The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention

And yet, again, we don't let murderers and rapists walk around outside of jail while awaiting trial, so why should this guy?

I didn't say that. I said that the crime of which a suspect is accused should have no effect on the conditions in which he is held before being proven guilty.

He's betraying our country by informing us that our country is betraying us. He should really pay for that!

Er, no. He's giving away classified information, which as anybody who's ever been near the armed forces, police or bleeding cadet forces will know often amounts to risking the lives of your countrymen and often your mates. It's marked SECRET for a reason.

Seriously though why do our leaders have no one to be accountable for? Why aren't Bush, Cheney, etc^ spending some time in solitary?

What for again?
 
No one gets sheets or a pillow in jail, even for just an overnight stay.

Don't you guys remember Lindsey Lohan's mom complaining about it?
 
Er, no. He's giving away classified information, which as anybody who's ever been near the armed forces, police or bleeding cadet forces will know often amounts to risking the lives of your countrymen and often your mates. It's marked SECRET for a reason.
Much of the stuff revealed was improperly marked secret, in my opinion.

The government has been abusing their power at the moment and should be made accountable. The fact that so many Americans support this guy means that many of the government actions and the laws supporting them are likely wrong.

I'll concede that it's generally wrong to break the law. He should be punished, then have a few book deals and a parade in his honor. :)

What for again?
Authorizing the ruining and ending hundreds of thousands of innocent US Coalition/Iraqi/Afghani/Pakistani's lives.
 
Ironically, Putin claims to handle "worst things imaginable" much more humanely than many US reactionaries would:

I would agree that is indeed ironic but probably not for the same reasons you do. Ever hear of Alexander Litvinenko?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko

Mise said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process[/url]

And?

That is so far down my list I'm not sure it would ever come up for consideration when making a decision like this.

And besides, he thought he was doing the right thing and probably was.

The military is going to lose jurisdiction in this case, which will severely impede procuring a guilty verdict, if they don't stop treating him like a terrorist.

Putting someone in solitary confinement isnt treating them like a terrorist. What they are treating him as is a soldier who has violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

He obviously has made a lot of people very patriotic people very angry, but our laws are in place precisely to keep anger out of our legal proceedings. There is no judicial grey area here like there was in Gitmo, so soon the government is going to try him as is his right and if there is any question that he was tortured he will walk...or is satisfying your anger more important than the rule of law?

Well, he isnt being tortured regardless of what people's personal opinion of solitary confinement is. And I would hope that the powers that be have that thought directly in mind in this case as its the governments case to lose. That is, they have overwhelming evidence to indict this soldier and send him to jail probably for the rest of his life. I think another part of the reason he is in solitary is precisely because of the concerns you bring up here.....not to simply 'get back' at him in some juvenile attempt...

EDIT: This just in....: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/12/1...rivate-accused-passing-secret-info-wikileaks/

Emphasis mine.

The U.S. Army private suspected of leaking a trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks is being treated just like every other maximum security detainee at the military brig in Quantico, Va., an official told FoxNews.com, emphatically denying published reports that Pfc. Bradley Manning, is being subjected to conditions that are "tantamount to torture."

Quantico Lt. Brian Villiard said Manning, 22, "is subjected to the same conditions as anyone else in the pretrial confinement facility. Every single [detainee] gets one hour of TV and recreation time each day."
He said Manning is not allowed to exercise in his cell, but that restriction applies to all detainees, he said.

"That's a safety measure, that's across the board for every detainee," he said, explaining that detainees can become dehydrated or injure themselves if allowed to exercise alone.

Manning, an Army intelligence analyst, has gained support from some anti-war activists who believe he performed a public service by acting as a whistle-blower. Some politicians and veterans' groups, meanwhile, have labeled the soldier's alleged release of classified information an act of treason, a crime punishable by execution.

Villiard spoke with Fox News in response to claims made by Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald and Manning's supporters that the Army intelligence analyst is being subjected to "cruel and inhumane" treatment at the military brig.

Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist said Greenwald's Dec. 15 Salon.com editorial, which detailed Manning's "inhumane" treatment, was "absolutely accurate" and concurred with information he's received from Manning's attorney, David Coombs, and David House, a 23-year-old researcher who befriend Manning after his arrest in May.

"I understand the brig's position that he's not being tortured, but some people think the conditions he's subjected to are tantamount to torture," Paterson told FoxNews.com on Thursday. "It could be more months or another year until he gets court-martialed."

