite Retweet Reply

Wikileaks & the Law
@WLLegal Wikileaks & the Law

Obama on Manning's treatment: "I've actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures..are appropriate. They assured me they are.”

15 minutes ago via web Favorite Retweet Reply

[8bitagent]

This should also be posted in the Eff Obama thread, but basically State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley has been sacked for speaking out on the treatment of Manning.

Gotta love a Democratic leadership, gotta show the Republicans they too can be cowboys!

[American Dream]

Bradley Manning's military doctors accused over treatment

WikiLeaks suspect treated cruelly, says rights group, which accuses psychiatrists of 'violating ethical duties'


* Ed Pilkington in New York
* http://www.guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 March 2011


A Bradley Manning supporter takes part in a protest outside the US state department this week.


A leading group of doctors in the US concerned with the ethical treatment of patients has questioned the role of military psychiatrists in Quantico, Virginia, where the suspected WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning is being subjected to harsh treatment that some call torture.

The advocacy body Physicians for Human Rights has sounded the alarm over the role of psychiatrists at the brig in the marine base where Manning has been in custody since last July.

The group sees the psychiatrists as trapped in a situation of "dual loyalty", where their obligations to the military chain of command may conflict with their medical duty to protect their patient.

Christy Fujio, author of a forthcoming report on the issue, said the main concern was that psychiatrists were allowing Manning's continuing solitary confinement.

"Even if they do not officially approve it, by continuing to examine him and report back to the government on his condition, they are effectively taking part in security operations. Their failure to call it what it is, cruel and inhumane treatment, constitutes a violation of their ethical duties as doctors."

Manning has been charged with passing a mountain of digital US state secrets to WikiLeaks. He is under a prevention of injury order, or PoI, that requires him to be kept alone in a cell for 23 hours a day and to be checked every five minutes. Since earlier this month, he has also been stripped naked each night and made to parade in front of officers.

Manning himself says the conditions amount to pre-trial punishment provoked by a sarcastic remark he made to guards.

Last night, Manning's father, Brian, also denounced the way his son is being treated. He told the Frontline programme on US public television: "It's shocking enough that I would come out of our silence as a family and say, 'No, you've crossed a line. This is wrong.'" And he referred to the Guantánamo detention facility for terror suspects, saying: "They worry about people down in a base in Cuba, but here we have someone on our own soil under our own control, and they are treating him in this way".

Official records kept at the brig, released recently by Manning's lawyer, reveal that between last August and January military psychiatrists made no fewer than 16 recommendations to their military commanders that Manning should be taken off the PoI restrictions because he was no threat to himself.

Typical of the entries was that of 29 October 2010, which stated that Manning "was evaluated by the brig psychiatrist and found fit to be removed from prevention of injury classification from a psychiatric standpoint".

Only once in that five-month period did the psychiatrists conclude that the prisoner should be subjected to the restrictions. Despite the clear medical opinion given, brig commanders have repeatedly ignored the advice and retained the harsh regime. That is, Physicians for Human Rights says, an indication the US government is breaking its own clear rules.

The group's Susan McNamara, a doctor who works with victims of torture from other countries, said Manning's treatment appeared to be an extension of the interrogation tactics used against terror suspects in Guantánamo.

"That is a huge problem, as it is designed to break a person down psychologically. Solitary confinement is a form of sensory deprivation, and if you are depriving a person of the human contact they need that can amount to torture." She added: "In the US, if a patient was treated in a psychiatric hospital in the same way the military is treating Manning, the federal government would stamp all over it … [it] is disobeying its own rules."

The controversy has reached to the heart of the Obama administration. This week, state department spokesman PJ Crowley resigned, having called the confinement "ridiculous and stupid" and warned it could damage the global standing of the US. Obama himself was forced to defend the regime, saying he had been "assured" by the Pentagon it was in Manning's own interests. While the Quantico psychiatrists are given credit for having consistently argued that Manning should be removed from the current extreme regime, there are serious questions about whether they are doing enough to force change.

[8bitagent]

Every single person I know who voted for Obama has now changed their opinions on his rule given the Manning situation as well as the escalated conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It couldn't be any more ironic how the right/Tea Party and left hates Obama for completely separate reasons(I am all for social programs, 'spreading the wealth', socialized medicine, etc...the right are for war, torture, etc)

[Plutonia]

Al Jazeera inadvertently outed Adrian Lamo's whereabouts in a recent interview -everyone is invited to call and ask him about his chats with Manning:

[8bitagent]

A year later, where's the "Free Bradley Manning" meme in the popular liberal/Democratic/youth/agitpop culture?

Other than Maddow and Democracy Now, it seems MIA. Manning should be a reawakening and a call to intellectual and political arms...the anti war and anti government liberals so alive during the Bush years have been asleep or nowhere to found. They should be more awake and mobilized than ever right now.