Bradley Manning’s supporters plan demonstrations March 19 and 20...

From DATELINE ZERO – I just read at Boing Boing: “A growing number of news organizations and civil liberties groups are condemning the Department of Defense’s “gratuitously harsh treatment” of Bradley Manning, a young Army intelligence specialist charged with downloading thousands of US government documents and passing them on to Wikileaks.”

While I ‘get it‘ that the military wants to make an example of Manning to make sure no one else dares considering doing something similar; how can they not see that they are setting themselves up with something that’s going to blow up in their faces spectacularly? The embarrassment of Abu Ghraib isn’t too far in the past … and the U.S. military is setting themselves up with this blatant, crass, and embarrassing display of abuse. I know I am not the only one who sees this…

For the past nine months, Manning has been imprisoned in a military detention facility at Quantico, Virginia. He has not yet had a trial, or been convicted of any crime … yet, to quote a New York Times editorial:

… the military has been treating him abusively, in a way that conjures creepy memories of how the Bush administration used to treat terror suspects. Inexplicably, it appears to have President Obama’s support to do so.

His conditions in solitary confinement include being forced to strip naked and appear before military officers, presumably of either gender.

Manning’s supporters plan a series of demonstrations on March 19 and 20, to protest the government’s treatment of the accused whistleblower.

• ACLU: “Letter To Defense Secretary Robert Gates Says Pentagon Confinement Standards Must Comply With U.S. Constitution”

• Los Angeles Times: “Punishing Pfc. Manning”

• Washington Post: “Pfc. Bradley Manning doesn’t deserve humiliating treatment”

• New York Times: “The Abuse of Private Manning”