The Torture of Bradley Manning

Tuesday 21 December 2010

by: Ralph Lopez | t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

The Torture of Bradley Manning
(Illustration: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)

One peculiar outcome of the new clampdown on whistleblowers is the spectacle of Americans cheering on the destruction of their own rights, as in the case of avowed tough guys commenting in blogs that people like Bradley Manning "did the crime and now does the time," deserve no sympathy and merit the clear torture he is now undergoing. The tough consistently miss the point that while Manning has been accused of leaking classified military and State Department files to WikiLeaks, he has been convicted of nothing. The treatment he is undergoing has become the new norm in the case of high-profile cases purportedly involving national security.

The peerless Glenn Greenwald in this case gets it wrong when he says Manning's treatment is "possibly" torture. Isolation is torture and has been proven to be so. Hardened prisoners have said they would take almost any other punishment for misbehavior over isolation and its effects on the mind and the spirit. According to Greenwald, Manning has been kept in his cell without any human contact whatsoever for 23 out of 24 hours every day for six months, is prohibited from exercising in his cell, takes his meals alone and is being administered what he is told are anti-depressants by the prison doctor to keep his mind from snapping from the effects of the constant, steady quiet, the artificial light which makes it impossible to distinguish night from day and the aloneness with one's own thoughts. Hard as it may be to understand without experiencing it, interaction with other humans, even other accused, is a vital part of the touchstones with reality which frame our psyche. In testimony introduced at the trial of another prisoner accused of material assistance to terrorists, Fahad Hashmi,who was held in isolation for two years, doctors concluded that:

"after 60 days' solitary detention people's mental state begins to break down and gradually develops into psychosis as the mind disintegrates."

Prolonged isolation produces fear, anxiety and stress as lack of human contact denies the victim the opportunity to affirm the validity of what they are thinking. Victims hear voices and begin to question who they are. Stuart Grassian MD, wrote in "Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement":

"over 400 published investigations of the effects of social isolation on primates show such deleterious effects as self-mutilation and disturbances in perception and learning. They found that in adult rhesus monkeys even brief periods of social isolation produce compromised cognitive processing."

Grassian also notes:

"McKinney, Suomi and Harlow (1971) produced symptoms of depression in rhesus monkeys by confining them for 30 days.... isolation-produced fear in dogs has been clearly demonstrated (Thompson & Melzack, 1956)."

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All this is taking place before Manning has been convicted of any crime. He has undergone, for six months, the punishment many convicts dread most, before setting foot in a courtroom. Greenwald reports that David House, who has visited Manning several times in Quantico, has described "palpable changes in Manning's physical appearance and behavior just over the course of the several months ... "

The trial balloon for holding accused "enemies of the state" in severe, enforced isolation, which means deliberate exposure to only artificial light around the clock without a peek at grass and sky, even through bars, was Jose Padilla. While his lawyers complained during Padilla's nearly four years in isolation before his trial that his mind was being destroyed, according to The Christian Science Monitor:

"his windows were covered over. There was a toilet and sink. The steel bunk was missing its mattress. He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla's lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years ... . [Padilla's captors] punctured the extreme sensory deprivation with sensory overload, blasting him with harsh lights and pounding sounds."

At his trial four years later Padilla was docile and exhibited sudden facial tics. In his affidavit filed during Padilla's civilian trial, his attorney Andrew Patel said, "I was told by members of the brig staff that Mr. Padilla's temperament was so docile and inactive that his behavior was like that of 'a piece of furniture.'" At his trial, Dr. Angela Hegarty said Padilla "lacks the capacity to assist in his own defense" and that "during questioning, he exhibited 'facial tics, unusual eye movements and contortions of his body.'"

Padilla was found guilty and sentenced to 17 more years.

Among the charges against Manning is leaking of the gun video of an Apache helicopter during an attack in Baghdad in 2007, which was widely broadcast in the mainstream media and remembered for the graphic footage of a group of Iraqi men being blown apart and dismembered by the Apache's 30mm cannon. Less remarked upon, but critical, is the attack recorded soon afterward, upon a man wounded in the attack and other men attempting to evacuate him in a van. Manning called it "the van thing." Even on military blogs, there is broad agreement that although the first attack, as brutal as it seemed, was technically within the rules of engagement because a rocket launcher was found on the scene, the second attack constituted a clear war crime. Attacks on the wounded and those attempting to evacuate them are known by all soldiers to be illegal. The Marine Corps Study Guide reinforces Article 12 of the Geneva Conventions that:

"wounded or sick, shall be respected and protected in all circumstances. They shall be treated humanely and cared for by the Party to the conflict ... Any attempts upon their lives, or violence to their persons, shall be strictly prohibited; in particular, they shall not be murdered or exterminated ..."

