Stump Lane

BRADLEY MANNING is getting the full treatment. It still appears to me that he is being prepared for a “confession.”

From the Law Office of David E. Coombs:

Last night, PFC Manning was inexplicably stripped of all clothing by the Quantico Brig. He remained in his cell, naked, for the next seven hours. At 5:00 a.m., the Brig sounded the wake-up call for the detainees. At this point, PFC Manning was forced to stand naked at the front of his cell.

The Duty Brig Supervisor (DBS) arrived shortly after 5:00 a.m. When he arrived, PFC Manning was called to attention. The DBS walked through the facility to conduct his detainee count. Afterwards, PFC Manning was told to sit on his bed. About ten minutes later, a guard came to his cell to return his clothing. [Coombs]

Bring out the dog collar! Smear him with something that looks like it might be feces. Will they allow him enough human interaction to form a naked human pyramid with some other prisoners?

This is what came out when things like this happened at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq:

Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross who visited the prison in mid-October, shortly before the worst of the recorded abuses, complained that detainees were being stripped and humiliated. “The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was ‘part of the process,'” the Red Cross said in a report. [Washington Post]

MEANWHILE Manning is being charged, among many other things, with “aiding the enemy,” a crime for which, if convicted, he could be put to death.

But this is a case of whistle blowing. Secret government information was passed to journalists. Now, if an actual declared enemy received the information, it was because the information had been published in the news media, not because PFC Manning handed it to them.

In looking at the charge of “aiding the enemy,” one would assume that either the journalists who published the information can be expected to be charged as accomplices to Manning’s alleged “crimes,” or that the craft of journalism itself, (that is, the seeking out and publishing of evidence of government wrongdoing,) is now a declared enemy of the state!

Not sure how this squares with the first amendment. Maybe some journalist enemy of the state could ask the constitutional law scholar in the oval office, before they’re stood in front of a firing squad.