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Show your support for Bradley Manning

Activists are planning events around the world on March 19-20 to show their support for Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower who is being held in appalling conditions by the U.S. government. The Bradley Manning Support Network issued the following call to support the day of action.

Demonstrators gathered in Quantico, Va., to protest the torture of Bradley ManningDemonstrators gathered in Quantico, Va., to protest the torture of Bradley Manning

ON MARCH 19-20, activist organizations and individuals will take to the streets to protest the U.S. government's treatment of accused WikiLeaks whistleblower Army Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Manning, 23, has been held in isolation for nearly 300 days, charged with releasing classified documents, including a video that shows American troops shooting and killing 11 people, including two Reuters employees, in 2007.

Organizers are calling on supporters around the world to take public action to protest Manning's inhumane treatment at the Quantico brig, which P.J. Crowley, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's former assistant for public affairs, declaimed last week as "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid."

The primary rally will take place outside the brig in Quantico where Manning is being held. In addition to the Quantico rally, the Bradley Manning Support Network is pleased to announce events in cities around the world, including Minneapolis, London, Montreal, The Hague, Phoenix, San Diego and Vienna.

"On March 2nd, Manning was stripped of his clothing and forced to spend the night naked, then stand for inspection the next morning without his clothes. This happened again the following night, and we don't know how long this will keep going," said Jeff Paterson, steering committee member of the Bradley Manning Support Network and project director of Courage to Resist. "This pre-trial punishment is inhumane and un-American."
What you can do

For a list of events on the day of action or for more information on his case, see the Bradley Manning Support Network website.

You can also find details about the rally in Quantico, Va.,, where Manning is being held--and also find out how to host your own rally.

Despite the recommendations of three forensic military psychiatrists, the MCB Quantico Commander refuses to lift Pfc. Manning's Prevention of Injury (POI) status and change his confinement classification from MAX to Medium Custody In (MDI).

Manning's imprisonment has resulted in an international outcry, and his conditions are the subject of an investigation by the UN special rapporteur on torture and a recent campaign by Amnesty International. Famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who will be speaking at a rally in Quantico on the 20th, has called Mr. Manning "a new hero of mine."

From US "Socialist Worker"

http://www.counterpunch.org/ellsberg03182011.html

President Obama tells us that he's asked the Pentagon whether the conditions of confinement of Bradley Manning, the soldier charged with leaking state secrets, "are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are."

If Obama believes that, he'll believe anything. I would hope he would know better than to ask the perpetrators whether they've been behaving appropriately. I can just hear President Nixon saying to a press conference the same thing: "I was assured by the White House Plumbers that their burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's doctor in Los Angeles was appropriate and met basic standards."

When that criminal behaviour ordered from the Oval Office came out, Nixon faced impeachment and had to resign. Well, times have changed. But if President Obama really doesn't yet know the actual conditions of Manning's detention – if he really believes, as he's said, that "some of this [nudity, isolation, harassment, sleep-deprivation] has to do with Private Manning's wellbeing", despite the contrary judgments of the prison psychologist – then he's being lied to, and he needs to get a grip on his administration.

If he does know, and agrees that it's appropriate or even legal, that doesn't speak well for his memory of the courses he taught on constitutional law.

The president refused to comment on PJ Crowley's statement that the treatment of Manning is "ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid". Those words are true enough as far as they go – which is probably about as far as a state department spokesperson can allow himself to go in condemning actions of the defence department. But at least two other words are called for: abusive and illegal.

Crowley was responding to a question about the "torturing" of an American citizen, and, creditably, he didn't rebut that description. Prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity – that's right out of the manual of the CIA for "enhanced interrogation". We've seen it applied in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. It's what the CIA calls "no-touch torture", and its purpose there, as in this case, is very clear: to demoralise someone to the point of offering a desired confession. That's what they are after, I suspect, with Manning. They don't care if the confession is true or false, so long as it implicates WikiLeaks in a way that will help them prosecute Julian Assange.

That's just my guess, as to their motives. But it does not affect the illegality of the behaviour. If I'm right, it's likely that such harsh treatment wasn't ordered at the level of a warrant officer or the brig commander. The fact that they have continued to inflict such suffering on the prisoner despite weeks of complaint from his defence counsel, harsh publicity and condemnation from organisations such as Amnesty International, suggests to me that it might have come from high levels of the defence department or the justice department, if not from the White House itself.

It's no coincidence that it's someone from the state department who has gone off-message to speak out about this. When a branch of the US government makes a mockery of our pretensions to honour the rule of law, specifically our obligation not to use torture, the state department bears the brunt of that, as it affects our standing in the world.

The fact that Manning's abusive mistreatment is going on at Quantico – where I spent nine months as a Marine officer in basic school – and that Marines are lying about it, makes me feel ashamed for the Corps. Just three years as an infantry officer was more than enough time for me to know that what is going on there is illegal behaviour that must be stopped and disciplined.


Daniel Ellsberg is a former US military analyst who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers, which revealed how the US public had been misled about the Vietnam war. His latest book is Secrets.