The Marine Corp Guide states:

"Marines do not attack medical personnel, facilities, or equipment. Both friendly and enemy medical personnel are to be encouraged to come to the battlefield in safety to care for the wounded combatants."

It is in the second attack, upon the wounded man and those attempting to evacuate him, that the Apache gunner is heard champing at the bit and impatiently requesting permission to open fire. It is in this aftermath that Spc. Ethan McCord, now an outspoken opponent of the wars, discovers the children who have been wounded in the van and runs with them to an armored vehicle to get them to help, after another soldier runs away vomiting.

Apparently anything but naive about the carnage which happened in Iraq every day, Manning wrote to Adrian Lamo about the gunship video:

"At first glance it was just a bunch of guys getting shot up by a helicopter ... No big deal ... about two dozen more where that came from, right? But something struck me as odd with the van thing and also the fact it was being stored in a JAG officer's directory. So I looked into it."

The JAG is the judge advocate general, a military prosecutor. Yet, there are no charges pending against the Apache gunner or the ground controller who gave him permission to fire. Manning wrote to Lamo that his biggest worry if found out to be the leaker would be to "get my side of the story out, before everything was twisted around to make me look like Nidal Hassan (the Fort Hood shooter.)"

Manning did, as many point out, sign an agreement to not disclose classified materials. He also, however, swore a higher oath to uphold and defend the US Constitution, and his agreement did not include war crimes.

It is not known whether Manning is allowed reading materials, although the Army says he is allowed a prescribed time for watching television each day. Despite this amelioration, the pattern of total isolation without even these has been set in the cases of Hashmi and Padilla and there is no reason to believe the government intends to decrease, but rather increase, the severity of pre-trial isolation in cases it decides it must win. In the end, relinquishing the right to humane treatment before trial and allowing a new system of mind destruction to become a standard will make it that much easier for the government to prevent anyone from hearing any other side of a story, in any case involving any one of us.

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THE POLITICAL APATHY MUST END!

Yes, there are many villains in the U.S. government, and long have been. They are an extremely powerful group that, by and large, works together in an extremely organized fashion. They would have to be able to do so in order to have been as successful as they have. Just look at how successful they have been in convincing most "Americans" that there are supposedly no major conspiracies which have gone on, and which continue to go on, in the U.S. government. They have been so pervasively successful that one can't even try to show most "Americans" the great deal of evidence of such huge conspiracies, and/or that a massive conspiracy continues to transpire. The evidence is piling up, but most people won't even look at it, let alone consider it, thus making the conspirators extremely successful in "washing the populace of brains", and of making certain that most "Americans" have little or no clue what is really going and just how pervasive and successful it is.

That has been one of the conspirators' primary goals from the beginning of their long, patient coup d'etat against the U.S., to turn it into a country that is anything but Truly Free, and to turn it into a corporate-fascist totalitarian militarized police state, by propagandizing, indoctrinating, conditioning and programming the American people that the colossal conspiracy, which most-definitely DOES exist, supposedly doesn't exist. That's the way evil works. First, it convinces most people that it supposedly doesn't exist; and then convinces them that the minority who realizes, proves and promulgates that it does exist, are supposedly "nutcases", "fruitcakes", "nutjobs", "fruitloops", "psychotics", "conspiracy theorists", "communists", "terrorists", "enemy belligerents", "enemies of the state", "threats", "dangerous", "extremists", "radicals", "insane", etc.; while throughout it all the extremely evil conspirators are the real ones' who are ALL of those things and more.

The conspirators are mass-murderers, they run everything, and they want to control everyone. They are control freaks, and they hate True Liberty and Freedom with a passion that knows no bounds. They won't be satisfied until everyone is under their thumbs, and until all those who see through their machinations and stand up against them are eradicated. They are beginning to put the finishing touches on their plan(s) to destroy all True Freedom and Liberty, to completely destroy the U.S., to subjugate everyone and everything, to enslave the entire world under one-world government and religion (counterfeit, Catholic "Christianity"), and to exterminate all those who won't bow down to it. And, because most people are, by design, completely blind(ed) to what is really going on, the conspirators will very soon be successful in these plans, unless the vast majority of us completely wake the hell up and rise up en masse against all of evil insanity they have in store for us.