Paterson stressed that Manning has not been convicted of a crime. Manning, who has not commented publicly on his case, faces up to 52 years in prison if convicted of downloading hundreds of thousands of classified Afghan and Iraq war reports and secret U.S. diplomatic cables while stationed in Iraq. Coombs did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

"There's no basis to be holding in a maximum detaining status for any other reason than to punish him," Paterson continued. "The whole rationale for pretrial confinement is to assure that the defendant shows up."

Paterson said he believed there are "punitive aspects" to Manning's detention, including being locked down for 23 hours per day and not being allowed to exercise in his cell.

But those conditions are the same for all such detainees at the Virginia brig, Villiard said Thursday.

Manning is allowed to watch television on a cart that is wheeled from cell to cell for prisoners' usage daily. Villiard disputed Salon.com's report that Manning is prohibited from watching news or current events during his allotted television time.

"They're allowed to watch anything that comes through our base's cable system," he said. "Anything I can watch in my office, he can watch in his cell."

Villiard declined to comment on Manning's condition because he has not met the soldier. But Manning has had personal and legal-related visits, he said.

He said Manning is provided a pillow that, as a "precautionary measure," cannot be torn, but he emphasized that he is not on suicide watch. He said Manning receives bedding and a piece of material to cover up with that acts as a sheet, contrary to Salon.com's opinion piece by Greenwald that claims he is being denied a "pillow and sheets" for his bed.
On Tuesday, the Berkeley, Calif., City Council indefinitely delayed a vote on whether to honor Manning as a hero.

Some council members in the liberal-leaning California city said they were concerned about the way the resolution was written and wanted more time to investigate. Others said it was premature to call Manning a hero when he has not admitted to being the source of the leaks.

The resolution proposed by the city's Peace and Justice Commission praises Manning for exposing "war crimes" by allegedly leaking a 2007 video of a laughing U.S. Apache helicopter crew gunning down 11 men in Baghdad, Iraq, including a Reuters news photographer.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has won similar support from anti-war groups, including documentary maker Michael Moore and Daniel Ellsberg, the man who famously leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War.

Ellsberg also praised Manning, recently telling reporters at a Washington news conference that the men were no more deserving of prosecution than the New York Times -- which published the Pentagon Papers in 1971 -- or Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward for helping uncover the Watergate conspiracy.

At least one veterans group condemned Berkeley's proposed resolution in support of Manning.

Prior to Tuesday's delayed vote, Ryan Gallucci, a spokesman for AMVETS, which represents roughly 180,000 U.S. veterans, said the Berkeley City Council "would be wise" to refuse the motion in support of Manning.

"AMVETS believes it would be appalling to commend someone like Bradley Manning who has betrayed his country and disgraced the uniform," Gallucci wrote in a statement to FoxNews.com last week. "Manning not only compromised American interests across the globe, but he has blood his hands for our Afghan allies sought out by the Taliban from the first leak."

Well, there you have it. The official denial that Manning is being mistreated and is indeed being given a pillow and sheets for his bed.

As Villiard was also mentioned in the Salon opinion piece as a source did the writer just ignore similar comments from Villard then and selectively report comments from that interview to give the story a certain bias?

It would seem so to me.
 
Much of the stuff revealed was improperly marked secret, in my opinion.

The government has been abusing their power at the moment and should be made accountable. The fact that so many Americans support this guy means that many of the government actions and the laws supporting them are likely wrong.

I'll concede that it's generally wrong to break the law. He should be punished, then have a few book deals and a parade in his honor. :)

We discussed this at length when this first came out but I will try and explain it again.

I doesn't matter what was released, because in the end he was not authorized to release it. So this guy legitimately thought what he saw needed to be released, and many of you agree with him. But what if he is wrong.

What if the next guy, acting under the exact same motivation but with a different standard of judgment decides nuclear missile codes should be made public? Or she specs of chemical weapons? Or the deployment schedules for our forces? I think most of us would agree this would be very damaging and should legitimately be kept secret, but we all know a few forum participants will swear up and down that all that needed to be known and this is transparency at its best with all the exact same arguments we see right now.

The point is the people doing the leaking are in no position to judge what should be secret or not themselves.

Additionally, as I discussed at length before, things are made secret for various reasons. Sometimes it is a very time sensitive thing, and while it was sensitive last week for unique reasons nobody would know that examining it a year down the road (including you) with none of the players present to comment on it.