In other words, most of us have to very quickly come out of our brainwashing, grow a spine, and take a stand against all of the conspirators' absolute madness, or most of us are doomed just the way(s) these extremely evil conspirators want. They have mass-murdered countless millions of innocent people worldwide; so, if you think they won't turn around and carry out more of it against the American people themselves, think again. Since they could do and get away with it against millions of other people in the world, no one is safe, and all of us can and will be the targets of their psychopathic, mass-murderous wrath, unless we rise up and put a stop to it. Otherwise, we not only doom ourselves; we are complicit in dooming millions of our fellow-Americans, as well as millions more innocent people the world-over. There is, absolutely, no time to put it off. We either totally wake up NOW and stand up against this deluge of evil insanity, the greatest and final insanity of all, or we are fracked.

If we don't rise up en masse against this tsunami of mass-murderous insanity, the heroic Bradley Mannings' of this world will be the least of our problems. In fact, not to de-emphasize their great importance in the scheme of things whatsoever, they already are the least of our problems. Like I alluded to before, above, if We the People don't put a stop to this tidal wave of madness, there will be purges of True Patriots, True Journalists, True Lawyers, True Educators, True Whistleblowers, etc., far surpassing those purges of same in communist Russia, East Germany, fascist Nazi Germany and elsewhere. And from there it will lead to greater and greater purges vast segments of the population, far outweighing the exterminations that took place in the foregoing. This is NOT a "conspiracy theory", it is "conspiracy FACT"; and, if we don't prevent it from happening, all of us who refuse to face and stand up against it, will be complicit in and responsible for it.

Much better to die Truly Free, standing up against it, than to die as cowards and slaves; for, a life without True Liberty is a life not worth living at all anyway. That is what Patrick Henry, the great hero of the American Revolution, meant when he famously declared, "...(G)ive me liberty or give me death!" If we very soon aren't going to know any True Freedom anymore whatsoever, than much better that the extremely evil powers-that-be get it over with now and murder us. I for one will not die a slave to them and their mass-murderous, absolute-evil insanity. How about those of you reading this? Will you bow down to, be complicit in and responsible for this evil, and sell your souls' to it for all eternity, or will you be True Heroes and stand up against it? Will you "Live (Truly) Free or die" cowards and slaves to absolute evil? We have been "washed of brain and courage" to believe the ultimate lie that cowardice is supposedly preferable, but it is by no means any such thing, in any way, shape, form or fashion whatsoever!

infowars.com/the-lbj-cia-assassination-of-jfk/ (I give this link because the article shows who many of the conspirators are)

The last paragraph of Patrick Henry's famous speech:

"...It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" --Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1775.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_Liberty,_or_give_me_Death!

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

--Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) [who was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps until their liberation by the Allies in 1945].

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...

Comments

This forum is moderated by software. Please allow up to 15 minutes for your comments to go live and avoid posting the same comment multiple times.

All for MANning the

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 15:23 — Vic Anderson (not verified)

All for MANning the Barackades of Liberty for US All and Actually DELIVERING the Obamanibly-touted TRANSPARENCY! There was another such MANdela!! In other Despots' SHADOWS!!!

This nation has a

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 16:17 — Anonymous (not verified)

This nation has a sickness.
It is called moral turpitude.
There appears to be no vestige of what was once a beacon of justice and freedom.
The Constitution has been sacrificed for the benefit of the war profiteers and their orchestrated terror theater.
Where is the rule of law?
Remember when we were innocent until proven guilty?
Now it's guilty, punished, and executed before there are even any charges.
This is not the nation we used to be.

BradleyManning=>example to

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 16:30 — Anonarcmous (not verified)

BradleyManning=>example to world of those who DARE stand up for freedom. US gov allows insubordination only on ETHICAL grounds.VicA+.

This is absolutely awful. I

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 16:58 — Annette Spanhel (not verified)

This is absolutely awful. I am sickened by his treatment by the grand ole USA.

I agree fully that the

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 16:59 — Anonymous (not verified)

I agree fully that the torture should end. He should be tried, convicted and executed for treason immediately. Only then will we not have to concern ourselves with this traitorous scum's mental well-being.

This place has never been a

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 17:10 — unsurped (not verified)

This place has never been a country of laws, equality and liberty. Only such things existed in the delusional detachment of the hopeful.

Seems the torture of Manning is acceptable to the masses, another symptom of the conditioning that they endure.

Has the government offered

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 17:30 — Anonymous (not verified)

Has the government offered any practical justification for his solitary confinement (protection from others, protection of others, etc.), or is it solely for punitive reasons? If the latter, that would seem cruel and unusual.

Not sure what 'Muricans this

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 17:30 — Army Pussy (not verified)

Not sure what 'Muricans this article is referring to - the many I know would like to see Manning released immediately, awarded for journalistic excellent, allowed to openly profess his sexual preference and then run for political office.

It's the Military's fault for allowing this release of data - not their preferred scapegoat. The military can be a perverse dump of sadistic immorality, and this whole incident cleary shows how impulsively mindless entire organizations can be - the easy way out is always to hoist up one of their own and shriek like schoolboys "He did it! He did it!"

If you think China made a

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 18:20 — mysterioso (not verified)

If you think China made a stink about someone they had in prison getting the Nobel Peace Prize, try giving it to Assange and Manning.

To some idiot named Nicholas

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 18:24 — Anonymous (not verified)

To some idiot named Nicholas Hess, private Manning and all those who serve in uniform as I did, never took an oath to defend his country. The oath upon enlistment is to defend the constitution. You, and others like you who wrap yourselves in the flag but never serve, "your country", wouldn't know this fact.

This is another instance of

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 19:00 — Anonymous (not verified)

This is another instance of not getting the change we thought we would get. We have Barack H Bush in the Oval Office.

THE PRISON GUARDS NEED TO

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 20:17 — Anonymous (not verified)

THE PRISON GUARDS NEED TO STAND UP AND PROTECT THE PRISONERS, OTHERWISE THEIR WHOLE SENCE OF BEING WILL BE FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
FREE MANNING!!

God help us defeat these

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 21:24 — Anonymous (not verified)

God help us defeat these satanists. In Jesus name we pray.

You have to admire whoever

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 21:39 — tomo (not verified)

You have to admire whoever put together the Obama scam. "Let's get some good looking, sweet-talking minority guy to promise to roll back the evils of Bush/Cheney. The liberals and progressives and a big chunk of everyone else will fall all over themselves electing him. Then will have a cadre of our people hammer him night and day. All those who voted for him will be so focused on the injustice of it all, that they won't notice as he puts the final nails in the coffin of democracy--leaving us, the richest and most evil-minded people in America fully in charge!" Sounds like a comic-book plot, no? But how else make sense of what is actually going on? Obama is "permanentizing the damage done to our Constitution by the monsters in charge of us during Bush/Cheney.

I can see that; and Obama is at least as smart as I am. I conclude that this is what he came for. His new name should be The Fraud. Were the structures of our democratic republic robust, he would be impeached, and Bradley Manning would be a free man. All of France once rose in defense of Dreyfus. What's the problem with us Americans?

The delusion is that we are

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 22:25 — Cap'n Canard! (not verified)

The delusion is that we are a "nation of laws"... and that is BS. As far as I can tell Manning is being tortured because he had a higher law in mind. Now the Obama administration will do the same song and dance as Bush and company did. Justice? Give me a break, they only care about profit margins, etc etc.

There isn't any rational

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 22:44 — Unverified Poster (not verified)

There isn't any rational justifcation for treating an imprisoned human being in this manner. Psychological and educational authorities have known, for many years, that isolation is an extreme assault on an individual's ability to maintain any semblance of psychological integrity, stability, and maintenance.

I am disgusted with our government for using fields of study meant to elevate mankind, in order to degrade human beings, instead.

This man should be freed; at most, under house arrest with a bracelet to insure that he doesn't leave the country.