Sometimes its routine. I have an entire second work email account that is on the military secret network, and since most of my colleagues use that too we conduct a lot of non secret business with it. My lunch plans for the last three years are all classified secret by virtue of the medium used, not the content. In order for them not to be secret someone paid a lot of money would have to review them to confirm they are not secret and release them. This is obviously not worth the effort, so you guys will just have to be content that you will never know what my alternate coffee shop choice was on the 23 of October 2009.

You also have to remember that the leaks you read are not the whole story. So you read a wikileak that says that the US had a plane divert into Iranian airspace on such and such date. OMG THE US ROUTINELY VIOLATES IRANIAN AIRSPACE! However, your source didn't leak another secret document that showed the plane diverted in response to illegal jamming from an Iranian source messing up its navigation. People always assume their leak is the whole story, but you can never know and if its not the rest is still secret so you won't be told.

Authorizing the ruining and ending hundreds of thousands of innocent US Coalition/Iraqi/Afghani/Pakistani's lives.

Yeah, no.
 
Can someone who supports this solitary confinement actually tell me what purpose it serves in this case?
 
That's nice, but according to the law the government is in fact the sole entity entitled to do so.

Don't like it? Then elect people who will change it. Or pay a few million GS13s their six figure salary to sift through and declassify everything. Is my lunch schedule really that important to you?
 
Can someone who supports this solitary confinement actually tell me what purpose it serves in this case?

Because its authorized under the MCM. Apparently these are the same facilities for everyone in pre-trial confinement at that base. Thats the nature of pre-trial confinement as opposed to pre-trial restraint, and is largely dictated by the seriousness of the offense, not whether it was violent or non-violent in nature. Pre-trial confinement also has a mandatory review process in order to determine its validity after the first 7 days of confinement.

The MCM is also very clear in that pre-trial confinement is not punishment, and the accused gets credit for time served during this process.
 
We discussed this at length when this first came out but I will try and explain it again.

I doesn't matter what was released, because in the end he was not authorized to release it. So this guy legitimately thought what he saw needed to be released, and many of you agree with him. But what if he is wrong.

What if the next guy, acting under the exact same motivation but with a different standard of judgment decides nuclear missile codes should be made public? Or she specs of chemical weapons? Or the deployment schedules for our forces? I think most of us would agree this would be very damaging and should legitimately be kept secret, but we all know a few forum participants will swear up and down that all that needed to be known and this is transparency at its best with all the exact same arguments we see right now.

The point is the people doing the leaking are in no position to judge what should be secret or not themselves.

Additionally, as I discussed at length before, things are made secret for various reasons. Sometimes it is a very time sensitive thing, and while it was sensitive last week for unique reasons nobody would know that examining it a year down the road (including you) with none of the players present to comment on it.

Sometimes its routine. I have an entire second work email account that is on the military secret network, and since most of my colleagues use that too we conduct a lot of non secret business with it. My lunch plans for the last three years are all classified secret by virtue of the medium used, not the content. In order for them not to be secret someone paid a lot of money would have to review them to confirm they are not secret and release them. This is obviously not worth the effort, so you guys will just have to be content that you will never know what my alternate coffee shop choice was on the 23 of October 2009.

You also have to remember that the leaks you read are not the whole story. So you read a wikileak that says that the US had a plane divert into Iranian airspace on such and such date. OMG THE US ROUTINELY VIOLATES IRANIAN AIRSPACE! However, your source didn't leak another secret document that showed the plane diverted in response to illegal jamming from an Iranian source messing up its navigation. People always assume their leak is the whole story, but you can never know and if its not the rest is still secret so you won't be told.

One of the best posts on here in a while. Thank you Pat.
 
That's nice, but according to the law the government is in fact the sole entity entitled to do so.

Don't like it? Then elect people who will change it. Or pay a few million GS13s their six figure salary to sift through and declassify everything. Is my lunch schedule really that important to you?

I suspect most people follow laws because they are convenient and in their best interest, not because they feel a moral compunction to.
 
Its convenient for me to steal lots of stuff, and probably to murder several people. Moral compunction halts my hand.
 
But then you go to jail/get executed. Therefore its not convenient.

I don't agree with his point in all cases, but I think its POSSIBLE for that to be the case and you still avoid murdering people.
 
Won't be long before this kid is buried in the desert, all files erased and his family relocated to safe places. US government is protecting itself by putting down the rights it signed over to us. :D
 
If I saw that I could steal without being caught, I still would not steal. That's what integrity means to me.

That is a good thing, and I wouldn't either. Meaning, as I said, his point wasn't completely correct. However, there are certain people who do not follow the law out of "Integrity" or "Morality" but still do not go on serial killing rampages (It does take integrity not to steal anything though.)
 
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