With, in the meantime, the real criminals and terrorists behind bars. Like George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Reading this article and all

Wed, 12/22/2010 - 00:30 — Anonymous (not verified)

Reading this article and all the comments has completely made me anxious and scared.
I have a loved family member who posted a video for everyone to see, and is now an official Teabagger. The video professes on how the founders of the nation said nothing about Democracy. I responded as well as I could and so to not further damage my relationship but I've been upset for several days over it, and of its misinformation.
What I'm trying to say is, that there are forces of some hidden nature (some of the gullible populace) that say they believe in the Constitution of the United States but have no idea that they are undermining its principles. Loved as this family member is, is also very uneducated, ignorant and now has some finances to fund the ignorance with.
30 years ago or so, a college professor said that the USA had the same capabilities as the Soviet Union but that we were a more "forgiving country," but now I'm starting to believe that we are the new and bad USSR.
What happened to our ideal of charging someone with whatever crime, expediently charged and tried and represented with a defense lawyer, and not kept in prison without due process?
This whole thing stinks.
Save the USA from itself and from within.

Where is Amnesty

Wed, 12/22/2010 - 00:37 — Frances Graiffin (not verified)

Where is Amnesty International on this?
What can we do to help?

Read Andrew Bacevich's

Wed, 12/22/2010 - 00:50 — Peter Selby (not verified)

Read Andrew Bacevich's recently published Washington Rules. He details how American policy is based on keeping our nation in a state of permanent "semi-war" or outright war. No wonder Obama and his cronies and predecessors want to break Manning and intimidate all other whistleblowers. Up and onward the march of truth - down with the scumdog politician liars. We have been betrayed by Obama and the Change we can no longer believe in. He is a warmonger and now he wants to expand the ground war into Pakistan. I am sickened by what our country has become.

ok what are we going to do

Wed, 12/22/2010 - 03:19 — tell the truth (not verified)

ok what are we going to do about this? this
could be a game changer if we march on washington
over this. folks lets call the people and organizations
that we know like the aclu etc. and see if we can
coordinate a march on dc to let these folks
know that the line has been no only crossed but
erased and we can take no more.

Just pick a uniform and kill

Wed, 12/22/2010 - 04:51 — Anonymous (not verified)

Just pick a uniform and kill whatever is in it.

America has most certainly

Wed, 12/22/2010 - 06:39 — Anonymous (not verified)

America has most certainly lost it's way. Greed, arrogance, anger, cruelty and vengeance define political and corporate USA. Stupidity, ignorance and insensitivity define the mass of US citizens. The minority remainder are well meaning but ineffectual and incapable of turning the USS Titanic around. Goodbye America, it's been a fascinating but disappointingly short journey interspersed with tantalising glimpses of what might have been.

Tragic but not anomalous. I

Wed, 12/22/2010 - 23:33 — Anonymous (not verified)

Tragic but not anomalous. I visit prisoners in regular (not military) federal prison and they tell me about being confined in solitary for months before even being CHARGED with anything. We've had secret prisons in the U.S. for a long time now.

We need to be asking

Thu, 12/23/2010 - 05:24 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)

We need to be asking ourselves, what about case law precedents? There is more than ample case law, all the way up to Supreme Court decisions, that all accused people who have not been tried, convicted and sentenced yet, have the right(s) to conditions approximating, as much as possible, release from incarceration, if they are not granted bail or "own recognizance" release, and they remain under incarceration. But, of course, these Constitutional rights have been violated all the way down to the county jails in the U.S. for decades. Far too many, if not most, accused prisoners are denied reasonable bail or release on their own recognizance for non-violent crimes, in violation of both the state and federal constitutions.

When you consider the case(s) of people like Bradley Manning, Jose Padilla, etc., who are being treated like "unprivileged enemy belligerents", or "unlawful enemy combatants", who supposedly have little or no rights whatsoever, although they do have such inalienable and immutable rights which are violated and denied to them more and more, what they are put through before any charges and/or cases have been proven against them, definitely amounts to presumption of guilt, pre-trial conviction and/or punishment, torture, and "cruel and unusual punishment" in violation of the Eighth Amendment (and "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment" under international law), and all of it is unconstitutional and a violation of human rights. But we have entered an era of all government in the U.S. supposedly being above the law.

This is what the U.S. has degenerated to the level of; yet, because most "Americans", from government leaders and media personalities on down, don't want to be seen as "soft on crime", and DO want to be seen as completely trusting the government to "do the right thing" even when it is completely wrong and/or unconstitutional, this insanity is allowed and supported by the "American people", most of whom have little or no, by intentional design, understanding of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. By that intentional design, most "Americans'" thinking is completely backwards, just as the powers-that-be want things to be, so the latter can more and more do and get away with whatever they want with immunity and impunity...

...If

Thu, 12/23/2010 - 05:25 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)

...If corporate-fascist-enablers in the also trusted mainstream media (MSM), as well as government officials, say that true journalism, expecting government transparency, and the duty to report violations of law are supposedly "treason", and/or supposedly make whistleblowers "traitors", most "Americans" are going to believe it; or, even if they don't believe or agree with it, they aren't going to do anything about it, and are content to allow the U.S. to become less and less about self-governance and/or government "of the People, by the People, for the People", allowing this country to deteriorate into deeper and deeper, and worse and worse, tyranny, despotism, authoritarianism, oppression, totalitarianism and repression.

The people have by and large been indoctrinated, conditioned and programmed to have no spine, courage and/or desire to take any responsibility for taking this country and government back. They don't even see it as their responsibility; but, as a direct result, will allow things to degenerate further and further, go along with the disintegration of freedom and liberty, and be complicit in the greater and greater oppression and repression against the American people as a whole. We have got to reverse this pattern or we are screwed, and very soon vast swaths of True Americans who do realize their responsibility, and the duty of all of us, to stand up against all of this madness, will be imprisoned like Bradley Manning.

I'm impressed with the

Thu, 12/23/2010 - 21:57 — tomo (not verified)

I'm impressed with the things S. Wolf says. Bradley Manning looks to me like a twelve-year-old. I have no idea how he's bearing up--but I have a deep sense of child-abuse occurring right out there in the public eye. Jose Padilla's treatment was already one outrage too many. I don't know much about Padilla, but I know it was wrong for us to treat him as we did. How many more outrages do we need?

We hoped President Obama would work toward restoring the moral tone of America.
Now whenever I see him smiling, I recall Bradley Manning, and Shakespeare's words come to me: "A man can smile and smile and be a villain."

Fire dog lake has a letter

Thu, 12/23/2010 - 23:13 — JadeQueen (not verified)

Fire dog lake has a letter to the jailer that I signed. It is probably easy to search.

He's a hero. Remember, he

Fri, 12/24/2010 - 06:26 — Anonymous (not verified)

He's a hero. Remember, he did this for us, goddammit. That took huge guts to do what he did. Can you imagine? He had to have known what the risk was. Well, he needs our help now. Here is a solution, I think. Let's let him know (somehow) that he really is a hero to us. He needs to know that. I believe for him to have that knowledge could make things more bearable. Think about it. We owe him that much, don't we? He gave us a huge heads-up, maybe even a years-ahead preview of how bad things are. Let us figure a way to get him that message.

THE POLITICAL APATHY MUST

Fri, 12/24/2010 - 08:45 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)

"Not sure what 'Muricans

Fri, 12/24/2010 - 15:30 — mchaun (not verified)

"Not sure what 'Muricans this
Tue, 12/21/2010 - 22:30 — Army Pussy (not verified)

Not sure what 'Muricans this article is referring to -"

You must be from Muriland?

Monte Haun mchaun@hotmail.com

Manning is a brave hero. He

Sat, 12/25/2010 - 11:35 — Galloway Grumblefield (not verified)

Manning is a brave hero. He stood up to an evil system.

I might have missed

Sat, 12/25/2010 - 23:06 — Anonymous (not verified)

I might have missed it...where do I write--Virginia(?) to the director of the prison to
further protest this incredible injustice?

FireDogLake's website, at

Sun, 12/26/2010 - 04:00 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)

FireDogLake's website, at firedoglake.com , has a letter/petition to sign onto.

Here's a mailing

Tue, 12/28/2010 - 05:45 — Anonymous (not verified)

Here's a mailing address:

Bradley Manning
c/o Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave #41
Oakland, CA
94601

Let him know he is not alone.

Tomo, Bradley is a mere two

Fri, 01/14/2011 - 14:56 — Frances in California (not verified)

Tomo, Bradley is a mere two years younger than my own son, now an adult capable of standing by his principles. I can't imagine what Manning must be going through but if I were his mom, I'd be storming the MIC with everything I could muster. He IS a hero; he belongs teaching in a University, like Andrew Bacevich or Henry Giroux. Tear down the wall and free him; let his jailers be held accountable.

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The Torture of Bradley Manning

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